of Sarpi.  Ultimately, so far as it is possible to formulate a view, I think he may be defined as a Christian Stoic, possessed with two main governing ideas, duty to God and duty to Venice.  His last words were for Venice; the penultimate consigned his soul to God.  For a mind like his, so philosophically tempered, so versed in all the history of the world to us-wards, the materials of dispute between Catholic and Protestant must have seemed but trifles.  He stayed where he had early taken root, in his Servite convent at S. Fosca, because he there could dedicate his life to God and Venice better than in any Protestant conventicle.  Had Venice inclined toward rupture with Rome, had the Republic possessed the power to make that rupture with success, Sarpi would have hailed the event gladly, as introducing for Italy the prospect of spiritual freedom, purer piety, and the overthrow of Papal-Spanish despotism.  But Venice chose to abide in the old ways, and her Counselor of State knew better than any one that she had not the strength to cope with Spain, Rome, Jesuitry and Islam single-handed.  Therefore he possessed his soul in patience, worshiping God under forms and symbols to which he had from youth been used, trusting the while that sooner or later God would break those mighty wings of Papal domination.

CHAPTER XI.

GUARINO, MARINO, CHIABRERA, TASSONI.

Dearth of Great Men—­Guarini a Link between Tasso and the Seventeenth Century—­His Biography—­The Pastor Fido—­Qualities of Guarini as Poet—­Marino the Dictator of Letters—­His Riotous Youth at Naples—­Life at Rome, Turin, Paris—­Publishes the Adone—­The Epic of Voluptuousness—­Character and Action of Adonis—­Marino’s Hypocrisy—­Sentimental Sweetness—­Brutal Violence—­Violation of Artistic Taste—­Great Powers of the Poet—­Structure of the Adone—­Musical Fluency—­Marinism—­Marino’s Patriotic Verses—­Contrast between Chiabrera and Marino—­An Aspirant after Pindar—­Chiabrera’s Biography—­His Court Life—­Efforts of Poets in the Seventeenth Century to attain to Novelty—­Chiabrera’s Failure—­Tassoni’s Life—­His Thirst to Innovate—­Origin of the Secchia Rapita—­Mock-Heroic Poetry—­The Plot of this Poem—­Its Peculiar Humor—­Irony and Satire—­Novelty of the Species—­Lyrical Interbreathings—­Sustained Contrast of Parody and Pathos—­The Poet Testi.

Soon after 1600 it became manifest that lapse of years and ecclesiastical intolerance had rendered Italy nearly destitute of great men.  Her famous sons were all either dead, murdered or exiled; reduced to silence by the scythe of time or by the Roman ’arguments of sword and halter.’  Bruno burned, Vanini burned, Carnesecchi burned, Paleario burned, Bonfadio burned; Campanella banished, after a quarter of a century’s imprisonment with torture; the leaders of free religious thought in exile, scattered over northern Europe.  Tasso, worn out with misery