Though the wars in Lombardy proved scarcely less fatal to men of letters than the siege of Rome, those disasters fell singly and at intervals. The ever-memorable stage of the Eternal City was reserved for the crowning tragedy of arts and letters. Whatever vicious seeds had been sown in Italy by the humanists had blossomed and borne fruit in Rome; and there the Nemesis of pride and insolence, and godlessness of evil living, fell upon them like a bolt from heaven. In essays, epistles, and funeral orations they amply recognised the justice of their punishment. A phrase of Hieronymus Niger's in a letter to Sadoleto--'Rome, that is the sink of all things shameful and abominable'--might serve as the epitome of their conscience-stricken Jeremiads.[411] All Italy re-echoed with these lamentations; and though Clement VII. and Paul III. did their best to repiece the ruins of Leo's golden house of fame, the note of despair and anguish uttered by the scholars in 1527 was never destined to be drowned by chorus hymeneal or triumphal chant again. What remained of humanism among the Italians assumed a different form, adapted to the new rule of the Spaniards and the new attitude of the Church. To the age of the Humanists succeeded the age of the Inquisitors and Jesuits.
[Footnote 411: 'Quod Romæ, hoc est in sentinâ omnium rerum atrocium et pudendarum deprehensi fuerimus.' Quoted by Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. p. 598, note 3.]
Special Causes for the Practice of Latin Versification in Italy -- The Want of an Italian Language -- Multitudes of Poetasters -- Beccadelli -- Alberti's 'Philodoxus' -- Poliziano -- The 'Sylvæ' -- 'Nutricia', 'Rusticus', 'Manto', 'Ambra' -- Minor Poems -- Pontano -- Sannazzaro -- Elegies and Epigrams -- Christian Epics -- Vida's 'Christiad' -- Vida's 'Poetica' -- Fracastoro -- The 'Syphilis' -- _Barocco_ Flatteries -- Bembo -- Immoral Elegies -- Imitations of Ovid and Tibullus -- The 'Benacus' -- Epitaphs -- Navagero -- Epigrams and Eclogues -- Molsa -- Poem on his own Death -- Castiglione -- 'Alcon' and 'Lycidas' -- Verses of Society -- The Apotheosis of the Popes -- Poem on the Ariadne of the Vatican -- Sadoleto's Verses on the Laocoon -- Flaminio -- His Life -- Love of the Country -- Learned Friends -- Scholar-Poets of Lombardy -- Extinction of Learning in Florence -- Decay of Italian Erudition.