Chapter XII: Pastoral and Didactic Poetry (2)

[Footnote 280: To do so would be almost impossible within lesser limits than those of a bulky volume. Any one who wishes to form a conception of the multitudes of pastoral plays written and printed in Italy, may consult the catalogues. I have before me one list, which I do not believe to be complete, in the _Teatro Italiano_, vol. x. It occupies twenty-seven closely-printed pages, and is devoted solely to rural scenes of actual life. The Arcadian masks and plays are omitted. Mutinelli, in the _Annali Urbani di Venezia_, p. 541, gives a list of the shows performed at Doges' banquets between 1574 and 1605. The large majority are pastoral; and it is noticeable that, as years go on, the pastorals drive all other forms of drama out of the field.]

[Footnote 281: See above, Part i., pp. 381, 382.]

[Footnote 282: For Berni, see Barbera's small edition, Florence, 1863. For Buonarroti, Lemonnier's edition in two volumes, 1860.]

[Footnote 283: See _Poesie Pastorali e Rusticali_ (Milano, _Classici Italiani_, 1808) for a fairly representative collection of these authors.]

We can well afford to turn in silence from the common crowd of eclogue-writers. Yet one poet emerges from the rank and file, and deserves particular attention. Francesco Maria Molza stood foremost in his own day among scholars of ripe erudition and literary artists of accomplished skill. His high birth, his genial conversation, his loves and his misfortunes rendered him alike illustrious; and his _Ninfa Tiberina_ is still the sweetest pastoral of the golden age. Molza was born in 1489 at Modena. Since his parents were among the richest and noblest people of that city, it is probable that he acquired the Greek and Latin scholarship, for which he was in after-life distinguished, under tutors at home. At the age of sixteen he went to Rome in order to learn Hebrew, and was at once recognized as a youth of more than ordinary promise by men like Marcantonio Flamminio and Lilio Giraldi. In 1512 he returned to Modena, where he married according to his rank. His wife brought him four children, and he passed a few years at this period with his family. But Molza soon wearied of domestic and provincial retirement. In 1516 he left home again and plunged into the dissipations of Roman life. From this date forward till his death in 1544 he must be reckoned among those Italians for whom Rome was dearer than their native cities. The brilliance of his literary fame and the affection felt for him by men of note in every part of Italy will not distract attention from the ignobility of his career. Faithless to his wife, neglectful of his children, continually begging money from his father, he passed his manhood in a series of amours. Some of these were respectable, but most of them disreputable. A certain Furnia, a low-born Beatrice Paregia, and the notorious Faustina Mancina are to be mentioned among the women who from time to time enslaved him. In the course of his intrigue with Beatrice he received a stab in the back from some obscure rival, which put him in peril of his life. For Faustina he composed the _Ninfa Tiberina_. She was a Roman courtesan, so famous for her beauty and fine breeding as to attract the sympathy of even severe natures. When she died, the town went into mourning, and the streets echoed with elegiac lamentations. It is curious that among Michelangelo's sonnets should be found one--not, however, of the best--written upon this occasion. While seeking amusement with the Imperias, who took Aspasia's place in Papal Rome, Molza formed a temporary attachment for a more illustrious lady--the beautiful and witty Camilla Gonzaga. He passed two years, between 1523 and 1525, in her society at Bologna. After his return to Rome, Molza witnessed the miseries of the sack, which made so doleful an impression on his mind that, saddened for a moment, he retired like the prodigal to Modena. Rome, however, although not destined to regain the splendor she had lost, shook off the dust and blood of 1527; and there were competent observers who, like Aretino, thought her still more reckless in vice than she had been before. Molza could not long resist the attractions of the Papal city. In 1529 we find him once more in Rome, attached to the person of Ippolito de' Medici, and delighting the Academies with his wit. Two years afterwards, his father and mother died on successive days of August. Molza celebrated their death in one of the most lovely of his many sonnets. But his ill life and obstinate refusal to settle at Modena had disinherited him; and henceforth he lived upon his son Camillo's bounty. To follow his literary biography at this period would be tantamount to writing the history of the two famous Academies _delle Virtu_ and _de' Vignaiuoli_. Of both he was a most distinguished member. He amused them with his conversation, recited before them his _Capitoli_, and charmed them with the softness and the sweetness of his manners. Numbers of his sonnets commemorate the friendships he made in those urbane circles.

