Flaminio's intimate relations with the ablest men of the century, those especially who were engaged in grave and Christian studies, add extrinsic interest to his fugitive pieces. In one poem he alludes to the weak health of Cardinal Pole;[501] in another he compares Plato's description of the ideal republic with Contarini's work upon the magistrates and commonwealth of Venice:—
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Descripsit ille maximus quondam Plato Longis suorum ambagibus voluminum, Quis civitatis optimus foret status: Sed hunc ab ipsâ sæculorum origine Nec ulla vidit, nec videbit civitas. At Contarenus optimam rempublicam Parvi libelli disputationibus Illam probavit esse, plus millesima Quam cernit æstas Adriatico in mari Florere pace, litteris, pecuniâ.[502] |
When Vittoria Colonna died, Flaminio wrote a lamentation on the loss he had sustained, and on the extinction of so great a light for Italy. These verses are remarkable for their sobriety and strength:—
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Cui mens candida, candidique mores, Virtus vivida, comitasque sancta, Cœleste ingenium, eruditioque Rara, nectare dulciora verba, Summa nobilitas, decora vultûs Majestas, opulenta sed bonorum Et res et domus usque aperta ad usus.[503] |
The same firm and delicate touch in the delineation of character gives value to the lines written on his father's death:—
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Vixisti, genitor, bene ac beate, Nec pauper, neque dives, eruditus Satis, et satis eloquens, valente Semper corpore, mente sanâ, amicis Jucundus, pietate singulari. Nunc lustris bene sexdecim peractis Ad divûm proficisceris beatas Oras; i, genitor, tuumque natum Olympi cito siste tecum in arce.[504] |
At the risk of extending this notice of Flaminio's poetry beyond due limits, I must quote from a copy of verses sent to Alessandro Farnese, together with a volume containing the Latin prolusiones of the North Italian scholars:—
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Hos tibi lepidissimos poetas Dono, tempora quos tulere nostra, Fortunata nimis, nimis beata Nostra tempora, quæ suos Catullos, Tibullos, et Horatios, suosque Marones genuere. Quis putasset, Post tot sæcula tam tenebricosa, Et tot Ausoniæ graves ruinas, Tanta lumina tempore uno in una Tam brevi regione Transpadanâ Oriri potuisse? quæ vel ipsa Sola barbarie queant fugatâ Suum reddere litteris Latinis Splendorem, veteremque dignitatem.[505] |
There is the whole of humanism in this passage—the belief in the unity of Italian civilisation, the conviction that the Middle Ages were but an interruption of historic continuity, the confidence in the restoration of classic literature, and the firm hope that Latin would never cease to be the language of culture. Flaminio says nothing, unless parenthetically, about the real woes of his country. The tyranny of the Spaniard and the violence of the German are reckoned with the old wrongs of the Goth and the Vandal in one phrase—'tot graves ruinas.' He does not touch upon the dismemberment of Italy into mutually jealous and suspicious States: for him the Italian nation, even in a dream, has no existence. He is satisfied with a literary ideal. Too fortunate, too blessed, are these days of ours, in spite of Florence extinguished, Rome sacked, Milan devastated, Venice curbed, because, forsooth, Bembo and Fracastoro have made a pinchbeck age of poetry. Here lay the incurable weakness of the humanistic movement. The vanity of the scholar, determined to seek the present in the past, building the walls of Troy anew with borrowed music, and singing in falsetto while Rome was burning—this blindness to the actual situation of Italy was scarcely less pernicious, scarcely less a sign of incapacity for civil life than the selfishness of the Despots or the egotism of the Papacy. Italy was foredoomed to lose her place among the nations at the very moment when she was recovering culture for the modern world; and when that culture was recovered through her industry and genius, not she, but the races of the North, began to profit by the acquisition—not her imitations of the Latin Muse, but the new languages of Europe were destined to prevail and lead the age.