Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/136

118 Upon whose branches, 'mid leaves newly green, The quiring birds chant love songs on the air. The grateful sound of waters chimes between, By twin streams cool and lucid shed forth there, In the wave sweet and bitter of whose river Love whets the golden arrows of his quiver. Nor the perennial garden's foliage green Doth snow new-fallen blanch, or rime frost hoar. No vernal blight dare come these walls between. No gale the grass and shrubs e'er ruffles o'er. Nor is the year in fourfold season seen; But joyous Spring here reigns for evermore, Shakes to the breeze her blonde and rippling tresses, And weaves her wreath of flowers as on she presses."

In Politian's own eyes and those of his contemporaries his achievement as a poet was less important than his labour as a classical scholar. Nor, as respected the needs and interests of his contemporaries, was this judgment wholly mistaken. "Knowledge in that age," says Symonds, "was the pearl of great price; not the knowledge of righteousness, not the knowledge of Nature and her laws, but the knowledge of the wonderful life which throbbed in ancient peoples, and which might make this old world young again," Politian's chief merits as a classical scholar were to have known how to excite a living interest in antiquity, and to have been the first to attempt a scientific classification of MSS. His translations from the Greek were admirable. So long as Lorenzo presided over Florence, Politian's lot, though embittered by some violent literary controversies, had been brilliant and prosperous: his patron's death exposed him to the general unpopularity of the supporters of Lorenzo's incapable successor, the French invader stood at the doors. Savonarola's followers began