GUARINI.

Pastoral poetry had in Italy a tendency to a rapid degeneration from the

first. "Decipit exemplum vitiis imitabile." The earliest "pastorals" were

far from being without merit, and merit of a high order. But they were

eminently "vitiis imitabiles." Two specimens of Italian Arcadian poetry

stand out, from the incredibly huge mass of such productions still extant,

superior to all the innumerable imitations to which they gave rise in a

more marked degree even than "originals" usually surpass imitations in

value. These are the "Aminta" of Tasso, and the "Pastor Fido" of the poet

with whom it is the object of these pages to make the English nineteenth

century reader, who never will find the time to read him, in some degree

acquainted--Batista Guarini. It would be difficult to say which of these

two celebrated pastoral dramas was received with the greater amount of

delight and enthusiasm by the world of their contemporaries, or even which

of them is the better performance. The almost simultaneous production of

these two masterpieces in their kind is a striking instance of the, one

may almost say, epidemic nature of the influences which rule the

production of the human intellect; influences which certainly did not

cease to operate for many generations after that of the authors of the

"Aminta" and the "Pastor Fido," although the servile imitation of those

greatly admired works unquestionably went for much in causing the

overwhelming flood of pastorals which deluged Italy immediately subsequent

to their enormous success.

I have said that it would be difficult to assign a preeminence to either

of these poems. But it must not be supposed that it is intended thence to

insinuate an equality between the authors of them. Tasso would occupy no

lower place on the Italian Parnassus if he had never written the "Aminta."

His fame rests upon a very much larger and firmer basis. But Guarini would

be nowhere--would not be heard of at all--had he not written the "Pastor

Fido." Having, however, produced that work--a work of which forty editions

are said to have been printed in his lifetime, and which has been

translated into almost every civilised language, including Latin, Greek,

and Hebrew--he has always filled a space in the eyes of his countrymen,

and occupied a position in the roll of fame, which render his admission as

one of our select band here imperative. He is, besides, a representative

poet; the head and captain of the pastoral school, which attained

everywhere so considerable a vogue, and in Italy such colossal

proportions.

Guarini was born in the year 1537 in Ferrara,--desolate, dreary, shrunken,

grass-grown, tumble-down Ferrara, which in the course of one half-century

gave to the world, besides a host of lesser names, three such poets as

Tasso, Ariosto and Guarini. Ariosto died four years before Guarini was

born; but Tasso was nearly his contemporary, being but seven years his

junior.

In very few cases in all the world and in all ages has it happened that

intellectual distinction has been the appanage of one family for as many

generations as in that of the Guarini. They came originally from Verona,

where Guarino, the first of the family on record, who was born in 1370,

taught the learned languages, and was one of the most notable of the band

of scholars who laboured at the restoration of classical literature. He

lived to be ninety years old, and is recorded to have had twenty-three

sons. It is certain that he had twelve living in 1438. One of them,

Giovanni Batista, succeeded his father in his professorship at Ferrara, to

which city the old scholar had been invited by Duke Hercules I. It would

seem that another of his sons must also have shared the work of teaching

in the University of Ferrara: for Batista the poet was educated by his

great-uncle Alessandro, and succeeded him in his professorship. Of the

poet's father we only learn that he was a mighty hunter, and further, that

he and his poet-son were engaged in litigation respecting the inheritance

of the poet's grandfather and great-uncle. It is probable that the two old

scholars wished to bequeath their property, which included a landed

estate, to their grandson and great-nephew, who already was manifesting

tastes and capacities quite in accordance with their own, rather than to

that exceptional member of the race who cared for nothing but dogs and

horses.

Nor was Batista the last of his race who distinguished himself in the same

career. His son succeeded him in his chair at the university; and we have

thus at least four generations of scholars and professors following the

same course in the same university, which was in their day one of the most

renowned in Europe.

All this sounds very stable, very prosperous, very full of the element of

contentment. And there is every reason to believe that the

great-grandfather, the grandfather, the great-uncle, the son, were all as

tranquil and contented and happy as well-to-do scholars in a prosperous

university city should be. But not so the poet. His life was anything but

tranquil, or happy, or contented. The lives of few men, it may be hoped,

have been less so.

Yet his morning was brilliant enough. He distinguished himself so

remarkably by his success in his early studies that, on the death of his

great-uncle Alexander when he was only nineteen, he was appointed to

succeed him. This was in 1556, when Hercules II. was Duke of Ferrara, and

when that court of the Este princes was at the apogee of its splendour,

renown, and magnificence. The young professor remained working at the

proper labours of his profession for ten years; and they were in all

probability the best and happiest, the only happy ones of his life. Happy

is the nation, it has been said, which has no history; and much the same

probably may be said of an individual. Respecting these ten years of

Guarini's life but little has been recorded. No doubt the chronicle of

them would have been monotonous enough. The same quiet duties quietly and

successfully discharged; the same morning walk to his school, the same

evening return from it, through the same streets, with salutations to the

same friends, and leisurely pauses by the way to chat, Italian fashion,

with one and another, as they were met in the streets, not then, as now,

deserted, grass-grown, and almost weird in their pale sun-baked

desolation, but thronged with bustling citizens, mingled with gay

courtiers, and a very unusually large proportion of men whose names were

known from one end of Italy to the other. Those school haunts in the

Ferrarese University were haunts which the world-weary ex-professor must

often throughout the years of his remaining life--some forty-five of them,

for he did not die till 1612, when he was seventy-five--have looked back

on as the best and happiest of his storm-tossed existence.

