Non vivamus ut jumenta,
Ne post mortem ad tormenta
Veniamus, et lamenta
Intolerabilia.

Modo veniam precemur,
Mortem CHRISTI meditemur,
Ad superna præparemur
Desiderabilia.'

Live we not like brute creation,
Lest, at death, to desolation,
We should come, and lamentation,
And intolerable ire.

Pray we now for GOD's salvation,
Meditate we JESU's Passion,
Dwell, while here, in conversation,
With the joys that saints desire.'

It is now our intention to offer a few remarks on three of the poets whom we have named above, Mantuan, Casimir, Buchanan. Baptista Spagnoli, surnamed Mantuan from the place of his birth and residence, was the earliest of these. Here, in 1448, he entered the order of the Carmelites at an early age, and was seven times vicar-general of his native city, and at last advanced to be prior-general of the order. He devoted himself entirely to the composition of Latin verse, and left behind him 55,000 lines, which have been published at Antwerp in four volumes, 8vo. He was, by contemporaries, evidently considered the equal of Virgil. The popularity of his Eclogues was long unbounded; Badius honoured them with a comment; Murmutius prefixed an argument in verse to each; Laurentius drew up an index to the whole, as in the case of a classical author. They were read at all English schools till the great rebellion; they seem to have retained much of their popularity till the beginning of the eighteenth century; they have been translated into English by Tuberville; and even now, in such dictionaries as Ainsworth and Young, Mantuan stands as an authority. So that Holofernes was by no means singular in his opinion. "Ah! good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice

Venegia, Venegia,

Che non te vede, e non te pregia.' Old Mantuan! old Mantuan; who understandeth thee not, loves thee not.'

Unfortunately Mantuan must now be judged by more critical rules than the worthy pedant had ever heard of. Of his 55,000 lines, we only profess to have read the eighth part; namely, his Eclogues, three books of his Parthenice, his Christian Fasti, and his epic, to dignify it by that title, The Messiah. Probably, however, if we judge him by these we shall not be uncharitable to his fame.

His Eclogues were written about the year 1474, though not published till 1498. They are ten in number; the first eight the composition of the poet's early youth, the others a later addition. We do not wonder at their popularity. There is a freshness and reality about some of their pictures of country

life which is very charming; and, notwithstanding some instances of that carelessness and hurry which eventually has blasted Mantuan's reputation, are, generally speaking, correct in diction and harmonious in rhythm. We except the two last, which are in all respects inferior to the rest, and, of all imaginable subjects, are occupied by certain controversies of the day on Carmelite discipline. The great fault in the language is the anxious display of the writer's learning, and the strange and profane mixture of Christianity and paganism. Thus, a shepherd, in enumerating those who have returned from the infernal regions, mentions Theseus, Orpheus, Hercules, and our Lord.

Some of our readers may wish to know what sort of poetry it was which Sir John Cheke quoted, and Buchanan impressed on gentle King Jamie's whipping-boy. We will not inflict it on them in the original; but we will endeavour to furnish them with a translation of one of the Eclogues; and, in compliment to Master Holofernes, we will take the one

'Fauste, precor, gelida quando pecus omne sub ulmo,

Ruminat,'

and so forth, which will, at all events, live in Shakspere's verses with a life far beyond its own merits.

' Lubin.—Colin, the cattle seek the elm's cool shade;
Be ours the task, on yon soft hillock laid,
To tell some tale of love: lest sleep surprise
'Midst nature's silence, our unguarded eyes;
And starting from our slumber, we behold
The prowler's ravage, and the scattered fold.
Colin. Of old I knew that spot; it saw my grief
When day by day rolled on without relief;
And, since thou will'st to hear a shepherd's fate
In deeds of love, mine own will I relate.
Here, in my sullen silence, day by day,
Careless of friends, I sighed my life away.
My flute was silent, and my bow unstrung;
The filbert clusters all unplundered hung.
No monster wolf I chased from out the grove,
Nor basket now, nor pastoral wreath I wove;
Reared in no rustic game my manly shape,

Nor plucked the wild wood strawberry and the grape.-
But why with rustic themes prolong my rhyme ?
The day hastes onward, and we lose our time:
Thou ask'st me, what the cause? I deem no shame

To answer boldly with my Lucy's name.

Lubin.-No! 'tis no news to hear how love's strong art
Can chain each sense, and fascinate the heart;
Sure 'tis no god, as writ in books we find,
Who brings such magic to unhinge the mind.
Colin. The worst is yet to follow: kept apart
I scarce could see her, though all mine in heart;

Where'er she went, there too might I discern
Her wedded sister, and her step-dame stern :
As from the bacon she that guards the house,
The watchful cat, keeps off the bright-eyed mouse.
Lubin.—The full may safely praise a fast; and he
Whose thirst is quenched, unmoved the thirsty see.
Colin. But now the fields to shine in gold begin :
And 'tis the time to put the sickle in :
The step-dame, whom I spoke of, comes between
Her daughters, as our custom is, to glean;

I marked their progress, and I followed slow;
My love she knew not, or feigned not to know;
For well she knew that I had sent of late

A leveret and two doves to Lucy's gate.

Lubin. Where, but for that, so many virtues meet,

'Tis hard that poverty should teach deceit.

Colin. Her bonnet thrown aside,-for close the air,-
A flowery chaplet wreathed my Lucy's hair:
Sideways I stole across the field, and tried,
Unnoticed by the dame, to reach her side;
And as we wrought together, gathered near
To ease her labour, many a straggling ear.
When, for my pains, I gained at last one smile,
Her mother's eye was on her face the while.

