Chapter VIII: Latin Poetry (1)

Special Causes for the Practice of Latin Versification in
Italy -- The Want of an Italian Language -- Multitudes of
Poetasters -- Beccadelli -- Alberti's 'Philodoxus' --
Poliziano -- The 'Sylvæ' -- 'Nutricia', 'Rusticus', 'Manto',
'Ambra' -- Minor Poems -- Pontano -- Sannazzaro -- Elegies
and Epigrams -- Christian Epics -- Vida's 'Christiad' --
Vida's 'Poetica' -- Fracastoro -- The 'Syphilis' --
_Barocco_ Flatteries -- Bembo -- Immoral Elegies --
Imitations of Ovid and Tibullus -- The 'Benacus' -- Epitaphs
-- Navagero -- Epigrams and Eclogues -- Molsa -- Poem on his
own Death -- Castiglione -- 'Alcon' and 'Lycidas' -- Verses
of Society -- The Apotheosis of the Popes -- Poem on the
Ariadne of the Vatican -- Sadoleto's Verses on the Laocoon
-- Flaminio -- His Life -- Love of the Country -- Learned
Friends -- Scholar-Poets of Lombardy -- Extinction of
Learning in Florence -- Decay of Italian Erudition.

The history of this last period of the Revival would be incomplete without a survey of its Latin poetry. I shall have failed to convey a right notion of the tendencies of humanism, if I have not shown that the Italians were seeking not merely to acquire a knowledge of ancient literature, but also to effect a resuscitation of antiquity in their own writings. Regarding themselves as the heirs of Rome, separated from the brilliant period of Latin civilisation by ten centuries of ignorance, they strove with all their might to seize the thread of culture at the very point where the poets of the Silver Age had dropped it. In the opinion of Northern races it might seem unnatural or unpatriotic to woo the Muses in a dead language; but for Italians the Camoenæ had not died; on the hills of Latium, where they fell asleep, they might awake again. Every familiar sight and sound recalled 'the rich Virgilian rustic measure' of the 'Georgics' and 'Bucolics.' Nature had not changed, nor did the poets feel the influence of Christianity so deeply as to find no meaning in the mythic phraseology of Fauns and Nymphs.

Latin, again, was far less a language of the past for the Italians than for other European nations. What risk the Tuscan dialect ran, when Dante wrote the first lines of the 'Divine Comedy' in Latin, and when Petrarch assumed the laurel crown by right of his 'Africa', is known to every student. The serious efforts of the greatest writers were for centuries devoted to Latin composition, because they believed that the nation, in the modern as in the ancient world, might freely use the speech of Cicero and Virgil. Their _volgari cose_ they despised as trifles, not having calculated the impotence of scholars or of kings to turn the streams of language from their natural courses. Nor was this blindness so inexplicable as it seems to us at first sight. Italy possessed no common dialect; Dante's 'Italiano Illustre,' or 'Cortegiano', was even less native to the race at large, less universal in its use, than Latin.[412] Fashioned from the Tuscan for literary purposes, selected from the vocabulary of cultivated persons, stripped of vernacular idioms, and studied in the works of a few standard authors, it was itself, upon the soil that gave it birth, a product of high art and conscious culture. The necessity felt soon after Dante's death for translating the 'Divine Comedy' into Latin, sufficiently proves that a Latin poem gained a larger audience than the masterpiece of Italian literature. While the singer of a dialect, however noble, appealed to his own fellow-citizens, the Latin poet gave his verses _urbi et orbi_. If another proof of the artificiality of Italian were needed, we should find it in the fact that the phrases of Petrarch are not less obsolete now than in the fourteenth century. The English require a glossary for Chaucer, and even Elizabethan usages are out of date; in other words, the language of the people has outgrown the style of its first poets. But Italian has undergone no process of transformation and regeneration according to the laws of organic growth, since it first started. The different districts still use different dialects, while writers in all parts of the peninsula have conformed their style as far as possible to early Tuscan models. It may be questioned whether united Italy, having for the first time gained the necessary conditions of national concentration, is not now at last about to enter on a new phase of growth in literature, which, after many years, will make the style of the first authors more archaic than it seems at present.

[Footnote 412: Cf. Filelfo, quoted in a note to the next chapter, who says,'Tuscan is hardly known to all Italians, while Latin is spread far and wide throughout the whole world.']

The foregoing observations were requisite in order to explain why the cultivation of Latin poetry was no mere play-work to Italian scholars. The peculiar direction given by Petrarch to classical studies at the outset must also be taken into account. We have seen that he regarded rhetoric and poetry as the two chief aims of humanism. To be either a poet or an orator was the object of all students who had slaked their thirst at the Castalian springs of ancient learning. Philology and poetry, accordingly, went hand in hand through the periods of the Revival; and to this first impulse we are perhaps justified in tracing back the prominence assigned to Latin verse in our own school studies.

Poetry being thus regarded as a necessary branch of scholarship, it followed that few men distinguished for their learning abstained from versification. Pedants who could do no more than make prosaic elegiacs scan, and scholars respectable for their acquirements, but destitute of inspiration, were reckoned among the _sacri vates_. It would be a weariful--nay, hopeless--task to pass all the Latin versifiers of the Renaissance in review. Their name is legion; even to count them would be the same as to number the stars--_ad una ad una annoverar le stelle_. It may be considered fortunate that perhaps the larger masses of their productions still remain in manuscript, partly because they preceded the age of printing, and partly, no doubt, because the good sense of the age rejected them. What has been printed, however, exceeds in bulk the 'Corpus Poetarum Latinorum,' and presents so many varieties that to deal with more than a selection is impossible.[413]

[Footnote 413: I purpose in this chapter to use the _Delitiæ Poetarum Italorum_, two parts divided into 4 vols., 1608; _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, Bergomi, 1753; _Poemata Selecta Italorum_, Oxonii, 1808; and _Selecta Poemata Italorum_, accurante A. Pope, Londini, 1740.]

