he * opinion of Baillet he has not succeeded so well in Latin as in French. The poems of Muretus are perhaps superior. Joseph Scaliger seemed to me to write Latin verse tolerably well, but he is not rated highly by Baillet and the authors whom quotes. The epigrams of Henry Stephens are remarkably prosaic and heavy. Passerat is very elegant; his lines breathe a classical spirit, and are full of those fragments of antiquity with which Latin poetry ought always to be inlaid, but in sense they are rather feeble. The epistles, on the contrary, of the Chancellor de l'Hospital, in an easy Horatian versification, are more interesting than such insipid effusions, whether of flattery or feigned passion, as the majority of modern Latinists present. They are unequal, and fall too often into a creeping style: but sometimes we find a spirit and nervousness of strength and sentiment worthy of his name; and though keeping in general to the level of Horatian satire, he rises at intervals to a higher pitch, and wants not the skill of descriptive poetry. Sammar. thanus. 95. The best of Latin poets whom France could boast was Sammarthanus (Sainte Marthe), known also, but less favourably, in his own language. They are more classically elegant than any others which met my eye in Gruter's collection; and this, I believe, is the general suffrage of critics. Few didactic poems, probably, are superior to his Pædotrophia, on the nurture of children; it is not a little * Jugemens des Savans, n. 1295. One of Scaliger's poems celebrates that immortal flea, which, on a great festival at Poitiers, having appeared on the bosom of a learned, and doubtless beautiful, young lady, Mademoiselle des Roches, was the theme of all the wits and scholars of the age. Some of their lines, and those of Joe Scaliger among the number, seem designed, by the freedom they take with the fair pucelle, to beat the intruder himself in impudence. See Œuvres de Pasquier, ii. 950. Among the epigrams of Passerat I have found one which Amaltheus seems to have shortened and improved, retaining the idea, in his famous lines on Acon and Leonilla. I do not know whether this has been observed. Cætera formosi, dextro est orbatus ocello Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro, [I now believe, on the authority of a friend, that this epigram, published in 1576, preceded that of Passerat.-1842.] Baillet, n. 1401. Some did not scruple to set him above the best Italians, and one went so far as to say that Virgil would have been envious of the Pædo, trophia. better, which indeed is no high praise, than the Balia of Tansillo on the same subject.* We may place Sammarthanus, therefore, at the head of the list; and not far from the bottom of it I should class Bonnefons, or Bonifonius, a French writer of Latin verse in the very worst taste, whom it would not be worth while to mention, but for a certain degree of reputation he has acquired. He might almost be suspected of designing to turn into ridicule the effeminacy which some Italians had introduced into amorous poetry. Bonifonius has closely imitated Secundus, but is much inferior to him in every thing but his faults. The Latinity is full of gross and obvious errors.t Belgic poets. 96. The Delicia Poetarum Belgarum appeared to me, on rather a cursory inspection, inferior to the French. Secundus outshines his successors. Those of the younger Dousa, whose premature death was lamented by all the learned, struck me as next in merit. Dominic Baudius is harmonious and elegant, but with little originality or vigour. These poets are loose and negligent in versification, ending too often a pentameter with a polysyllable, and with feeble effect; they have also little idea of several other common rules of Latin composition. Scots poets; 97. The Scots, in consequence of receiving, very frequently, a continental education, cultivated Latin poetry with Buchanan. ardour. It was the favourite amusement of Andrew Melville, who is sometimes a mere scribbler, at others tolerably classical and spirited. His poem on the Creation, in Delicia Poetarum Scotorum, is very respectable. One by Hercules Rollock, on the marriage of Anne of Denmark, is better, and equal, a few names withdrawn, to any of the contemporaneous poetry of France. The Epistolæ Heroidum of Alexander Bodius are also good. But the most distinguished among the Latin poets of Europe in this age was George Buchanan, of whom Joseph Scaliger and several other critics have spoken in such unqualified terms, that they seem to place him even above the Italians at the beginning of the sixteenth century. If such were their meaning, I should crave the liberty of hesitating. The best poem of Buchanan, in my judgment, is that on the Sphere, than which few philosophical subjects could afford better opportunities for ornamental digression. He is not, perhaps, in hexameters inferior to Vida, and certainly far superior to Palearius. In this poem Buchanan descants on the absurdity of the Pythagorean system, which supposes the motion of the earth. Many good passages occur in his elegies, though we may not reckon him equal in this metre to several of the Italians. His celebrated translation of the Psalms I must also presume to think over-praised +; it is difficult, perhaps, to find one, except the 137th, with which he has taken particular pains, that can be called truly elegant or classical Latin poetry. Buchanan is now and then incorrect in the quantity of syllables, as indeed is common with his contemporaries. 