“Sed tamen in vestro quædam sermone notavi
Carmine de veteri furta novella loqui,
Ex quibus in paucis superedita syllaba fregit
Et pede læsa suo musica clauda gemit.”
Let us congratulate Venantius on not yielding to the heresy of the “extra-metrical syllable,” which has deceived some of the very elect in more illuminated days. Some slight glimmers are given by the flattery,[[511]] more elaborate than anything yet noticed, of still another bishop, Martin of Gallicia: and in V. iii.[[512]] we get a ticket-list of the same kind (though shorter and slighter) as those of which Sidonius is so prodigal. In this, after Athanasius has been designated fortis, Hilary clarus, Martin dives, and Ambrose gravis, he adds the distich—
“Gregorius radiat, sacer Augustinus inundat,
Basilius rutilat, Cæsariusque micat.”
The epistle to Syagrius of Autun (V. vi.)[[513]], which introduces another elaborate cross-poem, contains a vindication of it, by a twist of the Horatian tag to the effect that as painting and poetics are so like, why should you not combine them in such a fashion? After which the intricacies of the poem itself are carefully explained. The reference to “us Romans” in the poem to Sigebert (V. ii. 98)[[514]] (where he compliments the king on his skill, Sicambrian as he is, in the Latin tongue) suggests that the writer would have been scantly grateful for the inclusion of his work among “Monumenta Germaniæ.”
The genuine prose works of Fortunatus, consisting only of a few Saints’ Lives, do not promise much; but there is at least one remarkable passage in them. It is the opening of the Life of Saint Marcellus[[515]] in which his customary deprecation takes this form. “Illustrious orators of the most eloquent genius, whose speeches are distinguished by varied flowers, and shadowed by the vernal tendrils of eloquence, are wont deliberately to seek common causes and sterile matter, that they may show themselves as possessing an inexhaustible flow of speech on the smallest subjects, and as able to inundate the dryest themes with their internal founts of rhetoric. Men not so clever cannot even treat great subjects,” &c.
And this, falling in with the other glimpses we have obtained, gives no misty view of the critical standpoint of this agreeable writer. The literary nisus, the literary tone, are fairly well maintained; there is no glaring lack of positive knowledge; and neither style nor sense shows anything like the degradation of Fulgentius. But Fortunatus, far more than Sidonius, is, in the good old phrase, “to seek” in the general field of matters literary, and especially in its critical quarters. Glitter and clatter, tinsel and crackers, are in prose, if not in verse (he is far more sober there), too much his ideals. The curse of the ancient formal Rhetoric has so far outlasted its blessings, that the expression of opinion last quoted would suit, and almost exaggerate, the position of the worst of the old declamation-makers. As to prosody, he has to some extent, if not wholly, “kept the bird in his bosom,” and his affection for subtleties in arrangement is, as has been said, not so wholly to his discredit as Mr Addison and Mr Pope thought. But it is rather a dangerous support; and he has very few others.