From the interchange, indeed, of occasional poems between such men as Molza, Soranzo, Gandolfo, Caro, Varchi, Guidiccioni, and La Casa, the materials for forming a just conception of he inner life of men of letters at that epoch must be drawn. They breathe a spirit of gentle urbanity, enlivened by jests, and saddened by a sense, rather uneasy than oppressive, of Italian disaster. The moral tone is pensive and relaxed; and in spite of frequent references to a corrupt Church and a lost nation, scarcely one spark of rage or passion flashes from the dreamy eyes that gaze at us. Leave us alone, they seem to say; it is true that Florence has been enslaved, and the shadow of disgrace rests upon our Rome; but what have we to do with it? And then they turn to indite sonnets on Faustina's hair or elegies upon her modesty[284]; and when they are tired with these recreations, meet together to invent ingenious obscenities.[285] It was in the midst of such trifling that the great misfortune of Molza's life befell him. The disease of the Renaissance, not the least of Italy's scourges in those latter days of heedlessness and dissolute living, overtook him in some haunt of pleasure. After 1539 he languished miserably under the infliction, and died of it, having first suffered a kind of slow paralysis, in February 1544. During the last months of his illness his thoughts turned to the home and children he had deserted. The exquisitely beautiful Latin elegy, in which he recorded the misery of slow decay, speaks touchingly, if such a late and valueless repentance can be touching, of his yearning for them.[286] In the autumn of 1543, accordingly, he managed to crawl back to Modena; and it was there he breathed his last, offering to the world as his biographer is careful to assure us, a rare example of Christian resignation and devotion.[287] All the men of the Renaissance died in the odor of piety; and Molza, as many of his sonnets prove, had true religious feeling. He was not a bad man, though a weak one. In the flaccidity of his moral fiber, his intellectual and aesthetical serenity, his confused and yet contented conscience, he fairly represents his age.

[Footnote 284: Of Molza's many sonnets upon this woman and her death, see especially Nos. cxi. cxii.]

[Footnote 285: In the chapter on Burlesque Poetry I shall have to justify this remark.]

[Footnote 286: See _Revival of Learning_, p. 488.]

[Footnote 287: The best Life of Molza is that written by Pierantonio Serassi, Bergamo, 1747. It is republished, with Molza's Italian poems, in the series of _Classici Italiani_, 1808.]

It would be difficult to choose between Molza's Latin and Italian poems, were it necessary to award the palm of elegance to either. Both are marked by the same _morbidezza_, the same pliancy, as of acanthus leaves that feather round the marble of some Roman ruin. Both are languid alike and somewhat tiresome, in spite of a peculiar fragrance. I have sought through upwards of 350 sonnets contained in two collections of his Italian works, for one with the ring of true virility or for one sufficiently perfect in form to bear transplantation. It is not difficult to understand their popularity during the poet's lifetime. None are deficient in touches of delicate beauty, spontaneous images, and sentiments expressed with much lucidity. And their rhythms are invariably melodious. Reading them, we might seem to be hearing flutes a short way from us played beside a rippling stream. And yet--or rather, perhaps, for this very reason--our attention is not riveted. The most distinctly interesting note in them is sounded when the poet speaks of Rome. He felt the charm of the seven hills, and his melancholy was at home among their ruins. Yet even upon this congenial topic it would be difficult to select a single poem of commanding power.

