Chapter VIII: Latin Poetry (2)

I have sketched the subject of the 'Syphilis' in outline because of its importance not only for the neo-Latin literature of the Renaissance, but also for the history of medical opinion. As a didactic poem, it is constructed with considerable art; the style, though prosaic, is forcible, and the meaning is always precise. Falling short of classic elegance, Fracastoro may still be said to have fulfilled the requirements of Vida, and to have added something male and vigorous peculiar to himself. His adulatory verses to Alessandro Farnese, Paul III., and Julius III. might be quoted as curious examples of fulsome flattery conveyed in a _barocco_ style. They combine Papal cant with Pagan mannerism, Virgilian and Biblical phraseology, masculine gravity of diction and far-fetched conceits, in a strange amalgam, as awkward as it is ridiculous.[456]

[Footnote 456: Cf. the passage about Alessandro Farnese's journeys--

Matre deâ comitante et iter monstrante nepoti--

and the reformation in Germany. _Poemata Selecta_, p. 125. The whole idyll addressed to Julius III., _ib._ pp. 130-135, is inconceivably uncouth.]

Another group of Latin versifiers, with Bembo at their head, cultivated the elegy, the idyll, and the ode. The authors of their predilection were Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus. Abandoning the attempt to mould Christian or modern material into classic form, they frankly selected Pagan motives, and adhered in spirit as well as style to their models. Two elegiac poems of Bembo's, the 'Priapus' and the 'Faunus ad Nympeum Flumen,' may be cited as flagrant specimens of sixteenth-century licentiousness.[457] Polished language and almost faultless versification are wasted upon themes of rank obscenity. The 'Priapus,' translated and amplified in Italian _ottava rima_, gained a popular celebrity beyond the learned circles for whom it was originally written. We may trace its influence in many infamous Capitoli of the burlesque poets. Bembo excelled in elegiac verse. In a poem entitled 'De Amicâ a Viro Servatâ,' he treated a characteristically Italian subject with something of Ovid's graceful humour.[458] A lover complains of living near his mistress, closely watched by her jealous husband. Here, as elsewhere, the morality is less to be admired than the versification; and that the latter, in spite of Bembo's scrupulous attention to metre, is not perfect, may be gathered from this line:--

Tunc quos nunc habeo et quos sum olim habiturus amicos.

[Footnote 457: _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, pp. 4 and 9-11.]

[Footnote 458: _Ib._ pp. 18-23.]

After reading hexameters so constructed we are tempted to shut the book with a groan, wondering how it was that a Pope's secretary and a prince of the Church should have thought it worth his while to compose a poem so injurious to his reputation as a moralist, or to preserve in it a verse so little favourable to his fame as a Latinist. More beautiful, because more true to classic inspiration, is the elegy of 'Galatea.'[459] The idyllic incidents suggest a series of pretty pictures for bas-reliefs or decorative frescoes in the manner of Albano. Bembo's masterpiece, however, in the elegiac metre, is a poem with 'De Galeso et Maximo' for its title.[460] It was composed, as the epigraph informs us, at the command of a great man at Rome; but whether that great man was also the greatest in Rome, and whether Maximus was another name for Leo, is matter of conjecture. The boy Galesus had wronged Maximus, his master. When reproved, he offered no excuses, called no witnesses, uttered no prayers to Heaven, indulged in no asseverations of innocence, shed no tears:--

Nil horum aggreditur; sed tantum ingrata loquentis
Implicitus collo dulce pependit onus.
Nec mora, cunctanti roseis tot pressa labellis
Oscula coelitibus invidiosa dedit,
Arida quot levibus florescit messis aristis,
Excita quot vernis floribus halat humus.
Maxime, quid dubitas? Si te piget, ipse tuo me
Pone loco: hæc dubitem non ego ferre mala.[461]

[Footnote 459: _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, p. 7.]

[Footnote 460: _Ib._ p. 23.]

[Footnote 461:

None of these things he tried; but only ran,
And clasped with his sweet arms the angry man;
Hung on his neck, rained kisses forth that Heaven
Envied from those red lips to mortals given;
In number like ripe ears of ruddy corn,
Or flowers beneath the breath of April born.
Still doubting, Maximus? Change place with me:
Gladly I'd bear such infidelity.]

Bembo's talent lay in compositions of this kind. His verses, to quote the phrase of Gyraldus, were uniformly 'sweet, soft, and delicate.' When he attempted work involving more sustained effort of the intellect and greater variety of treatment, he was not so successful. His hexameter poem 'Benacus,' a description of the Lago di Garda, dedicated to Gian Matteo Giberti, reads like an imitation of Catullus without the Roman poet's grace of style or wealth of fancy.[462] Among Bembo's most perfect compositions may be reckoned his epitaphs on celebrated contemporaries. The following written for Poliziano, deserves quotation.[463] Not only is the death of the scholar, following close upon that of his patron, happily touched, but the last line pays a proper tribute to Poliziano as an Italian poet:--

Duceret extincto cum mors Laurente triumphum,
Lætaque pullatis inveheretur equis,
Respicit insano ferientem pollice chordas,
Viscera singultu concutiente, virum.
Mirata est, tenuitque jugum; furit ipse, pioque
Laurentem cunctos flagitat ore Deos:
Miscebat precibus lacrymas, lacrymisque dolorem;
Verba ministrabat liberiora dolor.
Risit, et antiquæ non immemor illa querelæ,
Orphei Tartareæ cum patuere viæ,
Hic etiam infernas tentat rescindere leges,
Fertque suas, dixit, in mea jura manus.
Protinus et flentem percussit dura poetam,
Rupit et in medio pectora docta sono.
Heu sic tu raptus, sic te mala fata tulerunt,
Arbiter Ausoniæ, Politiane, lyræ.[464]

[Footnote 462: _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, pp. 26-34.]

