Castiglione cannot claim comparison with Navagero for sensuous charm and easy flow of verse. Nor has he those touches of genuine poetry which raise Molsa above the level of a fluent versifier. His Latin exercises, however, offer much that is interesting to a student of Renaissance literature; while the depth of feeling and the earnestness of thought in his clear and powerful hexameters surpass the best efforts of Bembo's artificial muse. When we read the idyll entitled 'Alcon,' a lamentation for the friend whom he had loved in youth-- Alcon deliciæ Musarum et Apollinis, Alcon Pars animæ, cordis pars Alcon maxima nostri--[476] we are impelled to question how far Milton owed the form of 'Lycidas' to these Italian imitations of the Græco-Roman style. What seemed false in tone to Johnson, what still renders that elegy the stumbling-block of taste to immature and unsympathetic students, is the highly artificial form given to natural feeling. Grief clothes herself in metaphors, and, abstaining from the direct expression of poignant emotion, dwells on thoughts and images that have a beauty of their own for solace. Nor is it in this quality of art alone that 'Lycidas' reminds us of Renaissance Latin verse. The curious blending of allusions to Church and State with pastoral images is no less characteristic of the Italian manner. As in 'Lycidas,' so also in these lines from Castiglione's 'Alcon,' the truth of sorrow transpires through a thin veil of bucolic romance:-- Heu miserande puer, fatis surrepte malignis! Non ego te posthac, pastorum adstante coronâ, Victorem aspiciam volucri certare sagittâ; Aut jaculo, aut durâ socios superare palæstrâ. Non tecum posthac molli resupinus in umbrâ Effugiam longos æstivo tempore soles: Non tua vicinos mulcebit fistula montes, Docta nec umbrosæ resonabunt carmina valles: Non tua corticibus toties inscripta Lycoris, Atque ignis Galatea meus nos jam simul ambos Audierint ambæ nostros cantare furores. Nos etenim a teneris simul usque huc viximus annis, Frigora pertulimusque æstus noctesque diesque, Communique simul sunt parta armenta labore. Rura mea hæc tecum communia; viximus una: Te moriente igitur curnam mihi vita relicta est? Heu male me ira Deûm patriis abduxit ab oris, Ne manibus premerem morientia lumina amicis.[477] [Footnote 476: 'Alcon, the darling of Phoebus and the Muses; Alcon, a part of my own soul; Alcon, the greatest part of my own heart.'--_Carmina Quinque Poetarum_, p. 89.]