There is, however, one record belonging to this happy time which must not

be forgotten. It was at Padua, _Padova la dotta_, as she has been in all

ages and is still called, Padua the learned, in the year 1565. Guarini was

then in his twenty-eighth year, and had been a professor at Ferrara for

the last eight years. Probably it was due to the circumstance that his

friend and fellow-townsman, Torquato Tasso, was then pursuing his studies

at Padua, that the young Ferrarese professor turned his steps in that

direction, bound "on a long vacation ramble." Tasso was only

one-and-twenty at the time; but he was already a member of the famous

Paduan Academy of the "Etherials," which Guarini was not. And we may

readily fancy the pride and pleasure with which the younger man, doing the

honours of the place to his learned friend, procured him to be elected a

member of the "Etherials." Guarini (so called _nel secolo_--in the world),

was _Il Costante_--the "Constant One" among the "Etherials." Scipio

Gonzaga, who became subsequently the famous Cardinal, spoke an oration of

welcome to him on his election. Then what congratulations, what

anticipations of fame, what loving protestations of eternal friendship,

what naive acceptance of the importance and serious value of their

Etherial Academic play, as the two youths strolling at the evening hour

among the crowds of gravely clad but in no wise gravely speaking students

who thronged the colonnades in deep shadow under their low-browed arches,

sally forth from beneath them as the sun nears the west, on to the vast

open space which lies around the great church of St. Antony! Advancing in

close talk they come up to Donatello's superb equestrian statue of the

Venetian General Gattamelata, and lean awhile against the tall pedestal,

finishing their chat before entering the church for the evening prayer.

The "Etherials" of Padua constituted one of the innumerable "Academies"

which existed at that day and for a couple of centuries subsequently in

every one of the hundred cities of Italy. The "Arcadian" craze was the

generating cause of all of them. All the members were "shepherds;" all

assumed a fancy name on becoming a member, by which they were known in

literary circles; and every Academy printed all the rhymes its members

strung together!

Those must have been pleasant days in old Padua, before the young

Professor returned to his work in the neighbouring university of Ferrara.

The two young men were then, and for some time afterwards, loving friends;

for they had not yet become rival poets.

At the end of those ten years of university life he may be said to have

entered on a new existence--to have begun life afresh--so entirely

dis-severed was his old life from the new that then opened on him.

Alphonso II., who had succeeded his father, Hercules II., as Duke of

Ferrara in 1559, "called him to the court" in 1567, and he began life as a

courtier, or a "servant" of the Duke, in the language of the country and

time.

Well, in 1567 he entered into the service of the Duke, his sovereign, and

never had another happy or contented hour!

The first service on which the Duke employed him, and for the performance

of which he seems specially to have taken him from his professional chair,

was an embassy to Venice, to congratulate the new Doge, Pietro Loredano,

on his elevation to the ducal throne, to which he had been elected on the

previous 19th of June. On this occasion the Professor was created

Cavaliere, a title to which his landed estate of Guarina, so called from

the ancestor on whom it had been originally bestowed by a former duke,

fairly entitled him.

Shortly afterwards he was sent as ambassador to the court of Turin; and

then to that of the Emperor Maximilian at Innspruck. Then he was twice

sent to Poland; the first time on the occasion of the election of Henry

the Third of France to the throne of that kingdom; and the second time

when Henry quitted it to ascend that of France on the death of his brother

Charles IX. The object of this second embassy was to intrigue for the

election to the Polish crown of Alphonso. But, as it is hardly necessary

to say, his mission was unsuccessful.

It seems, too, to have been well-nigh fatal to the ambassador. There is

extant a letter written from Warsaw to his wife, which gives a curious and

interesting account of the sufferings he endured on the journey and at the

place of his destination. He tells his wife not to be discontented that

his silence has been so long, but to be thankful that it was not eternal,

as it was very near being! "I started, as you know, more in the fashion of

a courier than of an ambassador. And that would have been more tolerable

if bodily fatigue had been all. But the same hand that had to flog the

horses by day, had to hold the pen by night. Nature could not bear up

against this double labour of body and mind; especially after I had

travelled by Serravelles and Ampez,[48] which is more disagreeable and

difficult than I can tell you, from the ruggedness no less of the country

than of the people, from the scarcity of horses, the miserable mode of

living, and the want of every necessary. So much so that on reaching

Hala[49] I had a violent fever. I embarked, however, for Vienna

notwithstanding. What with fever, discouragement, an intense thirst,

scarcity of remedies and of medical assistance, bad lodging, generally far

to seek,[50] and often infected with disease, food disgusting, even to

persons in health, bed where you are smothered in feathers, in a word,

none of the necessaries or comforts of life! I leave you to imagine what I

have suffered. The evil increased; my strength grew less. I lost my

appetite for everything save wine. In a word, little hope remained to me

of life, and that little was odious to me. There is on the Danube, which I

was navigating, a vast whirlpool, so rapid that if the boatmen did not

avail themselves of the assistance of a great number of men belonging to

the locality, strong and powerful and well acquainted with the danger, who

are there constantly for the purpose, and who struggle with their oars

against the rapacious gulf, there is not a vessel in that great river

which would not be engulfed! The place is worthy of the name of "the Door

of Death," which with a notoriety of evil fame it has gained for itself.

There is no passenger so bold as not to pass that bit of the course of the

river on foot; for the thing is truly formidable and terrible. But I was

so overcome by illness, that having lost all sense of danger or desire to

live, I did not care to leave the boat, but remained in it, with those

strong men, I hardly know whether to say stupidly or intrepidly--but I

will say intrepidly, since at one point, where I was within an ace of

destruction, I felt no fear."

He goes on to tell how at Vienna a physician treated him amiss, and made

him worse; how every kind of consideration, and his own desire to save his

life, counselled him to delay there; but how the honour, the

responsibility of the embassy wholly on his shoulders, his duty to his

sovereign prevailed to drive him onwards. He feared, too, lest it should

be supposed at Warsaw that he preferred his life to the business on which

he came, an accusation which might have been made use of by suspicious and

malignant adversaries to deprive him of all the credit of his labours, and

"to snatch from my Prince the crown which we are striving to place on his

head. It is impossible to imagine," he continues, "what I suffered in that

journey of more than six hundred miles from Vienna to Warsaw, dragged

rather than carried in carts, broken and knocked to pieces. I wonder that

I am still alive! The obstinate fever, the want of rest, of food, and of

medicine, the excessive cold, the infinite hardships, the uninhabited

deserts, were killing me. More often than not it was a much lesser evil to

crouch by night in the cart, which dislocated my bones by day, rather than

to be suffocated in the foulness of those dens, or stables rather, where

the dogs and cats, the cocks and hens, and the geese, the pigs and the

calves, and sometimes the children, kept me waiting."