The poetasters of the first two periods need not be taken into account. Struggling with a language imperfectly assimilated, and with the rules of a prosody as yet but little understood, it was as much as they could do to express themselves at all in metre. Elegance of composition was out of the question when a writer could neither set forth modern thoughts with ease nor imitate the classic style with accuracy. What he lost in force by the use of a dead language, he did not gain in polish; nor was the taste of the age schooled to appreciate the niceties of antique diction. Beccadelli alone, by a certain limpid fluency, attained to a degree of moderate excellence; and how much he owed to his choice of subject may be questioned. The obscenity of his themes, and the impudence required for their expression, may have acted as a stimulus to his not otherwise distinguished genius. There is, moreover, no stern conflict to be fought with phrases when the author's topic is mere animalism. The rest of his contemporaries, Filelfo included, did no more than smooth the way for their successors by practising the technicalities of verse and exciting emulation. To surpass their rude achievements was not difficult, while the fame they enjoyed aroused the ambition of younger rivals. Exception to this sweeping verdict may be made in favour of Alberti, whose Latin play, called 'Philodoxus,' was a brilliant piece of literary workmanship.[414] Not only did it impose on contemporaries as a genuine classic, but, even when judged by modern standards, it shows real familiarity with the language of Latin comedy and rare skill in its employment.

[Footnote 414: Bonucci's edition of Alberti's works, vol. i. Alberti's own preface, in the form of a dedicatory letter to Lionello d'Este, describes how he came to write this comedy, and how it was passed off upon contemporaries as an original play by Lepidus Comicus. _Ib._ pp. cxxi.-cxxiii.]

Poliziano is the first Latin poet who compels attention in the fifteenth century; nor was he surpassed, in fertility of conception and mastery of metre, by any of his numerous successors. With all his faults of style and crudities of diction, Poliziano, in my opinion, deserves the chief place among original poets of revived Latin literature. Bembo wrote more elegantly, Navagero more classically, Amalteo with a grace more winning. Yet these versifiers owe their celebrity to excellence of imitation. Poliziano possessed a manner of his own, and made a dead language utter thoughts familiar to the age in which he lived. He did not merely traverse the old ground of the elegy, the epigram, the satire, and the idyll. Striking out a new path for himself, and aiming at instruction, he poured forth torrents of hexameters, rough perhaps and over-fluent, yet marked by intellectual energy and copious fancy, in illustration of a modern student's learning. This freedom of handling is shown to best advantage in his 'Sylvæ.'[415]

[Footnote 415: See above, p. 254, for the purpose fulfilled by the _Sylvæ_.]

The 'Nutricia' forms an introduction to the history of poetry in general, and carries on its vigorous stream the weight of universal erudition. From it we learn how the most accomplished scholar of his century judged and distinguished the whole body of fine literature possessed by his contemporaries. On the emergence of humanity from barbarism, writes Poliziano, poetry was given to men as a consolation for the miseries of life and as an instrument of culture; their first nurse in the cradle of civilisation was the Muse:--

Musa quies hominum, divomque æterna voluptas.[416]

[Footnote 416: 'Of men the solace, and of gods the everlasting joy.']

After characterising the Pagan oracles, the mythical bards of Hellas, and the poet-prophets of the Jewish race, with brief but telling touches, Poliziano addresses himself in the following lines to the delineation of the two chief epic-singers:--

... etenim ut stellas fugere undique cælo,
Aurea cum radios Hyperionis exeruit fax,
Cernimus, et tenuem velut evanescere lunam;
Sic veterum illustres flagranti obscurat honores
Lampade Mæonides: unum quem dia canentem
Facta virum, et sævas æquantem pectine pugnas,
Obstupuit, prorsusque parem confessus Apollo est.
Proximus huic autem, vel ni veneranda senectus
Obstiterit, fortasse prior, canit arma virumque
Vergilius, cui rure sacro, cui gramine pastor
Ascræus, Siculusque simul cessere volentes.[417]

[Footnote 417: 'As from the heavens we see the stars on all sides fleeing, when the golden torch of the sun-god rises, and the diminished moon appears to fade; so with his burning lamp Mæonides obscures the honours of the earlier bards. Him alone, while he sang the divine deeds of heroes, and with his lyre arrayed fierce wars, Apollo, wonder-struck, confessed his equal. Close at his side, or higher even, but for the veneration due to age, Vergil entones the song of arms and the hero--Vergil, to whom from holy tilth and pasture land both Ascra's and Sicilia's shepherds yield their sway with willing homage.'--_Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Carmina_, p. 167.]

Then follows the enumeration of lesser Greek and Roman epopoeists. After them the lyrists and elegiac poets, among whom Pindar is celebrated in the following magniloquent paragraph:--

Aërios procul in tractus, et nubila supra
Pindarus it Dircæus olor, cui nectare blandæ
Os tenerum libâstis apes, dum fessa levaret
Membra quiete puer mollem spirantia somnum;
Sed Tanagræa suo mox jure poetria risit,
Irrita qui toto sereret figmenta canistro;
Tum certare auso palmam intercepit opimam
Æoliis prælata modis atque illice formâ.
Ille Agathocleâ subnisus voce coronas
Dixit Olympiacas, et quâ victoribus Isthmos
Fronde comam, Delphique tegant, Nemeæaque tesqua
Lunigenam mentita feram; tum numina divum
Virtutesque, virosque undanti pectore torrens
Provexit, sparsitque pios ad funera questus.
Frugibus hunc libisque virum Cirrhæus ab arâ
Phoebus, et accubitu mensæ dignatus honoro est:
Panaque pastores solis videre sub antris
Pindarico tacitas mulcentem carmine silvas.
Inde senem pueri gremio cervice repostâ
Infusum, et dulci laxantem corda sopore,
Protinus ad manes, et odoro gramine pictum
Elysium tacitâ rapuit Proserpina dextrâ.
Quin etiam hostiles longo post tempore flammæ,
Quæ septemgeminas populabant undique Thebas,
Expavere domum tanti tamen urere vatis,
Et sua posteritas medios quoque tuta per enses
Sensit inexhaustâ cinerem juvenescere famâ.[418]

[Footnote 418: 'Far off into the tracts of air and high above the clouds soars Pindar, the Dircæan swan, whose tender mouth ye gentle bees with nectar fed, while the boy gave rest to weary limbs that breathed soft slumber. But him the maid of Tanagra derided, what time she told him that he sowed his myths from the whole sack to waste; and when he dared contend with her in song, she bore away the victor's palm, triumphant by Æolian moods, and by her seductive beauty too. He with his mighty voice, trained in the school of Agathocles, sang the crowns of Olympia and the garlands wherewith the Isthmus and Delphi, and the Nemean wastes that falsely claimed the moon-born monster, shade the athlete's brows. Then, like a torrent, with swelling soul, he passed to celebrate the powers and virtues of the gods and heroes, and poured forth pious lamentations for the dead. Him Phoebus, lord of Cirrha, honoured with food and drink from his altar, and made him guest-fellow at his own board: shepherds too saw Pan in lonely caverns charming the woods with a Pindaric song. At last, when he was old, and lay with his neck reclined upon the bosom of the boy he loved, soothing his soul in sleep, Proserpina with still right hand approached and took him straight to join the shades and pace Elysium's fragrant meads. Nay, more: long afterwards, the foeman's flames, which laid seven-gated Thebes in ruins far and wide, these names dared not to burn so great a poet's house; and his descendants, safe 'mid a thousand swords, learned that his ashes still were young through fame that lives for aye.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 173.]

