Till Latium saw with joy th' Aonian train

By the great Medici restored again;
Th' illustrious Medici, of Tuscan race,
Were born to cherish learning in disgrace,
New life on every science to bestow,
And lull the cries of Europe in her woe.
With pity they beheld these turns of fate,
And propped the ruins of the Grecian state;
For lest her wit should perish with her fame,
Their cares supported still the Argive name.
They called th' aspiring youths from distant parts
To plant Ausonia with the Grecian arts;
To bask in ease, and science to diffuse,
And to restore the Empire of the Muse;
They sent to ravaged provinces with care,
And cities wasted by the rage of war ;

To buy the ancients' works, of deathless fame,
And snatch th' immortal labours from the flame;
To which the foes had doomed each glorious piece,
Who reign and lord it in the realms of Greece.

Hence, while Vida himself invokes the gods of ancient Greece, he seems seriously to believe that Leo X. was animated with the zeal of Peter the Hermit, and (inverting Virgil's Excudent alii) he writes thus of the contemplated Crusade :

:

Ye Gods of Rome, ye guardian deities,
Who lift our nation's glory to the skies;
And thou, Apollo, the great source of Troy,
Let Rome at least this single palm enjoy,
To shine in arts supreme, as once in power,
And teach the nations she subdued before;
Since discord all Ausonia's kings alarms,
And clouds the ancient glories of her arms.
In our own breasts we sheathe the civil sword,

Our country naked to a foreign lord;

Which, lately prostrate, started from despair,

Burned with new hopes, and armed her hands for war;
But armed in vain; th' inexorable hate

Of envious Fortune called her to her fate.

Insatiate in her rage, her frowns oppose

The Latin fame, and woes are heaped on woes.
Our dread alarms each foreign monarch took;
Through all their tribes the distant nations shook ;
To Earth's last bounds the fame of Leo runs ;
Nile heard, and Indus trembled for his sons;

Arabia heard the Medicean line,

The first of men, and sprung from race divine.
The Sovereign priest and mitred king appears
With his loved Julius joined, who kindly shares
The reins of Empire and the public cares.

To break their country's chains, the generous pair
Concert their schemes, and meditate the war;
On Leo Europe's monarchs turn their eyes;
On him alone the Western world relies;
And each bold chief attends his dread alarms,
While the proud Crescent fades before his arms.

I have already said that nothing could be further removed from the spirit of Pindar-the representative lyric poet of Greek city life in the days of its highest freedom-than the spirit of any Italian poet in the age of Humanism; and this truth is exemplified in the tame Pindaric imitations of Chiabrera, In England, on the contrary, poets of different orders and different generations have found something congenial in Pindar's thought, which they have attempted to reproduce in various manners. Cowley, attracted by his discursive method, and (as he thought) the irregular freedom of his metre, imitated him in his own metaphysical vein, and was himself copied by many English disciples. Congreve was the first to point out that Pindar's Odes were formed upon a regular system ; and when the scholarly genius of the Renaissance had pervaded the whole fabric of English education, Collins, who perhaps inherited by nature more of the fire of Pindar than any English poet, showed, in the structure of his own odes, that he was acquainted with the laws of Greek lyric verse. Three years after the appearance of Collins's little volume, Pindar was himself translated for the first time into English, on Dryden's paraphrastic principles, but with due observance of the order of his verse; and the work was hailed with an enthusiastic ode by Joseph Warton, who recognised in it an example of the lyrical spirit which he desired to see introduced into English poetry.

Gilbert West, the author of the translation, was born in 1703. He was the son of Richard West, prebendary

CHAPTER X

PHILOSOPHICAL ENGLISH POETRY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: INFLUENCE OF DEISM, NATURE-WORSHIP, LIBERTY, AND THE ARTS.

POPE'S ESSAY ON MAN; EDWARD YOUNG; JAMES THOMSON; MARK AKENSIDE; AND THEIR IMITATORS

HITHERTO English Poetry, as far as I have followed it in the different schools of the eighteenth century, has offered a lively image, in its satiric and familiar verse, of the corporate activity of the State. The civil conflict of a hundred years was closed by the Revolution of 1688. In every department of life the result of that Revolution was a compromise. There was compromise in the balance struck between Crown and Parliament. While, on the one side, Parliament destroyed the theory of the Divine Right of Kings, on the other, it left the prerogative untouched, and maintained the continuity of the ancient monarchical order, by fixing the succession to the throne in a branch of the legitimate dynasty.

There was compromise in the relations of Church and State. The Whig policy, as represented by Walpole, secured religious liberty, but guaranteed the ascendency of the National Church. When the Dissenters, who had done so much for the great Whig Minister, approached him with anxious inquiries as to when they might hope to be relieved of their political disabilities, he bluntly replied: "Never!" At the same time the High section of the Church was depressed, and the management of Church ascendency was left in the hands of the Latitudinarian, or Left Wing of the Episcopal body.

But in their joyous calm abodes
The recompense of justice they receive,
And in the fellowship of gods

Without a tear eternal ages live;

While, banished by the Fates from joy and rest,
Intolerable woes the impious soul molest.

ANTISTROPHE IV

But they who, in true virtue strong,
The third purgation can endure,1
And keep their minds from fraudful wrong
And guilt's contagion pure,

They through the starry paths of Jove
To Saturn's blissful seat remove;
Where fragrant breezes, vernal airs,
Sweet children of the main,

Purge the blest island from corroding cares,
And fan the bosom of each verdant plain;
Where fertile soil immortal fruitage bears,

Trees, from whose flaming branches flow,
Arrayed in golden bloom, refulgent beams;

And flowers, of golden hue, that blow
On the fresh borders of their parent streams :
These, by the blest in solemn triumph worn,
Their unpolluted hands and clustering locks adorn.

EPODE IV

Such is the righteous will, the high behest,

Of Rhadamanthus, ruler of the blest ;

The just assessor of the throne divine,

On which, high raised above all gods, recline,
Linked in the golden bands of wedded love,
The great progenitors of thundering Jove.
There, in the number of the blessed enrolled,
Live Cadmus, Peleus, heroes famed of old,
And young Achilles, to those isles removed,
Soon as, by Thetis won, relenting Jove approved.

1 Literally: "Those who have had the courage to remain steadfast thrice in each life."

CHAPTER X

PHILOSOPHICAL ENGLISH POETRY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: INFLUENCE OF DEISM, NATURE-WORSHIP, LIBERTY, AND THE ARTS.

POPE'S ESSAY ON MAN; EDWARD YOUNG; JAMES THOMSON; MARK AKENSIDE; AND THEIR IMITATORS

HITHERTO English Poetry, as far as I have followed it in the different schools of the eighteenth century, has offered a lively image, in its satiric and familiar verse, of the corporate activity of the State. The civil conflict of a hundred years was closed by the Revolution of 1688. In every department of life the result of that Revolution was a compromise. There was compromise in the balance struck between Crown and Parliament. While, on the one side, Parliament destroyed the theory of the Divine Right of Kings, on the other, it left the prerogative untouched, and maintained the continuity of the ancient monarchical order, by fixing the succession to the throne in a branch of the legitimate dynasty.

There was compromise in the relations of Church and State. The Whig policy, as represented by Walpole, secured religious liberty, but guaranteed the ascendency of the National Church. When the Dissenters, who had done so much for the great Whig Minister, approached him with anxious inquiries as to when they might hope to be relieved of their political disabilities, he bluntly replied: "Never!" At the same time the High section of the Church was depressed, and the management of Church ascendency was left in the hands of the Latitudinarian, or Left Wing of the Episcopal body.