Renaissance in Italy Volume II Part 22

Et nos ergo illi grata pietate dicamus Hanc de Pierio contextam flore coronam, Quam mihi Cajanas inter pulcherrima nymphas Ambra dedit patriae lectam de gramine ripae; Ambra mei Laurentis amor, quem corniger Umbro, Umbro senex genuit domino gratissimus Arno, Umbro suo tandem non erepturus ab alveo.[428]

[Footnote 428: 'We also, therefore, with glad homage dedicate to him this garland twined of Pieria's flowers, which Ambra, loveliest of Cajano's nymphs, gave to me, culled from meadows on her father's sh.o.r.es; Ambra, the love of my Lorenzo, whom Umbrone, the horned stream, begat--Umbrone, dearest to his master Arno, Umbrone, who now henceforth will never break his banks again.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 224.]

Taking into consideration the purpose fulfilled by Poliziano's 'Sylvae'

in his professorial career, it is impossible to deny their merit. The erudition is borne with ease; it does not clog or overload the poet's impulse. The flattery of Lorenzo is neither fulsome nor unmerited. The verse flows strongly and majestically, though more variety of cadence in the hexameter may be desired. The language, in spite of repet.i.tions 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 ill.u.s.trious sources. Some of the pictures are delicately sketched, while the whole style produces the effect of eloquent and fervid improvisation. For fulness and rapidity of utterance, copious fancy, and wealth of ill.u.s.tration, these four poems will bear comparison with Roman work of the Silver Age. The Florentines who crowded Poliziano's lecture-room must have felt as in the days of the Empire, when Statius declaimed his periods to a Roman audience, and the patrician critics clapped applause.[429]

[Footnote 429: Cf. Juvenal, _Satire_, i. 9-14; vii. 81-87. Persius, _Satire_, i. 79-82. And cf. Petronius Arbiter for a detailed picture of these Roman recitations.]

Among Poliziano's minor poems it is enough to mention the elegiac couplets on some violets sent him by his mistress, the verses descriptive of a beautiful girl, and the lamentation for the wife of Sismondo della Stufa.[430] They ill.u.s.trate the delicacy of his style and the freedom of his fancy in the treatment of occasional themes, and are far superior to his epigrams and epitaphs.[431] The numerous encomiastic 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 brutal mood could not have produced abuse more flexible and nauseous. Taken altogether, Poliziano's Latin compositions display the qualities of fluency and abundance that characterise his Italian verses, though they have not the exquisite polish of the 'Giostra.' Their final merit consists in their spontaneity. No stylist of the age of Leo knew how to use the language of cla.s.sic Rome with so much ease.

[Footnote 430: _Carmina Quinque_, &c. pp. 250, 272, 276.]

[Footnote 431: The epitaphs on Giotto, Lippo Lippi, the fair Simonetta, and others, are only valuable for their historic interest, such as that is.]

Jovia.n.u.s Ponta.n.u.s deserves a high place among the writers of Latin verse, whether we regard his didactic poems on astronomy and the cultivation of the orange, his epigrams, or the amorous elegies that, for their grace, may be compared almost with Ovid.[432] Even during his lifetime Ponta.n.u.s became a cla.s.sic, and after his death he was imitated by the most ambitious versifiers of the late Renaissance.[433]

The beauty of South Italian landscape--Sorrento's orange gardens and Baiae's waters--pa.s.sed into the fancy of the Neapolitan poets, and gave colour to their language. Nor was Ponta.n.u.s, in spite of his severe studies and gravely-tempered mind, dead to the seductions of this siren. What we admire in Sannazzaro's 'Arcadia' a.s.sumes 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 a.n.a.logue 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 Ponta.n.u.s won the admiration of Italian scholars. In this long series of hexameters he contrived to set forth the whole astronomical science of his age, touching upon the mythology of the celestial signs, describing the zodiac, discussing the motion of the heavens, raising the question of planetary influences, and characterising the different regions of the globe by their relation to the sun's path across the sky. He seems to have taken the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid for his model of versification; and though we miss the variety of Ovid's treatment, great ingenuity is displayed in adorning so difficult a subject with poetical episodes.[435] Personal interest is added to the conclusion of 'Urania' by the lamentation poured forth for his daughter Lucia by the poet:--

