It is the metre of the little jeu d’esprit addressed by the emperor Hadrian to Florus—[85]
Ego nolo Florus esse Ambulare per tabernas Latitare per popinas Culices pati rotundos;
Ego nolo Cæsar esse Ambulare per Britannos Scythicas pati pruinas.
Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favilla, &c.
and other monkish hymns, go far to rescue the old Saturnian from the charge of ruggedness and rusticity ascribed to it by Horace and others, whose taste was formed by Greek poetry, and whose fastidious ears could not brook any harmony but that which had been consecrated to the outpourings of Greek genius.
From this species of verse, which probably prevailed among the natives of Provence (the Roman Provincia) the Troubadours derived the metre of their ballad poetry, and thence introduced it into the rest of Europe. But whatever phases the external form of ancient poetry underwent, the classical writers both of Greece and Rome eschewed rhyme. Even to a modern ear the beautiful effect of the ancient metres is entirely destroyed by it. It was a false taste and a less refined ear which could accept it as a compensation for the imperfections of prosody.
Although rhyme was introduced as an embellishment of verses framed on the principle of ictus, and not of quantity, at a very early period of Christian Latin literature, it is not quite certain when it came to be added as a new difficulty to the metres of classical antiquity. It is recorded by Gray[86] that when the children educated in the monastery of St. Gall addressed a Bishop of Constance on his first visitation with expostulatory orations, the younger ones recited the following doggerel rhymes:—
Quid tibi fecimus tale ut nobis facias male Appellamus regem quia nostram fecimus legem.
The elder and more advanced students spoke in rhyming hexameters:—
Non nobis pia spes fuerat cum sis novus hospes Ut vetus in pejus transvertere tute velis jus.
CHAPTER IV. THREE PERIODS OF ROMAN CLASSICAL LITERATURE—ITS ELEMENTS RUDE—ROMAN RELIGION—ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE—EARLY HISTORICAL MONUMENTS—FESCENNINE VERSES—FABULÆ ATELLANÆ—INTRODUCTION OF STAGE PLAYERS—DERIVATION OF SATIRE.
The era during which Roman classical literature commenced, arrived at perfection, and declined, may be conveniently divided into three periods. The first of these embraces its rise and progress, such traces as are discoverable of oral and traditional compositions, the rude elements of the drama, the introduction of Greek literature, and the cultivation of the national taste in accordance with this model, the infancy of eloquence, and the construction and perfection of comedy.