Sappho is described in the following lines:--

lyricis jam nona poetis
Æolis accedit Sappho, quæ flumina propter
Pierias legit ungue rosas, unde implicet audax
Serta Cupido sibi, niveam quæ pectine blando
Cyrinnem, Megaramque simul, cumque Atthide pulchram
Cantat Anactorien, et crinigeram Telesippen;
Et te conspicuum recidivo flore juventæ
Miratur revocatque, Phaon, seu munera vectæ
Puppe tuâ Veneris, seu sic facit herba potentem:
Sed tandem Ambracias temeraria saltat in undas.[419]

[Footnote 419: 'Ninth among lyric bards, Æolian Sappho joins the crew; she who by flowing water plucks Pieria's rose for venturous Love to twine in wreaths for his own brow; who with her dulcet lyre sings fair Cyrinna's charms, and Megara, and Atthis and sweet Anactoria, and Telesippa of the flowing hair. And thee, too, Phaon, beautiful in youth's rathe flower, on thee she gazes, thee she calls again; such power to thee gave Venus for her freightage in thy skiff, or else the herb of love. Yet at the last, not wisely bold, she leaps into the Ambracian waves.' _Ib._ &c. p. 175.]

Having disposed of the lyrists, Poliziano proceeds to the dramatic poets. His brief notice of the three Attic tragedians is worthy of quotation, if only because it proves what we should suspect from other indications, that the best scholars of the earlier Renaissance paid them little attention. The facts mentioned in the following lines seem to be derived from the gossip of Athenæus:--

Æschylus aëriæ casu testudinis ictus,
Quemque senem meritæ rapuerunt gaudia palmæ,
Quemque tegit rabidis lacerum pia Pella molossis.[420]

[Footnote 420: 'Æschylus, smitten by a tortoise falling from the air above his head, and he whose triumph, justly won in old age, killed him with excess of joy, and he whose body, torn by raging hounds, the reverent earth of Pella hides.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 176.]

Nor are his observations on the comic dramatists less meagre.[421] The Roman poets having been passed in the same rapid review, Poliziano salutes the founders of Italian literature in the following fine passage:--

Nec tamen aligerum fraudarim hoc munere Dantem,
Per Styga, per stellas, mediique per ardua montis
Pulchra Beatricis sub virginis ora volantem:
Quique Cupidineum repetit Petrarcha triumphum:
Et qui bis quinis centum argumenta diebus
Pingit, et obscuri qui semina monstrat amoris:
Unde tibi immensæ veniunt præconia laudis,
Ingeniis opibusque potens Florentia mater.[422]

[Footnote 421: _Ib._ p. 177.]

[Footnote 422: 'Nor yet of this meed of honour would I cheat wing-bearing Dante, who flew through hell, through the starry heavens, and o'er the intermediate hill of purgatory beneath the beauteous brows of Beatrice; and Petrarch too, who tells again the tale of Cupid's triumph; or him who in ten days portrays a hundred stories, and lays bare the seeds of hidden love: from whom unmeasured fame and name are thine, by wit and wealth twice potent, Florence, mother of great sons!'--_Ib._ p. 178.]

The transition to Lorenzo at this point is natural. A solemn peroration in praise of the Medicean prince, himself a poet, whose studies formed the recreation of severer labours, ends the composition. This is written in Poliziano's best style, and, though it is too long to quote, six lines may be selected as indicating the theme of the argument:--

Quodque alii studiumque vocant durumque laborem,
Hic tibi ludus erit; fessus civilibus actis
Huc is emeritas acuens ad carmina vires:
Felix ingenio, felix cui pectore tantas
Instaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaci
Alternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas.[423]

[Footnote 423: 'What other men call study and hard toil, that for thee shall be pastime; wearied with deeds of state, to this thou hast recourse, and dost address the vigour of thy well-worn powers to song: blest in thy mental gifts, blest to be able thus to play so many parts, to vary thus the great cares of thy all-embracing mind, and weave so many divers duties into one.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 179.]

We possess the whole of Poliziano in the 'Nutricia.' It displays the energy of intellect that carried him on bounding verse through the intricacies of a subject difficult by reason of its scope and magnitude. All his haste is here, his inability to polish or select, his lava-stream of language hurrying the dross of prose and scoriæ of erudition along a burning tide of song. His memory held, as it were, in solution all the matter of antique literature; and when he wrote, he poured details forth in torrents, combining them with critical remarks, for the double purpose of instruction and panegyric. Taken at the lowest valuation by students to whom his copious stores of knowledge are familiar, the vivid and continuous melody of his leaping hexameters places the 'Nutricia' above the lucubrations of more fastidious Latinists. We must also remember that, when it was recited from the professorial Chair of Rhetoric at Florence, the magnetism of Poliziano's voice and manner supplied just that touch of charm the poem lacks for modern readers; nor was the matter so hackneyed at the end of the fifteenth century as it is now. Lilius Gyraldus, subjecting the 'Sylvæ' to criticism at a time when Latin poetry had been artistically polished by the best wits of the age of Leo, passed upon them a judgment which may even now be quoted as final.[424] 'Poliziano's learning was marvellous, his genius fervent and well-trained, his reading extensive and uninterrupted; yet he appears to have composed his verses with more heat than art, using too little judgment both in the selection of his materials and in the correction of his style. When, however, you read his 'Sylvæ,' the impression left upon your mind will be such that for the moment you will lack nothing.'

[Footnote 424: 'Dialogus de Poetis nostri Temporis.' _Opp._ vol. ii. p. 388. Edition of Basle, 1580.]

