Cætera formosi, dextro est orbatus ocello
Frater, et est lævo lumine capta soror.
Frontibus adversis ambo si jungitis ora,
Bina quidem facies, vultus at unus erit.
Sed tu, Carle, tuum lumen transmitte sorori,
Continuo ut vestrûm fiat uterque Deus.
Plena hæc fulgebit fraterna luce Diana,
Hujus frater eris tu quoque, cæcus amor.
This is very good, and Passerat ought to have credit for the invention; but the other is better. Though most know the lines by heart, I will insert them here:—
Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
Et Potis est forma vincere uterque Deos.
Blande puer, lumen quod habes, concede sorori,
Sic tu cæcus amor, sic erit illa Venus.
I have no ground for saying that this was written last, except that no one would have dreamed of improving it.
Sammarthanus. 95. The best of Latin poets whom France could boast was Sammarthanus (Sainte Marthe), known also, but less favourably, in his own language. They are more classically elegant than any others which met my eye in Gruter’s collection; and this, I believe, is the general suffrage of critics.[1236] Few didactic poems, probably, are superior to his Pædotrophia, on the nurture of children; it is not a little better, which indeed is no high praise, than the Balia of Tansillo on the same subject.[1237] We may place Sammarthanus, therefore, at the head of the list; and not far from the bottom of it I should class Bonnefons, or Bonifonius, a French writer of Latin verse in the very worst taste, whom it would not be worth while to mention, but for a certain degree of reputation he has acquired. He might also be suspected of designing to turn into ridicule the effeminacy which some Italians had introduced into amorous poetry. Bonifonius has closely imitated Secundus, but is much inferior to him in everything but his faults. The Latinity is full of gross and obvious errors.[1238]
[1236] Baillet, n. 1401. Some did not scruple to set him above the best Italians, and one went so far as to say that Virgil would have been envious of the Pædotrophia.
[1237] The following lines are a specimen of the Pædotrophia, taken much at random.
Ipsæ etiam Alpinis villosæ in cautibus ursæ,
Ipsæ etiam tigres, et quicquid ubique ferarum est,
Debita servandis concedunt ubera natis.
Tu, quam miti animo natura benigna creavit,
Exuperes feritate feras? nec te tua tangant
Pignora, nec querulos puerili e gutture planctus,
Nec lacrymas miserêris, opemque injusta recuses,
Quam præstare tuum est, et quæ te pendet ab unâ.
Cujus onus teneris hærebit dulce lacertis
Infelix puer, et molli se pectore sternet?
Dulcia quis primi captabit gaudia risûs,
Et primas voces et blæsæ murmura linguæ?
Tune fruenda alii potes illa relinquere demens,
Tantique esse putas teretis servare papillæ
Integrum decus, et juvenilem in pectore florem?
Lib. i. (Gruter. iii. 266.)
It is singular that Sammarthanus (Sainte Marthe), though a French poet (with less success than in Latin), and one of the most accomplished men of his time, and also one of the best known in literary history, is omitted in the Biographie Universelle. Such negligences must occur in a long work; but the editors are rather too severe on a preceding collection of biography, the Dictionnaire Historique of Chaudon and Delandine, for similar faults. Lives will be found in this much shorter publication which have been overlooked in their own.
[1238] The following lines are not an unfair specimen of Bonifonius:—