Renaissance in Italy, Volume 2 (of 7)

'Manto', 'Ambra'-Minor Poems-Pontano-Sannazzaro-Elegies and Epigrams-Christian Epics-Vida's 'Christiad'-Vida's 'Poetica'-Fracastoro-The 'Syphilis'-Barocco Flatteries-Bembo-Immoral Elegies-Imitations

Life-Love of the Country-Learned Friends-Scholar-Poets of Lombar

hemselves as the heirs of Rome, separated from the brilliant period of Latin civilisation by ten centuries of ignorance, they strove with all their might to seize the thread of culture at the very point where the poets of the Silver Age had dropped it. In the opinion of Northern races it might seem unnatural or unpatriotic to woo the Muses in a dead language; but for I

no', was even less native to the race at large, less universal in its use, than Latin.[412] Fashioned from the Tuscan for literary purposes, selected from the vocabulary of cultivated persons, stripped of vernacular idioms, and studied in the works of a few standard authors, it was itself, upon the soil that gave it birth, a product of high art and conscious culture. The necessity felt soon after Dante's death for translating the 'Divine Comedy' into Latin, sufficiently proves that a Latin poem gained a larger audience than the masterpiece of Italian literature. While the singer of a dialect, however noble, appealed to his own fellow-citizens, the Latin poet gave his verses urbi et orbi. If another proof of the artificiality of Italian were needed, we should find it in the fact that the phrases of Petrarch are not less

aken into account. We have seen that he regarded rhetoric and poetry as the two chief aims of humanism. To be either a poet or an orator was the object of all students who had slaked their thirst at the Castalian springs of ancient

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

he 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 successor

. 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 e

ccomplished scholar of his century judged and distinguished the whole body of fine literature possessed by his contemporaries. On the emergence of humanity from barbarism, wri

um, divomque ?te

t-prophets of the Jewish race, with brief but telling touches, Poliziano addresse

stellas fugere

ios Hyperioni

enuem velut ev

stres flagranti

des: unum que

s?vas ?quantem

usque parem conf

utem, vel ni ve

tasse prior, ca

rure sacro, cui

que simul cesser

ists. After them the lyrists and elegiac poets, among whom P

in tractus,

rc?us olor, cu

astis apes, du

puer mollem sp

suo mox jure

o sereret figm

uso palmam in

a modis atque

lea subnisus

as, et qua vic

lphique tegant,

tita feram; t

rosque undanti

sitque pios ad

libisque virum

bitu mens? dign

res solis vid

tas mulcentem

eri gremio ce

ulci laxantem

nes, et odoro

a rapuit Pros

iles longo post

nas populabant

m tanti tamen

as medios quoqu

a cinerem juvene

ribed in the f

jam no

Sappho, qu?

ngue rosas, und

ibi, niveam qu

que simul, cumque

ien, et crinig

uum recidivo

tque, Phaon, s

s, seu sic facit

ias temeraria sal

y of quotation, if only because it proves what we should suspect from other indications, that the best scholars of the earlier Re

i? casu test

merit? rapueru

dis lacerum pia Pe

Roman poets having been passed in the same rapid review, Poliziano sa

rum fraudarim h

tellas, mediique

cis sub virgin

um repetit Petr

inis centum a

uri qui semina

ns? veniunt pr

que potens Flor

poet, whose studies formed the recreation of severer labours, ends the composition. This is written in Poliziano's

diumque vocant d

erit; fessus

as acuens ad

, felix cui p

es, cui fas ta

et varias ita n

and panegyric. Taken at the lowest valuation by students to whom his copious stores of knowledge are familiar, the vivid and continuous melody of his leaping hexameters places the 'Nutricia' above the lucubrations of more fastidious Latinists. We must also remember that, when it was recited from the professorial Chair of Rhetoric at Florence, the magnetism of Poliziano's voice and manner supplied just that touch of charm the poem lacks for modern readers; nor was the matter so hackneyed at the end of the fifteenth century as it is now. Lilius Gyraldus, subjecting the 'Sylv?' to c