The second poem of the 'Sylvæ,' entitled 'Rusticus,' forms an induction to the study of bucolic poets, principally Hesiod and Virgil. It is distinguished by more originality and play of fancy than the 'Nutricia;' some of its delineations of landscape and sketches of country life compete not unfavourably with similar passages in the author's 'Stanze.' To dwell upon these beauties in detail, and to compare Poliziano, the Latin poet, with Poliziano, the Italian, would be a pleasant task. Yet I must confine myself to quoting the last, and in some respects the least imaginative, lines, for the sake of their historical interest. Careggi and Florence, Lorenzo and his circle of literary friends, rise before us in these verses:--

Talia Fesuleo lentus meditabar in antro,
Rure suburbano Medicum, quâ mons sacer urbem
Mæoniam, longique volumina despicit Arni:
Quâ bonus hospitium felix placidamque quietem
Indulget Laurens, Laurens haud ultima Phoebi
Gloria, jactatis Laurens fida anchora Musis;
Qui si certa magis permiserit otia nobis,
Afflabor majore Deo, nec jam ardua tantum
Silva meas voces, montanaque saxa loquentur,
Sed tu, si qua fides, tu nostrum forsitan olim,
O mea blanda altrix, non aspernabere carmen,
Quamvis magnorum genitrix Florentia vatum,
Doctaque me triplici recinet facundia linguâ.[425]

[Footnote 425: 'On themes like these I spent my hours of leisure in the grottoes of Fiesole, at the Medicean villa, where the holy hill looks down upon the Mæonian city, and surveys the windings of the distant Arno. There good Lorenzo gives his friends a happy home and rest from cares; Lorenzo, not the last of Phoebus' glorious band; Lorenzo, the firm anchor of the Muses tempest-tost. If only he but grant me greater ease, the inspiration of a mightier god will raise my soul; nor shall the lofty woods alone and mountain rocks resound my words; but thou--such faith have I--thou too shalt sometime hear, kind nurse of mine, nor haply scorn my song, thou, Florence, mother of imperial bards, and learned eloquence in three great tongues shall give me fame.' _Carmina_, &c. p. 196.]

The third canto of the 'Sylvæ' is called 'Manto.' It relates the birth of Virgil, to whom the Muses gave their several gifts, while the Sibyl of Mantua foretold his future course of life and all the glories he should gain by song. The poem concludes with a rhetorical eulogy of Rome's chief bard, so characteristic of Renaissance enthusiasm for Virgil that to omit a portion of it from these pages would be to sacrifice one of the most striking examples of Italian taste in scholarship:--

At manet æternum, et seros excurrit in annos
Vatis opus, dumque in tacito vaga sidera mundo
Fulgebunt, dum sol nigris orietur ab Indis,
Prævia luciferis aderit dum curribus Eos,
Dum ver tristis hiems, autumnum proferet æstas,
Dumque fluet spirans refluetque reciproca Tethys,
Dum mixta alternas capient elementa figuras,
Semper erit magni decus immortale Maronis,
Semper inexhaustis ibunt hæc flumina venis,
Semper ab his docti ducentur fontibus haustus,
Semper odoratos fundent hæc gramina flores,
Unde piæ libetis apes, unde inclyta nectat
Serta comis triplici juvenalis Gratia dextrâ.[426]

[Footnote 426: 'Nay, but for everlasting lives our poet's work, abides, and goes forth toward the ages late in time. So long as in the silent firmament the stars shall shine; so long as day shall rise from sun-burned Ind; so long as Phosphor runs before the wheels of light; so long as gloomy winter leads to spring, and summer to autumn; while breathing ocean ebbs and flows by turns, and the mixed elements put on their changing shapes--so long, for ever, shall endure great Maro's fame, for ever shall flow these rivers from his unexhausted fount, for ever shall draughts of learning be drawn from these rills, for ever shall these meadows yield their perfumed flowers, to pasture holy bees, and give the youthful Graces garlands for their hair.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 207.]

Not less ingenious than the poem itself is the elegiac introduction. Poliziano feigns that when the Minyæ came to Cheiron's cave on Pelion, and supped with him, Orpheus sang a divine melody, and then the young Achilles took the lyre, and with rude fingers praised the poet's song. The Minyæ smiled, but Orpheus was touched by the boy-hero's praises. Even so will Maro haply take delight in mine:--

Finis erat dapibus; citharam pius excitat Orpheus,
Et movet ad doctas verba canora manus.
Conticuere viri, tenuere silentia venti,
Vosque retro cursum mox tenuistis aquæ.
Jam volucres fessis pendere sub æthera pennis,
Jamque truces videas ora tenere feras.
Decurrunt scopulis auritæ ad carmina quercus,
Nudaque Peliacus culmina motat apex.
Et jam materno permulserat omnia cantu,
Cum tacuit, querulam deposuitque fidem.
Occupat hanc audax, digitosque affringit Achilles,
Indoctumque rudi personat ore puer.
Materiam quæris? laudabat carmina blandi
Hospitis, et tantæ murmura magna lyræ.
Riserunt Minyæ: sed enim tibi dicitur, Orpheu,
Hæc pueri pietas grata fuisse nimis.
Me quoque nunc magni nomen celebrare Maronis,
Si qua fides vero est, gaudet et ipse Maro.[427]

[Footnote 427: 'Supper was over; Orpheus awakes the lyre, and sings a melody to suit the tune he plays. The men were silent; the winds hushed; the rivers held their waters back to hear; the birds hung motionless in air; and the wild beasts grew calm. From the cliffs the oaks run down with listening ears, and the top of Pelion nods his barren head. And now the bard had soothed the whole world with his mother's song; when he ceased from singing and put down the thrilling lyre. This bold Achilles seizes; he runs his fingers o'er the strings, and chaunts an untaught lay, the simple boy. What was his theme? you ask. He praised the singing of the gentle guest, the mighty murmurs of that lyre divine. The Minyæ laughed; but yet, so runs the tale, even all too sweet, Orpheus, to thee was the boy's homage. Just so my praise of mighty Maro's name, if faith be not a dream, gives joy to Maro's self.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 197.]

