The rock, again the river resplendent.
Id.
Lydgate apologises for his own lines,—
Because I know the verse therein is wrong,
As being some too short, and some too long,—
in Gray, ii. 4. This seems at once to exclude the rhythmical system, and to account for the imperfection of the metrical. Lydgate has perhaps on the whole more aberrations from the decasyllable standard than Chaucer.
Puttenham, in his Art of Poesie (1586), book ii. ch. 3, 4, though he admits the licentiousness of Chaucer, Lydgate, and other poets in occasionally disregarding the cæsura, does not seem to doubt that they wrote by metrical rules; which indeed is implied in the other. Dr. Nott’s theory cannot allow a want of cæsura.
Politeness of Wyatt and Surrey. 29. If we compare the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey with that of Barclay or Skelton, about thirty or forty years before, the difference must appear wonderful. But we should not, with Dr. Nott, attribute this wholly to superiority of genius. It is to be remembered that the later poets wrote in a court, and in one which, besides the aristocratic manners of chivalry, had not only imbibed a great deal of refinement from France and Italy, but a considerable tinge of ancient literature. Their predecessors were less educated men, and they addressed a more vulgar class of readers. Nor was this polish of language peculiar to Surrey and his friend. In the short poems of Lord Vaux, and of others about the same time, even in those of Nicolas Grimoald, a lecturer at Oxford, who was no courtier, but had acquired a classical taste, we find a rejection of obsolete and trivial phrases, and the beginnings of what we now call the style of our older poetry.
Latin poetry. 30. No period since the revival of letters has been so conspicuous for Latin poetry as the present. Three names of great reputation adorn it, Sannazarius, Vida, Fracastorius. |Sannazarius.| The first of these, Sannazarius, or San Nazaro, or Actius Sincerus, was a Neapolitan, attached to the fortunes of the Aragonese line of kings; and following the last of their number Frederic, after his unjust spoliation, into France, remained there till his master’s death. Much of his poetry was written under this reign, before 1503; but his principal work, De Partu Virginis, did not appear till 1522. This has incurred not unjust blame for the intermixture of classical mythology, at least in language, with the Gospel story; nor is the latter very skilfully managed. But it would be difficult to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification. The unauthorised word, the doubtful idiom, the modern turn of thought, so common in Latin verse, scarce ever appear in Sannazarius; a pure taste enabled him to diffuse a Virgilian hue over his language; and a just ear, united with facility in command of words, rendered his versification melodious and varied beyond any competitor. The Piscatory Eclogues of Sannazarius, which are perhaps better known, deserve at least equal praise; they seem to breathe the beauty and sweetness of that fair bay they describe. His elegies are such as may compete with Tibullus. If Sannazarius does not affect sublimity, he never sinks below his aim; the sense is sometimes inferior to the style, as he is not wholly free from conceits;[792] but it would probably be more difficult to find cold and prosaic passages in his works than in those of any other Latin poet in modern times.
[792] The following lines, on the constellation Taurus, are more puerile than any I have seen in this elegant poet:
Torva bovi facies; sed qua non altera cœlo
Dignior, imbriferum quæ cornibus inchoet annum,
Nec quæ tam claris mugitibus astra lacessat.
Vida. 31. Vida of Cremona is not by any means less celebrated than Sannazarius; his poem on the Art of Poetry, and that on the Game of Chess, were printed in 1527; the Christiad, an epic poem, as perhaps it deserves to be called, in 1535; and that on silk worms in 1537. Vida’s precepts are clear and judicious, and we admire in his Game of Chess especially, and the poem on Silk worms, the skill with which the dry rules of art, and descriptions the most apparently irreducible to poetical conditions, fall into his elegant and classical language. It has been observed, that he is the first who laid down rules for imitative harmony, illustrating them by his own example. The Christiad shows not so much, I think, of Vida’s great talents, at least in poetical language; but the subject is better managed than by Sannazarius. Yet, notwithstanding some brilliant passages, among which the conclusion of the second book De Arte Poetica is prominent, Vida appears to me far inferior to the Neapolitan poet. His versification is often hard and spondaic, the elisions too frequent, and the cæsura too much neglected. The language, even where the subject best admits of it, is not so elevated as we should desire.