Ornabam tibi serta domi; Syriumque liquorem Ad thalamos geminae, geminae, tua cura, sorores Fundebant. Quid pro sertis Syrioque liquore Liquisti? Sine sole dies, sine sidere noctes, Insomnes noctes.[436]

[Footnote 432: I shall quote from his _Collected Poems_, Aldus, 1513.]

[Footnote 433: See the Elegy of Sannazzaro on the writings of Ponta.n.u.s, _Poemata Selecta_, pp. 1-4, and Fracastoro's _Syphilis_, ib.

p. 72.]

[Footnote 434: _Delitiae Poetarum Italorum_, pt. ii. pp. 668-712.

Specimens may also be read in the _Poemata Selecta Italorum_, pp.

1-24.]

[Footnote 435: See, for instance, the tale of Hylas, lib. v. p. 103; the tale of Cola Pesce, lib. iv. p. 79; the council of the G.o.ds, lib.

i. p. 18; the planet Venus, lib. i. p. 5.]

[Footnote 436: Lib. v. pp. 105-108. 'For thee I hung the house with wreaths; and thy twin sisters poured forth Syrian perfumes at the marriage chamber. What for our garlands and our perfumes hast thou left? Days without light, nights without a star, long sleepless nights.']

Lucia died before her marriage-day, and her grey-headed father went mourning for her, fooled by memory, vainly seeking the joy that could not come again. Had she become, he asks, a star in heaven, and did the blessed G.o.ds and heroines enjoy her splendour? No voice replied when he called into the darkness, nor did new constellations beam on him with brightness from his daughter's eyes. All through the wakeful night he mourned, but when dawn went forth he marked a novel l.u.s.tre 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 heights of heaven with more than his own glory.

With this apotheosis of his daughter, so curiously Pagan in feeling, and yet so far from cla.s.sical in taste, the poem might have ended, had not Pontano reserved its final honours for himself. To Lucia, now made a G.o.ddess, he addresses his prayers that she should keep his name and fame alive on earth when he is dead:--

Fama ipsa a.s.sistens tumulo c.u.m vestibus aureis, Ore ingens, ac voce ingens, ingentibus alis, Per populos late ingenti mea nomina plausu Vulgabit, t.i.tulosque feret per saecula nostros; Plaudentesque meis resonabunt laudibus aurae, Vivet et extento celeber Jovia.n.u.s in aevo.[437]

[Footnote 437: 'Fame herself, seated by my tomb with golden raiment, mighty-mouthed, mighty-voiced, with mighty wings, shall spread abroad among the people my names with mighty sound of praise, and carry through the centuries my t.i.tles, and with my glory shall resound applauding airs of heaven; renowned through everlasting ages Jovian shall live.']

Sannazzaro's own elegies on the joys of love and country life, the descriptions of his boyhood at Salerno, the praises of his Villa Mergillina, and his meditations among the ruins of c.u.mae, are marked by the same characteristics. Nothing quite so full of sensual enjoyment, so soft, and so voluptuous can be found in the poems of the Florentine and Roman scholars. They deserve study, if only as ill.u.s.trating the luxurious tone of literature at Naples. It was not by these lighter effusions, however, that Sannazzaro won his fame. The epic on the birth of Christ cost him twenty years of labour; 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 the Papal force in the Abruzzi; and these satires, hastily written in the tent and by the camp-fire, formed the amus.e.m.e.nt of his officers. From the soldiers of Alfonso they speedily pa.s.sed, on the lips of courtiers and scholars, through all the cities of Italy; nor is it easy to say how much of Lucrezia Borgia's legend may not be traceable to their brief but envenomed couplets. What had been the scandal of the camp acquired consistency in lines too pungent to be forgotten and too witty to remain unquoted.[439] As a specimen of Sannazzaro's style, the epigram on Venice may here be cited:--