The fourth poem, bearing the name of 'Ambra,' forms a similar induction to the study of Homer. The youth of Homer is narrated, and how Achilles appeared to him, blinding him with the vision of his heroic beauty, and giving him the wand of Teiresias. Then follow descriptions of both 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' and a passage of high-flown panegyric; the whole ending with these lines on Lorenzo's villa of Cajano:--

Et nos ergo illi gratâ pietate dicamus
Hanc de Pierio contextam flore coronam,
Quam mihi Cajanas inter pulcherrima nymphas
Ambra dedit patriæ lectam de gramine ripæ;
Ambra mei Laurentis amor, quem corniger Umbro,
Umbro senex genuit domino gratissimus Arno,
Umbro suo tandem non erepturus ab alveo.[428]

[Footnote 428: 'We also, therefore, with glad homage dedicate to him this garland twined of Pieria's flowers, which Ambra, loveliest of Cajano's nymphs, gave to me, culled from meadows on her father's shores; Ambra, the love of my Lorenzo, whom Umbrone, the horned stream, begat--Umbrone, dearest to his master Arno, Umbrone, who now henceforth will never break his banks again.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 224.]

Taking into consideration the purpose fulfilled by Poliziano's 'Sylvæ' in his professorial career, it is impossible to deny their merit. The erudition is borne with ease; it does not clog or overload the poet's impulse. The flattery of Lorenzo is neither fulsome nor unmerited. The verse flows strongly and majestically, though more variety of cadence in the hexameter may be desired. The language, in spite of repetitions and ill-chosen archaisms, is rich and varied; it has at least the charm of being the poet's own, not culled with scrupulous anxiety from one or two illustrious sources. Some of the pictures are delicately sketched, while the whole style produces the effect of eloquent and fervid improvisation. For fulness and rapidity of utterance, copious fancy, and wealth of illustration, these four poems will bear comparison with Roman work of the Silver Age. The Florentines who crowded Poliziano's lecture-room must have felt as in the days of the Empire, when Statius declaimed his periods to a Roman audience, and the patrician critics clapped applause.[429]

[Footnote 429: Cf. Juvenal, _Satire_, i. 9-14; vii. 81-87. Persius, _Satire_, i. 79-82. And cf. Petronius Arbiter for a detailed picture of these Roman recitations.]

Among Poliziano's minor poems it is enough to mention the elegiac couplets on some violets sent him by his mistress, the verses descriptive of a beautiful girl, and the lamentation for the wife of Sismondo della Stufa.[430] They illustrate the delicacy of his style and the freedom of his fancy in the treatment of occasional themes, and are far superior to his epigrams and epitaphs.[431] The numerous encomiastic elegies addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici and other patrons are wholly without value. Poliziano was a genuine poet. He needed the inspiration of true feeling or of lively fancy; on a tame occasion he degenerated into frigid baldness. Yet the satires on Mabilius, where spite and jealousy have stirred his genius, are striking for their volubility and pungency. A Roman imitator of Catullus in his brutal mood could not have produced abuse more flexible and nauseous. Taken altogether, Poliziano's Latin compositions display the qualities of fluency and abundance that characterise his Italian verses, though they have not the exquisite polish of the 'Giostra.' Their final merit consists in their spontaneity. No stylist of the age of Leo knew how to use the language of classic Rome with so much ease.

[Footnote 430: _Carmina Quinque_, &c. pp. 250, 272, 276.]

[Footnote 431: The epitaphs on Giotto, Lippo Lippi, the fair Simonetta, and others, are only valuable for their historic interest, such as that is.]

Jovianus Pontanus deserves a high place among the writers of Latin verse, whether we regard his didactic poems on astronomy and the cultivation of the orange, his epigrams, or the amorous elegies that, for their grace, may be compared almost with Ovid.[432] Even during his lifetime Pontanus became a classic, and after his death he was imitated by the most ambitious versifiers of the late Renaissance.[433] The beauty of South Italian landscape--Sorrento's orange gardens and Baiæ's waters--passed into the fancy of the Neapolitan poets, and gave colour to their language. Nor was Pontanus, in spite of his severe studies and gravely-tempered mind, dead to the seductions of this siren. What we admire in Sannazzaro's 'Arcadia' assumes the form of pure Latinity in his love poems.[434] Their style is penetrated with the feeling for physical beauty, Pagan and untempered by an afterthought of Christianity. Their vigorous and glowing sensuality finds no just analogue except in some Venetian paintings. It was not, however, by his lighter verses so much as by the five books called 'De Stellis' or 'Urania' that Pontanus won the admiration of Italian scholars. In this long series of hexameters he contrived to set forth the whole astronomical science of his age, touching upon the mythology of the celestial signs, describing the zodiac, discussing the motion of the heavens, raising the question of planetary influences, and characterising the different regions of the globe by their relation to the sun's path across the sky. He seems to have taken the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid for his model of versification; and though we miss the variety of Ovid's treatment, great ingenuity is displayed in adorning so difficult a subject with poetical episodes.[435] Personal interest is added to the conclusion of 'Urania' by the lamentation poured forth for his daughter Lucia by the poet:--

Ornabam tibi serta domi; Syriumque liquorem
Ad thalamos geminæ, geminæ, tua cura, sorores
Fundebant. Quid pro sertis Syrioque liquore
Liquisti? Sine sole dies, sine sidere noctes,
Insomnes noctes.[436]

[Footnote 432: I shall quote from his _Collected Poems_, Aldus, 1513.]

[Footnote 433: See the Elegy of Sannazzaro on the writings of Pontanus, _Poemata Selecta_, pp. 1-4, and Fracastoro's _Syphilis_, ib. p. 72.]

[Footnote 434: _Delitiæ Poetarum Italorum_, pt. ii. pp. 668-712. Specimens may also be read in the _Poemata Selecta Italorum_, pp. 1-24.]

[Footnote 435: See, for instance, the tale of Hylas, lib. v. p. 103; the tale of Cola Pesce, lib. iv. p. 79; the council of the gods, lib. i. p. 18; the planet Venus, lib. i. p. 5.]

[Footnote 436: Lib. v. pp. 105-108. 'For thee I hung the house with wreaths; and thy twin sisters poured forth Syrian perfumes at the marriage chamber. What for our garlands and our perfumes hast thou left? Days without light, nights without a star, long sleepless nights.']

