MODERN LATIN POETRY.
The chief pride of the humanists is, however, their modern Latin poetry.
It lies within the limits of our task to treat of it, at least in so far
as it serves to characterise the humanistic movement.
How favourable public opinion was to that form of poetry, and how nearly
it supplanted all others, has been already shown (p. 252). We may be
very sure that the most gifted and highly developed nation then existing
in the world did not renounce the use of a language such as the Italian
out of mere folly and without knowing what they were doing. It must have
been a weighty reason which led them to do so.
This cause was the devotion to antiquity. Like all ardent and genuine
devotion it necessarily prompted men to imitation. At other times and
among other nations we find many isolated attempts of the same kind. But
only in Italy were the two chief conditions present which were needful
for the continuance and development of neo-Latin poetry: a general
interest in the subject among the instructed classes, and a partial
reawakening of the old Italian genius among the poets themselves--the
wondrous echo of a far-off strain. The best of what is produced under
these conditions is not imitation, but free production. If we decline to
tolerate any borrowed forms in art, if we either set no value on
antiquity at all, or attribute to it some magical and unapproachable
virtue, or if we will pardon no slips in poets who were forced, for
instance, to guess or to discover a multitude of syllabic quantities,
then we had better let this class of literature alone. Its best works
were not created in order to defy criticism, but to give pleasure to the
poet and to thousands of his contemporaries.[599]
The least success of all was attained by the epic narratives drawn from
the history or legends of antiquity. The essential conditions of a
living epic poetry were denied, not only to the Romans who now served as
models, but even to the Greeks after Homer. They could not be looked for
among the Latins of the Renaissance. And yet the ‘Africa’ of
Petrarch[600] probably found as many and as enthusiastic readers and
hearers as any epos of modern times. The purpose and origin of the poem
are not without interest. The fourteenth century recognised with sound
historical tact the time of the second Punic war as the noon-day of
Roman greatness; and Petrarch could not resist writing of this time. Had
Silius Italicus been then discovered, Petrarch would probably have
chosen another subject; but, as it was, the glorification of Scipio
Africanus the Elder was so much in accordance with the spirit of the
fourteenth century, that another poet, Zanobi di Strada, also proposed
to himself the same task, and only from respect for Petrarch withdrew
the poem with which he had already made great progress.[601] If any
justification were needed for the ‘Africa,’ it lies in the fact that in
Petrarch’s time and afterwards Scipio was as much an object of public
interest as if he were then alive, and that he was held by many to be a
greater man than Alexander, Pompey, and Cæsar.[602] How many modern
epics treat of a subject at once so popular, so historical in its basis,
and so striking to the imagination? For us, it is true, the poem is
unreadable. For other themes of the same kind the reader may be referred
to the histories of literature.
A richer and more fruitful vein was discovered in expanding and
completing the Greco-Roman mythology. In this too Italian poetry began
early to take a part, beginning with the ‘Teseide’ of Boccaccio, which
passes for his best poetical work. Under Martin V. Maffeo Vegio wrote in
Latin a thirteenth book to the Æneid; besides which we meet with many
less considerable attempts, especially in the style of Claudian--a
‘Meleagris,’ a ‘Hesperis,’ and so forth. Still more curious were the
newly-invented myths, which peopled the fairest regions of Italy with a
primæval race of gods, nymphs, genii, and even shepherds, the epic and
bucolic styles here passing into one another. In the narrative or
conversational eclogue after the time of Petrarch, pastoral life was
treated in a purely conventional manner,[603] as a vehicle of all
possible feelings and fancies; and this point will be touched on again
in the sequel. For the moment, we have only to do with the new myths. In
them, more clearly than anywhere else, we see the double significance of
the old gods to the men of the Renaissance. On the one hand, they
replace abstract terms in poetry, and render allegorical figures
superfluous; and, on the other, they serve as free and independent
elements in art, as forms of beauty which can be turned to some account
in any and every poem. The example was boldly set by Boccaccio, with his
fanciful world of gods and shepherds who people the country round
Florence in his ‘Ninfale d’Ameto’ and ‘Ninfale Fiesolano.’ Both these
poems were written in Italian. But the masterpiece in this style was the
‘Sarca’ of Pietro Bembo,[604] which tells how the rivergod of that name
wooed the nymph Garda; of the brilliant marriage feast in a cave of
Monte Baldo; of the prophecies of Manto, daughter of Tiresias; of the
birth of the child Mincius; of the founding of Mantua; and of the future
glory of Virgil, son of Mincius and of Maia, nymph of Andes. This
humanistic rococo is set forth by Bembo in verses of great beauty,
concluding with an address to Virgil, which any poet might envy him.