Lubin. And who could blame her much, or blame at all? She only picked the ears that you let fall:

Prudence, indeed, would greater distance keep ;—

But on! thy tale serves well to banish sleep.

Colin.-"Lucy!"-she cried-(poor Lucy turned away)

"Why so far straggling from the rest to-day?

Here, by the alders, is the shade more cool,
Where the leaves dance reflected on the pool:
Come hither then!"-In vain she praised the shade;
Lucy wrought harder than before, but stayed:
No word I uttered, and I gave no sign;
But still I held my station in the line.
Now cheering by my jokes the reaping train-
Now by short snatches of some pastoral strain.
Lubin. To love entails a yoke as hard as e'er
Our horses in the plough, or oxen bear.

Colin. That saying, by experience must be had.
Lubin.-Perchance it was. Who has not once been mad?
Colin.-Time passed away, and paler still my hue,

Thinner my cheeks, my features sharper grew;

By false pretences could I not belie

That changing index of the mind, the eye.
At length my father wooed me to disclose

My grief, and tell the secret of my woes.

Lubin.-A father's love is still his child's best guide, Howe'er a frown that love may sometimes hide.

Colin. He heard, and promised, as he might, to aid;

And ere the winter fade the flowerets fade,

All was agreed, and promises were past,

And Lucy's self was to be mine at last.

How oft I sought her when the moonbeams shone,
With the bright hope of finding her alone!

Though disappointed, still I held my aim,
Framed some new pretext, and once more I came :
Now 'twas my axe, and now my grindstone; now
Sure I had left the coulter of my plough.

And when all these no more excuse could yield,
I brought some rustic present from my field.
Once, when I came at midnight, to my grief,
The dogs flew out, and took me for a thief:
I fled,—by nature framed more swift than they;
And thus at length that winter passed away.
Now spring returns, the grape shoots bud again;
The blossoms glitter in the April rain:

Nature revives once more, the blackbird sings;
The firefly glitters past on dazzling wings.
All perils o'er, all obstacles o'erthrown,
The morning dawns, and Lucy is my own.
Why should I needs each wedding game describe,
And every sport that blessed the rustic tribe?
Enough;-The eve passed calm and bright away,
And youths and maidens sang our nuptial lay.

Lubin.-Colin, your sheep are moving in the track
Towards the vineyard,—we must drive them back.'

The Parthenice, which has been most prolixly and laboriously illustrated by the indefatigable Badius, is a work of merit far inferior to that just noticed. The first part, in three books, treats of the Blessed Virgin; the second, in the same number, on the Passion of S. Catherine; the third, in two books, on those of SS. Lucy, Margaret, and Apollonia. There is also said to be one on S. Cecilia, which we have not seen.

The faults of all these poems are the same: carelessness, haste, impatience of correction, repetition of ideas, confusion of Christianity with Paganism, pedantry, and want of judgment.

The same plot is constantly employed. We first have a geographical and historical view of the scene of the poem; then a description of the state of the Roman Empire; next a council of the gods, for the purpose of crushing Christianity, which ends by their determining to destroy the poet's present heroine: all make a noble stand against violence the first day; all are healed by a celestial messenger on the succeeding night; all crowned with martyrdom on the following morning.

To prove the heterogeneous mixture of his ideas, he brings the Muses and Graces from Hellas to serve as attendants on the Blessed Virgin: he devotes some twenty lines to the catalogue of the personages famous in Pagan story with whom she was acquainted; and in the Salutation itself we have more than one mythical reference.

For his want of judgment; in the marriage-feast of S. Joseph he describes at length the massive silver and gold plate then brought forth by the servants. His pedantry, though everywhere

remarkable, is nowhere so much so as in the descriptions he gives of night. Having mentioned the hour, he gives a list of some twenty or thirty stars, and their exact position, with the minuteness of an astronomer; and this not once nor twice, but many times.

We will conclude with one or two specimens of his more serious poetry.

The infancy of a child is made the subject of a very sweet simile :

'So, when the rose bush spring's first breath hath kissed,
And yet its leaves are like a verdant mist;

A green and tiny globe must first enclose
The perfect beauty of the full-blown rose ;
Till summer suns, and breezes of the west,

Woo, with soft breath, the little stranger's breast;
Swells, with the genial sap, the vest of green:

Next, through its side, a ruby streak is seen;

The silken petals, one by one, unfold

Round the bright seeds, and anthers tipped with gold;
Till June, returning, bid its ruby lip,

The glassy dewdrops dare, unshamed, to sip.'

The pre-eminence of the Blessed Virgin over other saints is made the subject of a somewhat novel comparison:

'So, where famed Ganges from his Indian source
Through solemn forests winds his twilight course;
The fiery gems that sparkle in his bed,

Midst the dark stones a brighter lustre shed.'

Of a different style is the following:

:

And deem not virtue gained an easy task;
Her favours long and arduous labour ask.
Stern discipline the chief must undergo,
Ere he can march resistless on the foe;
Thy soul must, if it pant to win the field,

Do what it would not, what it would must yield;
Bear self-denial's yoke, or else descend
From worse to worse, with misery for its end;
Till, such is habit's power, by slow degrees
The very toils, that erst so galled it, please.'

From Mantuan we proceed to a far greater poet.

Matthew Casimir Sarbiewski, born in 1595, at Sarbiew, an insignificant village, near Plonsk, in Poland, is justly considered the prince of modern Latin poets. We are not ashamed to confess that we regard him as so very nearly equal to Horace, that it would be hard indeed to decide on their respective merits; and to own that we do not prefer the Qualem ministrum of the latter to the Terrena linquo: tollite præpetem of the former. 'After Lucretius and Statius,' says Coleridge, I know no

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