The zeal by which these bishops professed to be actuated gave birth more
innocently, indeed, to an absurd species of parody, as repugnant to piety
as it is to taste, where the poet of voluptuousness was made a preacher of
the gospel, and his muse, like the Venus in armor at Lacedaemon, was
arrayed in all the severities of priestly instruction. Such was the
"Anacreon Recantatus," by Carolus de Aquino, a Jesuit, published 1701,
which consisted of a series of palinodes to the several songs of our poet.
Such, too, was the Christian Anacreon of Patrignanus, another Jesuit, who
preposterously transferred to a most sacred subject all that the Graecian
poet had dedicated to festivity and love.
His metre has frequently been adopted by the modern Latin poets; and
Scaliger, Taubman, Barthius, and others, have shown that it is by no means
uncongenial with that language. The Anacreontics of Scaliger, however,
scarcely deserve the name; as they glitter all over with conceits, and,
though often elegant, are always labored. The beautiful fictions of
Angerianus preserve more happily than any others the delicate turn of
those allegorical fables, which, passing so frequently through the mediums
of version and imitation, have generally lost their finest rays in the
transmission.
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