Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/205

Rh track of the gifted man whom we have already seen so influential in the development of Italian prose—Jacopo Sannazaro. Sannazaro's attention was, indeed, principally given to Latin poetry. But the qualifications of an eminent Latinist and of a pattern Petrarchist were much the same. Both abdicated all claim to originality by setting before themselves a model which it was taken for granted—and with justice—that they would be for ever unable to rival. Sannazaro was, notwithstanding, something more than a master of felicitous expression. His Virgilian De Partu Virginis, in which he vied with the chief contemporary writers of Latin hexameters, Vida and Fracastoro, is less attractive than his elegies, into which he has introduced more of personal feeling, or his Piscatorian Eclogues, in which he has successfully revived the form, if not the spirit, of ancient composition, and from which Milton did not disdain to borrow ornaments for Lycidas. As a follower of Petrarch, Sannazaro stands on a diiferent footing from Bembo and Molza. Their excellence in their own way is indisputable, but monotonous: they neither rise nor sink; every poem of theirs is just as good as every other poem. Sannazaro, a man of noble character and strong feeling, imports a personal note into his poetry, and succeeds in proportion to the clearness with which he can render this audible. His praise of Petrarch's Laura, for instance, is something more than conventionality, and these lines, Mors et Vita, translated by Glassford, express the sum of much serious meditation:

''Alas! when I behold this empty show'' Of life, and think how soon it shall have fled; When I consider how the honoured head Is daily struck by death's mysterious blow,