[1145] This will be found in the Componimenti Lirici of Mathias; a collection good on the whole, yet not perhaps the best that might have been made; nor had the editor at that time so extensive an acquaintance with Italian poetry as he afterwards acquired. Crescimbeni reckons Celio the last of the good age in poetry; he died in 1612. He praises also Scipio Gaetano (not the painter of that name) whose poems were published, but posthumously, in the same year.
[1146] Della Volgar Poesia, ii. 436.
[1147] Roscoe republished La Balia, which was very little worth while; the following is an average specimen:—
Questo degenerar, ch’ognor si vede,
Sendo voi caste, donne mie, vi dico,
Che d’altro che dal latte non precede.
L’altrui latte oscurar fa’l pregio antico
Degli avi illustri e adulterar le razze,
E s’infetta talor sangue pudico.
Coldness of the amatory sonnets. 7. The amatory sonnets of this age, forming the greater number, are very frequently cold and affected. This might possibly be ascribed in some measure to the state of manners in Italy, where, with abundant licentiousness, there was still much of jealousy, and public sentiment applauded alike the successful lover and the vindictive husband. A respect for the honour of families, if not for virtue, would impose on the poet who felt or assumed a passion for any distinguished lady, the conditions of Tasso’s Olindo, to desire much, to hope for little, and to ask nothing. It is also at least very doubtful, whether much of the amorous sorrow of the sonnetteers were not purely ideal.
Studied imitation of Petrarch. 8. Lines and phrases from Petrarch are as studiously introduced as we find those of classical writers in modern Latin poetry. It cannot be said that this is unpleasing; and to the Italians, who knew every passage of their favourite poet, it must have seemed at once a grateful homage of respect, and an ingenious artifice to bespeak attention. They might well look up to him as their master, but could not hope that even a foreigner would ever mistake the hand through a single sonnet. He is to his disciples, especially those towards the latter part of the century, as Guido is to Franceschini or Elisabetta Serena; an effeminate and mannered touch enfeebles the beauty which still lingers round the pencil of the imitator. If they produce any effect upon us beyond sweetness of sound and delicacy of expression, it is from some natural feeling, some real sorrow, or from some occasional originality of thought, in which they cease for a moment to pace the banks of their favourite Sorga. It would be easy to point out not a few sonnets of this higher character, among those especially of Francesco Coppetta, of Claudio Tolomei, of Ludovico Paterno, or of Bernardo Tasso.
Their fondness for description. 9. A school of poets, that has little vigour of sentiment, falls readily into description, as painters of history or portrait that want expression of character endeavour to please by their landscape. The Italians, especially in this part of the sixteenth century, are profuse in the song of birds, the murmur of waters, the shade of woods; and, as these images are always delightful, they shed a charm over much of their poetry, which only the critical reader, who knows its secret, is apt to resist, and that to his own loss of gratification. The pastoral character, which it became customary to assume, gives much opportunity for these secondary, yet very seducing beauties of style. They belong to the decline of the art, and have something of the voluptuous charm of evening. Unfortunately they generally presage a dull twilight, or a thick darkness of creative poetry. The Greeks had much of this in the Ptolemaic age, and again in that of the first Byzantine emperors. It is conspicuous in Tansillo, Paterno, and both the Tassos.
Judgment of Italian critics. 10. The Italian critics, Crescimbeni, Muratori, and Quadrio, have given minute attention to the beauties of particular sonnets culled from the vast stores of the sixteenth century. But as the development of the thought, the management of the four constituent clauses of the sonnet, especially the last, the propriety of every line, for nothing digressive or merely ornamental should be admitted, constitute in their eyes the chief merit of these short compositions, they extol some which in our eyes are not so pleasing, as what a less regular taste might select. Without presuming to rely on my own judgment, defective both as that of a foreigner, and of one not so extensively acquainted with the minor poetry of this age, I will mention two writers, well-known indeed, but less prominent in the critical treatises than some others, as possessing a more natural sensibility and a greater truth of sorrow than most of their contemporaries, Bernardino Rota and Gaspara Stampa.
Bernardino Rota. 11. Bernardino Rota, a Neapolitan of ancient lineage and considerable wealth, left poems in Latin as well as Italian; and among the latter his eclogues are highly praised by his editor. But he is chiefly known by a series of sonnets intermixed with canzoni, upon a single subject, Portia Capece, his wife, whom, “what is unusual among our Tuscan poets (says his editor), he loved with an exclusive affection.” But be it understood, lest the reader should be discouraged, that the poetry addressed to Portia Capece is all written before their marriage, or after her death. The earlier division of the series, “Rime in Vita” seems not to rise much above the level of amorous poetry. He wooed, was delayed; complained, and won—the natural history of an equal and reasonable love. Sixteen years intervened of that tranquil bliss which contents the heart without moving it, and seldom affords much to the poet in which the reader can find interest. Her death in 1559 gave rise to poetical sorrows, as real and certainly full as rational as those of Petrarch, to whom some of his contemporaries gave him the second place; rather probably from the similarity of their subject, than from the graces of his language. Rota is by no means free from conceits, and uses sometimes affected and unpleasing expressions, as mia dolce guerra, speaking of his wife, even after her death; but his images are often striking;[1148] and, above all, he resembles Petrarch, with whatever inferiority, in combining the ideality of a poetical mind with the naturalness of real grief. It has never again been given to man, nor will it probably be given, to dip his pen in those streams of ethereal purity which have made the name of Laura immortal; but a sonnet of Rota may be not disadvantageously compared with one of Milton, which we justly admire for its general feeling, though it begins in pedantry and ends in conceit.[1149] For my own part, I would much rather read again the collection of Rota’s sonnets than those of Costanzo.
[1148] Muratori blames a line of Rota as too bold, and containing a false thought.