[Footnote 463: _Ib._ p. 38.]

[Footnote 464: 'When Lorenzo was dead, and Death went by in triumph, drawn by her black horses, her eyes fell on one who madly struck the chords, while sighs convulsed his breast. She turned, and stayed the car; he storms and calls on all the gods for Lorenzo, mixing tears with prayers, and sorrow with his tears, while sorrow suggests words of wilder freedom. Death laughed; remembering her old grudge, when Orpheus made his way to hell, she cried, "Lo, he too seeks to abrogate our laws, and lays his hand upon my rights!" Nor more delay; she struck the poet while he wept, and broke his heart-strings in the middle of his sighs. Alas! thus wast thou taken from us, ravished by harsh fate, Politian, master of the Italian lyre!']

More richly endowed for poetry than Bembo was his fellow-countryman Andrea Navagero. Few Latin versifiers of the Renaissance combined so much true feeling and fancy with a style more pure and natural. Some of his little compositions, half elegy, half idyll, have the grace and freedom of the Greek Anthology.[465] There is a simple beauty in their motives, while the workmanship reminds us of chiselling in smooth waxy marble; unlike the Roman epigrammatists, Navagero avoided pointed terminations.[466] The picture of Narcissus dead and transformed to a flower, in the elegy of 'Acon,' might be quoted as a fair specimen of his manner:--

Magna Parens, quæ cuncta leves producis in auras,
Totaque diverso germine picta nites;
Quæ passim arboribus, passim surgentibus herbis,
Sufficis omnifero larga alimenta sinu;
Excipe languentem puerum, moribundaque membra,
Æternumque tuâ fac, Dea, vivat ope.
Vivet, et ille vetus Zephyro redeunte quotannis
In niveo candor flore perennis erit.[467]

[Footnote 465: Notice especially 'Thyrsidis vota Veneri,' 'Invitatio ad amoenum fontem,' 'Leucippem amicam spe præmiorum invitat,' 'Vota Veneri ut amantibus faveat,' and 'In Almonem.'--_Carmina_, &c. pp. 52, 53, 54, 55.]

[Footnote 466: Paolo Giovio noticed this; in his _Elogia_ he writes, '_Epigrammata non falsis aculeatisque finibus, sed tenerâ illâ et prædulci priscâ suavitate claudebat._']

[Footnote 467: 'Mighty mother, thou who bringest all things forth to breathe the liquid air, who shinest in thy painted robe of diverse budding lives, thou who from thy teeming bosom givest nourishment to trees and sprouting herbs in every region of the earth, take to thyself the fainting boy, cherish his dying limbs, and make him live for ever by thy aid. Yes, he shall live; and that white loveliness of his, each year as spring returns, shall blossom in a snowy flower.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 57.]

The warnings addressed to his mistress in her country rambles, to beware of rustic gods, and the whole eclogue of 'Iolas,' are written in a rich and facile style, that makes us wonder whether some poet of the Græco-Roman period did not live again in Navagero.[468] Only here and there, as in the case of all this neo-Latin writing, an awkward word or a defective cadence breaks the spell, and reminds us that it was an artificial thing. A few lines forming the exordium to an unfinished poem on Italy may be inserted here for their intrinsic interest:--

Salve, cura Deûm, mundi felicior ora,
Formosæ Veneris dulces salvete recessus:
Ut vos post tantos animi mentisque labores
Aspicio, lustroque libens! ut munere vestro
Sollicitas toto depello e pectore curas![469]

[Footnote 468: 'Ad Gelliam rusticantem,' _Carmina_, &c. pp. 64-66. 'Iolas,' _ib._ pp. 66-68.]

[Footnote 469: 'Hail, darling of the gods, thou happiest spot of earth! hail chosen haunt of beauty's queen! What joy I feel to see you thus again, and tread your shores after so many toils endured in mind and soul! How from my heart by your free gift I cast all anxious cares!'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 84.]

Navagero, we are told, composed these verses on his return from a legation to Spain. Born in 1483, he spent his youth and early manhood in assiduous study. Excessive application undermined his health, and Giovio relates that he began to suffer from _atra bilis_, or the melancholy of scholars. The Venetian Senate had engaged him to compose the history of the Republic in Latin; this work was already begun when illness forced him to abandon it. He was afterwards employed in an unsuccessful mission to Charles V. and in diplomatic business at the Court of France. He died at Blois of fever, contracted in one of his hurried journeys. He was only forty-six when he perished, bequeathing to immediate posterity the fame of a poet at least equal to the ancients. In that age of affectation and effort the natural flow of Navagero's verse, sensuous without coarseness and highly coloured without abuse of epithets, raised a chorus of applause that may strike the modern student as excessive. The memorial poems written on his death praise the purity of sentiment and taste which made him burn a copy of Martial yearly to the chaste Muses.[470] One friend calls upon the Nereids to build his tomb by the silent waters of the lagoons, and bids the Faun of Italy lament with broken reeds.[471] Another prophesies that his golden poems will last as many years as there are flowers in spring, or grapes in autumn, or storms upon the sea, or stars in heaven, or kisses in Catullus, or atoms in the universe of Lucretius.[472]

[Footnote 470: See the Hendecasyllabics of Johannes Matthæus, _Carmina_, &c. p. 86.]