The _Ninfa Tiberina_ is a monody of eighty-one octave stanzas, addressed by the poet, feigning himself a shepherd, to Faustina, whom he feigns a nymph. It has nothing real but the sense of beauty that inspired it, the beauty, exquisite but soulless, that informs its faultless pictures and mellifluous rhythms. We are in a dream-world of fictitious feelings and conventional images, where only art remains sincere and unaffected. The proper point of view from which to judge these stanzas, is the simply aesthetic. He who would submit to their influence and comprehend the poet's aim, must come to the reading of them attuned by contemplation of contemporary art. The arabesques of the Loggie, the metal-work of Cellini, the stucchi of the Palazzo del Te, Sansovino's bass-reliefs of fruits and garlands, Albano's cupids, supply the necessary analogues. Poliziano's _Giostra_ demanded a similar initiation. But between the _Giostra_ and the _Ninfa Tiberina_ Italian art had completed her cycle from early Florence to late Rome, from Botticelli and Donatello to Giulio Romano and Cellini. The freshness of the dawn has been lost in fervor of noonday. Faustina succeeds to the fair Simonetta. Molza cannot "recapture the first fine careless rapture" of Poliziano's morning song--so exuberant and yet so delicate, so full of movement, so tender in its sentiment of art. The _volutta idillica_, which opened like a rosebud in the _Giostra_, expands full petals in the _Ninfa Tiberina_; we dare not shake them, lest they fall. And these changes are indicated even by the verse. It was the glory of Poliziano to have discovered the various harmonies, of which the octave, artistically treated, is capable, and to have made each stanza a miniature masterpiece. Under Molza's treatment the verse is heavier and languid, not by reason of relapse into the negligence of Boccaccio, but because he aims at full development of its resources. He weaves intricate periods, and sustains a single sentence, with parentheses and involutions, from the opening of the stanza to its close. Given these conditions, the _Ninfa Tiberina_ is all nectar and all gold.

After an exordium, which introduces

La bella Ninfa mia, che al Tebro infiora
Col pie le sponde,

Molza calls upon the shepherds to transfer their vows to her from Pales. She shall be made the goddess of the spring, and claim an altar by Pomona's. Here let the rustic folk play, dance, and strive in song. Hither let them bring their gifts.[288]

Io dieci pomi di fin oro eletto,
Ch'a te pendevan con soave odore,
Simil a quel, che dal tuo vago petto
Spira sovente, onde si nutre amore,
Ti sacro umil; e se n'avrai diletto,
Doman col novo giorno uscendo fuore,
Per soddisfar in parte al gran disio,
Altrettanti cogliendo a te gl'invio.

E d'ulivo una tazza, ch'ancor serba
Quel puro odor, che gia le diede il torno,
Nel mezzo a cui si vede in vista acerba
Portar smarrito un giovinetto il giorno,
E si 'l carro guidar che accende l'erba,
E sin al fondo i fiumi arde d'intorno,
Stolto che mal tener seppe il viaggio,
E il consiglio seguir fedele e saggio!

[Footnote 288:

Ten apples of fine gold, elect and rare,
Which hung for thee, and softest perfume shed,
Like unto that which from thy bosom fair
Doth often breathe, whence Love is nourished,
Humbly I offer; and if thou shalt care,
To-morrow with the dawn yon fields I'll tread,
My great desire some little to requite,
Plucking another ten for thy delight.

Also an olive cup, where still doth cling
That pure perfume it borrowed from the lathe,
Where in the midst a fair youth ruining
Conducts the day, and with such woeful scathe
Doth guide his car, that to their deepest spring
The rivers burn, and burn the grasses rathe;
Ah fool, who knew not how to hold his way,
Nor by that counsel leal and wise to stay!]

The description of the olive cup is carried over the next five stanzas, when the poet turns to complain that Faustina does not care for his piping. And yet Pan joined the rustic reeds; and Amphion breathed through them such melody as held the hills attentive; and Silenus taught how earth was made, and how the seasons come and go, with his sweet pipings. Even yet, perchance, she will incline and listen, if only he can find for her some powerful charm. Come forth, he cries, repeating the address to Galatea, leave Tiber to chafe within his banks and hurry toward the sea. Come to my fields and caves:[289]

A te di bei corimbi un antro ingombra,
E folto indora d'elicrisi nembo
L'edera bianca, e sparge si dolce ombra,
Che tosto tolta a le verd'erbe in grembo
D'ogni grave pensier te n'andrai sgombra;
E sparso in terra il bel ceruleo lembo,
Potrai con l'aura, ch'ivi alberga il colle,
Seguir securo sonno dolce e molle.

[Footnote 289:

White ivy with pale corymbs loads for thee
That cave, and with thick folds of helichryse
Gildeth the arch it shades so lovingly;
Here lapped in the green grass which round it lies,
Thou shalt dismiss grave thoughts, and fancy-free
Spread wide thy skirt of fair cerulean dyes,
And with the wholesome airs that haunt the hill,
Welcome sweet soothing sleep, secure from ill.]