Lucia died before her marriage-day, and her grey-headed father went mourning for her, fooled by memory, vainly seeking the joy that could not come again. Had she become, he asks, a star in heaven, and did the blessed gods and heroines enjoy her splendour? No voice replied when he called into the darkness, nor did new constellations beam on him with brightness from his daughter's eyes. All through the wakeful night he mourned, but when dawn went forth he marked a novel lustre on the sea and in the sky. Lucia had been added to the nymphs of morning. She smiled upon her father as she fled before the wheels of day; and now the sun himself arose, and in his light her light was swallowed: Hyperion scaled the heights of heaven with more than his own glory. With this apotheosis of his daughter, so curiously Pagan in feeling, and yet so far from classical in taste, the poem might have ended, had not Pontano reserved its final honours for himself. To Lucia, now made a goddess, he addresses his prayers that she should keep his name and fame alive on earth when he is dead:--

Fama ipsa assistens tumulo cum vestibus aureis,
Ore ingens, ac voce ingens, ingentibus alis,
Per populos late ingenti mea nomina plausu
Vulgabit, titulosque feret per sæcula nostros;
Plaudentesque meis resonabunt laudibus auræ,
Vivet et extento celeber Jovianus in ævo.[437]

[Footnote 437: 'Fame herself, seated by my tomb with golden raiment, mighty-mouthed, mighty-voiced, with mighty wings, shall spread abroad among the people my names with mighty sound of praise, and carry through the centuries my titles, and with my glory shall resound applauding airs of heaven; renowned through everlasting ages Jovian shall live.']

Sannazzaro's own elegies on the joys of love and country life, the descriptions of his boyhood at Salerno, the praises of his Villa Mergillina, and his meditations among the ruins of Cumæ, are marked by the same characteristics. Nothing quite so full of sensual enjoyment, so soft, and so voluptuous can be found in the poems of the Florentine and Roman scholars. They deserve study, if only as illustrating the luxurious tone of literature at Naples. It was not by these lighter effusions, however, that Sannazzaro won his fame. The epic on the birth of Christ cost him twenty years of labour; and when it was finished, the learned world of Italy welcomed it as a model of correct and polished writing. At the same time the critics seem to have felt, what cannot fail to strike a modern reader, that the difficulties of treating such a theme in the Virgilian manner, and the patience of the stylist, had rendered it a masterpiece of ingenuity rather than a work of genius.[438] Sannazzaro's epigrams, composed in the spirit of bitterest hostility towards the Borgia family, were not less famous than his epic. Alfonso of Aragon took the poet with him during his campaign against the Papal force in the Abruzzi; and these satires, hastily written in the tent and by the camp-fire, formed the amusement of his officers. From the soldiers of Alfonso they speedily passed, on the lips of courtiers and scholars, through all the cities of Italy; nor is it easy to say how much of Lucrezia Borgia's legend may not be traceable to their brief but envenomed couplets. What had been the scandal of the camp acquired consistency in lines too pungent to be forgotten and too witty to remain unquoted.[439] As a specimen of Sannazzaro's style, the epigram on Venice may here be cited:--

Viderat Hadriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis
Stare urbem, et toto ponere jura mari:
Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantumvis, Jupiter, arces
Objice, et illa tui moenia Martis, ait:
Si Pelago Tybrim præfers, urbem aspice utramque;
Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos.[440]

[Footnote 438: 'Lilius Gyraldus,' loc. cit. p. 384, writes about this epic, 'in quibus, ut sic dicam, statarius poeta videri potest. Non enim verborum volubilitate fertur, sed limatius quoddam scribendi genus consectatur, et limâ indies atterit, ut de illo non ineleganter dictum illud Apellis de Protogene Pontanus usurpare solitus esset, eum manum de tabulâ tollere nescire.']

[Footnote 439: See _Delitiæ Poetarum Italorum_, second part, pp. 713-761. The following couplet on the death of Cesare Borgia is celebrated:--

Aut nihil aut Cæsar vult dici Borgia; quidni?
Cum simul et Cæsar possit et esse nihil.]

[Footnote 440: 'When Neptune beheld Venice stationed in the Adriatic waters, and giving laws to all the ocean, "Now taunt me, Jupiter, with the Tarpeian rock and those walls of thy son Mars!" he cried. "If thou preferrest Tiber to the sea, look on both cities; thou wilt say the one was built by men, the other by gods."']

I have already touched upon the Virgilianism of Sannazzaro's 'Partus Virginis.'[441] What the cold churches of Palladio are to Christian architecture, this frigid epic is to Christian poetry. Leo X. delighted to recognise the Gospel narrative beneath a fancy dress of mythological inventions, and to witness the triumph of classical scholarship in the holy places of the mediæval faith. To fuse the traditions of Biblical and secular antiquity was, as I have often said, the dream of the Renaissance. What Pico and Ficino attempted in philosophical treatises, the poets sought to effect by form. Religion, attiring herself in classic drapery, threw off the cobwebs of the Catacombs, and acquired the right of _petites entrées_ at the Vatican. It did not signify that she had sacrificed her majesty to fashion, or that her tunic _à la mode antique_ was badly made. Her rouge and spangles enchanted the scholarly Pontiff, who forthwith ordered Vida to compose the 'Christiad,' and gave him a benefice at Frascati in order that he might enjoy a poet's ease. Vida's epic, like Sannazzaro's, was not finished during the lifetime of Leo. Both the 'Christiad' and the 'Partus Virginis' reflected lustre on the age of Clement.

[Footnote 441: See above, p. 288.]

Vida won his first laurels in the field of didactic poetry. Virgilian exercises on the breeding of silkworms and the game of chess displayed his faculty for investing familiar subjects with the graces of a polished style.[442] Such poems, whether written in Latin, or, like the 'Api' of Rucellai, in Italian, gratified the taste of the Renaissance, always appreciative of form independent of the matter it invested. For a modern student Vida's metrical treatise in three books on the 'Art of Poetry' has greater interest; since it illustrates the final outcome of classic studies in the age of Leo. The 'Poetica' is addressed to Francis, Dauphin of France, in his Spanish prison:[443]--

Primus ades, Francisce; sacras ne despice Musas,
Regia progenies, cui regum debita sceptra
Gallorum, cum firma annis accesserit ætas.
Hæc tibi parva ferunt jam nunc solatia dulces;
Dum procul a patriâ raptum, amplexuque tuorum,
Ah dolor! Hispanis sors impia detinet oris,
Henrico cum fratre; patris sic fata tulerunt
Magnanimi, dum fortunâ luctatur iniquâ.
Parce tamen, puer, o lacrymis; fata aspera forsan
Mitescent, aderitque dies lætissima tandem
Post triste exilium patriis cum redditus oris
Lætitiam ingentem populorum, omnesque per urbes
Accipies plausus, et lætas undique voces;
Votaque pro reditu persolvent debita matres.
Interea te Pierides comitentur; in altos
Jam te Parnassi mecum aude attollere lucos.[444]

[Footnote 442: _Bombycum; Libri duo. Scacchia, Ludus; Liber unus._ Pope's _Poemata Italorum_, vol. i. pp. 103-130; pp. 190-210. The former poem is addressed to Isabella Gonzaga, née d'Este.]

