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Roma cui paret dominusque Tibris, Qui vicem summi geris hic Tonantis, Qui potes magnum reserare et idem Claudere cœlum.[485] |
A more quaint confusion of Latin mythology and mediæval superstition, more glibly and trippingly conveyed in flimsy verse, can hardly be imagined; and yet even this, I think, is beaten by the ponderous conceits of Fracastoro, who, through the mouth of the goat-footed Pan, saluted Julius III. as the mountain of salvation, playing on his name Del Monte:—
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Hoc in Monte Dei pecudes pascentur et agni, Graminis æterni pingues et velleris aurei; Exsilient et aquæ vivæ, quibus ubera capræ Grandia distendant, distendant ubera vaccæ.[486] |
The mountain soon becomes a shepherd, and the shepherd not only rules the people, and feeds the sheep of God, but chains the monsters of the Reformation to a rock in Caucasus, and gives peace and plenty to Italy:—
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Æternis illum numeris ad sidera tollent, Heroemque, deumque, salutiferumque vocabunt.[487] |
Returning to Castiglione: I have already spoken of his epitaph on Raphael and his description of the newly-discovered 'Ariadne.'[488] The latter exercise in rhetoric competes with Sadoleto's laboured hexameters on the Laocoon. These verses, frigid as a prize poem in our estimation, moved Bembo to enthusiasm. When they appeared he wrote to Sadoleto, 'I have read your poem on Laocoon a hundred times. O wonder-working bard! Not only have you made for us, as it were, a second statue to match that masterpiece; but you have engraved upon my mind the very statue itself.' This panegyric stirs a smile when we compare it with Sadoleto's own prolusion, the fruit of a grave intellect and cultivated taste rather than of genius and inspiration.[489]
Time would fail to tell of all the later Latin poets—of La Casa's polished lyrics in the style of Horace, of Amalteo's waxen eclogues, of Aonio Paleario's fantastic hexameters upon the 'Immortality of the Soul,'[490] of Strozzi's elegies, of Ariosto's epigrams, and Calcagnini's learned muse. When I repeat that every educated man wrote Latin verses in that century, and that all who could committed their productions to the press, enough has been said to prove the impossibility of dealing more than superficially with so vast a mass of meritorious mediocrity.
One name remains to be rescued from the decent obscurity of the 'Delitiæ Poetarum Italorum.' Marcantonio Flaminio was born at Seravalle in 1498. He came, while yet a young man, to the Court of Leo armed with Latin poetry for his credentials. No better claim on patronage from Pope or cardinal could be preferred in that age of twanging lyres. At Rome Flaminio lived in the service of Alessandro Farnese, whose hospitality he afterwards repaid with verses honourable alike to poet and patron by their freedom from vulgar flattery. The atmosphere of a Court, however, was uncongenial to Flaminio. Fond of country life, addicted to serious studies, sober in his tastes, and cheerful in his spirits, pious, and unaffectedly unambitious, he avoided the stream of the great world and lived retired. Community of interests brought him into close connection with the Cardinals Pole and Contarini, from whom he caught so much of the Reformation spirit as a philosophical Italian could assimilate; but it was not in his modest and quiet nature to raise the cry of revolt against authority.[491] The most distinguished wits and scholars of the age were among his intimate friends. Both his poems and his correspondence reflect an agreeable light upon the literary society of the late Renaissance. The Latin verses, with which we are at present occupied, breathe genuine piety, healthful simplicity, and moral purity, in strong contrast with the neopaganism of the Roman circle. These qualities suit the robust style, clear, terse, and nervous, he knew how to use. It is pleasant to close the series of Italian Latinists with one who combined the best art of his century with the temper of a republican and the spirit of a Christian.
The most prominent quality of Flaminio as a poet is love of the country. Three little compositions describing his own farm are animated with the enthusiasm of genuine affection.[492] We feel that no mere reminiscence of Catullus makes him write—