It is perilous for thee to roam the shores where Mars met Ilia. O Father Tiber, deal gently with so fair a maiden. It was thou who erewhile saved the infant hope of Rome, whom the she-wolf suckled near thine overflow! But such themes soar too high for shepherd's pipings. I turn to Caro and to Varchi. Both are shepherds, who know how to stir the streams of Mincius and Arethuse. Even the gods have lived in forest wild, among the woods, and there Anchises by the side of Venus pressed the flowers. What gifts shall I find for my Faustina? Daphnis and Moeris are richer far than I. How can I contend with them in presents to the fair? And yet she heeds them not:

Tanto d'ogni altrui dono poco si cura
Questa vaga angioletta umile e pura.

My passion weighs upon me as love weighed on Aristaeus. He forgot his flocks, his herds, his gardens, even his beehives for Eurydice. His heartache made him mad, and he pursued her over field and forest. She fled before him, but he followed:[290]

La sottil gonna in preda a i venti resta,
E col crine ondeggiando addietro torna:
Ella piu ch'aura, o piu che strale, presta
Per l'odorata selva non soggiorna;
Tanto che il lito prende snella e mesta,
Fatta per paura assai piu adorna:
Fende Aristeo la vagha selva anch'egli,
E la man parle aver entro i capegli.

Tre volte innanzi la man destra spinse
Per pigliar de le chiome il largo invito;
Tre volte il vento solamente strinse,
E resto lasso senza fin schernito:
Ne stanchezza pero tardollo o vinse,
Perche tornasse il pensier suo fallito;
Anzi quanto mendico piu si sente,
Tanto s'affretta, non che il corso allente.

[Footnote 290:

Her rippling raiment, to the winds a prey,
Waves backward with her wavering tresses light;
Faster than air or arrow, without stay
She through the perfumed wood pursues her flight;
Then takes the river-bed, nor heeds delay,
Made even yet more beautiful by fright;
Threads Aristaeus, too, the forest fair,
And seems to have his hands within her hair.

Three times he thrust his right hand forth to clasp
The abundance of her curls that lured him on;
Three times the wind alone deceived his grasp,
Leaving him scorned, with all his hopes undone;
Yet not the toil that made him faint and gasp,
Could turn him from his purpose still unwon;
Nay, all the while, the more his strength is spent,
The more he hurries on the course intent.]

The story of Eurydice occupies twenty-nine stanzas, and with it the poem ends abruptly. It is full of carefully-wrought pictures, excessively smooth and sugared, recalling the superficial manner of the later Roman painters. Even in the passage that describes Eurydice's agony, just quoted, the forest is _odorata_ or _vagha_. Fear and flight make the maiden more _adorna_. The ruffian Aristaeus gets tired in the chase. He, too, must be presented in a form of elegance. Not the action, but how the action might be made a groundwork for embroidery of beauty, is the poet's care. We quit the _Ninfa Tiberina_ with senses swooning under superfluity of sweetness--as though we had inhaled the breath of hyacinths in a heated chamber.

Closely allied to bucolic stands didactic poetry. The _Works and Days_ of Hesiod and the _Georgics_ of Virgil--the latter far more effectually, however, than the former--determined this style for the Italians. We have already seen to what extent the neo-Latin poets cultivated a form of verse that, more than any other, requires the skill of a great artist and the inspiration of true poetry, if it is to shun intolerable tedium.[291] The best didactic poems written in Latin by an Italian are undoubtedly Poliziano's _Sylvae_, and of these the most refined is the _Rusticus_.[292] But Poliziano, in composing them, struck out a new line. He did not follow his Virgilian models closely. He chose the form of declamation to an audience, in preference to the time-honored usage of apostrophizing a patron. This relieves the _Sylvae_ from the absurdity of the poet's feigning to instruct a Memmius or Augustus, a Francis I. or Charles V., in matters about which those warriors and rulers can have felt but a frigid interest. Pontano's _Urania_ and _De Hortis Hesperidum_ are almost free from the same blemish. The former is addressed to his son Lucius, but in words so brief and simple that we recognize the propriety of a father giving this instruction to his child.[293] The latter is dedicated to Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who receives complimentary panegyrics in the exordium and peroration, but does not interfere with the structure of the poem. Its chief honors are reserved, as is right and due, for Virgil:[294]--

Dryades dum munera vati
Annua, dum magno texunt nova serta Maroni,
E molli viola et ferrugineis hyacinthis,
Quasque fovent teneras Sebethi flumina myrtos.

