Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/25

Rh such a nature were then no light matter. Verse-making was looked upon by many as nearly allied to magic, and such unholy tampering with unseen agencies called for reprehension or summary punishment. These opinions were not counteracted by the conduct of those in authority, and the Dominican Solipodio, when Grand Inquisitor, was the scourge and the terror of poetasters. Petrarch escaped from Scylla to fall into Charybdis. Though relieved from the imputation of witchcraft, he feelingly complained that envy had stepped in to increase the number of his calumniators. Even the great Maffei could not contain his spleen. He was a scholar, and one of the first Latin poets of his time, and some epistles Petrarch had written appeared to him excessively absurd. "Having read them," says he, "I could not help laughing; and who would not laugh, to see a man, who can only be famous through the assent of those who concur to praise him, fool enough to make his reputation depend on the certificate of an ignorant notary?" Maffei had not been guilty of such folly. He had never been offered the laurel.

But the Romans, in the dearth of more manly occupation, were delighted with any idle or frivolous spectacle, and undignified burlesques would occasionally divert the listlessness of an unoccupied but lively people. About a hundred years after Petrarch's coronation, one Camillo Querno visited the city, bearing as his credentials an epic poem, with the title of "Alexias," extending to the imposing length of twenty thousand lines. These he proposed to repeat for the edification of the Latin gentry; a day was fixed for the purpose, when, to give the performance greater éclat, he retired with a select circle to a small island in the Tiber. He there proceeded with the recitation, assisting his labour by frequent and copious draughts of wine, till at the conclusion of the feat a crown of mingled laurel, vine, and cabbage leaves was placed on his