He proceeds to tell how the country was overrun, in that time of

interregnum, by lawless bands of Cossacks; how he was obliged to travel

with a strong escort, but nevertheless was obliged several times to

deviate from the direct road to avoid the Cossacks, but on two occasions

had very narrow escapes from falling into their hands. When he reached

Warsaw at last, more dead than alive, the only improvement of his position

was that he was stationary instead of in motion. "The cart no more

lacerates my limbs!" But there was no rest to be got. "The place, the

season, the food, the drink, the water, the servants, the medicines, the

doctors, mental trouble, and a thousand other ills make up my torment.

Figure to yourself all the kingdom lodged in one little town, and my room

in the midst of it! There is no place from the top to the bottom, on the

right or on the left, by day or by night, that is not full of tumult and

noise. There is no special time here destined for business. Negotiation is

going on always, because drinking is going on always; and business is dry

work without wine. When business is over, visits begin; and when these are

at an end, drums, trumpets, bombs, uproar, cries, quarrels, fighting,

split one's head in a manner piteous to think of. Ah! if I suffered all

this labour and this torment for the love and the glory of God, I should

be a martyr!" (one thinks of Wolsey!) "But is he not worthy of the name

who serves without hope of recompense?"

He concludes his letter, bidding his wife not to weep for him, but to live

and care for her children, in a manner which indicates that he had even

then but little hope of returning alive.

We are nevertheless assured by his biographers that he acquitted himself

upon all these occasions in such sort as to give satisfaction to his

sovereign and to acquire for himself the reputation of an upright and able

minister. The Italian practice of entrusting embassies especially to men

of letters, which we first had occasion to note when tracing the

vicissitudes of the life of Dante in the thirteenth century, which we saw

subsequently exemplified in the cases of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto,

and which might be further exemplified in the persons of many other

Italian scholars and men of letters, still, as we see, prevailed in the

sixteenth century, and continued to do so for some little time longer.

But in no one instance, of all those I have mentioned, does the poet thus

employed in functions which in other lands and other times have usually

led to honours and abundant recognition of a more solid kind, appear to

have reaped any advantage in return for the service performed, or to have

been otherwise than dissatisfied and discontented with the treatment

accorded to him.

It would have been very interesting to learn somewhat of the impression

made upon an Italian scholar of the sixteenth century by the places

visited, and persons with whom he must have come in contact in those

transalpine lands, which were then so far off, so contrasted in all

respects with the home scenes among which his life had been passed in the

low-lying, fat, and fertile valley of the Po. Of all this his various

biographers and contemporaries tell us no word! But there is a volume of

his letters, a little square quarto volume, now somewhat rare, printed at

Venice in the year 1595.[51] These letters have somewhat unaccountably not

been included in any of the editions of his works, and they are but little

known. But turning to this little volume, and looking over the dates of

the letters (many of them, however, are undated), I found three written

"Di Spruch," and eagerly turned to them, thinking that I should certainly

find there what I was seeking. The letters belong to a later period of

Guarini's life, having been written in 1592, when he was again sent on an

embassy to the German Emperor. This circumstance, however, is of no

importance as regards the purpose for which I wanted the letters. I was

disappointed. But I must nevertheless give one of these letters, not

wantonly to compel my reader to share my disappointment, but because it is

a curiosity in its way. The person to whom he writes is a lady, the

Contessa Pia di Sala, with whom he was evidently intimate. He is at

Innspruck at the Court of the Emperor Maximilian. The lady is at Mantua,

and this is what he writes to her:

"Di Spruch, Nov. 29, 1592.

"The letter of your Illustrious Ladyship, together with

which you send me that of your most excellent brother,

written at the end of August, reached me yesterday, at first

to my very great anger at having been for so long a time

deprived of so precious a thing, while I appeared in fault

towards so distinguished a lady; but finally to my very

great good fortune. For if a letter written by the most

lovely flame[52] in the world had arrived, while the skies

were burning, what would have become of me, when, now that

winter is beginning, I can scarcely prevent myself from

falling into ashes? And in truth, when I think that those so

courteous thoughts come from the mind which informs so

lovely a person, that those characters have been traced by a

hand of such excellent beauty, I am all ablaze, no less than

if the paper were fire, the words flames, and all the

syllables sparks. But God grant that, while I am set on fire

by the letter of your Illustrious Ladyship, you may not be

inflamed by anger against me, from thinking that the terms

in which I write are too bold. Have no such doubt, my

honoured mistress! I want nothing from the flaming of my

letter, but to have made by the light of it more vivid and

more brilliant in you, the natural purity of your beautiful

face, even as it seems to me that I can see it at this

distance. My love is nothing else save honour; my flame is

reverence; my fire is ardent desire to serve you. And only

so long will the appointment in his service, which it has

pleased my Lord His Serene Highness the Duke of Mantua to

give me, and on which your Illustrious Ladyship has been

kind enough to congratulate me so cordially, be dear to me,

as you shall know that I am fit for it, and more worthy and

more ready to receive the favour of your commands, which

will always be to me a most sure testimony that you esteem

me, not for my own worth, as you too courteously say, but

for the worth which you confer on me, since I am not worthy

of such esteem for any other merit than that which comes to

me from being honoured by so noble and beautiful a lady. I

kiss the hand of your Illustrious Ladyship, wishing the

culmination of every felicity."