Such works are often slighted as mere declamation. This is a matter of
taste on which we are all free to form our own opinion.
Further, we find long epic poems in hexameters on biblical or
ecclesiastical subjects. The authors were by no means always in search
of preferment or of papal favour. With the best of them, and even with
less gifted writers, like Battista Mantovano, the author of the
‘Parthenice,’ there was probably an honest desire to serve religion by
their Latin verses--a desire with which their half-pagan conception of
Catholicism harmonised well enough. Gyraldus goes through a list of
these poets, among whom Vida, with his ‘Christiad’ and Sannazaro, with
his three books, ‘De partu Virginis,’[605] hold the first place.
Sannazaro (b. 1458, d. 1530) is impressive by the steady and powerful
flow of his verse, in which Christian and pagan elements are mingled
without scruple, by the plastic vigour of his description, and by the
perfection of his workmanship. He could venture to introduce Virgil’s
fourth eclogue into his song of the shepherds at the manger (III. 200
sqq.) without fearing a comparison. In treating of the unseen world, he
sometimes gives proofs of a boldness worthy of Dante, as when King David
in the Limbo of the Patriarchs rises up to sing and prophesy (I. 236
sqq.), or when the Eternal, sitting on the throne clad in a mantle
shining with pictures of all the elements, addresses the heavenly host
(III. 17 sqq). At other times he does not hesitate to weave the whole
classical mythology into his subject, yet without spoiling the harmony
of the whole, since the pagan deities are only accessory figures, and
play no important part in the story. To appreciate the artistic genius
of that age in all its bearings, we must not refuse to notice such works
as these. The merit of Sannazaro will appear the greater, when we
consider that the mixture of Christian and pagan elements is apt to
disturb us much more in poetry than in the plastic arts. The latter can
still satisfy the eye by beauty of form and colour, and in general are
much more independent of the significance of the subject than poetry.
With them, the imagination is interested chiefly in the form, with
poetry, in the matter. Honest Battista Mantovano in his calendar of the
festivals,[606] tried another expedient. Instead of making the gods and
demigods serve the purposes of sacred history, he put them, as the
Fathers of the Church did, in active opposition to it. When the angel
Gabriel salutes the Virgin at Nazareth, Mercury flies after him from
Carmel, and listens at the door. He then announces the result of his
eavesdropping to the assembled gods, and stimulates them thereby to
desperate resolutions. Elsewhere,[607] it is true, in his writings,
Thetis, Ceres, Æolus, and other pagan deities pay willing homage to the
glory of the Madonna.
The fame of Sannazaro, the number of his imitators, the enthusiastic
homage which was paid to him by the greatest men--by Bembo, who wrote
his epitaph, and by Titian, who painted his portrait--all show how dear
and necessary he was to his age. On the threshold of the Reformation he
solved for the Church the problem, whether it were possible for a poet
to be a Christian as well as a classic; and both Leo and Clement were
loud in their thanks for his achievements.
And, finally, contemporary history was now treated in hexameters or
distichs, sometimes in a narrative and sometimes in a panegyrical style,
but most commonly to the honour of some prince or princely family. We
thus meet with a Sforziad,[608] a Borseid, a Laurentiad, a Borgiad (see
p. 223), a Triulziad, and the like. The object sought after was
certainly not attained; for those who became famous and are now immortal
owe it to anything rather than to this sort of poems, to which the world
has always had an ineradicable dislike, even when they happen to be
written by good poets. A wholly different effect is produced by smaller,
simpler and more unpretentious scenes from the lives of distinguished
men, such as the beautiful poem on Leo X.’s ‘Hunt at Palo,’[609] or the
‘Journey of Julius II.’ by Hadrian of Corneto (p. 119). Brilliant
descriptions of hunting-parties are found in Ercole Strozza, in the
above-mentioned Hadrian, and in others; and it is a pity that the modern
reader should allow himself to be irritated or repelled by the adulation
with which they are doubtless filled. The masterly treatment and the
considerable historical value of many of these most graceful poems,
guarantee to them a longer existence than many popular works of our own
day are likely to attain.