Viderat Hadriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis Stare urbem, et toto ponere jura mari: Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantumvis, Jupiter, arces Objice, et illa tui moenia Martis, ait: Si Pelago Tybrim praefers, urbem aspice utramque; Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos.[440]

[Footnote 438: 'Lilius Gyraldus,' loc. cit. p. 384, writes about this epic, 'in quibus, ut sic dicam, statarius poeta videri potest. Non enim verborum volubilitate fertur, sed limatius quoddam scribendi genus consectatur, et lima indies atterit, ut de illo non ineleganter dictum illud Apellis de Protogene Ponta.n.u.s usurpare solitus esset, eum manum de tabula tollere nescire.']

[Footnote 439: See _Delitiae Poetarum Italorum_, second part, pp.

713-761. The following couplet on the death of Cesare Borgia is celebrated:--

Aut nihil aut Caesar vult dici Borgia; quidni?

c.u.m simul et Caesar possit et esse nihil.]

[Footnote 440: 'When Neptune beheld Venice stationed in the Adriatic waters, and giving laws to all the ocean, "Now taunt me, Jupiter, with the Tarpeian rock and those walls of thy son Mars!" he cried. "If thou preferrest Tiber to the sea, look on both cities; thou wilt say the one was built by men, the other by G.o.ds."']

I have already touched upon the Virgilianism of Sannazzaro's 'Partus Virginis.'[441] What the cold churches of Palladio are to Christian architecture, this frigid epic is to Christian poetry. Leo X.

delighted to recognise the Gospel narrative beneath a fancy dress of mythological inventions, and to witness the triumph of cla.s.sical scholars.h.i.+p in the holy places of the mediaeval faith. To fuse the traditions 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 cla.s.sic drapery, threw off the cobwebs of the Catacombs, and acquired the right of _pet.i.tes entrees_ at the Vatican.

It did not signify that she had sacrificed her majesty to fas.h.i.+on, or that her tunic _a la mode antique_ was badly made. Her rouge and spangles enchanted the scholarly Pontiff, who forthwith ordered Vida to compose the 'Christiad,' and gave him a benefice at Frascati in order that he might enjoy a poet's ease. Vida's epic, like Sannazzaro's, was not finished during the lifetime of Leo. Both the 'Christiad' and the 'Partus Virginis' reflected l.u.s.tre on the age of Clement.

[Footnote 441: See above, p. 288.]

Vida won his first laurels in the field of didactic poetry. Virgilian exercises on the breeding of silkworms and the game of chess displayed his faculty for investing familiar subjects with the graces of a polished style.[442] Such 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 treatise in three books on the 'Art of Poetry' has greater interest; since it ill.u.s.trates the final outcome of cla.s.sic studies in the age of Leo. The 'Poetica' is addressed to Francis, Dauphin of France, in his Spanish prison:[443]--

Primus ades, Francisce; sacras ne despice Musas, Regia progenies, cui regum debita sceptra Gallorum, c.u.m firma annis accesserit aetas.

Haec tibi parva ferunt jam nunc solatia dulces; Dum procul a patria raptum, amplexuque tuorum, Ah dolor! Hispanis sors impia detinet oris, Henrico c.u.m fratre; patris sic fata tulerunt Magnanimi, dum fortuna luctatur iniqua.

Parce tamen, puer, o lacrymis; fata aspera forsan Mitescent, aderitque dies laetissima tandem Post triste exilium patriis c.u.m redditus oris Laet.i.tiam ingentem populorum, omnesque per urbes Accipies plausus, et laetas undique voces; Votaque pro reditu persolvent debita matres.

