The Florentine poet Antonio Malatesti (1610-1672) earned a brief but significant mention in the earliest history of Italian literature for his contributions to the renewal of the sonnet form in two genres, enigmatography and dithyrambic poetry. In more recent times, his name has cropped up most frequently because of a sequence of fifty bawdy sonnets entitled La Tina, equivoci rusticali, which Malatesti dedicated and presented to the young John Milton on the occasion of his visit to Florence in 1638. The dedication manuscript disappeared soon after Milton's death and remained practically...