Horace and His Influence by Grant Showerman
page 86 of 134 (64%)
page 86 of 134 (64%)
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had comparatively small part. Among her translators during these
centuries must be mentioned Ludovico Dolce, whose excellent rendering of the _Satires_ and _Epistles_ was a product of the early sixteenth; Scipione Ponsa, whose faithful _Ars Poetica_ in _ottava rima_ appeared in the first half of the seventeenth; the advocate Borgianelli, whose brilliant version of Horace entire belongs to the second half; and the Venetian Abriani, whose complete _Odes_ in the original meters, the first achievement of the kind, was a not unsuccessful performance which has taken its place among Horatian curiosities. Among literary critics are the names of Gravina, whose _Della Ragione Poetica_, full of sound scholarship and refreshing good sense, appeared in 1716 at Naples; Volpi of Padua, author of a treatise on Satire, in which the merits of Lucilius, Horace, Juvenal, and Persius were effectively discussed; and their followers, Algarotti the Venetian and Vannetti of Roveredo, in whom Horatian criticism reached its greatest altitude. If we look outside the field of scholastic endeavor and academic imitation, and attempt to discern the effect of Horace in actual literary creation, we are confronted by the difficulty of determining exactly where imitation and adaptation cease to be artificial, and reach the degree of individuality and independence which entitles them to the name of originality. If we are to include here such authors as are manifestly indebted to suggestion or inspiration from Horace, and yet are quite as manifestly modern and Italian, we may note at least the names of Petrarch, already mentioned; the famous Cardinal Bembo, whose ideal, to write "thoughtfully and little," was a reflection of Horace; Ariosto, whose satires are in the Horatian spirit, and who, complaining to his brother Alessandro of the attitude of his patron, Cardinal Hippolyto d'Este, recites the story of the fox and the weasel, changing them to donkey and rat; Chiabrera of Savona, who wrote satire |
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