Now, this letter I consider to be a very great curiosity! The other two

written from the same place, one to a Signor Bulgarini at Siena, the other

to a lady, the Marchesa di Grana, at Mantua, are of an entirely similar

description. I turned to them in the hope of finding how Innspruck, its

stupendous scenery, its court, its manners so widely different from those

to which the writer and his correspondents were used, its streets, its

people, impressed a sixteenth century Italian from the valley of the Po. I

find instead a psychological phenomenon! The writer is a grave, austere

man (Guarini was notably such), celebrated throughout Italy for his

intellectual attainments, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, with a

wife and family; he is amidst scenes which must, one would have thought,

have impressed in the very highest degree the imagination of a poet, and

must, it might have been supposed, have interested those he was writing to

in an only somewhat less degree, and he writes the stuff the reader has

just waded through. It is clear that this Italian sixteenth century

scholar, poet and of cultivated intellect as he was, saw nothing amid the

strange scenes to which a hard and irksome duty called him, which he

thought worthy of being mentioned even by a passing word to his friends!

Surely this is a curious trait of national character.

He remained in the service of the court for fourteen years, employed

mainly, as it should seem, in a variety of embassies; an employment which

seems to have left him a disappointed, soured, and embittered man. He

considered that he had not been remunerated as his labour deserved, that

the heavy expenses to which he had been put in his long journeys had not

been satisfactorily made up to him, and that he had not been treated in

any of the foreign countries to which his embassies had carried him with

the respect due to his own character and to his office.

He determined therefore to leave the court and retire to Padua, a

residence in which city, it being not far distant from his estate of

Guarina, would offer him, he thought, a convenient opportunity of

overlooking his property and restoring order to his finances, which had

suffered much during his travels. This was in the year 1582, when Guarini

was in the forty-fifth year of his age. It is not clear, however, that

this retirement was wholly spontaneous; and the probability is that the

Duke and his ambassador were equally out of humour with each other. And it

is probable that the faults were not all on the side of the Duke. There is

sufficient evidence that the author of the "Pastor Fido" must have been a

difficult man to live with.

The old friendship of happier days with Tasso had not survived the wear

and tear of life at court. It was known that they no longer saw or spoke

with each other. And everybody--if not of their contemporaries, at least

of subsequent writers--jumped to the conclusion that the writer of the

"Aminta" and the writer of the "Pastor Fido" must be jealous of each

other. Jealousy there certainly was. But some frailer and more mortal

female than the Muse was the cause of it. The Abate Serassi in his life of

Tasso admits that Tasso first gave offence to Guarini by a sonnet in which

he endeavoured to alienate the affections of a lady from him, by

representing him as a faithless and fickle lover. The lines in which Tasso

attacked his brother poet are, it must be admitted, sharp enough!

Si muove e si raggira

Instabil piu che arida fronde ai venti;

Nulla fe, null' amor, falsi i tormenti

Sono, e falso l'affeto ond' ei sospira.

Insidioso amante, ama e disprezza

Quasi in un punto, e trionfando spiega

Di femminile spoglie empi trofei.[53]...

The attack was savage enough, it must be admitted, and well calculated to

leave a lasting wound. Guarini immediately answered the cruel sonnet by

another, the comparative weakness of which is undeniable.

Questi che indarno ad alta mira aspira

Con altrui biasmi, e con bugiardi accenti,

Vedi come in se stesso arruota i denti,

Mentre contra ragion meco s'adira.

Di due fiamme si vanta, e stringe e spezza

Piu volte un nodo; e con quest' arti piega

(Chi 'l crederebbe!) a suo favore i Dei.[54]...

There is reason to think that the accusation of many times binding and

loosing the same knot, may have hit home. The sneer about bending the gods

to favour him, alludes to Tasso's favour at court, then in the ascendant,

and may well have been as offensive to the Duke and the ladies of his

court as to the object of his satire. Both angry poets show themselves

somewhat earth-stained members of the Paduan "Etherials." But the sequel

of the estrangement was all in favour of the greater bard. Tasso, in

desiring a friend to show his poems in manuscript to certain friends, two

or three in number, on whose opinion he set a high value, named Guarini

among the number. And upon another occasion wishing to have Guarini's

opinion as to the best of two proposed, methods of terminating a sonnet,

and not venturing to communicate directly with him, he employed a common

friend to obtain his brother-poet's criticism. Tasso had also in his

dialogue entitled the "Messagero" given public testimony to Guarini's high

intellectual and civil merits. But Guarini appears never to have forgiven

the offence. He never once went to see Tasso in his miserable confinement

in the hospital of St. Anne; nor, as has been seen, would hold any

communication with him.

He must have been a stern and unforgiving man. And indeed all the

available testimony represents him as having been so,--upright, honest,

and honourable, but haughty, punctilious, litigious, quick to take

offence, slow to forget or forgive it, and cursed with a thin-skinned

_amour propre_ easily wounded and propense to credit others with the

intention of wounding where no such intention existed. The remainder of

the story of his life offers an almost unbroken series of testimonies to

the truth of such an estimate of his character.

It was after fourteen years' service in the court of Duke Alphonso, as has

been said, that he retired disgusted and weary to live in independence and

nurse his estate in the neighbourhood of Padua. But the part of

Cincinnatus is not for every man! It was in 1582 that he retired from the

court intending to bid it and its splendours, its disappointments and its

jealousies, an eternal adieu. In 1585, on an offer from the Duke to make

him his secretary, he returned and put himself into harness again!

