[537] Lettere, i. 99.
[538] Lettere, vi. 4.
[539] See Lettere, ii. 168, iii. 169, for his method of composing these books.
[540] I have purposely chosen an extract where the style is keen and mobile. Had I taken examples from the Letters, I could have produced a far closer parallel to Lilly's rhetoric.
[541] See the article on Albicante in Mazzuchelli's Scrittori Italiani, vol. i.
[542] For what follows see Tiraboschi, tom. vii. part 3, lib. iii.
[543] These lines have been, without authority, ascribed to Giovio; they may thus be rendered:
|
Here lieth Aretine, in prose and poem Who spake such ill of all the world but Christ, Pleading for this neglect, I do not know him. |
Giovio, we may remember, styled Aretino divino, divinissimo, unichissimo, precellentissimo, in his letters.
[544] Among the many flatteries addressed to Aretino none is more laughable than a letter (Lettere all'Aretino, vol. iii. p. 175) which praises his physical beauty in most extravagant terms: "Most divine Lord Peter; if, among the many and so lovely creatures that swinish Nature sends into this worst of worlds, you alone are of such beauty and incomparable grace that you combine all qualities the human frame can boast of: for the which cause there is no need to wonder that Titian, when he seeks to paint a face that has in it true beauty, uses his skilled brush in only drawing you," etc. etc. The period is too long to finish.