[Footnote 471: Basilius Zanchius, _Carmina_, &c. p. 85.]

[Footnote 472: M. Antonius Flaminius, _ib._ p. 85.]

A place very close to Navagero might be claimed for Francesco Maria Molsa, a nobleman of Modena, who enjoyed great fame at Rome for his Latin and Italian poetry. After a wild life of pleasure he died at the age of forty-one, worn out with love and smitten by the plague of the Renaissance. The sweetest of his elegies celebrate the charms of Faustina Mancini, his favourite mistress. In spite of what Italians would call their _morbidezza_, it is impossible not to feel some contempt for the polished fluency, the sensual relaxation, of these soulless verses. A poem addressed to his friends upon his sick bed, within sight of certain death, combines the author's melody of cadence with a certain sobriety of thought and tender dignity of feeling.[473] It is, perhaps, of all his compositions the worthiest to live. The following couplets describe the place which he would choose for his sepulchre:--

Non operosa peto titulos mihi marmora ponant,
Nostra sed accipiat fictilis ossa cadus;
Exceptet gremio quæ mox placidissima tellus,
Immites possint ne nocuisse feræ.
Rivulus hæc circum dissectus obambulet, unda
Clivoso qualis tramite ducta sonat;
Exiguis stet cæsa notis super ossa sepulta,
Nomen et his servet parva tabella meum:
Hic jacet ante annos crudeli tabe peremptus
Molsa; ter injecto pulvere, pastor, abi.
Forsitan in putrem longo post tempore glebam
Vertar, et hæc flores induet urna novos;
Populus aut potius abruptis artubus alba
Formosâ exsurgam conspicienda comâ.
Scilicet huc diti pecoris comitata magistro
Conveniet festo pulchra puella die;
Quæ molles ductet choreas, et veste recinctâ
Ad certos nôrit membra movere modos.[474]

[Footnote 473: _Poemata Selecta_, pp. 203-206. An elegy written by Janus Etruscus, Pope's _Poemata Italorum_, vol. ii. p. 25, on a similar theme, though very inferior to Molsa's, may be compared with it.]

[Footnote 474: 'I ask for no monument of wrought marble to proclaim my titles: let a vase of baked clay receive these bones. Let earth, quietest of resting-places, take them to herself, and save them from the injury of ravening wolves. And let a running stream divide its waters round my grave, drawn with the sound of music from a mountain-flank. A little tablet carved with simple letters will be enough to mark the spot, and to preserve my name: "Here lies Molsa, slain before his day by wasting sickness: cast dust upon him thrice, and go thy way, gentle shepherd." It may be that after many years I shall turn to yielding clay, and my tomb shall deck herself with flowers; or, better, from my limbs shall spring a white poplar, and in its beauteous foliage I shall rise into the light of heaven. To this place will come, I hope, some lovely maid attended by the master of the flock; and she shall dance above my bones and move her feet to rhythmic music.']

The Paganism of the Renaissance, exchanging Christian rites for old mythologies, and classic in the very tomb, has rarely found sweeter expression than in this death song. We trace in it besides a note of modern feeling, the romantic sense of community with nature in the immortality of trees and flowers.[475]

[Footnote 475: For the picture of the girl dancing on the lover's grave, cf. Omar Khayyam. Cf. too Walt Whitman's metaphor for grass--'the beautiful uncut hair of graves.']

Castiglione cannot claim comparison with Navagero for sensuous charm and easy flow of verse. Nor has he those touches of genuine poetry which raise Molsa above the level of a fluent versifier. His Latin exercises, however, offer much that is interesting to a student of Renaissance literature; while the depth of feeling and the earnestness of thought in his clear and powerful hexameters surpass the best efforts of Bembo's artificial muse. When we read the idyll entitled 'Alcon,' a lamentation for the friend whom he had loved in youth--

Alcon deliciæ Musarum et Apollinis, Alcon
Pars animæ, cordis pars Alcon maxima nostri--[476]

we are impelled to question how far Milton owed the form of 'Lycidas' to these Italian imitations of the Græco-Roman style. What seemed false in tone to Johnson, what still renders that elegy the stumbling-block of taste to immature and unsympathetic students, is the highly artificial form given to natural feeling. Grief clothes herself in metaphors, and, abstaining from the direct expression of poignant emotion, dwells on thoughts and images that have a beauty of their own for solace. Nor is it in this quality of art alone that 'Lycidas' reminds us of Renaissance Latin verse. The curious blending of allusions to Church and State with pastoral images is no less characteristic of the Italian manner. As in 'Lycidas,' so also in these lines from Castiglione's 'Alcon,' the truth of sorrow transpires through a thin veil of bucolic romance:--

