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It was during the short period when Great Britain had no king that Cromwell's court-poet, Andrew Marvell, urged him to complete his glorious career by demolishing our present allies: A Cæsar he, ere long, to Gaul, To Italy an Hannibal. On the other hand, none of the 'autocrats' wanted this war. The Kaiser was certainly pushed into it.
But was Ovid the court-poet so bad a courtier as to find no other plea to excuse himself than by a plain accusation of his master? Mercury himself, though employed on a quite contrary errand, yet owns it a marriage by an innuendo pulchramque uxorius urbem extruis. He calls AEneas not only a husband, but upbraids him for being a fond husband, as the word uxorius implies.
Whenever a planet approached Isabella, the bride of the young Duke, the divinity whose name it bore stepped forth from the globe, and sang some verses written by the court-poet Bellincioni . At another festival the model of the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza appeared with other objects under a triumphal arch on the square before the castle.
Sasha bowed again and departed. Simon Petrovitch was the court-poet of Kinesma. He had a mechanical knack of preparing allegorical diversions which suited the conventional taste of society at that time; but he had also a failing, he was rarely sober enough to write. Prince Alexis, therefore, was in the habit of locking him up and placing a guard over him, until the inspiration had done its work.
But in the gayeties of the court of the Stuarts arose occasion for the continuous and profitable employment of a court-poet, and there was enough thrift in the king to see the advantage of securing the service for a certain small annuity, rather than by the payment of large sums as presents for occasional labors.
That autumn, Cristoforo Romano also left the court, which Duchess Beatrice's death had shorn of its old brightness and splendour, and entered the service of her sister Isabella d'Este at Mantua, while the court-poet, Gaspare Visconti, died early in the following year.
How refreshing to find ourselves in the atmosphere of the kindly Chaucer! Let us pause for a moment, and recall what he says of women, he who was not only a knightly Court-poet, but also a popular singer, well versed in the practical wisdom of life.
The fame which Leonardo had attained, and the high esteem in which he was held by the Moro, is proved by the verses of contemporary poets, and especially by those of his fellow-countryman, Bellincioni, the court-poet who died in 1492. "To-day," he sings, "Milan is the new Athens!
From Milan he went to Rome, where he exercised his profession of arms till the year 1504, when he was called to gentler uses at the court of the elegant Dukes of Urbino. He lived there as courtier and court-poet, and he returned to Rome as the ambassador from Urbino.
By his vacillating conduct, Guenther had trifled away the good fortune of being appointed at the court of Augustus the Second, where, in addition to every other species of ostentation, they were also looking about for a court-poet, who could give elevation and grace to their festivities, and immortalize a transitory pomp.
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