ndscape and sketches of country life compete not unfavourably with similar passages in the author's 'Stanze.' To dwell upon these beauties in detail, and to compare Poliziano, the Latin poet, with Poliziano, the Italian, would be a pleasant ta

lentus medit

Medicum, qua

ique volumina

tium felix plac

ns, Laurens ha

is Laurens fid

magis permise

re Deo, nec j

es, montanaque

fides, tu nostr

ltrix, non asp

um genitrix Fl

lici recinet fac

is future course of life and all the glories he should gain by song. The poem concludes with a rhetorical eulogy of Rome's chief bard, so characteristic of Renais

um, et seros e

que in tacito v

sol nigris or

ris aderit du

hiems, autumnu

rans refluetque

rnas capient e

gni decus immo

stis ibunt h?c

octi ducentur f

s fundent h?c

is apes, unde

lici juvenalis G

Pelion, and supped with him, Orpheus sang a divine melody, and then the young Achilles took the lyre, and with rude fingers praised

us; citharam piu

doctas verba

ri, tenuere s

cursum mox te

ssis pendere su

s videas ora

lis aurit? ad c

acus culmina

o permulserat

uerulam depos

ax, digitosque a

rudi perso

is? laudabat

tant? murmu

sed enim tibi

etas grata f

magni nomen cel

o est, gaudet et

chilles appeared to him, blinding him with the vision of his heroic beauty, and giving him the wand of Teiresias. Then follow descriptio

illi grata p

o contextam f

nas inter pulc

tri? lectam de

ntis amor, quem

nuit domino gr

m non erepturus

hexameter may be desired. The language, in spite of repetitions and ill-chosen archaisms, is rich and varied; it has at least the charm of being the poet's own, not culled with scrupulous anxiety from one or two illustrious sources. Some of the pictures are delicately sketched, while the whole style produces the effect of eloquent and fervid improvisation

comiastic elegies addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici and other patrons are wholly without value. Poliziano was a genuine poet. He needed the inspiration of true feeling or of lively fancy; on a tame occasion he degenerated into frigid baldness. Yet the satires on Mabilius, where spite and jealousy have stirred his genius, are striking for their volubility and pungency. A Roman imitator of Catullus in his

ravely-tempered mind, dead to the seductions of this siren. What we admire in Sannazzaro's 'Arcadia' assumes the form of pure Latinity in his love poems.[434] Their style is penetrated with the feeling for physical beauty, Pagan and untempered by an afterthought of Christianity. Their vigorous and glowing sensuality finds no just analogue except in some Venetian paintings. It was not, however, by his lighter verses so much as by the five books called 'De Stellis' or 'Urania' that Pontanus won the admiration of Italian scholars. In this long series of hexameters he contrived to set forth the whole astronomical science of

erta domi; Syr

in?, gemin?, tu

d pro sertis S

sole dies, sine

s nocte

ss from his daughter's eyes. All through the wakeful night he mourned, but when dawn went forth he marked a novel lustre on the sea and in the sky. Lucia had been added to the nymphs of morning. She smiled upon her father as she fled before the wheels of day; and now the sun himself arose, and in his light her light was swallowed: Hyperion scaled the height

tens tumulo cum

voce ingens,

te ingenti mea

osque feret per

meis resonabun

o celeber Jovia

ur; and when it was finished, the learned world of Italy welcomed it as a model of correct and polished writing. At the same time the critics seem to have felt, what cannot fail to strike a modern reader, that the difficulties of treating such a theme in the Virgilian manner, and the patience of the stylist, had rendered it a masterpiece of ingenuity rather than a work of genius.[438] Sannazzaro's epigrams, composed in the spirit of bitterest hostility towards the Borgia family, were not less famous than his epic. Alfonso of Aragon took the poet with him during his campaign against th

cis Venetam Ne

et toto pon

ias quantumvis,

lla tui m?ni

pr?fers, urbem

ices, hanc posu

tions of Biblical and secular antiquity was, as I have often said, the dream of the Renaissance. What Pico and Ficino attempted in philosophical treatises, the poets sought to effect by form. Religion, attiring herself in classic drapery, threw off the cobwebs of the Catacombs, and acquired the right of petites entrées at the Vatican. It did not signify that she had sacrificed her majesty to fashion,

uch poems, whether written in Latin, or, like the 'Api' of Rucellai, in Italian, gratified the taste of the Renaissance, always appreciative of form independent of the matter it invested. For a modern student Vida's metrical tre

ncisce; sacras n

es, cui regum

firma annis ac

ferunt jam nunc

tria raptum, am

anis sors impi

atre; patris s

m fortuna luc

r, o lacrymis; f

ritque dies l?

