Of France—Quillet. 50. The superiority of France in Latin verse was no longer contested by Holland or Germany. Several poets of real merit belong to this period. The first in time was Claude Quillet, who, in his Callipædia, bears the Latinised name of Leti. This is written with much elegance of style and a very harmonious versification. No writer has a more Virgilian cadence. Though inferior to Sammarthanus, he may be reckoned high among the French poets. He has been reproached with too open an exposition of some parts of his subject; which applies only to the second book.
Menage. 51. The Latin poems of Menage are not unpleasing; he has, indeed, no great fire or originality, but the harmonious couplets glide over the ear, and the mind is pleased to recognise the tesselated fragments of Ovid and Tibullus. His affected passion for Mademoiselle Lavergne, and lamentations about her cruelty are ludicrous enough, when we consider the character of the man, as Vadius in the Femmes Savantes of Molière. They are perfect models of want of truth; but it is a want of truth to nature, not to the conventional forms of modern Latin verse.
Rapin on gardens. 52. A far superior performance is the poem on gardens, by the Jesuit, Réné Rapin. For skill in varying and adorning his subject, for a truly Virgilian spirit in expression, for the exclusion of feeble, prosaic, or awkward lines, he may, perhaps, be equal to any poet, to Sammarthanus, or to Sannazarius himself. His cadences are generally very gratifying to the ear, and in this respect he is much above Vida.[993] But his subject, or his genius, has prevented him from rising very high; he is the poet of gardens, and what gardens are to nature, that is he to mightier poets. There is also too monotonous a repetition of nearly the same images, as in his long enumeration of flowers in the first book; the descriptions are separately good, and great artifice is shown in varying them; but the variety could not be sufficient to remove the general sameness that belongs to a horticultural catalogue. Rapin was a great admirer of box and all topiary works, or trees cut into artificial forms.
[993] As the poem of Rapin is not in the hands of everyone who has taste for Latin poetry, I will give as a specimen the introduction to the second book:—
Me nemora atque omnis nemorum pulcherrimus ordo,
Et spatia umbrandum latè fundanda per hortum
Invitant; hortis nam si florentibus umbra
Abfuerit, reliquo deerit sua gratia ruri.
Vos grandes luci et silvæ aspirate canenti;
Is mihi contingat vestro de munere ramus,
Unde sacri quando velant sua tempora vates,
Ipse et amem meritam capiti imposuisse coronam.
Jam se cantanti frondosa cacumina quercus
Inclinant, plauduntque comis nemora alta coruscis.
Ipsa mihi læto fremitu, assensuque secundo
E totis plausum responsat Gallia silvis.
Nec me deinde suo teneat clamore Cithæron,
Mænalaque Arcadicis toties lustrata deabus.
Non Dodonæi saltus, silvæque Molorchi,
Aut nigris latè ilicibus nemorosa Calydne,
Et quos carminibus celebravit fabula lucos:
Una meos cantus tellus jam Franca moretur,
Quæ tot nobilibus passim lætissima silvis,
Conspicienda sui latè miracula ruris
Ostendit, lucisque solum commendat amœnis.
One or two words in these lines are not strictly correct; but they are highly Virgilian, both in manner and rhythm.
53. The first book of the Gardens of Rapin is on flowers, the second on trees, the third on waters, and the fourth on fruits. The poem is of about 3,000 lines, sustained with equable dignity. All kinds of graceful associations are mingled with the description of his flowers, in the fanciful style of Ovid and Darwin; the violet is Ianthis, who lurked in valleys to shun the love of Apollo, and stained her face with purple to preserve her chastity; the rose is Rhodanthe, proud of her beauty, and worshipped by the people in the place of Diana, but changed by the indignant Apollo to a tree, while the populace, who had adored her, are converted into her thorns, and her chief lovers into snails and butterflies. A tendency to conceit is perceived in Rapin, as in the two poets to whom we have just compared him. Thus, in some pretty lines, he supposes Nature to have “tried her ‘prentice hand” in making a convolvulus before she ventured upon a lily.[994]
[994] Et tu rumpis humum et multo te flore profundis,
Qui riguas inter serpis, convolvule, valles;
Dulce rudimentum meditantis lilia quondam
Naturæ, cum sese opera ad majora pararet.
54. In Rapin there will generally be remarked a certain redundancy, which fastidious critics might call tautology of expression. But this is not uncommon in Virgil. The Georgics have rarely been more happily imitated, especially in their didactic parts, than by Rapin in the Gardens; but he has not the high flights of his prototype; his digressions are short and belong closely to the subject; we have no plague, no civil war, no Eurydice. If he praises Louis XIV., it is more as the founder of the garden of Versailles, than as the conqueror of Flanders, though his concluding lines emulate, with no unworthy spirit, those of the last Georgic.[995] It may be added, that some French critics have thought the famous poem of Delille on the same subject inferior to that of Rapin.
[995] Hæc magni insistens vestigia sacra Maronis,
Re super hortensi, Claro de monte canebam,
Lutetia in magna; quo tempore Francica tellus
Rege beata suo, rebusque superba secundis,
Et sua per populos latè dare jura volentes
Cæperat, et toti jam morem imponere mundo.