Another writer, less orthodox, but more celebrated, was Giordano Bruno. His works, however, although published on the threshold of the Seventeenth Century, were conceived and written in the Sixteenth. He was burnt alive for his heresies in the year 1601. For some years he took refuge in England, and it would have been well for his prosperity had he stayed there. In these days of greater latitude of speculation, there appears to be little in his works to bring down upon him so terrible a penalty, but the provocation hardly given by the works, seems to have been afforded by the author. He was irritable and vainglorious, and he knew neither prudence nor discretion. His great treatise, Della Causa, Principio ed Uno, is an exposition of Pantheism, but his vague reveries have little foundation in science to recommend them. He also wrote a Comedy, rather more indelicate than should emanate from the pen of a philosopher.
Campanella, a somewhat kindred spirit, though without the latent Atheism of Giordano Bruno, was a Dominican Friar, a native of Cosenza. He was suspected of disaffection, perhaps of heresy, and was cooped up for twenty-seven years in a narrow dungeon. He beguiled his weary captivity by writing long philosophical works. They are, however, all in Latin,[1] and therefore do not come within the scope of this volume. I mention them as a sign of the revival of the long dormant spirit of science and speculation. Campanella wrote in defence of Galileo's theory of the rotation of the earth round the sun. Campanella obtained his liberty in 1629 and retired to France, where he met with some kindness from Cardinal Richelieu.
The first Edition of the celebrated Dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca was published in 1613. It is curious that with the universal attention it aroused, it did not raise the standard of taste and scholarship, for truth to tell, the average run of inferior writers produced works incredibly bad.
There was a dearth of really good writers of stories in prose in the Seventeenth Century. The Stories of Celio Malaspini are racy and amusing, and give a graphic idea of the manners and customs of the early part of the Century, but they are often indelicate and have few graces of style to recommend them. Trajano Boccalini wrote some vivacious political and literary squibs which had a wide circulation in an age long before the introduction of newspapers, where alone writings on such ephemeral topics now appear.
Florence could boast of a select band of philosophers, Magalotti, Viviani, Redi and Dati, but their influence does not seem to have extended beyond Tuscany. Auton Maria Salvini was a laborious grammarian and one of the chief compilers of the Dictionary above named.
Probably the most eminent man of letters of the last ten years of the Seventeenth Century was Crescimbeni, the historian of Italian poetry, and the founder of the Arcadian Academy, still flourishing in Rome. He was a writer of great talent and judgment, and he was more alive than his contemporaries to the evils resulting from the exaggerated metaphors and wild hyperboles introduced by the followers of Marino. He looked out for a perfect model of poetry, and he found it in the works of Angelo di Costanzo, and certainly that writer's equable sweetness and refinement are unruffled by tempestuous passion or towering sublimity. Crescimbeni might, we think, with greater propriety have selected Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto to reform the degraded taste of the age; but still, the beauties of Costanzo are of a high order, and the recommendation bore good fruit.
If it cannot be said of any writer of the Seventeenth Century that he rises to the highest pinnacle of Art, yet, on a review of the whole period, there remains an impression of much ingenuity and much vigour of thought.
[1] His poems, chiefly Sonnets, are in Italian.