In general, these poems are good in proportion to the sparing use of the
sentimental and the general. Some of the smaller epic poems, even of
recognised masters, unintentionally produce, by the ill-timed
introduction of mythological elements, an impression that is
indescribably ludicrous. Such, for instance, is the lament of Ercole
Strozza[610] on Cæsar Borgia. We there listen to the complaint of Rome,
who had set all her hopes on the Spanish Popes Calixtus III. and
Alexander VI., and who saw her promised deliverer in Cæsar. His history
is related down to the catastrophe of 1503. The poet then asks the Muse
what were the counsels of the gods at that moment,[611] and Crato tells
how, upon Olympus, Pallas took the part of the Spaniards, Venus of the
Italians, how both then embrace the knees of Jupiter, how thereupon he
kisses them, soothes them, and explains to them that he can do nothing
against the fate woven by the Parcæ, but that the divine promises will
be fulfilled by the child of the House of Este-Borgia.[612] After
relating the fabulous origin of both families, he declares that he can
confer immortality on Cæsar as little as he could once, in spite of all
entreaties, on Memnon or Achilles; and concludes with the consoling
assurance that Cæsar, before his own death, will destroy many people in
war. Mars then hastens to Naples to stir up war and confusion, while
Pallas goes to Nepi, and there appears to the dying Cæsar under the form
of Alexander VI. After giving him the good advice to submit to his fate
and be satisfied with the glory of his name, the papal goddess vanishes
‘like a bird.’
Yet we should needlessly deprive ourselves of an enjoyment, which is
sometimes very great, if we threw aside everything in which classical
mythology plays a more or less appropriate part. Here, as in painting
and sculpture, art has often ennobled what is in itself purely
conventional. The beginnings of parody are also to be found by lovers of
that class of literature (pp. 159 sqq.) _e.g._ in the Macaroneid--to
which the comic Feast of the Gods, by Giovanni Bellini, forms an early
parallel.
Many, too, of the narrative poems in hexameters are merely exercises, or
adaptations of histories in prose, which latter the reader will prefer,
where he can find them. At last, everything--every quarrel and every
ceremony--came to be put into verse, and this even by the German
humanists of the Reformation.[613] And yet it would be unfair to
attribute this to mere want of occupation, or to an excessive facility
in stringing verses together. In Italy, at all events, it was rather due
to an abundant sense of style, as is further proved by the mass of
contemporary reports, histories, and even pamphlets, in the ‘terza
rima.’ Just as Niccolò da Uzzano published his scheme for a new
constitution, Macchiavelli his view of the history of his own time, a
third, the life of Savonarola, and a fourth, the siege of Piombino by
Alfonso the Great,[614] in this difficult metre, in order to produce a
stronger effect, so did many others feel the need of hexameters, in
order to win their special public. What was then tolerated and demanded,
in this shape, is best shown by the didactic poetry of the time. Its
popularity in the fifteenth century is something astounding. The most
distinguished humanists were ready to celebrate in Latin hexameters the
most commonplace, ridiculous, or disgusting themes, such as the making
of gold, the game of chess, the management of silkworms, astrology, and
venereal diseases (_morbus gallicus_), to say nothing of many long
Italian poems of the same kind. Nowadays this class of poems is
condemned unread, and how far, as a matter of fact, they are really
worth the reading, we are unable to say.[615] One thing is certain, that
epochs far above our own in the sense of beauty--the Renaissance and the
Greco-Roman world--could not dispense with this form of poetry. It may
be urged in reply, that it is not the lack of a sense of beauty, but the
greater seriousness and the altered method of scientific treatment which
renders the poetical form inappropriate, on which point it is
unnecessary to enter.
One of these didactic works has of late years been occasionally
republished[616]--the ‘Zodiac of Life,’ by Marcellus Palingenius (Pier
Angello Manzolli), a secret adherent of Protestantism at Ferrara,
written about 1528. With the loftiest speculations on God, virtue, and
immortality, the writer connects the discussion of many questions of
practical life, and is, on this account, an authority of some weight in
the history of morals. On the whole, however, his work must be
considered as lying outside the boundaries of the Renaissance, as is
further indicated by the fact that, in harmony with the serious didactic
purpose of the poem, allegory tends to supplant mythology.
But it was in lyric, and more particularly in elegiac poetry, that the
poet-scholar came nearest to antiquity; and next to this, in epigram.