[Footnote 443: _Poemata Selecta_, pp. 207-266. It will be remembered that Francis I., after Pavia, gave his two sons as hostages to Charles V.]

[Footnote 444: 'Thou, Francis, art the first to answer to my call. Scorn not the sacred Muses, scion of a royal line, to whom the sceptre of the kings of Gallia in due season of maturity will pass. Their sweetness even now shall yield thee some slight solace, exiled from home and fatherland by fate impiteous on the Spanish shore, thee and thy brother Henry. So the fortunes of thy mighty-hearted father willed, condemned to strive against unequal doom. Yet spare thy tears: perchance hard fate will soften, and a day of supreme joy will come at last, when, after thy sad exile, once more given to thy nation, thou shalt behold thy country's gladness, and hear the shouts of all her cities and the ringing songs of happiness, and mothers shall perform their vows for thy return. Meanwhile let the maidens of Pieria attend thee; and, with me for guide, ascend into the groves of high Parnassus.']

After this dedication Vida describes the solace to be found in poetry, and adds some precepts on the preparation of the student's mind.[445] A rapid review of the history of poetry--the decline of Greek inspiration after Homer, and of Latin after Virgil; the qualities of the Silver Age, and the Revival of letters under the Medici at Florence--serves to show how narrow the standard of Italian culture had become between the period of Poliziano, who embraced so much in his sketch of literature, and that of Vida, who confined himself to so little. The criticism is not unjust; but it proves that the refinement of taste by scholarship had resulted in restricting students to one or two models, whom they followed with servility.[446] Having thus established his general view of the poetic art, Vida proceeds to sketch a plan of education. The qualities and duties of a tutor are described; and here we may notice how far Vittorino's and Guarino's methods had created an ideal of training for Italy. The preceptor must above all things avoid violence, and aim at winning the affections of his pupil; it would be well for him to associate several youths in the same course of study, so as to arouse their emulation. He must not neglect their games, and must always be careful to suit his method to the different talents of his charges. When the special studies to be followed are discussed, Vida points out that Cicero is the best school of Latin style. He recommends the early practice of bucolic verse, and inculcates the necessity of treating youthful essays with indulgence. These topics are touched with more or less felicity of phrase and illustration; and though the subject-matter is sufficiently trite, the good sense and kindly feeling of the writer win respect. The first book concludes with a peroration on the dignity and sanctity of poets, a theme the humanists were never weary of embroidering.[447] The second describes the qualities of a good poem, as these were conceived by the refined but formal taste of the sixteenth century. It should begin quietly, and manage to excite without satisfying the curiosity of the reader. Vain displays of learning are to be avoided. Episodes and similes must occur at proper intervals; and a frugal seasoning of humour will be found agreeable. All repetitions should be shunned, and great care should be taken to vary the narrative with picturesque descriptions. Rhetoric, again, is not unworthy of attention, when the poet seeks to place convenient and specious arguments in the mouths of his personages.

[Footnote 445:

tibi digna supellex
Verborum rerumque paranda est, proque videnda
Instant multa prius, quorum vatum indiget usus.

_Poemata Selecta_, p. 209.]

[Footnote 446: After mentioning the glories of Virgil, Vida adds:--

Sperare nefas sit vatibus ultra.
Nulla mora, ex illo in pejus ruere omnia visa,
Degenerare animi, atque retro res lapsa referri.
Hic namque ingenio confisus posthabet artem;
Ille furit strepitu, tenditque æquare tubarum
Voce sonos, versusque tonat sine more per omnes;
Dant alii cantus vacuos, et inania verba
Incassum, solâ capti dulcedine vocis.

_Poemata Selecta_, p. 213. Cf. the advice (p. 214) to follow none but Virgil:--

Ergo ipsum ante alios animo venerare Maronem,
Atque unum sequere, utque potes, vestigia serva.]

[Footnote 447:

Dona deûm Musæ: vulgus procul este profanum.

_Poemata Selecta_, p. 224; and again, _ib._ p. 226:--

Tu Jovis ambrosiis das nos accumbere mensis;
Tu nos diis æquas superis, &c.]

It is difficult in a summary to do justice to this portion of Vida's poem. His description of the ideal epic is indeed nothing more or less than a refined analysis of the 'Æneid;' and students desirous of learning what the Italians of the sixteenth century admired in Virgil will do well to study its acute and sober criticism. A panegyric of Leo closes the second book. From this peroration some lines upon the woes of Italy may be read with profit, as proving that the nation, conscious of its own decline, was contented to accept the primacy of culture in exchange for independence:--

Dii Romæ indigetes, Trojæ tuque auctor, Apollo
Unde genus nostrum coeli se tollit ad astra,
Hanc saltem auferri laudem prohibete Latinis:
Artibus emineat semper, studiisque Minervæ,
Italia, et gentes doceat pulcherrima Roma;
Quandoguidem armorum penitus fortuna recessit,
Tanta Italos inter crevit discordia reges;
Ipsi nos inter sacros distringimus enses,
Nec patriam pudet externis aperire tyrannis.[448]

[Footnote 448: 'Ye native gods of Rome! and thou, Apollo, Troy's founder! by whom our race is raised to heaven! let not at least this glory be withdrawn from Latium's children: may Italy for ever hold the heights of art and learning, and most beauteous Rome instruct the nations; albeit all success in arms be lost, so great hath grown the discord of Italia's princes. Yea, one against the other, we draw bloody swords, nor feel we any shame in calling foreign tyrants into our own land.'--_Poemata Selecta_, p. 245.]