[Footnote 291: _Revival of Learning_, chap. viii.]

[Footnote 292: _Ibid._ pp. 453-463.]

[Footnote 293:

Tu vero nate ingentes accingere ad orsus
Et mecum illustres coeli spatiare per oras,
Namque aderit tibi Mercurius, cui coelifer Atlas
Est avus, et notas puerum puer instruet artes.

Ed. Aldus (1513), p. 2.]

[Footnote 294: _Ibid._ p. 138.]

Pontano's greatness, here as elsewhere, is shown in his mytho-poetic faculty. The lengthy dissertation on the heavens and the lighter discourse on orange-cultivation are adorned and enlivened with innumerable legends suggested to his fertile fancy by the beauty of Neapolitan scenery. When we reach the age of Vida and Fracastoro, we find ourselves in the full tide of Virgilian imitation[295]; and it is just at this point in our inquiry that the transition from Latin to Italian didactic poetry should be effected.

[Footnote 295: See _Revival of Learning_, pp. 471-481, for notices of the _Poetica_, _Bombyces_, _Scacchia_ and _Syphilis_.]

Giovanni Rucellai, the son of that Bernardo, who opened his famous Florentine Gardens to the Platonic Academy, was born in 1475. As the author of _Rosmunda_, he has already appeared in this book. When he died, in 1526, he bequeathed a little poem on Bees to his brother Palla and his friend Gian Giorgio Trissino. Trissino and Rucellai had been intimate at Florence and in Rome. They wrote the _Sofonisba_ and _Rosmunda_ in generous rivalry, meeting from time to time to compare notes of progress and to recite their verses. An eye-witness related to Scipione Ammirato how "these two dearest friends, when they were together in a room, would jump upon a bench and declaim pieces of their tragedies, calling upon the audience to decide between them on the merits of the plays."[296] Trissino received the MS. of his friend's posthumous poem at Padua, and undertook to see it through the press. The _Api_ was published at Venice in 1539.[297] What remained to be said or sung about bees after the Fourth Georgic? Very little indeed, it must be granted. Yet the _Api_ is no mere translation from Virgil; and though the higher qualities of variety invention and imagination were denied to Rucellai, though he can show no passages of pathos to compete with the _Corycius senex_, of humor to approach the battle of the hives, no episode, it need be hardly said, to match with _Pastor Aristaeus_, still his modest poem is a monument of pure taste and classical correctness. It is the work of a ripe scholar and melodious versifier, if not of a great singer; and its diction belongs to the best period of polite Italian.

[Footnote 296: See Morsolin's _Giangiorgio Trissino_ (Vicenza, 1878), p. 92.]

[Footnote 297: _Ibid._ p. 245.]

The same moderate praise might be awarded to the more ambitious poem of Luigi Alamanni, entitled _Coltivazione_, but for its immoderate prolixity.[298] Alamanni resolved to combine the precepts of Hesiod, Virgil and Varro, together with the pastoral passages of Lucretius, in one work, adapting them to modern usage, and producing a comprehensive treatise upon farming. With this object he divided his poem into six books, the first four devoted to the labors of the several seasons, the fifth to gardens, and the sixth to lucky and unlucky days. On a rough computation, the whole six contain some 5,500 lines. _La Coltivazione_ is dedicated to Francis I., and is marred by inordinate flatteries of the French people and their king. Students who have the heart to peruse its always chaste and limpidly flowing blank verse, will be rewarded from time to time with passages like the following, in which the sad circumstances of the poet and the pathos of his regrets for Italy raise the style to more than usual energy and dignity:[299]

