In an admirable article on Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde (Mutterschutz, 1906, Heft 5), Heinrich Meyer-Benfey, in pointing out that the Catholic sacramental conception of marriage licensed love, but failed to elevate it, regards Lucinde, with all its defects, as the first expression of the unity of the senses and the soul, and, as such, the basis of the new ethics of love. It must, however, be said that four hundred years earlier Pontano had expressed this same erotic unity far more robustly and wholesomely than Schlegel, though the Latin verse in which he wrote, fresh and vital as it is, remained without influence. Pontano's Carmina, including the "De Amore Conjugali," have at length been reprinted in a scholarly edition by Soldati.
From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries Ovid was, in reality, the most popular and influential classic poet. His works played a large part in moulding Renaissance literature, not least in England, where Marlowe translated his Amores, and Shakespeare, during the early years of his literary activity, was greatly indebted to him (see, e.g., Sidney Lee, "Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets," Quarterly Review, Ap., 1909).
This has already been discussed in Chapter II.