98. England was far from strong, since she is not to claim Buchanan, in the Latin poetry of this age. A poem in ten Buchananus unus est in tota Europa omnes post se relinquens in Latina poesi. Scaligerana Prima. Henry Stephens, says Maittaire, was the first who placed Buchanan at the head of all the poets of his age, and all France, Italy, and Germany, have since subscribed to the same opinion, and conferred that title upon him. Vitæ Stephanorum, ii. 258. I must confess that Sainte Marthe appears to me not inferior to Buchanan. The latter is very unequal: if we frequently meet with a few lines of great elegance, they are compensated by others of a different description. + Baillet thinks it impossible that those who wish for what is solid as well as what is agreeable in poetry, can prefer any other Latin verse of Buchanan to his Psalms. Jugemens des Savans, n. 1328. But Baillet and several others exclude much poetry of Buchanan on account of its reflecting on popery. Baillet and Blount produce abundant testimonies to the excellence of Buchanan's verses. Le Clerc calls his translation of the Psalms incomparable, Bibl. Choisie, viii. 127., and prefers it much to that by Beza, which I am not prepared to question. He extols also all his other poetry, except his tragedies and the poem of the Sphere, which I have praised above the rest. different are the humours of critics! But as I have fairly quoted those who do not quite agree with myself, and by both number and reputation ought to weigh more with the reader, he has no right to complain that I mislead his taste. So books, De Republica Instauranda, by Sir Thomas Chaloner, published in 1579, has not, perhaps, received so much attention as it deserves, though the author is more judicious than imaginative, and does not preserve a very good rhythm. It may be compared with the Zodiacus Vitæ of Palingenius, rather than any other Latin poem I recollect, to which, however, it is certainly inferior. Some lines relating to the English constitution, which, though the title leads us to expect more, forms only the subject of the last book, the rest relating chiefly to private life, will serve as a specimen of Chaloner's powers*, and also display the principles of our government as an experienced statesman understood them. The Anglorum Prælia, by Ockland, which was directed by an order of the Privy Council to be read exclusively in schools, is an hexameter poem, versified from the chronicles, in a tame strain, not exceedingly bad, but still farther from good. I recollect no other Latin verse of the queen's reign worthy of notice. CHAPTER VI. HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE from 1550 To 1600. - Italian Tragedy and Comedy - Pastoral Drama - Spanish Drama Lope de Vega French Dramatists - Early English Drama Second Era; of Marlowe and his Contemporaries Shakspeare Character of several of his Plays written within this Period. 1. MANY Italian tragedies are extant, belonging to these fifty years, though not very generally known, nor can I Italian speak of them except through Ginguéné and tragedy. Walker, the latter of whom has given a few extracts. The Marianna and Didone of Lodovico Dolce, the Edipus of Anguillara, the Merope of Torelli, the Semiramis of Manfredi, are necessarily bounded, in the conduct of their fable, by what was received as truth. But others, as Cinthio had done, preferred to invent their story, in deviation from the practice of antiquity. The Hadriana of Groto, the Acripanda of Decio da Orto, and the Torrismond of Tasso, are of this kind. In all these we find considerable beauties of language, a florid and poetic tone, but declamatory and not well adapted to the rapidity of action, in which we seem to perceive the germ of that change from common speech to recitative, which, fixing the attention of the hearer on the person of the actor rather than on his relation to the scene, destroyed in great measure the character of dramatic representation. Italian tragedies are deeply imbued with horror; murder and cruelty, with all attending circumstances of disgust, and every pollution of crime, besides a profuse employment of spectral agency, seem the chief weapons of the poet's armoury to subdue the spectator. Even the gentleness of Tasso could not resist the contagion iu his Torrismond. These tragedies still retain the chorus at the termination of every act. Of the Italian comedies little can be added to what has been said before; no comic writer of this period is comparable in The |