On
the whole, however, his hi fruit of contrast, nor the 'burla,' for
their subject; their aim is merely to give simple and elegant
expression to wise sayings and pretty stories or fables. But if
anything proves the great antiquity of the collection, it is precisely
this absence of satire. For with the fourteenth century comes Dante,
who, in the utterance of scorn, leaves all other poets in the world far
behind, and who, if only on account of his great picture of the
deceivers, must be called the chief master of colossal comedy. With
Petrarch begin the collections of witty sayings after the pattern of
Plutarch (Apophthegmata, etc.).
is no verbal imitation, in precisely the tone and style of the verses
on Lesbia's sparrow. There are short poems of this sort, the date of
which even a critic would be unable to fix, in the absence of positive
evidence that they are works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
On the other hand, we can find scarcely an ode in the Sapphic or Alcaic
meter, which does not clearly betray its modern origin. This is shown
mostly by a rhetorical verbosity, rare in antiquity before the time of
Statius, and by a singular want of the lyrical concentration which is
indispensable to this style of poetry. Single passages in an ode,
sometimes two or three strophes together, may look like an ancient
fragment; but a longer extract will seldom keep this character
throughout.
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