But this second attempt to submit himself to the service, to the caprices

and exigencies of a master and of a court ended in a quicker and more

damaging catastrophe than the first. In a diary kept by the poet's nephew,

Marcantonio Guarini, under the date of July 13, 1587, we find it written

that "the Cavalier Batista Guarini, Secretary of the Duke, considering

that his services did not meet with sufficient consideration in proportion

to his worth, released himself from that servitude." The phrase here

translated "released himself" is a peculiar one--_si licenzio_--"dismissed

himself." To receive _licenza_, or to be _licenziato_, is to be dismissed,

or at least parted with in accordance with the will of the employer. But

the phrase used by the diarist seems intended to express exactly what

happened when the poet, once more discontented, took himself off from

Ferrara and its Duke. He seems to have done so in a manner which gave deep

and lasting offence. In a subsequent passage of the above-quoted diary we

read, "the Cavaliere Batista Guarini having absented himself from Ferrara,

disgusted with the Duke, betook himself to Florence, and then, by the

intermedium of Guido Coccapani the agent, asked for his dismissal in form

and obtained it." We happen, however, to have a letter written by this

Coccapani, who seems to have been the Duke's private secretary and

managing man, in which he gives his version of the matter. He was

"stupefied," he says, "when he received the extravagant letter of the

Cavaliere Guarini, and began to think that it would be with him as it had

been with Tasso," who by that time had fallen into disgrace. There is

reason to think that he left Ferrara secretly, without taking leave of the

Duke, or letting anybody at court know where he had gone. He did,

however, obtain his formal dismissal, as has been said, but the Duke by no

means forgave him.

Though it would appear that on leaving Ferrara in this irregular manner he

went in the first instance to Florence, it seems that he had had hopes

given him of a comfortable position and honourable provision at Turin. He

was to have been made a Counsellor of State, and entrusted with the task

of remodelling the course of study at the university, with a stipend of

six hundred crowns annually. But on arriving at Turin he found

difficulties in the way. In fact, the angry Duke of Ferrara had used his

influence with the Duke of Savoy to prevent anything being done for his

contumacious Secretary of State. Guarini, extremely mortified, had to

leave Turin, and betook himself to Venice.

His adventure, however, was of a nature to cause great scandal in that

clime and time. As usual, the Italians were offended at the "imprudence"

of which Guarini's temper had led him to be guilty, more than they would

have been by many a fault which among ourselves would be deemed a very

much worse one. A violence of temper or indignation shown in such a manner

as to injure _one's own_ interests is, and in a yet greater degree was, a

spectacle extremely disgusting to Italian moral sentiment.

The outcry against Guarini on this occasion was so great that he found

himself obliged to put forth an exculpatory statement.

"If human actions, my most kind readers," he begins, "always bore marked

on the front of them the aims and motives which have produced them, or if

those who talk about them were always well informed enough to be able to

judge of them without injury to the persons of whom they speak, I should

not be compelled, at my age, and after so many years of a life led in the

eyes of the world, and often busied in defending the honour of others, to

defend this day my own, which has always been dearer to me than my life.

Having heard, then, that my having left the service of His Serene Highness

the Duke of Ferrara and entered that of the Duke of Savoy has given

occasion to some persons, ignorant probably of the real state of the case,

to make various remarks, and form various opinions, I have determined to

publish the truth, and at the same time to declare my own sentiments in

the matter.

"I declare, then, that previously to my said departure I consigned to the

proper person everything, small as it was, which was in my hands regarding

my office, which had always been exercised by me uprightly and without any

other object in view than the service of my sovereign and the public

welfare. Further, that I, by a written paper under my own hand (as the

press of time and my need rendered necessary), requested a free and

decorous dismissal from the Duke in question, and also, that I set forth

in all humility the causes which led me to that determination; and I added

(some of the circumstances in which I was compelling me to do so) that if

His Serene Highness did not please to give me any other answer, I would

take his silence as a consent to my request of dismissal. I declare

further that the paper was delivered to the principal Minister of his

Serene Highness, and lastly, that my salary was, without any further

communication with me, stopped, and cancelled from the roll of payments.

And as this is the truth, so it is equally true that my appointment as

reformer of the University of Turin, and Counsellor of State with six

hundred crowns yearly, was settled and concluded with His Serene Highness

the Duke of Savoy, and that I declined to bind myself, and did not bind

myself, to ask any other dismissal from His Serene Highness the Duke of

Ferrara than that which I have already spoken. And, finally, it is true

that, as I should not have gone to Turin if I had not been engaged for

that service and invited thither, so I should not have left, or wished to

leave this place,[55] had I not known that I received my dismissal in the

manner above related. Now, as to the cause which may have retarded and may

still retard the fulfillment of the engagement above mentioned, I have

neither object, nor obligation, nor need to declare it. Suffice it that it

is not retarded by any fault of mine, or difficulty on my side. In

justification of which I offered myself, and by these presents now again

offer myself, to present myself wheresoever, whensoever, and in whatsoever

manner, and under whatsoever conditions and penalties, as may be seen more

clearly set forth in the instrument of agreement sent by me to His

Highness. From all which, I would have the world to know, while these

affairs of mine are still in suspension, that I am a man of honour, and am

always ready to maintain the same in whatsoever manner may be fitting to

my condition and duty. And as I do not at all doubt that some decision of

some kind not unworthy of so just and so magnanimous a prince will be

forthcoming; so, let it be what it may, it will be received by me with

composure and contentment; since, by God's grace, and that of the serene

and exalted power under the most just and happy dominion of which I am now

living, and whose subject, if not by birth, yet by origin and family, I

am,[56] I have a comfortable and honoured existence. And may you, my

honoured readers, live in happiness and contentment. Venice, February 1,

1589."

We must, I think, nevertheless be permitted to doubt the contentment and

happiness of the life he led, as it should seem, for the next four years,

at Venice. No such decision of any kind, as he hoped from the Duke of

Savoy, was forthcoming. He was shunted! He had quarrelled with his own

sovereign, and evidently the other would have none of him. The Italians of

one city were in those days to a wonderful degree foreigners in another

ruled by a different government; and there can be little doubt that

Guarini wandered among the quays and "calle" of Venice, or paced the great

piazza at the evening hour, a moody and discontented man!

At last, after nearly four years of this sad life, there came an

invitation from the Duke of Mantua proposing that Guarini should come to

Mantua together with his son Alessandro, to occupy honourable positions in

that court. The poet, heartily sick of "retirement," accepted at once, and

went to Mantua. But there, too, another disappointment awaited him. The

"magnanimous" Duke Alphonso would not tolerate that the man who had so

cavalierly left his service should find employment elsewhere. It is

probable that this position was obtained for him by the influence of his

old friend and fellow-member of the "Etherials" at Padua, Scipione

Gonzaga; and it would seem that he occupied it for a while, and went on

behalf of the Duke of Mantua to Innspruck, whence he wrote the wonderful

letters which have been quoted.