The third book treats of style and diction. To be clear and varied, to command metaphor and allusion, to choose phrases coloured by mythology and fancy, to suit the language to the subject, to vary the metrical cadence with the thought and feeling, and to be assiduous in the use of the file are mentioned as indispensable to excellence. A peroration on Virgil, sonorous and impassioned, closes the whole poem, which, rightly understood, is a monument erected to the fame of the Roman bard by the piety of his Italian pupil. The final lines are justly famous:--

O decus Italiæ! lux o clarissima vatum!
Te colimus, tibi serta damus, tibi thura, tibi aras;
Et tibi rite sacrum semper dicemus honorem
Carminibus memores. Salve, sanctissime vates!
Laudibus augeri tua gloria nil potis ultra,
Et nostræ nil vocis eget; nos aspice præsens,
Pectoribusque tuos castis infunde calores
Adveniens, pater, atque animis te te insere nostris.[449]

[Footnote 449: 'Hail, light of Italy, thou brightest of the bards! Thee we worship, thee we adore with wreaths, with frankincense, with altars; to thee, as duty bids, for everlasting will we chaunt our holy hymns. Hail, consecrated bard! No increase to thy glory flows from praise, nor needs it voice of ours. Be near, and look upon thy votaries; come, father, and infuse thy fervour into our chaste hearts, and plant thyself within our souls.'--_Poemata Selecta_, p. 266.]

Vida's own intellect was clear, and his style perspicuous; but his genius was mediocre. His power lay in the disposition of materials and in illustration. A precise taste, formed on Cicero and Virgil, and exercised with judgment in a narrow sphere, satisfied his critical requirements. Virgil with him was first and last, and midst and without end. In a word, he shows what a scholar of sound parts and rhetorical aptitude could achieve by the study and imitation of a single author.

Since I have begun to speak of didactic poems, I may take this opportunity of noticing Fracastoro, who seems to have chosen Pontanus for his model, and, while emulating both Lucretius and Virgil, to have fallen short of Vida's elegance. His work is less remarkable for purity of diction than for massiveness of intellect, gravity of matter, and constructive ability. Jeronimo Fracastoro was born in 1483 at Verona, where he spent the greater portion of his life, enjoying high reputation as a physician, philosopher, astronomer, and poet. During his youth he studied under Pomponazzo at Padua. The strong tincture of materialistic science he there received, continued through life to colour his thought. Among modern Pagans none is more completely bare of Christianity than Fracastoro. As is well known, he chose the new and terrible disease of the Renaissance for his theme, and gave a name to it that still is current. To speak of Fracastoro's 'Syphilis,' dedicated to Bembo, hailed with acclamation by all Italy, preferred by Sannazzaro to his own epic, and praised by Julius Cæsar Scaliger as a 'divine poem,' is not easy now. The plague it celebrates appeared at Naples in 1495, and spread like wildfire over Europe, assuming at first the form of an epidemic sparing neither Pope nor king, and stirring less disgust than dread among its victims.[450] Whether the laws of its propagation were rightly understood in the sixteenth century is a question for physicians to decide. No one appears to have suspected that it differed in specific character from other pestilent disorders; and it is clear, both from contemporary chronicles and from Fracastoro's poem, that the _mal franzese_, as it was popularly called, suggested to the people of that age associations different from those that have since gathered round it. At the same time more formidable and less loathsome, it was a not more unworthy subject for verse than the plague at Athens described by Lucretius. Treating the disease, therefore, as a curse common to his generation, the scientific poet dared to set forth its symptoms, to prescribe remedies, to discuss the question of its origin, and to use it as an illustration of antagonistic forces, pernicious and beneficent, in the economy of nature. To philosophise his repulsive subject-matter was the author's ambition. His contemporaries admired the poetic graces with which he had contrived to adorn it.

[Footnote 450: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 433, note.]

The exordium of the first book states the problem. Whence came this new scourge of humanity? Not, surely, from America, though it is there indigenous. Its diffusion after the disasters of 1494 was too rapid to admit of this hypothesis.[451] To the corruption of the atmosphere must be referred the general invasion of the plague.[452] The theory of infected and putrescent air is stated in a long Lucretian passage, followed by a scientific account of the symptoms of syphilis. At this point the poet diversifies his argument by an episode, narrating the sad death of a young man born on the banks of the Oglio, and leading by gradual transitions to a peroration on the wars and woes of Italy.[453] Over all the poets of this age the miseries of their country hung like a cloud, and, touch the lyre as they may at the beginning of their song, it is certain ere the ending to give forth a dolorous groan. In the second book Fracastoro enters on the subject of remedies. He lays stress on choice of air, abundant exercise, avoidance of wine and heating diet, blood-letting, abstinence from sensual pleasures, fomentations, herbs, and divers minute rules of health. By attention to these matters the disease may be, if not shunned, at least mitigated. The sovereign remedy of quicksilver demanded fuller illustration; therefore the poet introduces the legendary episode of the shepherd Ilceus, conducted by the nymph Liparë to the sulphur founts and lakes of mercury beneath Mount Etna. Ilceus bathed, and was renewed in health. The rigorously didactic intention of Fracastoro is proved by the recipe for a mercurial ointment and the description of salivation that wind up this book.[454] The third opens with an allusion to the discovery of America, and a celebration of the tree Hyacus (Guaiacum). It is noticeable that, with such an opportunity for singing the praises of Columbus, Fracastoro passed him by, nor cared to claim for Italy a share in the greatest achievement of the century. Mingling myth with history, he next proceeds to tell how the Spaniards arrived in the West Indies, and shot birds sacred to the Sun,[455] one of which spoke with human voice, predicting the evils that would fall upon the crew for their impiety. Not the least of these was to be a strange and terrible disease. The natives of the islands flocked to meet the strangers, and some of them were tettered with a ghastly eruption. This leads to the episodical legend of the shepherd Syphilus, who dared to deride the Sun-god, and of the king Alcithous, who accepted divine honours in his stead. The Sun, to requite the insolence of Syphilus, afflicted him with a dreadful sickness. It yielded to no cure until the nymph Ammericë initiated him in the proper lustral rites, and led him to the tree Hyacus. The poem ends with a panegyric of Guaiacum.

[Footnote 451:

quoniam in primis ostendere multos
Possumus, attactu qui nullius hanc tamen ipsam
Sponte suâ sensere luem, primique tulere.

_Poemata Selecta_, p. 67.]

[Footnote 452:

Quumque animadvertas, tam vastæ semina labis
Esse nec in terræ gremio, nec in æquore posse,
Haud dubie tecum statuas reputesque necesse est,
Principium sedemque mali consistere in ipso
Aëre, qui terras circum diffunditur omnes.

_Ibid._ p. 69.]

[Footnote 453: _Ibid._ pp. 79, 80.]

[Footnote 454: _Ibid._ pp. 95, 96.]

[Footnote 455: These phrases he finds for a fowling-piece:--

Cava terrificis horrentia bombis
Aera, et flammiferum tormenta imitantia fulmen.

_Poemata Selecta_, p. 101.]