[Footnote 412: Cf. Filelfo, quoted in a note to the next chapter, who says,'Tuscan is hardly known to all Italians, while Latin is spread far and wide throughout the whole world.']
The foregoing observations were requisite in order to explain why the cultivation of Latin poetry was no mere play-work to Italian scholars. The peculiar direction given by Petrarch to classical studies at the outset must also be taken into account. We have seen that he regarded rhetoric and poetry as the two chief aims of humanism. To be either a poet or an orator was the object of all students who had slaked their thirst at the Castalian springs of ancient learning. Philology and poetry, accordingly, went hand in hand through the periods of the Revival; and to this first impulse we are perhaps justified in tracing back the prominence assigned to Latin verse in our own school studies.
Poetry being thus regarded as a necessary branch of scholarship, it followed that few men distinguished for their learning abstained from versification. Pedants who could do no more than make prosaic elegiacs scan, and scholars respectable for their acquirements, but destitute of inspiration, were reckoned among the _sacri vates_. It would be a weariful--nay, hopeless--task to pass all the Latin versifiers of the Renaissance in review. Their name is legion; even to count them would be the same as to number the stars--_ad una ad una annoverar le stelle_. It may be considered fortunate that perhaps the larger masses of their productions still remain in manuscript, partly because they preceded the age of printing, and partly, no doubt, because the good sense of the age rejected them. What has been printed, however, exceeds in bulk the 'Corpus Poetarum Latinorum,' and presents so many varieties that to deal with more than a selection is impossible.[413]
[Footnote 413: I purpose in this chapter to use the _Delitiæ Poetarum Italorum_, two parts divided into 4 vols., 1608; _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, Bergomi, 1753; _Poemata Selecta Italorum_, Oxonii, 1808; and _Selecta Poemata Italorum_, accurante A. Pope, Londini, 1740.]
The poetasters of the first two periods need not be taken into account. Struggling with a language imperfectly assimilated, and with the rules of a prosody as yet but little understood, it was as much as they could do to express themselves at all in metre. Elegance of composition was out of the question when a writer could neither set forth modern thoughts with ease nor imitate the classic style with accuracy. What he lost in force by the use of a dead language, he did not gain in polish; nor was the taste of the age schooled to appreciate the niceties of antique diction. Beccadelli alone, by a certain limpid fluency, attained to a degree of moderate excellence; and how much he owed to his choice of subject may be questioned. The obscenity of his themes, and the impudence required for their expression, may have acted as a stimulus to his not otherwise distinguished genius. There is, moreover, no stern conflict to be fought with phrases when the author's topic is mere animalism. The rest of his contemporaries, Filelfo included, did no more than smooth the way for their successors by practising the technicalities of verse and exciting emulation. To surpass their rude achievements was not difficult, while the fame they enjoyed aroused the ambition of younger rivals. Exception to this sweeping verdict may be made in favour of Alberti, whose Latin play, called 'Philodoxus,' was a brilliant piece of literary workmanship.[414] Not only did it impose on contemporaries as a genuine classic, but, even when judged by modern standards, it shows real familiarity with the language of Latin comedy and rare skill in its employment.