The Cardinal's influence, however, was not strong enough to prevail

against the spite of a neighbouring sovereign. There are two letters

extant from the Duke, or his private secretary, to that same Coccapani

whom we saw so scandalized at Guarini's hurried and informal departure

from Ferrara, and who was residing as Alphonso's representative at Mantua,

in which the Minister is instructed to represent to the Duke of Mantua

that his brother of Ferrara "did not think it well that the former should

take any of the Guarini family into his service, and when they should see

each other he would tell him his reasons. For the present he would only

say that he wished the Duke to know that it would be excessively pleasing

to him if the Duke would have nothing to say to any of them."

This was in 1593; and the world-weary poet found himself at fifty-six once

again cast adrift upon the world. The extremity of his disgust and

weariness of all things may be measured by the nature of the next step he

took. He conceived, says his biographer Barotti, that "God called him by

internal voices, and by promise of a more tranquil life, to accept the

tonsure." His wife had died some little time before; and it was therefore

open to him to do so. He went to Rome accordingly for the purpose of there

taking orders. But during the short delay which intervened between the

manifestation of his purpose and the fulfilment of it, news reached him

that his friend and protectress the Duchess of Urbino, Alphonso's sister,

had interceded for him with the Duke, and that he was forgiven! It was

open to him to return to his former employment! And no sooner did the news

reach him than he perceived that "the internal voices" were altogether a

mistake. God had never called him at all, and Alphonso had! All thoughts

of the Church were abandoned on the instant, and he hastened to Ferrara,

arriving there on the 15th of April, 1595.

But neither on this occasion was he destined to find the tranquillity

which he seemed fated never to attain! And this time the break-up was a

greater and more final one than the last. Duke Alphonso died in 1597; and

the Pontificial Court, which had long had its eye on the possibility of

enforcing certain pretended claims to the Duchy of Ferrara, found the

means at Alphonso's death of ousting his successor the Duke Cesare, who

remained thenceforward Duke of Modena only, but no longer of Ferrara.

Guarini was once more adrift! Nor were the political changes in Ferrara

the only thing which rendered the place no longer a home for him. Other

misfortunes combined to render a residence in the city odious to him. His

daughter Anna had married a noble gentleman of Ferrara, the Count Ercole

Trotti, by whom she was on the 3rd of May, 1598, murdered at his villa of

Zanzalino near Ferrara. Some attempt was made to assert that the husband

had reason to suspect that his wife was plotting against his life. But

there seems to have been no foundation for any accusation of the sort; and

the crime was prompted probably by jealousy. Guarini, always on bad terms

with his sons, and constantly involved in litigation with them, as he had

been with his father, was exceedingly attached to this unfortunate

daughter.

But even this terrible loss was not the only bitterness which resulted

from this crime. Guarini composed a long Latin epitaph, in which he

strongly affirms her absolute innocence of everything that had been laid

to her charge, and speaks with reprobation of the husband's[57] crime. But

scarcely had the stone bearing the inscription been erected than the

indignant father was required by the authorities of the city to remove it.

A declaration, which he published on the subject, dated June 15, 1598, is

still extant. "On that day," he writes, "the Vice-legate of Ferrara spoke

with me, in the name of the Holy Father, as to the removing of the epitaph

written by me on Anna my daughter in the church of Sta. Catherina. He said

that there were things in it that might provoke other persons to

resentment, and occasion much scandal; and that, besides that, there were

in the inscription words of Sacred Scripture, which ought not to be used

in such a place. I defended my cause, and transmitted a memorial to his

Holiness, having good reason to know that these objections were the mere

malignity of those who favour the opposite party, and of those who caused

the death of my innocent child. But at last, on the 22nd, I caused the

epitaph to be removed, intimating that it was my intention to take up the

body, and inter it elsewhere. On which it is worthy of remark, that having

made my demand to that effect, I was forbidden to do so." He further adds:

"Note! news was brought to me here that my son Girolamo, who was evidently

discovered to be the accomplice, and principal atrocious author of the

death of his sister Anna, received from the Potesta of Rovigo licence to

come into the Polisina with twelve men armed with arquebuses."

All this is very sad; and whether these terrible suspicions may or may not

have had any foundation other than the envenomed temper generated by the

family litigations, it must equally have had the effect of making the life

of Guarini a very miserable one, and contributing to his determination to

abandon finally his native city.

More surprising is it that, after so many disgusts and disappointments, he

should once again have been tempted to seek, what he had never yet been

able to find there, in a court. In a letter written in November, 1598, he

informs the Duke Cesare (Duke of Modena, though no longer of Ferrara) that

the Grand Duke of Florence had offered him a position at Florence. And his

Serene Highness, more kindly and forgiving than the late Duke, wrote him

an obliging and congratulatory letter in the following month.

At Florence everything at first seemed to be going well with him, and he

seemed to stand high in favour with the Grand Duke Ferdinand. But very

shortly he quitted Florence in anger and disgust on the discovery of the

secret marriage of his third son, Guarini, with a woman of low condition

at Pisa, with at least the connivance, as the poet thought, whether justly

or not there is nothing to show, of the Grand Duke.

After that his old friend the Duchess of Urbino once again stood his

friend, and he obtained a position in the court of Urbino, then one of the

most widely famed centres of cultivation and letters in Italy. And for a

while everything seemed at last to be well with him there. On the 23rd of

February, 1603, he writes to his sister, who apparently had been pressing

him to come home to Ferrara:--"I should like to come home, my sister. I

have great need and a great desire for home; but I am treated so well

here, and with so much distinction and so much kindness, that I cannot

come. I must tell you that all expenses for myself and my servants are

supplied, so that I have not to spend a farthing for anything in the world

that I need. The orders are that anything I ask for should be furnished to

me. Besides all which, they give me three hundred crowns a year; so that,

what with money and expenses, the position is worth six hundred crowns a

year to me. You may judge, then, if I can throw it up. May God grant you

every happiness!

