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THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP

LXX.

doned to a long repose, our gratitude must ap-plaud the man, who by precept and example re-vived the spirit and study of the Augustan age.From his earliest youth, Petrarch aspired to thepoetic crown. The academical honours of thethree faculties had introduced a royal degree ofmaster or doctor in the art of poetry ; 8 and thetitle of poet-laureat, which custom, rather thanvanity, perpetuates in the English court, h wasfirst invented by the Caesars of Germany . Inthe musical games of antiquity, a prize was be-stowed on the victor:* the belief that Virgil andHorace had been crowned in the capitol in-flamed the emulation of a Latin bard; k and the

new edition of Petrarch’s Latin works j'but I much doubt whether itwould redound to the profit of the bookseller, or the amusement ofthe public.

* Consult Selden’s Titles of Honour, in his works (vol. iii, p. 457-406). An hundred years before Petrarch , St. Francis received thevisit of a poet, qui ab imperatore fuerat coronatus et exinde rex ver-suum dictus.

“ From Augustus to Louis, the muse has too often been false andvenal; but I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a simi-lar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at alleveuts, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse,such as may be sung in the chapel, and, I believe, in the presence ofthe sovereign. I speak the more freely, as the best time for abolishingthis ridiculous custom, is while the prince is a man of virtue, and thepoet a man of genius.

1 Isocrates (in Panegyrico, tom. i, p. 116, 117, edit. Battie, Cantab.1729) claims for his native Athens the glory of first instituting and re-commending the aj-DVaf xm ra adx* fxn fA ovw f xai f

xaf xoj.a)v K <u The example of the Panathensea was imitated at

Delphi; but the Olympic games were ignorant of a musical crown, tillit was extorted by the vain tyranny of Nero (Sueton. in Neron e, c. 23;Philostrat. apud Casaubon ad locum; Dion Cassius, or Xiphilin , 1.lxiii, p. 1032, 1041. Potter’s Greek Antiquities, vol. i, p. 445, 450).

* The Capitoline games (certamen quinquenale, musicum, equestre,gymnieum) were instituted by Domitian (Sneton. c. 4) in the year ofChrist 86 (Censorin de Die Natali, c. 18, p. 100, edit. Havercamp),

and