In the lighter style, Catullus exercised a perfect fascination over the
Italians. Not a few elegant Latin madrigals, not a few little satires
and malicious epistles, are mere adaptations from him; and the death of
parrots and lapdogs is bewailed, even where there is no verbal
imitation, in precisely the tone and style of the verses on Lesbia’s
Sparrow. There are short poems of this sort, the date of which even a
critic would be unable to fix,[617] in the absence of positive evidence
that they are works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
On the other hand, we can find scarcely an ode in the Sapphic or Alcaic
metre, which does not clearly betray its modern origin. This is shown
mostly by a rhetorical verbosity, rare in antiquity before the time of
Statius, and by a singular want of the lyrical concentration which is
indispensable to this style of poetry. Single passages in an ode,
sometimes two or three strophes together, may look like an ancient
fragment; but a longer extract will seldom keep this character
throughout. And where it does so, as, for instance, in the fine Ode to
Venus, by Andrea Navagero, it is easy to detect a simple paraphrase of
ancient masterpieces.[618] Some of the ode-writers take the saints for
their subject, and invoke them in verses tastefully modelled after the
pattern of analogous odes of Horace and Catullus. This is the manner of
Navagero, in the Ode to the Archangel Gabriel, and particularly of
Sannazaro (p. 260), who goes still further in his appropriation of pagan
sentiment. He celebrates above all his patron saint,[619] whose chapel
was attached to his lovely villa on the shores of Posilippo, ‘there
where the waves of the sea drink up the stream from the rocks, and surge
against the walls of the little sanctuary.’ His delight is in the annual
feast of S. Nazzaro, and the branches and garlands with which the chapel
is hung on this day, seem to him like sacrificial gifts. Full of sorrow,
and far off in exile, at St. Nazaire, on the banks of the Loire, with
the banished Frederick of Aragon, he brings wreaths of box and oak
leaves to his patron saint on the same anniversary, thinking of former
years, when all the youth of Posilippo used to come forth to greet him
on flower-hung boats, and praying that he may return home.[620]
Perhaps the most deceptive likeness to the classical style is borne by a
class of poems in elegiacs or hexameters, whose subject ranges from
elegy, strictly so-called, to epigram. As the humanists dealt most
freely of all with the text of the Roman elegiac poets, so they felt
themselves most at home in imitating them. The elegy of Navagero
addressed to the night, like other poems of the same age and kind, is
full of points which remind us of his models; but it has the finest
antique ring about it. Indeed Navagero[621] always begins by choosing a
truly poetical subject, which he then treats, not with servile
imitation, but with masterly freedom, in the style of the Anthology, of
Ovid, of Catullus, or of the Virgilian eclogues. He makes a sparing use
of mythology, only, for instance, to introduce a sketch of country life,
in a prayer to Ceres and other rural divinities. An address to his
country, on his return from an embassy to Spain, though left unfinished,
might have been worthy of a place beside the ‘Bella Italia, amate
sponde’ of Vincenzo Monti, if the rest had been equal to this beginning:
‘Salve, cura Deûm, mundi felicior ora,
Formosae Veneris dulces salvete recessus;
Ut vos post tantos animi mentisque labores
Aspicio lustroque libens, ut munere vestro
Sollicitas toto depello e pectore curas!’[622]
The elegiac or hexametral form was that in which all higher sentiment
found expression, both the noblest patriotic enthusiasm (see p. 119, the
elegy on Julius II.) and the most elaborate eulogies on the ruling
houses,[623] as well as the tender melancholy of a Tibullus. Francesco
Mario Molza, who rivals Statius and Martial in his flattery of Clement
VII. and the Farnesi, gives us in his elegy to his ‘comrades,’ written
from a sick-bed, thoughts on death as beautiful and genuinely antique as
can be found in any of the poets of antiquity, and this without
borrowing anything worth speaking of from them.[624] The spirit and
range of the Roman elegy were best understood and reproduced by
Sannazaro, and no other writer of his time offers us so varied a choice
of good poems in this style as he. We shall have occasion now and then
to speak of some of these elegies in reference to the matter they treat
of.
The Latin epigram finally became in those days an affair of serious
importance, since a few clever lines, engraved on a monument or quoted
with laughter in society, could lay the foundation of a scholar’s
celebrity. This tendency showed itself early in Italy. When it was known
that Guido della Polenta wished to erect a monument at Dante’s grave,
epitaphs poured in from all directions,[625] ‘written by such as wished
to _show themselves_, or to honour the dead poet, or to win the favour
of Polenta.’ On the tomb of the Archbishop Giovanni Visconti (d. 1354),
in the Cathedral at Milan, we read at the foot of 36 hexameters: ‘Master
Gabrius de Zamoreis of Parma, Doctor of Laws, wrote these verses.’ In
course of time, chiefly under the influence of Martial, and partly of
Catullus, an extensive literature of this sort was formed. It was held
the greatest of all triumphs, when an epigram was mistaken for a genuine
copy from some old marble,[626] or when it was so good that all Italy
learned it by heart, as happened in the case of some of Bembo’s. When
the Venetian government paid Sannazaro 600 ducats for a eulogy in three
distichs,[627] no one thought it an act of generous prodigality. The
epigram was prized for what it was, in truth, to all the educated
classes of that age--the concentrated essence of fame. Nor, on the other
hand, was any man then so powerful as to be above the reach of a
satirical epigram, and even the most powerful needed, for every
inscription which they set before the public eye, the aid of careful and
learned scholars, lest some blunder or other should qualify it for a
place in the collections of ludicrous epitaphs.[628] The epigraph and
the epigram were branches of the same pursuit; the reproduction of the
former was based on a diligent study of ancient monuments.
