'
Yet we should needlessly deprive ourselves of an enjoyment which is
sometimes very great, if we threw aside everything in which classical
mythology plays a more or less appropriate part. Here, as in painting
and sculpture, art has often ennobled what is in itself purely
conventional. The beginnings of parody are also to be found by lovers
of that class of literature, e.g. in the Macaroneid-- to which the
comic Feast of the Gods, by Giovanni Bellini, forms an early parallel.
Many, too, of the narrative poems in hexameters are merely exercises,
or adaptations of histories in prose, which latter the reader will
prefer, where he can find them. At last, everything-- every quarrel and
every ceremony--came to be put into verse, and this even by the German
humanists of the Reformation. and yet it would be unfair to attribute
this to mere want of occupation, or to an excessive facility in
stringing verses together. In Italy, at all events, it was rather due
to an abundant sense of style, as is further proved by the mass of
contemporary reports, histories, and even pamphlets, in the 'terza
rima.' Just as Niccolo da Uzzano published his scheme for a new
constitution, Machiavelli his view of the history of his own time, a
third, the life of Savonarola, and a fourth the siege of Piombino by
Alfonso the Great, in this difficult meter, in order to produce a
stronger effect, so did many others feel the need of hexameters, in
order to win their special public.
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