Your brother,

B. GUARINI."

But all would not do. He had been but a very little time in this little

Umbrian Athens among the Apennines before he once again threw up his

position in anger and disgust, because he did not obtain all the marks of

distinction to which he thought that he was entitled. This was in 1603. He

was now sixty-six, and seems at length to have made no further attempt to

haunt at court. Once again he was at Rome in 1605, having undertaken, at

the request of the citizens of Ferrara, to carry their felicitations to

the new Pope, Paul the Fifth. And with the exception of that short

expedition his last years were spent in the retirement of his ancestral

estate of Guarina.

The property is situated in the district of Lendinara, on the fat and

fertile low-lying region between Rovigo and Padua, and belongs to the

commune--parish, as we should say--of St. Bellino. The house, dating

probably from the latter part of the fifteenth century, is not much more

than a hundred yards or so from the _piazza_ of the village, which boasts

two thousand inhabitants. The road between the two is bordered with trees.

The whole district is as flat as a billiard table, and as prosaical in its

well-to-do fertility as can be imagined. It is intersected by a variety of

streams, natural and artificial. About a couple of miles from the house to

the south is the Canalbianco; and a little farther to the north the

Adigetto. To the east runs the Scortico. St. Bellino, from whom the

village is named, was, it seems, enrolled among the martyrs by Pope

Eugenius the Third in 1152. He has a great specialty for curing the bite

of mad dogs. There is a grand cenotaph in his honour in the village

church, which was raised by some of the Guarini family. But this, too,

like all else, became a subject of trouble and litigation to our poet. A

certain Baldassare Bonifaccio of Rovigo wanted to transport the saint to

that city. Guarini would not hear of this; litigated the matter before the

tribunals of Venice, and prevailed. So the saint still resides at St.

Bellino to the comfort of all those bitten by mad dogs in those parts. The

house and estate have passed through several hands since that time; but a

number of old family portraits may still be seen on the walls, together

with the family arms, and the motto, "Fortis est in asperis non turbari."

The armchair and writing table of the poet are also still preserved in the

house, and a fig-tree is pointed out close by it, under the shade of which

the poet, as tradition tells, wrote on that table and in that chair his

"Pastor Fido." There is an inscription on the chair as follows: "Guarin

sedendo qui canto, che vale al paragon seggio reale."[58]

It was not, however, during this his last residence here that the "Pastor

Fido" was written, but long previously. It was doubtless his habit to

escape from the cares of official life in Ferrara from time to time as he

could; and it must have been in such moments that the celebrated pastoral

was written.[59]

The idea of a scholar and a poet, full of years and honours, passing the

quiet evening of his life in a tranquil retirement in his own house on his

own land, is a pleasing one. But it is to be feared that in the case of

the author of the "Pastor Fido" it would be a fallacious one. Guarini

would not have come to live on his estate if he could have lived

contentedly in any city. We may picture him to ourselves sitting under his

fig-tree, or pacing at evening under the trees of the straight avenue

between his house and the village, or on the banks of one of the sluggish

streams slowly finding their way through the flat fields towards the Po;

but I am afraid the picture must be of one "Remote, unfriended,

melancholy, slow," with eyes bent earthwards, and discontented mind:

"remote," because to the Italian mind all places beyond the easy reach of

a city are so; "unfriended," because he had quarrelled with everybody;

"melancholy," because all had gone amiss with him, and his life had been a

failure; "slow," because no spring of hope in the mind gave any elasticity

to his step.

One other "haunt" of the aged poet must, however, be mentioned, because it

is a very characteristic one. During this last residence at Guarina, he

hired an apartment at Ferrara, selecting it in a crowded part of the

centre of the city, especially frequented by the lawyers, that he might be

in the midst of them, when he went into the city on the various business

connected with his interminable lawsuits. The most crowded part of the

heart of the city of Ferrara! It would be difficult to find any such part

now. But the picture offered to the imagination, of the aged poet,

professor, courtier, haunting the courts, the lawyers' chambers, leaving

his, at least, tranquil retreat at St. Bellino, to drag weary feet through

the lanes of the city in which he had in earlier days played so different

a part, is a sad one. But there are people who like contention so much

that such work is a labour of love to them. And certainly, if the

inference may be drawn from the fact of his never having been free from

lawsuits in one quarrel or another, Guarini must have been one of these.

But it is passing strange that the same man should have been the author of

the "Pastor Fido."

They pursued him to the end, these litigations; or he pursued them! And at

last he died, not at Guarina, but at Venice, on the 7th of October, 1612,

where, characteristically enough, he chanced to be on business connected

with some lawsuit.

And now a few words must be said about his great work, the "Pastor Fido."

It is one of the strangest things in the range of literary history that

such a man should have written such a poem. He was, one would have said,

the last man in the world to produce such a work. The first ten years of

his working life were spent in the labour of a pedagogue; the rest of it

in the inexpressibly dry, frivolous, and ungenial routine of a small

Italian court, or in wandering from one to the other of them in the vain

and always disappointed search for such employment. We are told that he

was a punctilious, stiff, unbending, angular man; upright and honourable,

but unforgiving and wont to nurse his enmities. He was soured,

disappointed, discontented with everybody and everything, involved in

litigation first with his father, and then with his own children. And this

was the man who wrote the "Pastor Fido," of all poems comparable to it in

reputation the lightest, the airiest, and the most fantastic! The argument

of it is as follows:

