What was then tolerated and
demanded, in this shape, is best shown by the didactic poetry of the
time. Its popularity in the fifteenth century is something astounding.
The most distinguished humanists were ready to celebrate in Latin
hexameters the most commonplace, ridiculous, or disgusting themes, such
as the making of gold, the game of chess, the management of silkworms,
astrology, and venereal diseases _(morbus gallicus), _to say nothing of
many long Italian poems of the same kind. Nowadays this class of poem
is condemned unread, and how far, as a matter of fact, they are really
worth the reading, we are unable to say. One thing is certain: epochs
far above our own in the sense of beauty--the Renaissance and the
Greco-Roman world--could not dispense with this form of poetry. It may
be urged in reply, that it is not the lack of a sense of beauty, but
the greater seriousness and the altered method of scientific treatment
which renders the poetical form inappropriate, on which point it is
unnecessary to enter.
One of these didactic works has been occasionally republished--the
'Zodiac of Life,' by Marcellus Palingenius (Pier Angelo Manzolli), a
secret adherent of Protestantism at Ferrara, written about 1528. With
the loftiest .speculations on God, virtue, and immortality, the writer
connects the discussion of many questions of practical life, and is, on
this account, an authority of some weight in the history of morals.
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