ARETINO.—Aretino was a satirist and a poet so fundamentally licentious that he has remained the type of infamous author. He wrote comedies (The Courtesan, The Marshal, The Philosopher, The Hypocrite), intimate letters that are extremely interesting for the study of the customs of his day, religious and edifying books, replete with talent if not with sincerity, as well as an innumerable mass of satires, pamphlets, statements, diatribes which caused all the princes of his day to tremble, and through making them tremble also brought gold into the coffers of Aretino; he had raised blackmail to the height of a literary department.
BEMBO; BALDI.—Cardinal Bembo, a devout Ciceronian to the verge of fanaticism, wrote more especially in Latin, but left Italian poems of much elegance and charm; he ranks among the most brilliant representatives of the Italian Renaissance.
Baldi, a very widely versed scholar, sought relaxation from his erudition in writing eclogues, moral poems, and a very curious didactic poem on navigation.
TANSILLO; DOLCE.—Tansillo, a very fertile poet, composed a rather licentious poem entitled The Vintager, and a religious poem called The Tears of St. Peter (which the younger Malherbe thought so beautiful that he partially translated it), The Rustic Prophet and The Nurse, wherein he showed himself the pupil of Tasso, comedies, a bucolic drama, etc.
Dolce, not less prolific, produced five epic poems of which the best is The Childhood of Orlando, many comedies, for the most part imitations of Plautus, tragedies after Euripides and Seneca, and then one which seems to have been original and was the celebrated Mariamna, so often imitated in French. He was also an indefatigable translator of Horace, Cicero, Philostrates, etc.
BENVENUTO CELLINI.—The great sculptor and chaser, Benvenuto Cellini, belongs to literary history because of his Treatise on Goldsmithing and Sculpture and his admirable Memoirs, which are certainly in part fictitious, but are a literary work of the foremost rank.
HANNIBAL CARO; GUARINI.—Hannibal Caro, by his poems, his letters, his literary criticism, his comedy, The Beggars, and his metrical translation of the Aeneid, acquired high rank in the judgment both of Italy and Europe.
Guarini, the friend of Tasso, whom he helped in the labour of revising and correcting Jerusalem Delivered, was unquestionably his pupil. Tasso having written a bucolic poem, Aminta, Guarini wrote a bucolic poem, The Faithful Shepherd, which has been one of the greatest literary successes ever known. It was a kind of irregular drama mingled with songs and dances, highly varied, poetic, pathetic sometimes in a rather insipid way. All the pastorals, whether French or Italian, and later the opera itself, can be traced to Guarini, or at least the taste for the eclogue may be derived from the dramas Guarini originated. This was a man whose influence has been considerable not only on literature, but also on manners, customs, and morals.
DECADENCE OF LITERATURE.—In the seventeenth century Italian literature indisputably was in decadence. In verse more especially, but also in prose, it was the period of ability without depth and even without foundation, of elegant and affected verbiage or burlesque lacking alike in power, thought, and passion. Marini loomed large with his Adonis, an ingenious mythological epic, sometimes brilliant but also lame, sometimes full of points, but also with trifles. Great as was his reputation in Italy, it was perhaps surpassed in France, where he was welcomed and flattered by Marie de' Medici and hyperbolically praised by Voiture, Balzac, Scudéry, etc.
SALVATOR ROSA; TASSONI; MAFFEI.—The great painter Salvator Rosa devoted himself hardly less to literature; he left lyrical poems and particularly satires which are far from lacking spirit, though often destitute of taste. Satiric, too, was the paradoxical Tassoni, who scoffed at Petrarch, and who in his Thoughts, long prior to J.J. Rousseau, was the first, perhaps (but who knows?), to maintain that literature is highly prejudicial to society and humanity, and who achieved fame by his Rape of the Bucket: that is, by a burlesque poem on the quarrel between the Bolognese and the inhabitants of Modena about a bucket.