Ma qual paese e quello ove oggi possa,
Glorioso Francesco, in questa guisa
Il rustico cultor goderse in pace
L'alte fatiche sue sicuro e lieto?
Non gia il bel nido ond'io mi sto lontano,
Non gia l'Italia mia; che poiche lunge
Ebbe, altissimo Re, le vostre insegne,
Altro non ebbe mai che pianto e guerra.
I colti campi suoi son fatti boschi,
Son fatti albergo di selvagge fere,
Lasciati in abbandono a gente iniqua.
Il bifulco e 'l pastor non puote appena
In mezzo alle citta viver sicuro
Nel grembo al suo signor; che di lui stesso
Che 'l devria vendicar, divien rapina ...
Fuggasi lunge omai dal seggio antico
L'italico villan; trapassi l'alpi;
Truove il gallico sen; sicuro posi
Sotto l'ali, signor, del vostro impero.
E se qui non avra, come ebbe altrove
Cosi tepido il sol, si chiaro il cielo,
Se non vedra quei verdi colli toschi,
Ove ha il nido piu bello Palla e Pomona;
Se non vedra quei cetri, lauri e mirti,
Che del Partenopeo veston le piagge;
Se del Benaco e di mill'altri insieme
Non sapra qui trovar le rive e l'onde;
Se non l'ombra, gli odor, gli scogli ameni
Che 'l bel liguro mar circonda e bagna;
Se non l'ampie pianure e i verdi prati
Che 'l Po, l'Adda e 'l Tesin rigando infiora,
Qui vedra le campagne aperte e liete,
Che senza fine aver vincon lo sguardo, etc.[300]

[Footnote 298: See _Versi e Prose di Luigi Alamanni_, 2 vols., Lemonnier, Firenze, 1859. This edition is prefaced by a Life written by Pietro Raffaelli.]

[Footnote 299: _Op. cit._ vol. ii p. 210. It is the opening of the peroration to Book i.]

[Footnote 300: "But what land is that where now, O glorious Francis, the husbandman may thus enjoy his labors with gladness and tranquillity in peace? Not the fair nest, from which I dwell so far away; nay, not my Italy! She since your ensigns, mighty king, withdrew from her, hath had naught else but tears and war. Her tilled fields have become wild woods, the haunts of beasts, abandoned to lawless men. Herdsman or shepherd can scarce dwell secure within the city beneath their master's mantle; for those who should defend them, make the country folk their prey.... Let Italy's husbandman fly far from his own home, pass the Alpine barrier, seek out the breast of Gaul, repose, great lord, beneath thy empire's pinions! And though he shall not have the sun so warm, the skies so clear, as he was wont to have; though he shall not gaze upon those green Tuscan hills, where Pallas and Pomona make their fairest dwelling; though he shall not see those groves of orange, laurel, myrtle, which clothe the slopes of Parthenope; though he shall seek in vain the banks and waves of Garda and a hundred other lakes; the shade, the perfume, and the pleasant crags, which Liguria's laughing sea surrounds and bathes; the ample plains and verdant meadows which flower beneath the waters of Po, Adda, and Ticino; yet shall he behold glad fields and open, spreading too far for eyes to follow!"]

Luigi Alamanni was the member of a noble Florentine family, who for several generations had been devoted to the Medicean cause. He was born in 1495, and early joined the band of patriots and scholars who assembled in the Rucellai gardens to hear Machiavelli read his notes on Livy. After the discovery of the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, in which Machiavelli was implicated, and which cost his cousin Luigi di Tommaso Alamanni and his friend Jacopo del Diacceto their lives, Luigi escaped across the mountains by Borgo San Sepolcro to Urbino. Finally, after running many risks, and being imprisoned for a while at Brescia by Giulio's emissaries, he made good his flight to France. His wife and three children had been left at Florence. He was poor and miserable, suffering as only exiles suffer when their home is such a paradise as Italy. In 1527, after the expulsion of the Medici, Luigi returned to Florence, and took an active part in the preparations for the siege as well as in the diplomatic negotiations which followed the fall of the city. Alessandro de' Medici declared him a rebel; and he was forced to avail himself again of French protection. With the exception of a few years passed in Italy between 1537 and 1540, the rest of his life was spent as a French courtier. Both Francis I. and Henri II. treated him with distinction and bounty. Catherine de Medicis made him her master of the household; and his son received the bishopric of Macon. In 1556 he died at Amboise following the Court.