Heu miserande puer, fatis surrepte malignis!
Non ego te posthac, pastorum adstante coronâ,
Victorem aspiciam volucri certare sagittâ;
Aut jaculo, aut durâ socios superare palæstrâ.
Non tecum posthac molli resupinus in umbrâ
Effugiam longos æstivo tempore soles:
Non tua vicinos mulcebit fistula montes,
Docta nec umbrosæ resonabunt carmina valles:
Non tua corticibus toties inscripta Lycoris,
Atque ignis Galatea meus nos jam simul ambos
Audierint ambæ nostros cantare furores.
Nos etenim a teneris simul usque huc viximus annis,
Frigora pertulimusque æstus noctesque diesque,
Communique simul sunt parta armenta labore.
Rura mea hæc tecum communia; viximus una:
Te moriente igitur curnam mihi vita relicta est?
Heu male me ira Deûm patriis abduxit ab oris,
Ne manibus premerem morientia lumina amicis.[477]

[Footnote 476: 'Alcon, the darling of Phoebus and the Muses; Alcon, a part of my own soul; Alcon, the greatest part of my own heart.'--_Carmina Quinque Poetarum_, p. 89.]

[Footnote 477: 'Alas! poor youth, withdrawn from us by fate malign. Never again shall I behold thee, while the shepherds stand around, win prizes with thy flying shafts or spear, or wrestle for the crown; never again with thee reclining in the shade shall I all through a summer's day avoid the sun. No more shall thy pipe soothe the neighbouring hills, the vales repeat thy artful songs. No more shall thy Lycoris, whose name inscribed by thee the woods remember, and my Galatea hear us both together chaunt our loves. For we like brothers lived our lives till now from infancy: heat and cold, days and nights, we bore; our herds were reared with toil and care together. These fields of mine were also thine: we lived one common life. Why, then, when thou must die, am I still left to live? Alas! in evil hour the wrath of Heaven withdrew me from my native land, nor suffered me to close thy lids with a friend's hands!'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 91.]

Castiglione's most polished exercises are written on fictitious subjects in elegiac metre. Thus he feigns a letter from his wife, in the style of the 'Heroidum Epistolæ,' praying him to beware of Rome's temptations, and to keep his heart for her.[478] Again he warns his mistress to avoid the perils of the sea-beach, where the Tritons roam:--

Os informe illis, rictus, oculique minaces,
Asperaque anguineo cortice membra rigent:
Barba impexa, ingens, algâ limoque virenti
Oblita, oletque gravi lurida odore coma.[479]

[Footnote 478: _Ib._ p. 100.]

[Footnote 479: 'Hideous is their face, their grinning mouth, their threatening eyes, and their rough limbs are stiff with snaky scales; their beard hangs long and wide, uncombed, tangled with sea-weed and green ooze, and their dusky hair smells rank of brine.'--_Ib._ p. 103.]

In these couplets we seem to read a transcript from some fresco of Mantegna or Julio Romano. Two long elegies are devoted to the theme of marine monsters, and the tale of Hippolytus is introduced to clinch the poet's argument. Among Castiglione's poems of compliment, forming a pleasant illustration to his book of the 'Courtier,' may be mentioned the lines on 'Elisabetta Gonzaga singing.'[480] Nor can I omit the most original of his elegies, written, or at least conceived, in the camp of Julius before Mirandola.[481] Walking by night in the trenches under the beleaguered walls, Castiglione meets the ghost of Lodovico Pico, who utters a lamentation over the wrongs inflicted on his city and his race. The roar of cannon cuts short this monologue, and the spectre vanishes into darkness with a groan. During his long threnody the prince of Mirandola apostrophises the warlike Pope in these couplets:--

O Pater, O Pastor populorum, O maxime mundi
Arbiter, humanum qui genus omne regis;
Justitiæ pacisque dator placidæque quietis,
Credita cui soli est vita salusque hominum;
Quem Deus ipse Erebi fecit Coelique potentem,
Ut nutu pateant utraque regna tuo![482]

[Footnote 480: 'De Elisabetta Gonzaga canente,' _Carmina_, &c. p. 97. Cf. Bembo's 'Ad Lucretiam Borgiam,' _ib._ p. 14, on a similar theme.]

[Footnote 481: _Ib._ p. 95.]

[Footnote 482: 'O father, O shepherd of the nations, O great master of the world who rulest all the human race, giver of justice, peace, and tranquil ease; thou to whom alone is committed the life and salvation of men, whom God Himself made lord of hell and heaven, that either realm might open at thy nod.']

When the spiritual authority of the Popes came thus to be expressed in Latin verse, it was impossible not to treat them as deities. The temptation to apply to them the language of Roman religion was too great; the double opportunity of flattering their vanity as Pontiffs, and their ears as scholars, was too attractive to be missed. In another place Castiglione used the following phrases about Leo:--

Nec culpanda tua est mora, nam præcepta Deorum
Non fas, nec tutum est spernere velle homini:
Esse tamen fertur clementia tanta Leonis
Ut facili humanas audiat ore preces.[483]

[Footnote 483: 'I do not blame thee for delaying thy return, since neither is it safe nor right for man to set at naught a God's command; and yet so great is Leo's kindness said to be that he inclines a ready ear to human prayers.'--_Ib._ p. 102.]

