Francesco Maria Molza, who rivals Statius and
Martial in his flattery of Clement VII and the Farnesi, gives us in his
elegy to his 'comrades,' written from a sick-bed, thoughts on death as
beautiful and genuinely antique as can be found in any of the poets of
antiquity, and this without borrowing anything worth speaking of from
them. The spirit and range of Roman elegy were best understood and
reproduced by Sannazaro, and no other writer of his time offers us so
varied a choice of good poems in this style as he. We shall have
occasion now and then to speak of some of these elegies in reference to
the matter they treat of.
The Latin epigram finally became in those days an affair of serious
importance, since a few clever lines, engraved on a monument or quoted
with laughter in society, could lay the foundation of a scholar's
celebrity. This tendency showed itself early in Italy. When it was
known that Guido da Polenta wished to erect a monument at Dante's
grave, epitaphs poured in from all directions, 'written by such as
wished to show themselves, or to honour the dead poet, or to win the
favour of Polenta.' On the tomb of the Archbishop Giovanni Visconti (d.
1354), in the Cathedral at Milan, we read at the foot of thirty-six
hexameters: 'Master Gabrius de Zamoreis of Parma, Doctor of Laws, wrote
these verses.
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