Poetry being thus regarded as a necessary branch of scholarship, it followed that few men distinguished for their learning abstained from versification. Pedants who could do no more than make prosaic elegiacs scan, and scholars respectable for their acquirements, but destitute of inspiration, were reckoned among the sacri vates. It would be a weariful—nay, hopeless—task to pass all the Latin versifiers of the Renaissance in review. Their name is legion; even to count them would be the same as to number the stars—ad una ad una annoverar le stelle. It may be considered fortunate that perhaps the larger masses of their productions still remain in manuscript, partly because they preceded the age of printing, and partly, no doubt, because the good sense of the age rejected them. What has been printed, however, exceeds in bulk the 'Corpus Poetarum Latinorum,' and presents so many varieties that to deal with more than a selection is impossible.[413]
The poetasters of the first two periods need not be taken into account. Struggling with a language imperfectly assimilated, and with the rules of a prosody as yet but little understood, it was as much as they could do to express themselves at all in metre. Elegance of composition was out of the question when a writer could neither set forth modern thoughts with ease nor imitate the classic style with accuracy. What he lost in force by the use of a dead language, he did not gain in polish; nor was the taste of the age schooled to appreciate the niceties of antique diction. Beccadelli alone, by a certain limpid fluency, attained to a degree of moderate excellence; and how much he owed to his choice of subject may be questioned. The obscenity of his themes, and the impudence required for their expression, may have acted as a stimulus to his not otherwise distinguished genius. There is, moreover, no stern conflict to be fought with phrases when the author's topic is mere animalism. The rest of his contemporaries, Filelfo included, did no more than smooth the way for their successors by practising the technicalities of verse and exciting emulation. To surpass their rude achievements was not difficult, while the fame they enjoyed aroused the ambition of younger rivals. Exception to this sweeping verdict may be made in favour of Alberti, whose Latin play, called 'Philodoxus,' was a brilliant piece of literary workmanship.[414] Not only did it impose on contemporaries as a genuine classic, but, even when judged by modern standards, it shows real familiarity with the language of Latin comedy and rare skill in its employment.
Poliziano is the first Latin poet who compels attention in the fifteenth century; nor was he surpassed, in fertility of conception and mastery of metre, by any of his numerous successors. With all his faults of style and crudities of diction, Poliziano, in my opinion, deserves the chief place among original poets of revived Latin literature. Bembo wrote more elegantly, Navagero more classically, Amalteo with a grace more winning. Yet these versifiers owe their celebrity to excellence of imitation. Poliziano possessed a manner of his own, and made a dead language utter thoughts familiar to the age in which he lived. He did not merely traverse the old ground of the elegy, the epigram, the satire, and the idyll. Striking out a new path for himself, and aiming at instruction, he poured forth torrents of hexameters, rough perhaps and over-fluent, yet marked by intellectual energy and copious fancy, in illustration of a modern student's learning. This freedom of handling is shown to best advantage in his 'Sylvæ.'[415]
The 'Nutricia' forms an introduction to the history of poetry in general, and carries on its vigorous stream the weight of universal erudition. From it we learn how the most accomplished scholar of his century judged and distinguished the whole body of fine literature possessed by his contemporaries. On the emergence of humanity from barbarism, writes Poliziano, poetry was given to men as a consolation for the miseries of life and as an instrument of culture; their first nurse in the cradle of civilisation was the Muse:—
Musa quies hominum, divomque æterna voluptas.[416]
After characterising the Pagan oracles, the mythical bards of Hellas, and the poet-prophets of the Jewish race, with brief but telling touches, Poliziano addresses himself in the following lines to the delineation of the two chief epic-singers:—
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... etenim ut stellas fugere undique cælo, Aurea cum radios Hyperionis exeruit fax, Cernimus, et tenuem velut evanescere lunam; Sic veterum illustres flagranti obscurat honores Lampade Mæonides: unum quem dia canentem Facta virum, et sævas æquantem pectine pugnas, Obstupuit, prorsusque parem confessus Apollo est. Proximus huic autem, vel ni veneranda senectus Obstiterit, fortasse prior, canit arma virumque Vergilius, cui rure sacro, cui gramine pastor Ascræus, Siculusque simul cessere volentes.[417] |
Then follows the enumeration of lesser Greek and Roman epopœists. After them the lyrists and elegiac poets, among whom Pindar is celebrated in the following magniloquent paragraph:—
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Aërios procul in tractus, et nubila supra Pindarus it Dircæus olor, cui nectare blandæ Os tenerum libâstis apes, dum fessa levaret Membra quiete puer mollem spirantia somnum; Sed Tanagræa suo mox jure poetria risit, Irrita qui toto sereret figmenta canistro; Tum certare auso palmam intercepit opimam Æoliis prælata modis atque illice formâ. Ille Agathocleâ subnisus voce coronas Dixit Olympiacas, et quâ victoribus Isthmos Fronde comam, Delphique tegant, Nemeæaque tesqua Lunigenam mentita feram; tum numina divum Virtutesque, virosque undanti pectore torrens Provexit, sparsitque pios ad funera questus. Frugibus hunc libisque virum Cirrhæus ab arâ Phœbus, et accubitu mensæ dignatus honoro est: Panaque pastores solis videre sub antris Pindarico tacitas mulcentem carmine silvas. Inde senem pueri gremio cervice repostâ Infusum, et dulci laxantem corda sopore, Protinus ad manes, et odoro gramine pictum Elysium tacitâ rapuit Proserpina dextrâ. Quin etiam hostiles longo post tempore flammæ, Quæ septemgeminas populabant undique Thebas, Expavere domum tanti tamen urere vatis, Et sua posteritas medios quoque tuta per enses Sensit inexhaustâ cinerem juvenescere famâ.[418] |
Sappho is described in the following lines:—