Navagero called Julius II. _novus ex alto demissus Olympo Deus_ (a new God sent down from heaven to earth), and declared that the people of Italy, in thanksgiving for his liberation of their country from the barbarians, would pay him yearly honours with prayer and praise:--

Ergo omnes, veluti et Phoebo Panique, quotannis
Pastores certis statuent tibi sacra diebus,
Magne Pater; nostrisque diu cantabere silvis.
Te rupes, te saxa, cavæ te, Maxime Juli,
Convalles, nemorumque frequens iterabit imago.
At vero nostris quæcumque in saltibus usquam
Quercus erit, ut quæque suos dant tempora flores,
Semper erit variis ramos innexa coronis;
Inscriptumque geret felici nomine truncum.
Tum quoties pastum expellet, pastasve reducet
Nostrum aliquis pecudes; toties id mente revolvens
Ut liceat, factum esse tuo, Pater optime, ductu;
Nullus erit, qui non libet tibi lacte recenti,
Nullus erit qui non teneros tibi nutriat agnos.
Quin audire preces nisi dedignabere agrestes,
Tu nostra ante Deos in vota vocaberis omnes.
Ipse ego bina tibi solenni altaria ritu,
Et geminos sacrâ e quercu lauroque virenti
Vicino lucos Nanceli in litore ponam.[484]

[Footnote 484: 'Therefore shall all our shepherds pay thee divine honours, as to Pan or Phoebus, on fixed days, great Father; and long shalt thou be celebrated in our forests. Thy praise, Julius the Great, the cliffs, the rocks, the hollow valleys, and the woodland echoes shall repeat. Wherever in our groves an oak tree stands, as spring and summer bring the flowers, its branches shall be hung with wreaths, its trunk shall be inscribed with thy auspicious name. As often as our shepherds drive the flocks afield, or bring them pastured home, each one, remembering that he does this under thy protection, shall pour libations of new milk forth to thee, and rear thee tender lambs for sacrifice. Nay, if thou spurn not rustic prayers, before all gods shall we invoke thee in our supplications. I myself will build and dedicate to thee two altars, and will plant twin groves of sacred oak and laurel evergreen for thee.'--_Carmina_, &c. pp. 58, 59.]

It will be remembered that the oak was the ensign of the Della Rovere family, so that when the poets exalted Julius to Olympus, they were not in want of a tree sacred to the new deity. To trace this Pagan flattery of the Popes through all its forms would be a tedious business. It will be enough to quote Poliziano's 'Sapphics' to Innocent VIII.:--

Roma cui paret dominusque Tibris,
Qui vicem summi geris hic Tonantis,
Qui potes magnum reserare et idem
Claudere coelum.[485]

[Footnote 485: 'Thou whom Rome obeys, and royal Tiber, who wieldest upon earth the Thunderer's power, whose it is to lock and open the gates of heaven.'--_Ib._ p. 260.]

A more quaint confusion of Latin mythology and mediæval superstition, more glibly and trippingly conveyed in flimsy verse, can hardly be imagined; and yet even this, I think, is beaten by the ponderous conceits of Fracastoro, who, through the mouth of the goat-footed Pan, saluted Julius III. as the mountain of salvation, playing on his name Del Monte:--

Hoc in Monte Dei pecudes pascentur et agni,
Graminis æterni pingues et velleris aurei;
Exsilient et aquæ vivæ, quibus ubera capræ
Grandia distendant, distendant ubera vaccæ.[486]

[Footnote 486: 'In this mountain of the Lord shall flocks and herds feed, fat with eternal pastures and golden-fleeced. Living waters too shall leap forth, wherewith the goats shall swell their udders, and the kine likewise.'--_Poemata Selecta_, p. 132.]

The mountain soon becomes a shepherd, and the shepherd not only rules the people, and feeds the sheep of God, but chains the monsters of the Reformation to a rock in Caucasus, and gives peace and plenty to Italy:--

Æternis illum numeris ad sidera tollent,
Heroemque, deumque, salutiferumque vocabunt.[487]

[Footnote 487: 'Him with immortal verse the poets shall exalt to heaven, and call him hero, god, and saviour.'--_Ib._ p. 133.]

Returning to Castiglione: I have already spoken of his epitaph on Raphael and his description of the newly-discovered 'Ariadne.'[488] The latter exercise in rhetoric competes with Sadoleto's laboured hexameters on the Laocoon. These verses, frigid as a prize poem in our estimation, moved Bembo to enthusiasm. When they appeared he wrote to Sadoleto, 'I have read your poem on Laocoon a hundred times. O wonder-working bard! Not only have you made for us, as it were, a second statue to match that masterpiece; but you have engraved upon my mind the very statue itself.' This panegyric stirs a smile when we compare it with Sadoleto's own prolusion, the fruit of a grave intellect and cultivated taste rather than of genius and inspiration.[489]

[Footnote 488: See above, pp. 312, 317.]

[Footnote 489: See _Carmina Quinque Poetarum_, pp. 318-336.]

