In Italy—Germany—France—Great Britain.
Decline of Latin poetry in Italy. 91. The cultivation of poetry in modern languages did not as yet thin the ranks of Latin versifiers. They are, on the contrary, more numerous in this period than before. Italy, indeed, ceased to produce men equal to those who had flourished in the age of Leo and Clement. Some of considerable merit will be found in the great collection, “Carmina Illustrium Poetarum” (Florentiæ, 1719); one too, which rigorously excluding all voluptuous poetry, makes some sacrifice of genius to scrupulous morality. The brothers Amaltei are perhaps the best of the later period. It is not always easy, at least without more pains than I have taken, to determine the chronology of these poems, which are printed in the alphabetical order of the authors’ names. But a considerable number must be later than the middle of the century. It must be owned that most of these poets employ trivial images, and do not much vary their forms of expression. They often please, but rarely make an impression on the memory. They are generally, I think, harmonious; and perhaps metrical faults, though not uncommon, are less so than among the Cisalpine Latinists. There appears, on the whole, an evident decline since the preceding age.
Compensated in other countries. Lotichius. 92. This was tolerably well compensated in other parts of Europe. One of the most celebrated authors is a native of Germany, Lotichius, whose poems were first published in 1551, and with much amendment in 1561. They are written in a strain of luscious elegance, not rising far above the customary level of Ovidian poetry, and certainly not often falling below it. The versification is remarkably harmonious and flowing, but with a mannerism not sufficiently diversified; the first foot of each verse is generally a dactyle, which adds to the grace, but somewhat impairs the strength. Lotichius is, however, a very elegant and classical versifier; and perhaps equal in elegy to Joannes Secundus, or any Cisalpine writer of the sixteenth century.[1231] One of his elegies, on the siege of Magdeburg, gave rise to a strange notion—that he predicted, by a sort of divine enthusiasm, the calamities of that city in 1631. Bayle has spun a long note out of this fancy of some Germans.[1232] But those who take the trouble, which these critics seem to have spared themselves, of attending to the poem itself, will perceive that the author concludes it with prognostics of peace instead of capture. It was evidently written on the siege of Magdeburg by Maurice in 1550. George Sabinus, son-in-law of Melanchthon, ranks second in reputation to Lotichius among the Latin poets of Germany during this period.
[1231] Baillet calls him the best poet of Germany after Eobanus Hessus.
[1232] Morhof, l. i. c. 19. Bayle, art. Lotichius, note G. This seems to have been agitated after the publication of Bayle; for I find in the catalogue of the British Museum a disquisition, by one Krusike, Utrum Petrus Lotichius secundam obsidionem urbis Magdeburgensis prædixerit; published as late as 1703.
Collections of Latin poetry by Gruter. 93. But France and Holland, especially the former, became the more favoured haunts of the Latin muse. A collection in three volumes by Gruter, under the fictitious name of Ranusius Gherus, Deliciæ Poetarum Gallorum, published in 1609, contains the principal writers of the former country, some entire, some in selection. In these volumes there are about 100,000 lines; in the Deliciæ Poetarum Belgarum, a similar publication by Gruter, I find about as many; his third collection, Deliciæ Poetarum Italorum, seems not so long, but I have not seen more than one volume. These poets are disposed alphabetically; few, comparatively speaking, of the Italians seem to belong to the latter half of the century, but very much the larger proportion of the French and Dutch. A fourth collection, Deliciæ Poetarum Germanorum, I have never seen. All these bear the fictitious name of Gherus. According to a list in Baillet, the number of Italian poets selected by Gruter is 203; of French, 108; of Dutch or Belgic, 129; of German, 211.
Characters of some Gallo-Latin poets. 94. Among the French poets, Beza, who bears in Gruter’s collection the name of Adeodatus Seba, deserves high praise, though some of his early pieces are rather licentious.[1233] Bellay is also an amatory poet; in the opinion of Baillet he has not succeeded so well in Latin as in French. The poems of Muretus are perhaps superior. Joseph Scaliger seemed to me to write Latin verse tolerably well, but he is not rated highly by Baillet and the authors whom he quotes.[1234] The epigrams of Henry Stephens are remarkably prosaic and heavy. Passerat is very elegant; his lines breathe a classical spirit, and are full of those fragments of antiquity with which Latin poetry ought always to be inlaid, but in sense they are rather feeble.[1235] The epistles, on the contrary, of the Chancellor de l’Hospital, in an easy Horatian versification, are more interesting than such insipid effusions, whether of flattery or feigned passion, as the majority of modern Latinists present. They are unequal, and fall too often into a creeping style; but sometimes we find a spirit and nervousness of strength and sentiment worthy of his name; and though keeping in general to the level of Horatian satire, he rises at intervals to a higher pitch, and wants not the skill of descriptive poetry.
[1233] Baillet, n. 1366, thinks Beza an excellent Latin poet. The Juvenilia first appeared in 1548. The later editions omitted several poems.
[1234] Jugemens des Savans, n. 1295. One of Scaliger’s poems celebrates that immortal flea, which, on a great festival at Poitiers, having appeared on the bosom of a learned, and doubtless beautiful young lady, Mademoiselle des Roches, was the theme of all the wits and scholars of the age. Some of their lines and those of Joe Scaliger among the number, seem designed, by the freedom they take with the fair Pucelle, to beat the intruder himself in impudence. See Œuvres de Pasquier, ii. 950.
[1235] Among the epigrams of Passerat I have found one which Amaltheus seems to have shortened and improved, retaining the idea, in his famous lines on Acon and Leonilla. I do not know whether this has been observed.