The city of epigrams and inscriptions was, above all others, Rome. In
this state without hereditary honours, each man had to look after his
own immortality, and at the same time found the epigram an effective
weapon against his competitors. Pius II. counts with satisfaction the
distichs which his chief poet Campanus wrote on any event of his
government which could be turned to poetical account. Under the
following popes satirical epigrams came into fashion, and reached, in
the opposition to Alexander VI. and his family, the highest pitch of
defiant invective. Sannazaro, it is true, wrote his verses in a place of
comparative safety, but others in the immediate neighbourhood of the
court ventured on the most reckless attacks (p. 112). On one occasion
when eight threatening distichs were found fastened to the door of the
library,[629] Alexander strengthened his guard by 800 men; we can
imagine what he would have done to the poet if he had caught him. Under
Leo X., Latin epigrams were like daily bread. For complimenting or for
reviling the pope, for punishing enemies and victims, named or unnamed,
for real or imaginary subjects of wit, malice, grief, or contemplation,
no form was held more suitable. On the famous group of the Virgin with
Saint Anna and the Child, which Andrea Sansovino carved for S. Agostino,
no less than 120 persons wrote Latin verses, not so much, it is true,
from devotion, as from regard for the patron who ordered the work.[630]
This man, Johann Goritz of Luxemburg, papal referendary of petitions,
not only held a religious service on the feast of Saint Anna, but gave a
great literary dinner in his garden on the slopes of the Capitol. It was
then worth while to pass in review, in a long poem ‘De poetis urbanis,’
the whole crowd of singers who sought their fortune at the court of Leo.
This was done by Franciscus Arsillus[631]--a man who needed the
patronage neither of pope nor prince, and who dared to speak his mind,
even against his colleagues. The epigram survived the pontificate of
Paul III. only in a few rare echoes, while the epigraph continued to
flourish till the seventeenth century, when it perished finally of
bombast.
In Venice, also, this form of poetry had a history of its own, which we
are able to trace with the help of the ‘Venezia’ of Francesco Sansovino.
A standing task for the epigram-writers was offered by the mottos
(Brievi) on the pictures of the Doges in the great hall of the ducal
palace--two or four hexameters, setting forth the most noteworthy facts
in the government of each.[632] In addition to this, the tombs of the
Doges in the fourteenth century bore short inscriptions in prose,
recording merely facts, and beside them turgid hexameters or leonine
verses. In the fifteenth century more care was taken with the style; in
the sixteenth century it is seen at its best; and then soon after came
pointless antithesis, prosopopœia, false pathos, praise of abstract
qualities--in a word, affectation and bombast. A good many traces of
satire can be detected, and veiled criticism of the living is implied in
open praise of the dead. At a much later period we find a few instances
of a deliberate recurrence to the old, simple style.
Architectural works and decorative works in general were constructed
with a view to receiving inscriptions, often in frequent repetition;
while the Northern Gothic seldom, and with difficulty, offered a
suitable place for them, and in sepulchral monuments, for example, left
free only the most exposed parts--namely the edges.
By what has been said hitherto we have, perhaps, failed to convince the
reader of the characteristic value of this Latin poetry of the Italians.
Our task was rather to indicate its position and necessity in the
history of civilisation. In its own day, a caricature of it
appeared[633]--the so-called maccaronic poetry. The masterpiece of this
style, the ‘opus maccaronicorum,’ was written by Merlinus Coccaius
(Teofilo Folengo of Mantua). We shall now and then have occasion to
refer to the matter of this poem. As to the form--hexameter and other
verses, made up of Latin words and Italian words with Latin endings--its
comic effect lies chiefly in the fact that these combinations sound
like so many slips of the tongue, or the effusions of an over-hasty
Latin ‘improvisatore.’ The German imitations do not give the smallest
notion of this effect.