Time would fail to tell of all the later Latin poets--of La Casa's polished lyrics in the style of Horace, of Amalteo's waxen eclogues, of Aonio Paleario's fantastic hexameters upon the 'Immortality of the Soul,'[490] of Strozzi's elegies, of Ariosto's epigrams, and Calcagnini's learned muse. When I repeat that every educated man wrote Latin verses in that century, and that all who could committed their productions to the press, enough has been said to prove the impossibility of dealing more than superficially with so vast a mass of meritorious mediocrity.

[Footnote 490: A didactic poem in three books; Pope's _Poemata Italorum_, vol. i. pp. 211-270. The description of the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the entrance of the blessed into Paradise, forming the conclusion of the last book, is an excellent specimen of _barocco_ style and bathos. Virgil had written, '_Ite domum pasti, si quis pudor, ite juvenci!_' Paleario makes the Judge address the damned souls thus: '_Ite domum in tristem, si quis pudor, ite ruentes_,' &c. How close Milton's path lay to the worst faults in poetry, and how wonderfully he escaped, may well be calculated by the study of such verse as this.]

One name remains to be rescued from the decent obscurity of the 'Delitiæ Poetarum Italorum.' Marcantonio Flaminio was born at Seravalle in 1498. He came, while yet a young man, to the Court of Leo armed with Latin poetry for his credentials. No better claim on patronage from Pope or cardinal could be preferred in that age of twanging lyres. At Rome Flaminio lived in the service of Alessandro Farnese, whose hospitality he afterwards repaid with verses honourable alike to poet and patron by their freedom from vulgar flattery. The atmosphere of a Court, however, was uncongenial to Flaminio. Fond of country life, addicted to serious studies, sober in his tastes, and cheerful in his spirits, pious, and unaffectedly unambitious, he avoided the stream of the great world and lived retired. Community of interests brought him into close connection with the Cardinals Pole and Contarini, from whom he caught so much of the Reformation spirit as a philosophical Italian could assimilate; but it was not in his modest and quiet nature to raise the cry of revolt against authority.[491] The most distinguished wits and scholars of the age were among his intimate friends. Both his poems and his correspondence reflect an agreeable light upon the literary society of the late Renaissance. The Latin verses, with which we are at present occupied, breathe genuine piety, healthful simplicity, and moral purity, in strong contrast with the neopaganism of the Roman circle. These qualities suit the robust style, clear, terse, and nervous, he knew how to use. It is pleasant to close the series of Italian Latinists with one who combined the best art of his century with the temper of a republican and the spirit of a Christian.

[Footnote 491: This epigram on Savonarola shows Flaminio's sympathy with the preachers of pure doctrine:--

Dum fera flamma tuos, Hieronyme, pascitur artus,
Relligio, sacras dilaniata comas,
Flevit, et o, dixit, crudeles parcite flammæ,
Parcite, sunt isto viscera nostra rogo.]

The most prominent quality of Flaminio as a poet is love of the country. Three little compositions describing his own farm are animated with the enthusiasm of genuine affection.[492] We feel that no mere reminiscence of Catullus makes him write--

Jam vos revisam, jam juvabit arbores
Manu paternâ consitas
Videre, jam libebit in cubiculo
Molles inire somnulos.[493]

[Footnote 492: 'Ad Agellum suum.'--_Poemata Selecta_, pp. 155, 156, 177.]

[Footnote 493: 'Now shall I see you once again; now shall I have the joy of gazing on the trees my father planted, and falling into gentle slumber in his little room.']

Nor is it an idle prayer he addresses to the Muses in these lines:--

At vos, o Heliconiæ puellæ,
Queis fontes et amoena rura cordi,
Si carâ mihi luce cariores
Estis, jam miserescite obsecrantis,
Meque, urbis strepitu tumultuosæ
Ereptum, in placido locate agello.[494]

[Footnote 494: 'Maidens of Helicon, who love the fountains and the pleasant fields, as you are dearer to me than the dear light, have pity now upon your suppliant, take me from the tumult of the noisy town, and place me in my tranquil farm.']

He is never tired of contrasting the pleasures of the country with the noise and weariness of Rome:--

Ipse miser tumultuosâ
Urbe detinear; tibi benignus
Dedit Jupiter in remoto agello
Latentem placidâ frui quiete,
Inter Socraticos libros, et inter
Nymphas et Satyros, nihil profani
Curantem populi leves honores.[495]

[Footnote 495: 'I, poor wretch, am prisoned in the noisy town. Kind Jupiter allows you, secluded in your distant farm, to take the joys of peace among Socratic books, among the nymphs and satyrs, unheeding the light honours of the vulgar crowd.'--'Ad Honoratum Fascitellum,' _Poemata Selecta_, p. 178.]

Flaminio's thought of the country is always connected with the thought of study. The picture of a tranquil scholar's life among the fields, diversified by sport and simple pleasures of the rustic folk, gives freshness to his hendecasyllables, whether addressed to his patron Alessandro Farnese, or to his friends Galeazzo Florimonte and Francesco Torriani:[496]--

Inde ocellos
Ut primum sopor incubans gravabit,
Jucundissime amice, te sub antrum
Ducam, quod croceis tegunt corymbis
Serpentes hederæ, imminensque laurus
Suaviter foliis susurrat: at tu
Ne febrim metuas gravedinemve;
Est enim locus innocens: ubi ergo
Hic satis requieveris, legentur
Lusus Virgilii, et Syracusani
Vatis, quo nihil est magis venustum,
Nihil dulcius, ut mihi videtur.
Cum se fregerit æstus, in virenti
Convalle spatiabimur; sequetur
Brevis coena; redibis inde ad urbem.[497]

[Footnote 496: _Poemata Selecta_, pp. 153, 169, 173.]