Luigi Alamanni was the greatest Italian poet of whose services Francis I. could boast, as Cellini was the greatest Italian artist. His works are numerous, and all are marked by the same qualities of limpid facility, tending to prolixity and feebleness. Sonnets and _canzoni_, satires, romantic epics, eclogues, translations, comedies, he tried them all. His translation of the _Antigone_ deserves commendation for its style. His _Flora_ is curious for its attempt to reproduce the comic iambic of the Latin poets. If his satires dealt less in generalities, they might aspire to comparison with Ariosto's. As it is, the poet's bile vents itself in abstract invectives, of which the following verses upon Rome may stand for a fair specimen:[301]

Or chi vedesse il ver, vedrebbe come
Piu disnor tu, che 'l tuo Luter Martino,
Porti a te stessa, e piu gravose some.
Non la Germania, no, ma l'ozio e 'l vino,
Avarizia, ambizion, lussuria, e gola
Ti mena al fin, che gia veggiam vicino.
Non pur questo dico io, non Francia sola,
Non pur la Spagna, tutta Italia ancora
Che ti tien d'eresia, di vizi scola.
E chi nol crede, ne dimandi ognora
Urbin, Ferrara, l'Orso, e la Colonna,
La Marca, il Romagnuol, ma piu chi plora
Per te servendo, che fu d'altri donna.

[Footnote 301: Vol. i. p. 251. It is the end of the third satire. "He who saw truly, would perceive that thyself brings on thee more dishonor than thy Martin Luther, and heavier burdens too. Not Germany, no, but sloth and wine, avarice, ambition, sensuality, and gluttony, are bringing thee to thy now near approaching end. It is not I who say this, not France alone, nor yet Spain, but all Italy, which holds thee for the school of heresy and vice. He who believes it not, let him inquire of Urbino, Ferrara, the Bear and the Column, the Marches and Romagna, yet more of her who weeps because you make her serve, who was once mistress over nations."]

Alamanni is said to have been an admirable improvisatore; and this we can readily believe, for his verses even when they are most polished, flow with a placidity of movement that betrays excessive case.

We have traced the pastoral ideal from its commencement in Boccaccio, through the _Arcadia_ of Sannazzaro, Poliziano's _Orfeo_, and the didactic poets, up to the point when it was destined soon to find its perfect form in the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor Fido_. Both Tasso and Guarini lived beyond the chronological limits assigned to this work. The Renaissance was finished; and Italy had passed into a new phase of existence, under the ecclesiastical reaction which is called the Counter-Reformation. It is no part of my programme to enter with particularity into the history of the second half of the sixteenth century. And yet the subject of this and the preceding chapter would be incomplete were I not to notice the two poems which combined the drama and the pastoral in a work of art no less characteristic for the people and the age than fruitful of results for European literature. Great tragedy and great comedy were denied to the Italians. But they produced a novel species in the pastoral drama, which testified to their artistic originality, and led by natural transitions to the opera. Poetry was on the point of expiring; but music was rising to take her place. And the imaginative medium prepared by the lyrical scenes of the Arcadian play, afforded just that generality and aloofness from actual conditions of life, which were needed by the new art in its first dramatic essays.

It would be a mistake to suppose that because the form of the Arcadian romance was artificial, it could not lend itself to the presentation of real passion when adapted to the theater. The study of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor Fido_ is sufficient to remove this misconception. Though the latter is the more carefully constructed of the two, the plot in either case presents a series of emotional situations, developed with refined art and expressed with lyrical abundance. The rustic fable is but a veil, through which the everlasting lineaments of love are shown. Arcadia, stripped of pedantry and affectation, has become the ideal world of sentiment. Like amber, it incloses in its glittering transparency the hopes and fears, the pains and joys, which flit from heart to heart of men and women when they love. The very conventionality of the pastoral style assists the lyrical utterance of real feeling. For it must be borne in mind that both _Aminta_ and the _Pastor Fido_ are essentially lyrical. The salt and savor of each play are in their choruses and monologues. The dialogue, the fable and the characters serve to supply the poet with motives for emotion that finds vent in song. This being conceded, it will be understood how from their scenes as a whole world of melodrama issued. Whatever may have been the subject of an opera before the days of Gluck, it drew its life-blood from these pastorals.