Interea te Pierides comitentur; in altos Jam te Parna.s.si mec.u.m aude attollere lucos.[444]

[Footnote 442: _Bombyc.u.m; Libri duo. Scacchia, Ludus; Liber unus._ Pope's _Poemata Italorum_, vol. i. pp. 103-130; pp. 190-210. The former poem is addressed to Isabella Gonzaga, nee d'Este.]

[Footnote 443: _Poemata Selecta_, pp. 207-266. It will be remembered that Francis I., after Pavia, gave his two sons as hostages to Charles V.]

[Footnote 444: 'Thou, Francis, art the first to answer to my call.

Scorn not the sacred Muses, scion of a royal line, to whom the sceptre of the kings of Gallia in due season of maturity will pa.s.s. Their sweetness even now shall yield thee some slight solace, exiled from home and fatherland by fate impiteous on the Spanish sh.o.r.e, thee and thy brother Henry. So the fortunes of thy mighty-hearted father willed, condemned to strive against unequal doom. Yet spare thy tears: perchance hard fate will soften, and a day of supreme joy will come at last, when, after thy sad exile, once more given to thy nation, thou shalt behold thy country's gladness, and hear the shouts of all her cities and the ringing songs of happiness, and mothers shall perform their vows for thy return. Meanwhile let the maidens of Pieria attend thee; and, with me for guide, ascend into the groves of high Parna.s.sus.']

After this dedication Vida describes the solace to be found in poetry, and adds some precepts on the preparation of the student's mind.[445]

A rapid review of the history of poetry--the decline of Greek inspiration after Homer, and of Latin after Virgil; the qualities of the Silver Age, and the Revival of letters under the Medici at Florence--serves to show how narrow the standard of Italian culture had become between the period of Poliziano, who embraced so much in his sketch of literature, and that of Vida, who confined himself to so little. The criticism is not unjust; but it proves that the refinement of taste by scholars.h.i.+p had resulted in restricting students to one or two models, whom they followed with servility.[446] Having thus established his general view of the poetic art, Vida proceeds to sketch a plan of education. The qualities 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 a.s.sociate 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 ill.u.s.tration; and though the subject-matter is sufficiently trite, the good sense and kindly feeling of the writer win respect. The first book concludes with a peroration on the dignity and sanct.i.ty of poets, a theme the humanists were never weary of embroidering.[447] The second describes the qualities of a good poem, as these were conceived by the refined but formal taste of the sixteenth century. It should begin quietly, and manage to excite without satisfying the curiosity of the reader. Vain displays of learning are to be avoided. Episodes and similes must occur at proper intervals; and a frugal seasoning of humour will be found agreeable. All repet.i.tions should be shunned, and great care should be taken to vary the narrative with picturesque descriptions. Rhetoric, again, is not unworthy of attention, when the poet seeks to place convenient and specious arguments in the mouths of his personages.

[Footnote 445:

tibi digna supellex Verborum rerumque paranda est, proque videnda Instant multa prius, quorum vatum indiget usus.

_Poemata Selecta_, p. 209.]

[Footnote 446: After mentioning the glories of Virgil, Vida adds:--

Sperare nefas sit vatibus ultra.

Nulla mora, ex illo in pejus ruere omnia visa, Degenerare animi, atque retro res lapsa referri.

Hic namque ingenio confisus posthabet artem; Ille furit strepitu, tenditque aequare tubarum Voce sonos, versusque tonat sine more per omnes; Dant alii cantus vacuos, et inania verba Inca.s.sum, sola capti dulcedine vocis.

_Poemata Selecta_, p. 213. Cf. the advice (p. 214) to follow none but Virgil:--

Ergo ipsum ante alios animo venerare Maronem, Atque unum sequere, utque potes, vestigia serva.]

[Footnote 447:

Dona dem Musae: vulgus procul este profanum.