[Footnote 497: 'Then, when sleep descends upon your eyes, best friend of mine, I'll lead you to a cave o'ercurtained by the wandering ivy's yellow bunches, whereby the sheltering laurel murmurs with her gently waving leaves. Fear no fever or dull headache. The place is safe. So when you are rested, we will read the rustic songs of Virgil or Theocritus; sweet and more charming verse I know not; and after the day's heat is past, we will stroll in some green valley. A light supper follows, and then you shall return to town.'--_Ib._ p. 174.]

One of Flaminio's best poems is written from his friend Stefano Sauli's villa near Genoa.[498] It describes how he spends his time between the philosophy of Aristotle and the verses of Catullus, while Sauli at his side devotes himself to Cicero. The fall of evening lures them from their study to the sea-beach: perched upon a water-girded rock, they angle with long reeds for fishes, or watch the white sails on the purple waves. The same theme is repeated in a copy of hexameters addressed to Sauli.[499] Flaminio had fallen ill of fever at Rome. To quit the city was his cure:--

Scilicet ut Romæ corruptas fugimus auras,
Et riguos patriæ montes saltusque salubres
Venimus, effoetos venit quoque robur in artus:
Diffugit macies, diffugit corpore pallor;
Et somnus vigiles irrepsit blandus ocellos,
Quem neque desiliens crepitanti rivulus undâ,
Nec Lethea mihi duxere papavera quondam.[500]

[Footnote 498: 'Ad Christophorum Longolium,' _Ib._]

[Footnote 499: _Poemata Selecta_, p. 163.]

[Footnote 500: 'No sooner had I left Rome's tainted air for the clear streams and healthful forests of my native land, than strength returned into my wasted limbs; my body lost the pallor and emaciation of disease, and sweet sleep crept upon my wakeful eyes, such as no waters falling with a tinkling sound or Lethe's poppies had induced before.']

Sauli, for his part, is congratulated on having exchanged the cares of Church and State for Ciceronian studies among his laurel groves and gleaming orange gardens.

Flaminio's intimate relations with the ablest men of the century, those especially who were engaged in grave and Christian studies, add extrinsic interest to his fugitive pieces. In one poem he alludes to the weak health of Cardinal Pole;[501] in another he compares Plato's description of the ideal republic with Contarini's work upon the magistrates and commonwealth of Venice:--

Descripsit ille maximus quondam Plato
Longis suorum ambagibus voluminum,
Quis civitatis optimus foret status:
Sed hunc ab ipsâ sæculorum origine
Nec ulla vidit, nec videbit civitas.
At Contarenus optimam rempublicam
Parvi libelli disputationibus
Illam probavit esse, plus millesima
Quam cernit æstas Adriatico in mari
Florere pace, litteris, pecuniâ.[502]

[Footnote 501: _Poemata Selecta_, p. 162.]

[Footnote 502: 'Plato, the greatest of sages, once described in his long volumes the best form of a State; but this from the beginning of the world till now hath never yet been seen, nor will it afterwards be seen in any city. Contarini in his little book has proved that the best commonwealth is that which now for more than a thousand years has flourished in the Adriatic with peace, letters, and wealth.'--_Poemata Selecta_, p. 162.]

When Vittoria Colonna died, Flaminio wrote a lamentation on the loss he had sustained, and on the extinction of so great a light for Italy. These verses are remarkable for their sobriety and strength:--

Cui mens candida, candidique mores,
Virtus vivida, comitasque sancta,
Coeleste ingenium, eruditioque
Rara, nectare dulciora verba,
Summa nobilitas, decora vultûs
Majestas, opulenta sed bonorum
Et res et domus usque aperta ad usus.[503]

[Footnote 503: 'Ad Hieronymum Turrianum,' _ib._ p. 168. 'Her mind was pure, her manners pure; her virtue lively, her courtesy without a taint of earth; her intellect was heavenly, her learning rare; her words sweeter than nectar; her nobility the highest; her features beautiful in their majesty; her wealth liberally open to the use of good men.']

The same firm and delicate touch in the delineation of character gives value to the lines written on his father's death:--

Vixisti, genitor, bene ac beate,
Nec pauper, neque dives, eruditus
Satis, et satis eloquens, valente
Semper corpore, mente sanâ, amicis
Jucundus, pietate singulari.
Nunc lustris bene sexdecim peractis
Ad divûm proficisceris beatas
Oras; i, genitor, tuumque natum
Olympi cito siste tecum in arce.[504]

[Footnote 504: 'Well and happily hast thou lived, my father; neither poor nor rich; learned enough and eloquent enough; of vigorous body and of healthy mind; pleasant to thy friends, and in thy piety unrivalled. Now, after sixteen lustres finished, thou goest to the regions of the blest. Go, father, and soon greet thy son, to stay with thee in heaven's high seat.'--'Ad Patrem morientem,' _Poemata Selecta_, p. 157.]

