BATTISTA GUARINI, who died in 1612, was pre-eminent, by reason of his _Pastor Fido,_ among writers of Pastoral Plays; but these insipid and unreal creations have no attraction for modern readers. The _Pastor Fido_ is a work of much skill and ingenuity; but it is tainted with that fondness for quibbles and conceits which disfigures so much of the literature of the Seventeenth Century, not only in Italy, but also in other countries. If Italy had her Marino, Spain had her Gongora, France her Benserade, and England her Lyly, Donne, and Cowley. It is curious to remark how a literary fashion spreads from one country to another, and in that age of scanty travel and difficult communication, it is doubly curious. Thus, in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, Byronism became a universal epidemic.
The love of far-fetched conceits originated in the latter half of the Sixteenth Century. We see much of it in Shakespeare's early comedies, and the traces of it in Tasso gave ground to Boileau one hundred years later to sneer at those who preferred "the tinsel of Tasso to the gold of Virgil."
"A Racan, à Malherbe, préférer Théophile, Et le clinquant du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile."
It is, however, unjust to blame Tasso for an inordinate profusion of conceits. He presents some, it is true, but they are almost always ingenious and imaginative, and not so far-fetched as to be unnatural.
The poet who really set the fashion of fantastic ingenuity, was GIAMBATTISTA MARINO (or MARINI, for both forms of the name seem to have been used by his contemporaries), a Neapolitan, born in 1569, died in 1625. His chief work is the _Adone_ an epic poem in twenty enormous cantos on the loves of Venus and Adonis. If it were not for its appalling length, the poem would have much to recommend it. He also wrote other epics, not quite so voluminous: _La Gerusalemme Distrutta, La Strage degl' Innocenti,_ on the Massacre of the Innocents, and numerous lyric effusions. When he was at Turin, he had a vulgar dispute with a rival poet of the name of Murtola, and numerous satires and pasquinades were the result. Murtola was so incensed at the biting sarcasms of Marino, that he waylaid him one evening and fired a pistol. The shot killed, not Marino, but a favourite courtier of the Duke of Savoy, who was walking with the poet. Murtola was thrown into a dungeon, but Marino interceded for his fallen rival, and it is a curious illustration of the absolute power of the Princes of those days, that all proceedings against Murtola were stopped, and he was granted a free pardon. Marino had reason to regret his intercession for so unworthy an object. Murtola accidentally discovered a copy of verses written by Marino many years previously, reflecting on the Duke. He lost no time in forwarding them to the Duke, who was so incensed that he would doubtless have inflicted upon Marino the punishment from which he had saved the treacherous Murtola, had not Marino prudently taken refuge in flight.