lium patriis cu

em populorum, o

sus, et l?tas

ditu persolven

erides comite

mecum aude attol

and duties of a tutor are described; and here we may notice how far Vittorino's and Guarino's methods had created an ideal of training for Italy. The preceptor must above all things avoid violence, and aim at winning the affections of his pupil; it would be well for him to associate several youths in the same course of study, so as to arouse their emulation. He must not neglect their games, and must always be careful to suit his method to the different talents of his charges. When the special studies to be followed are discussed, Vida points out that Cicero is the best school of Latin style. He recommends the early practice of bucolic verse, and inculcates the necessity of treating youthful essays with indulgence. These topics are touched with more or less felicity of phrase and illustration; and though the subject-matter is sufficiently t

sirous of learning what the Italians of the sixteenth century admired in Virgil will do well to study its acute and sober criticism. A panegyric of Leo closes the second book. From this peroratio

tes, Troj? tuqu

trum c?li se t

erri laudem pro

t semper, stud

tes doceat pul

morum penitus f

nter crevit di

r sacros dist

t externis aperi

ct, to vary the metrical cadence with the thought and feeling, and to be assiduous in the use of the file are mentioned as indispensable to excellence. A peroration on Virgil, sonorous a

?! lux o clar

serta damus, tibi

acrum semper d

res. Salve, san

i tua gloria n

ocis eget; nos

tuos castis

tque animis te te i

ise taste, formed on Cicero and Virgil, and exercised with judgment in a narrow sphere, satisfied his critical requirements. Virgil with him was first and last,

chose the new and terrible disease of the Renaissance for his theme, and gave a name to it that still is current. To speak of Fracastoro's 'Syphilis,' dedicated to Bembo, hailed with acclamation by all Italy, preferred by Sannazzaro to his own epic, and praised by Julius C?sar Scaliger as a 'divine poem,' is not easy now. The plague it celebrates appeared at Naples in 1495, and spread like wildfire over Europe, assuming at first the form of an epidemic sparing neither Pope nor king, and stirring less disgust than dread among its victims.[450] Whether the laws of its propagation were rightly understood in the sixteenth century is a question for physicians to decide. No one appears to have suspected that it differed in specific character from other pestilent disorders; and it is clear, both from

the subject of remedies. He lays stress on choice of air, abundant exercise, avoidance of wine and heating diet, blood-letting, abstinence from sensual pleasures, fomentations, herbs, and divers minute rules of health. By attention to these matters the disease may be, if not shunned, at least mitigated. The sovereign remedy of quicksilver demanded fuller illustration; therefore the poet introduces the legendary episode of the shepherd Ilceus, conducted by the nymph Lipar? to the sulphur founts and lakes of mercury beneath Mount Etna. Ilceus bathed, and was renewed in health. The rigorously didactic intention of Fracastoro is proved by the recipe for a mercurial ointment and the description of salivation that wind up this book.[454] The third opens with an allusion to the discovery of America, and a celebration of the tree Hyacus (Guaiacum). It is noticeable that, with such an opportunity for singing the praises of Columbus, Frac

ble, and the meaning is always precise. Falling short of classic elegance, Fracastoro may still be said to have fulfilled the requirements of Vida, and to have added something male and vigorous peculiar to himself. His adulatory verses to Alessandro Farnese, Paul III., and Julius I