At the risk of extending this notice of Flaminio's poetry beyond due limits, I must quote from a copy of verses sent to Alessandro Farnese, together with a volume containing the Latin _prolusiones_ of the North Italian scholars:--

Hos tibi lepidissimos poetas
Dono, tempora quos tulere nostra,
Fortunata nimis, nimis beata
Nostra tempora, quæ suos Catullos,
Tibullos, et Horatios, suosque
Marones genuere. Quis putasset,
Post tot sæcula tam tenebricosa,
Et tot Ausoniæ graves ruinas,
Tanta lumina tempore uno in una
Tam brevi regione Transpadanâ
Oriri potuisse? quæ vel ipsa
Sola barbarie queant fugatâ
Suum reddere litteris Latinis
Splendorem, veteremque dignitatem.[505]

[Footnote 505: _Poemata Selecta_, p. 166. 'These most graceful poets I give you, the offspring of our too, too happy times, which have produced their Catullus and their Horace, their Tibullus and their Maro. Who could have thought, after so many ages of such darkness, and all the ruin that has weighed on Italy, that so many lights could have arisen at one epoch in one little region of the land above the Po? They alone are enough to put to flight the gloom of barbarism, and to restore its antique glory and own splendour to Latin literature.' After this he goes on to add that these poets will confer eternal lustre on Italy. Not only the northern nations of Europe, but America also has begun to study Latin; and races in another hemisphere will take their culture from these pages. The Cardinal is finally reminded that immortality of fame awaits him in their praises.]

There is the whole of humanism in this passage--the belief in the unity of Italian civilisation, the conviction that the Middle Ages were but an interruption of historic continuity, the confidence in the restoration of classic literature, and the firm hope that Latin would never cease to be the language of culture. Flaminio says nothing, unless parenthetically, about the real woes of his country. The tyranny of the Spaniard and the violence of the German are reckoned with the old wrongs of the Goth and the Vandal in one phrase--'_tot graves ruinas_.' He does not touch upon the dismemberment of Italy into mutually jealous and suspicious States: for him the Italian nation, even in a dream, has no existence. He is satisfied with a literary ideal. Too fortunate, too blessed, are these days of ours, in spite of Florence extinguished, Rome sacked, Milan devastated, Venice curbed, because, forsooth, Bembo and Fracastoro have made a pinchbeck age of poetry. Here lay the incurable weakness of the humanistic movement. The vanity of the scholar, determined to seek the present in the past, building the walls of Troy anew with borrowed music, and singing in falsetto while Rome was burning--this blindness to the actual situation of Italy was scarcely less pernicious, scarcely less a sign of incapacity for civil life than the selfishness of the Despots or the egotism of the Papacy. Italy was foredoomed to lose her place among the nations at the very moment when she was recovering culture for the modern world; and when that culture was recovered through her industry and genius, not she, but the races of the North, began to profit by the acquisition--not her imitations of the Latin Muse, but the new languages of Europe were destined to prevail and lead the age.

Another point for observation is that the centre of humanistic studies has shifted.[506] Florence, disillusioned, drained of strength, and sucked dry by the tyrants, holds her tongue. The schools of Naples and of Rome are silent. Lombardy is now the mother of poets, who draw their inspiration no longer from Valdarno or the myrtle groves of Posilippo, but from the blue waves of Garda.[507] The university where science still flourishes is Padua. The best professors of the classics, Celio Calcagnini and Lilius Gyraldus, teach at Ferrara. Bembo, the dictator of letters for his century, Navagero, the sweetest versifier, Contarini, the most sober student, are Venetians. Stefano Sauli, the author of a Ciceronian treatise on the Christian hero, is a patrician of Genoa. Sadoleto and Molsa are Modenese. Verona claims Fracastoro and the Torriani. Imola is the mother city of Flaminio. Castiglione and Capilupo are natives of Mantua; Amalteo and Vida of Forli and Cremona; Bonfadio and Archio of Lake Garda. If we seek the causes of this change, we find them partly in the circumstance that Venice at this period was free, while Ferrara still retained her independence under native princes; partly also in the fact that Florence had already overtaxed her intellectual energies. Like a creeping paralysis, the extinction of liberty and spiritual force was gradually invading all the members of the Italian community. The Revival of Learning came to an end, as far as Italy was concerned, in these Transpadane poets.

[Footnote 506: 'Tam brevi regione Transpadanâ.']

[Footnote 507: Cf. Bembo's _Benacus_, Bonfadio's _Gazani Vici Descriptio_, Fracastoro's _Ad Franciscum Turrianum Veronensem_, &c.]

To trace the history of philosophic thought, set in motion by the Renaissance and stamped out by the Counter-Reformation, and to describe the aftergrowth of art and literature encouraged by the Catholic reaction, must form the subject of a separate inquiry.

I hope, if I have time and strength, after the completion of my work on the Renaissance, to trace this sequel in a volume on 'Italy and the Council of Trent.' To this chapter of Italian history will also belong the philosophy of the sixteenth century, the poetry of Tasso, the painting of the Bolognese masters, and the new music of Palestrina.