Pleasantness of sound is justly exacted of poets. The harshness of many poets, particularly the German. Some are too melodious.
Hence it is that anyone who wishes to conform to nature must necessarily strive for pleasantness of sound. This is the more justly exacted of poets since poetry itself is nothing other than measured language, bound into fixed numbers and feet, for the purpose of charming the ear. Consequently, those poets are justly censured who rest content with rounding off their words in six feet and altogether neglect to accommodate the ear. A good many epigrammatists are constant offenders in this kind, especially those who have rendered the Greek Anthology in Latin and the German poets.
For example, who can tolerate this German epigram?
He who made all that nothing was of nothing,
Who'll make that nothing that now something is,
Made you who nothing were what you now are
From nothing, will make nothing what you are—
Yes, or if something, being but sin from sin,
From sin must form something for heaven fit.
Again, what is harsher than this epigram?
You from your soul could not but know mine that
That gave up in your ghost but just now his:
As soul is known from soul so is your ghost
Known to the Muses by my muse that's yours.
Or than this distich?
Forward, nor turn from the old path one bit:
This that you are I while I live shall be.[4]
But just as it is a considerable fault in diction wholly to neglect the pleasure of the ear, since verse, as we said, was devised to flatter it, so on the other hand those writers make a grievous mistake who have an immoderate regard for the ear, and pay no attention to the thought so long as they are satisfied with the sound. Out of such concern we get tuneful trifles and verses empty of substance. Writers who have by an attentive consideration of the poets achieved the faculty of poetic diction and rhythm quite often fall into this error. They abound in choice phrases and so are in effect content to smooth over the commonplace with a not indecorous make-up. You can see this in many poems and epigrams of Buchanan, Borbonius, and Barleius. If the reader is not quite attentive such poems will often deceive him, but being re-read and examined they beget a kind of distaste because of the thinness of the matter. Consequently, we have looked carefully for this fault, and have eliminated many poems that are melodious in this way and have nothing inside.