The central motive of _Aminta_ and the _Pastor Fido_ is the contrast between the actual world of ambition, treachery and sordid strife, and the ideal world of pleasure, loyalty and tranquil ease. Nature is placed in opposition to civil society, the laws of honor to the laws of love, the manners of Arcadia to the manners of Italy. This cardinal motive finds its highest utterance in Tasso's chorus on the Age of Gold:

O bella eta dell'oro,
Non gia perche di latte
Sen corse il fiume, e stillo mele il bosco;
Non perche i frutti loro
Dier dall'aratro intatte
Le terre, e gli angui errar senz'ira o tosco;
Non perche nuvol fosco
Non spiego allor suo velo,
Ma in primavera eterna,
Ch'ora s'accende, e verna,
Rise di luce e di sereno il cielo;
Ne porto peregrino
O guerra, o merce agli altrui lidi il pino:
Ma sol perche quel vano
Nome senza oggetto,
Quell'idolo d'errori, idol d'inganno,
Quel che dal volgo insano
Onor poscia fu detto,
Che di nostra natura 'l feo tiranno,
Non mischiava il suo affanno
Fra le liete dolcezze
Dell'amoroso gregge;
Ne fu sua dura legge
Nota a quell'alme in libertate avvezze:
Ma legge aurea e felice,
Che Natura scolpi, "S'ei piace, ei lice."

The last phrase, _S'ei piace, ei lice_, might be written on the frontispiece of both dramas, together with Dafne's sigh: _Il mondo invecchia, E invecchiando intristisce_. Of what use is life unless we love?

Amiam, che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S'asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce.

The girl who wastes her youth in proud virginity, prepares a sad old age of vain regret:

Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzarella che sei;
Che 'l pentirsi da sezzo nulla giova.

It is the old cry of the Florentine _Canti_ and _Ballate_, "Gather ye rose-buds while ye may!" _Di doman non c'e certezza._ And the stories of _Aminta_ and _Pastor Fido_ teach the same lesson, that nature's laws cannot be violated, that even fate and the most stubborn bosoms bow to love.

Of the music and beauty of these two dramas, I find it difficult to speak. Before some masterpieces criticism bends in silence. We cannot describe what must be felt. All the melodies that had been growing through two centuries in Italy, are concentrated in their songs. The idyllic voluptuousness, which permeated literature and art, steeps their pictures in a golden glow. It is easy enough to object that their apparent simplicity conceals seduction, that their sentimentalism is unmanly, and their suggestions of physical beauty effeminating:--

Ma come Silvia il ricconobbe, e vide
Le belle guance tenere d'Aminta
Iscolorite in si leggiadri modi,
Che viola non e che impallidisca
Si dolcemente, e lui languir si fatto,
Che parea gia ultimi sospiri
Esalar l'alma; in guisa di Baccante,
Gridando e percotendosi il bel petto,
Lascio cadersi in sul giacente corpo;
E giunse viso a viso, e bocca a bocca.

This passage warns us that an age of _cicisbei_ and _castrati_ has begun, and that the Italian sensuousness has reached its final dissolution. Silvia's kisses in _Aminta_, Mirtillo's kisses in _Pastor Fido_, introduce a new refinement of enervation. Marino with his _Adone_ is not distant. But, while we recognize in both these poems--the one perfumed and delicate like flowers of spring, the other sculptured in pure forms of classic grace--evident signs of a civilization sinking to decay; though we almost loathe the beauty which relaxes every chord of manhood in the soul that feels it; we are bound to confess that to this goal the Italian genius had been steadily advancing since the publication of the _Filocopo_. The negation of chivalry, mysticism, asceticism, is accomplished. After traversing the cycle of comedy, romance, satire, burlesque poetry, the plastic arts, and invading every province of human thought, the Italian reaction against the middle ages assumes a final shape of hitherto unapprehended loveliness in the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor Fido_. They complete and close the Renaissance, bequeathing in a new species of art its form and pressure to succeeding generations.