Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/207

Rh Roscoe that "any person of good taste and extensive reading might, by a due portion of labour, produce works of equal merit," we must nevertheless allow that it will probably be long ere such a capacity for labour reappears. He entirely fulfilled the requirements of his own age, by which he was simply idolised. The quintessence of his contemporaries' admiration is concentrated in Vittoria Colonna's humble yet dignified remonstrance with him for having failed to celebrate the death of her husband:

Bembo's Latin poetry, of which charming specimens may be seen in Symonds's Renaissance, is better than his Italian, for it does not disappoint. The fame of (1489–1544) was in his day hardly second to Bembo's, and was based on much the same grounds. Like Bembo, he was an elegant Latin poet, who carried the maxims appropriate for composition in a dead language into a living one. Like Bembo's, his vernacular poems, with one remarkable exception, are models of diction as inexpressive as harmonious—a perpetual silvery