,' may be cited as flagrant specimens of sixteenth-century licentiousness.[457] Polished language and almost faultless versification are wasted upon themes of rank obscenity. The 'Priapus,' translated and amplified in Italian ottava rima, gained a popular celebrity beyond the learned circles for whom it was originally written. We may trace its influence in many infamous Capitoli of the burlesque poets. Bembo excelled in elegiac

eo et quos sum oli

cause more true to classic inspiration, is the elegy of 'Galatea.'[459] The idyllic incidents suggest a series of pretty pictures for bas-reliefs or decorative frescoes in the manner of Albano. Bembo's masterpiece, however, in the elegiac metre, is a poem with 'De Galeso et Maximo' for its title.[460] It was composed, as the epigraph informs us, at the c

itur; sed tantum

ollo dulce p

anti roseis tot

tibus invid

ibus florescit

ernis floribu

bitas? Si te pi

dubitem non ego

l. His hexameter poem 'Benacus,' a description of the Lago di Garda, dedicated to Gian Matteo Giberti, reads like an imitation of Catullus without the Roman poet's grace of style or wealth of fancy.[462] Among Bembo's most perfect compositions may be reckoned his epi

o cum mors Laur

latis inveh

o ferientem po

ultu concuti

uitque jugum; f

nctos flagit

s lacrymas, lacr

trabat libe

qu? non immemo

tare? cum

rnas tentat re

dixit, in me

entem percussi

medio pector

us, sic te mala

ni?, Politia

little compositions, half elegy, half idyll, have the grace and freedom of the Greek Anthology.[465] There is a simple beauty in their motives, while the workmanship reminds us of chiselling in smooth waxy marbl

? cuncta leves p

rso germine

ibus, passim sur

ifero larga

em puerum, mori

tua fac, De

vetus Zephyro r

or flore pere

whether some poet of the Gr?co-Roman period did not live again in Navagero.[468] Only here and there, as in the case of all this neo-Latin writing, an awkward word or a defective caden

De?m, mundi

is dulces sal

ntos animi men

oque libens! u

depello e pect

rles V. and in diplomatic business at the Court of France. He died at Blois of fever, contracted in one of his hurried journeys. He was only forty-six when he perished, bequeathing to immediate posterity the fame of a poet at least equal to the ancients. In that age of affectation and effort the natural flow of Navagero's verse, sensuous without coarseness and highly coloured without abuse of epithets, raised a chorus of applause that may strike the modern student as excessive. The memorial poems wr

est of his elegies celebrate the charms of Faustina Mancini, his favourite mistress. In spite of what Italians would call their morbidezza, it is impossible not to feel some contempt for the polished fluency, the sensual relaxation, of these soulless verses. A poem addressed to his friends upon his

o titulos mihi

cipiat fictil

o qu? mox plac

sint ne noc

rcum dissectus

lis tramite

?sa notis supe

servet parva

annos crudeli

jecto pulvere

trem longo pos

c flores indu

otius abrupti

urgam consp

iti pecoris co

esto pulchr

tet choreas, e

it membra mov

y tomb, has rarely found sweeter expression than in this death song. We trace in it besides a note of m

nt versifier. His Latin exercises, however, offer much that is interesting to a student of Renaissance literature; while the depth of feeling and the earnestness of thought in his

Musarum et A

is pars Alcon ma

ial form given to natural feeling. Grief clothes herself in metaphors, and, abstaining from the direct expression of poignant emotion, dwells on thoughts and images that have a beauty of their own for solace. Nor is it in this quality of art alone that 'Lycidas' reminds us of Renai

puer, fatis su

hac, pastorum a

iam volucri ce

dura socios su

hac molli resu

gos ?stivo t

os mulcebit f

os? resonabunt

ibus toties in

latea meus nos

? nostros can

ris simul usque h

musque ?stus no

ul sunt parta

tecum communi

ur curnam mihi v

De?m patriis a

rem morientia lu

from his wife, in the style of the 'Heroidum Epistol?,' praying him to beware of Rome's temptations, and to keep

is, rictus, oc

uineo cortice

ingens, alga l

gravi lurida o

o his book of the 'Courtier,' may be mentioned the lines on 'Elisabetta Gonzaga singing.'[480] Nor can I omit the most original of his elegies, written, or at least conceived, in the camp of Julius before Mirandola.[481] Walking by night in the trenches under the beleaguered walls, Castiglione meets

