The Sixteenth Century was remarkable for three poetesses of considerable merit: Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, and Veronica Gambara. Vittoria Colonna was the widow of the Marquis of Pescara, and dedicates many of her verses to his memory. Gaspara Stampa, a native of Padua, was deeply in love with Collatino Collalto, and gave utterance to her passion in numerous Sonnets, some of which rise to considerable beauty and dignity. Veronica Gambara, of Brescia, produced some noble verses, especially the fine Sonnet in which she implores, in the name of Christ, Charles V and Francis I, to put an end to their hostilities.
Although he lived until nearly the end of the century, we may for convenience mention Angelo Di Costanzo in this chapter. He was born in Naples, in 1507, of a wealthy and noble family, but in spite of his wealth he had many sorrows. Don Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy of Naples, banished him from the city of his birth. His first wife died in youth; his second wife caused him much unhappiness by her misconduct; and to complete his misfortunes, he lived to deplore the loss of his two sons. He appealed in vain to be allowed to return to his home. His petitions were rejected, and he died in grief and exile in 1591. Some of his poems are eminently beautiful; his Sonnet on Virgil, "Quella cetra gentil," is justly celebrated. In prose he wrote a history of Naples, frequently reprinted.
On reviewing the poetry of this period, with the brilliant exception of Ariosto, the result is, perhaps, a feeling of disappointment. Certainly, the achievements are not commensurate with the undoubted culture and intellect of the writers. There is nothing (always excepting Ariosto) that has taken hold of the world's attention. How different in this respect are the poets from the painters of the same period! How obscure by the side of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Giorgione, Sebastian del Piombo, Tintoretto, and the whole galaxy sparkling for ever in the heaven of Art! Some powerful minds, such as Vida and Fracastoro, were diverted into the path of Latin poetry; but I think the chief explanation of the inferiority of the poets is their lack of really fine subjects; for how can a poet write nobly if he has no adequate theme for his verse? Their amorous poetry ran too much in the Petrarchan groove; their heroic poetry was too apt to assume the form of ponderous epics, utterly unreadable without the graces of Ariosto. Religious enthusiasm seems to have been remote from their minds. Another generation had to arise before that fire was again kindled on the shrine of Poetry.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
MACHIAVELLI AND THE PROSE WRITERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Niccolò Machiavelli, the profoundest thinker and the keenest politician of his century, was born in Florence on the third of May, 1469. In 1498 he was made Secretary of State of the Florentine Republic. But this dignity was the cause of his subsequent adversity. When the Medici family was restored to power in Florence, he was imprisoned, fined, and even put to the torture. He profited by an amnesty issued by Leo X on his accession, but he was relegated to poverty and obscurity. Impatient of both, he curried favour with the reigning dynasty, but such was the ill-luck that steadily pursued him through life, that no sooner had he acquired a certain degree of favour than the Medici were again expelled from Florence, and he, as one of their adherents, was regarded by the triumphant party with suspicion and hostility. He did not long survive the wreck of all his hopes, dying on the twenty-second of June, 1527.
In his generation, Italy had fallen on evil days. The invasion of Charles VIII of France opened the flood-gates of a deluge of disasters; and the devastations of the King were succeeded by the crushing despotism of the Emperor. The immense wealth, accumulated during centuries of prosperity, was rapidly melting away. The Republic of Venice lost much of her trade owing to the rivalry of Holland and Portugal, and the stream of commerce was directed from the Adriatic by the discovery of the new passage to India round the Cape of Good Hope. The reckless extravagance of Leo X exhausted the Papal Treasury; a great religious schism cut off abundant supplies from distant countries; and the terrible sack of Rome, with the ruinous ransom demanded from Clement VII, completed, in the year of Machiavelli's death, a long series of disasters. Freedom was crushed by native tyrants and foreign oppressors. The present was ghastly with innumerable wounds, the future looked blacker than the grave. What wonder was it, therefore, that men sought refuge from such horrors in every finesse that diplomacy could suggest? This is the true explanation and the one excuse of Machiavelli's tortuous policy. He is utterly unscrupulous, but it is the unscrupulousness of a patriot at bay who has exhausted all other means of self-defence.
Still, it cannot be denied that Machiavelli is anything but a sympathetic figure. We admire the keenness of his intellect as we admire the keenness of a sharp-edged sword; but where is the love of humanity, the enthusiasm for great ideals, the indignation of a noble mind at the iniquities of an evil age? Wonderful is the penetration of his remarks; unrivalled his insight; above praise the clearness and precision of his thoughts. No historian has ever surpassed him in unrolling a panorama of past events. No politician has ever laid down more sagacious rules for attaining an object in view. No statesman has ever discerned with a keener eye the symptoms of the times.