1.6. How the riming Poesie came first to the Grecians and Latines, and had altered and almost spilt their maner of Poesie.
Bvt it came to passe, when fortune fled farre from the Greekes and Latines,
& that their townes florished no more in traficke, nor their
Vniversities in learning as they had done continuing those Monarchies: the
barbarous conquerers inuading them with innumerable swarmes of strange
nations, the Poesie metricall of the Grecians and Latines came to be much
corrupted and altered,
in so much as there were times that the very Greekes and Latines
themselues tooke pleasure in Riming verses, and vsed it as a rare and
gallant thing: Yea their Oratours proses nor the Doctors Sermons were
acceptable to Princes nor yet to the common people vnlesse it went in
manner of tunable rime or metricall sentences, as appeares by many of the
auncient writers, about that time and since. And the great Princes, and
Popes, and Sultans would one salute and greet an other sometime in
friendship and sport, sometime in earnest and enmitie by ryming verses,
& nothing seemed clerkly done, but must be done in ryme: Whereof we
finde diuers examples from the time of th'Emperours Gracian &
Valentinian downwardes: For then aboutes began the declination of the
Romain Empire, by the notable inundations of the
Hunnes and
Vandalles in Europe, vnder the conduict of
Totila &
Atila and other their generalles. This brought the ryming Poesie in
grace, and made it preuaile in Italie and Greece (their owne long time cast
aside, and almost neglected) till after many yeares that the peace of Italie
and of th'Empire Occidentall reuiued new clerkes, who recouering and
perusing the bookes and studies of the ciuiler ages, restored all maner of
arts, and that of the Greeke and Latine Poesie withall into their former
puritie and netnes. Which neuerthelesse did not so preuaile, but that the
ryming Poesie of the Barbarians remained still in his reputation, that one in
the schole, this other in Courts of Princes more ordinary and allowable.