tor populorum,

anum qui gen

que dator plac

li est vita sa

Erebi fecit C

nt utraque re

he temptation to apply to them the language of Roman religion was too great; the double opportunity of flattering their vanity as Pon

a est mora, nam

tum est sperner

rtur clementi

anas audiat o

aven to earth), and declared that the people of Italy, in thanksgiving for his liberation

uti et Ph?bo Pa

s statuent tib

strisque diu ca

saxa, cav? te

rumque frequens

s qu?cumque in

qu?que suos dan

ariis ramos i

geret felici n

tum expellet, p

pecudes; toties

m esse tuo, Pate

i non libet tib

non teneros ti

ces nisi dedign

Deos in vota

tibi solenni

ra e quercu la

anceli in lito

to Olympus, they were not in want of a tree sacred to the new deity. To trace this Pagan flattery of the Popes thr

ret dominus

ummi geris

agnum reser

re c?l

rse, can hardly be imagined; and yet even this, I think, is beaten by the ponderous conceits of Fracastoro, who, throu

ei pecudes pas

i pingues et v

qu? viv?, quib

nt, distendant u

he people, and feeds the sheep of God, but chains the monsters of the R

numeris ad s

ue, salutiferumq

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 tha

mmortality 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 tha

ongenial 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 amon

ttle compositions describing his own farm are animated with the enthusiasm of gen

sam, jam juv

terna c

m libebit

ire somnu

er he addresses to the

Heliconi

s et am?na

mihi luc

miserescite

is strepit

lacido locate

the pleasures of the country with

ser tum

near; tib

ter in rem

placida f

ticos libro

Satyros, ni

puli leves

e among the fields, diversified by sport and simple pleasures of the rustic folk, gives freshness to his hendecasyllable

oce

opor incuba

e amice, te

croceis te

der?, immine

oliis susu

metuas gra

cus innocen

requieveri

gilii, et

ihil est mag

ius, ut mi

erit ?stus,

patiabimur

redibis inde

, while Sauli at his side devotes himself to Cicero. The fall of evening lures them from their study to the sea-beach: perched upon a water-girded rock, they angle with long reeds for fishes, o

om? corruptas

i? montes salt

s venit quoque

es, diffugit

les irrepsit b

liens crepitant

duxere papaver

ged the cares of Church and State for Ciceronian studi

dies, add extrinsic interest to his fugitive pieces. In one poem he alludes to the weak health of Cardinal Pole;[501] in anoth

lle maximus

um ambagibu

is optimus f

ipsa s?cul

it, nec vide

us optimam

elli disp

vit esse, p

?stas Adri

, litteris,

s he had sustained, and on the extinction of so great a light for I

ndida, cand

da, comitas

ngenium,

tare dulc

litas, dec

opulenta s

s usque aperta

delineation of character gives value to

enitor, be

neque dive

atis eloque

ore, mente

pietate

s bene sexd

proficisc

enitor, tu

siste tecum

, I must quote from a copy of verses sent to Alessandro Farnese, together w

lepidissi

ra quos tul

nimis, n

ora, qu? su

et Horatio

nuere. Qui

?cula tam

soni? gra

na tempore

regione

uisse? qu

arie quea

ere litte

eteremque dig

ment 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

d Lilius Gyraldus, teach at Ferrara. Bembo, the dictator of letters for his century, Navagero, the sweetest versifier, Contarini, the most sober student, are Venetians. Stefano Sauli, the author of a Ciceronian treatise on the Christian hero, is a patrician of Genoa. Sadoleto and Molsa are Modenese. Verona claims Fracastoro and the Torriani. Imola is the mother city of Flaminio. Castiglione and Capilupo are natives of Mantua; Amalteo and Vida of Forli and Cremona; Bonfadio and Archio of Lake Garda.

mped out by the Counter-Reformation, and to describe the aftergrowth of art and liter

volume on 'Italy and the Council of Trent.' To this chapter of Italian history will also belong the philosophy of