The love of beauty, the love of Florence, and the love of Christ, are the three main motives of his poetry.  This is not the place to discuss at length the nature of his philosophy, his patriotism, or his religion; to enquire how far he retained the early teaching of Ficino and Savonarola; or to trace the influence of Dante and the Bible on his mind.  I may, however, refer my readers who are interested in these questions, to the Discourse of Signor Guasti, the learned essay of Mr. J.E.  Taylor, and the refined study of Mr. W.H.  Pater.  My own views will be found expressed in the third volume of my ‘Renaissance in Italy’; and where I think it necessary, I shall take occasion to repeat them in the notes appended to my translation.

III.

Michael Angelo’s madrigals and sonnets were eagerly sought for during his lifetime.  They formed the themes of learned academical discourses, and won for him the poet’s crown in death.  Upon his tomb the Muse of Song was carved in company with Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting.  Since the publication of the rifacimento in 1623, his verses have been used among the testi di lingua by Italians, and have been studied in the three great languages of Europe.  The fate of Campanella’s philosophical poems has been very different.  It was owing to a fortunate chance that they survived their author; and until the year 1834 they were wholly and entirely unknown in Italy.  The history of their preservation is so curious that I cannot refrain from giving some account of it, before proceeding to sketch so much of Campanella’s life and doctrine as may be necessary for the understanding of his sonnets.

The poems were composed during Campanella’s imprisonment at Naples; and from internal evidence there is good reason to suppose that the greater part of them were written at intervals in the first fourteen years of the twenty-five he passed in confinement.[9] In the descriptive catalogue of his own works, the philosopher mentions seven books of sonnets and canzoni, which he called ’Le Cantiche.’[10] Whether any of these would have been printed but for a mere accident is doubtful.  A German gentleman, named Tobia Adami, who is supposed to have been a Court-Counsellor at Weimar, after travelling through Greece, Syria, and Palestine, in company with a young friend called Rodolph von Bunau, visited Campanella in his dungeon.  A close intimacy sprang up between them, and Adami undertook to publish several works of the philosopher in testimony of his admiration.  Among these were ‘Le Cantiche.’  Instead, however, of printing the poems in extenso, he made a selection, choosing those apparently which took his fancy, and which, in his opinion, threw most light on Campanella’s philosophical theories.  It is clear that he neglected the author’s own arrangement, since there is no trace of the division into seven books.  What proportion the selection bore to the whole bulk of the Ms. seems to me uncertain, though the latest editor asserts that it formed only a seventh part.[11] The manuscript itself is lost, and Adami’s edition of the specimens is all that now remains as basis for the text of Campanella’s poems.