The Arcadians, suffering in various ways from the anger of Diana, were at

last informed by the oracle that the evils which afflicted them would

cease when a youth and a maiden, both descended from the Immortals, as it

should seem the _creme de la creme_ of Arcadian society mostly was, should

be joined together in faithful love. Thereupon Montano, a priest of the

goddess who was descended from Hercules, arranged that his only son Silvio

should be betrothed to Amaryllis, the only daughter of Tytirus, who was

descended from Pan. The arrangement seemed all that could be desired, only

that a difficulty arose from the fact that Silvio, whose sole passion was

the chase, could not be brought to care the least in the world for

Amaryllis. Meantime Mirtillo, the son, as was supposed, of the shepherd

Carino, fell desperately in love with Amaryllis. She was equally attached

to him, but dared not in the smallest degree confess her love, because the

law of Arcadia would have punished with death her infidelity to her

betrothed vows. A certain Corisca, however, who had conceived a violent

but unrequited passion for Mirtillo, perceiving or guessing the love of

Amaryllis for him, hating her accordingly, and hoping that, if she could

be got out of the way, she might win Mirtillo's love, schemes by deceit

and lies to induce Mirtillo and Amaryllis to enter together a cave, which

they do in perfect innocence, and without any thought of harm. Then he

contrives that they should be caught there, and denounced by a satyr; and

Amaryllis is condemned to die. The law, however, permits that her life may

be saved by any Arcadian who will voluntarily die in her stead; and this

Mirtillo determines to do, although he believes that Amaryllis cares

nothing for him, and also is led by the false Corisca to believe that she

had gone into the cave for the purpose of meeting with another lover. The

duty of sacrificing him devolves on Montano the priest; and he is about to

carry out the law, when Carino, who has been seeking his reputed son

Mirtillo, comes in, and while attempting to make out that he is a

foreigner, and therefore not capable of satisfying the law by his death,

brings unwittingly to light circumstances that prove that he is in truth a

son of Montano, and therefore a descendant of the god Hercules. It thus

appears that a marriage between Mirtillo and Amaryllis will exactly

satisfy the conditions demanded by the oracle. There is an under-plot,

which consists in providing a lover and a marriage for the woman-hater

Silvio. He is loved in vain by the nymph Dorinda, whom he unintentionally

wounds with an arrow while out hunting. The pity he feels for her wound

softens his heart towards her, and all parties are made happy by this

second marriage.

Such is a skeleton of the story of the "Pastor Fido." It will be observed

that there is more approach to a plot and to human interest than in any

previous production of this kind, and some of the situations are well

conceived for dramatic effect. And accordingly the success which it

achieved was immediate and immense. Nor, much as the taste of the world

has been changed since that day, has it ever lost its place in the

estimation of cultivated Italians.

It would be wholly uninteresting to attempt any account of the

wide-spreading literary controversies to which the publication of the

"Pastor Fido" gave rise. The author terms it a tragi-comedy; and this

title was violently attacked. The poet himself, as may well be imagined

from the idiosyncrasy of the man, was not slow to reply to his critics,

and did so in two lengthy treatises entitled from the name of a

contemporary celebrated actor, "Verato primo," and "Verato secondo," which

are printed in the four-quarto-volume edition of his works, but which

probably no mortal eye has read for the last two hundred years!

The question of the rivalry between the "Aminta" of Tasso and the "Pastor

Fido" has an element of greater interest in it. It is certain that the

former preceded the latter, and doubtless suggested it. It seems probable

that Ginguene is right in his suggestion, that Guarini, fully conscious

that no hope was open to him of rivalling his greater contemporary and

townsman in epic poetry, strove to surpass him in pastoral. It must be

admitted that he has at least equalled him. Yet, while it is impossible to

deny that almost every page of the "Pastor Fido" indicates not so much

plagiarism as an open and avowed purpose of doing the same thing better,

if possible, than his rival has done it, the very diverse natural

character of the two poets is also, at every page, curiously indicated.

Specially the reader may be recommended to compare the passages in the two

poems where Tasso under the name of Thyrsis, and Guarini under the name of

Carino (Act 5, scene 1), represent the sufferings both underwent at the

court of Alphonso II. The lines of Guarini are perhaps the most vigorous

in their biting satire. But the gentler and nobler nature of Tasso is

unmistakable.

It is strange that the Italian critics, who are for the most part so

lenient to the licentiousness of most of the authors of this period, blame

Guarini for the too great warmth, amounting to indecency, of his poem. The

writer of his life in the French "Biographie Universelle" refers to

certain scenes as highly indecent. I can only say that, on examining the

passages indicated carefully, I could find no indecency at all. It is

probable that the writer referred to had never read the pages in question.

But it is odd that those whose criticism he is no doubt reflecting should

have said so. No doubt there are passages, not those mentioned by the

writer in the "Biographie," but for instance the first scene of the second

act, when a young man in a female disguise is one among a party of girls,

who propose a prize for her who can give to one of them, the judge, the

sweetest kiss, which prize he wins, which might be deemed somewhat on the

sunny side of the hedge that divides the permissible from the

unpermissible. But in comparison with others of that age Guarini is pure

as snow.

It has been said in speaking of the sad story of his daughter Anna, that

she was accused of having given her husband cause for jealousy. It would

seem very clear that there was no ground for any such accusation. But it

was said that the misconduct on her part had been due to the corruption of

her mind by the reading of her father's verses. The utter groundlessness

of such an assertion might be shown in many ways. But the savage and

malignant cruelty of it points with considerable evidence to the sources

of the current talk about the courtier poet's licentiousness.

It is impossible to find room here for a detailed comparison between these

two celebrated pastorals; and it is the less needed inasmuch as Ginguene

has done it very completely and at great length in the twenty-fifth

chapter of the second part of his work.

Guarini also produced a comedy, the "Idropica," which was acted with much

success at the court of Mantua, and is printed among his works, as well as

some prose pieces of small importance, the principal of which is "Il

Secretario," a treatise on the duties of a secretary, not printed among

his works, but of which an edition exists in pot quarto (186 pages)

printed at Venice in 1594. Neither have his letters been printed among his

works. They exist, printed without index or order of any kind, in a volume

of the same size as the "Secretario," printed at Venice also in 1595, but

by a different printer.

The name, however, of Batista Guarini would have long since been

forgotten, had he not written the "Pastor Fido."

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE, in Belgravia.