Soon after 1600 it became manifest that lapse of years and ecclesiastical intolerance had rendered Italy nearly destitute of great men. Her famous sons were all either dead, murdered or exiled; reduced to silence by the scythe of time or by the Roman 'arguments of sword and halter.' Bruno burned, Vanini burned, Carnesecchi burned, Paleario burned, Bonfadio burned; Campanella banished, after a quarter of a century's imprisonment with torture; the leaders of free religious thought in exile, scattered over northern Europe. Tasso, worn out with misery and madness, rested at length in his tomb on the Janiculan; Sarpi survived the stylus of the Roman Curia with calm inscrutability at S. Fosca; Galileo meditated with closed lips in his watch-tower behind Bello Sguardo. With Michelangelo in 1564, Palladio in 1580, Tintoretto in 1594, the godlike lineage of the Renaissance artists ended; and what children of the sixteenth century still survived to sustain the nation's prestige, to carry on its glorious traditions? The list is but a poor one. Marino, Tassoni, the younger Buonarroti, Boccalini and Chiabrera in literature. The Bolognese Academy in painting. After these men expand arid wildernesses of the Sei Cento—barocco architecture, false taste, frivolity, grimace, affectation—Jesuitry translated into culture. On one bright point, indeed, the eye rests with hope and comfort. Palestrina, when he died in 1594, did not close but opened an age for music. His posterity, those composers, lutists, violists and singers, from whom the modern art of arts has drawn her being, down to the sweet fellowship of Pergolese, Marcello and Jomelli, of Guarneri, Amati and Stradivari, of Farinelli, Caffarielli and La Romanina, were as yet but rising dimly heralded with light of dawn upon their foreheads.
In making the transition from the Gerusalemme to the Adone, from the last great poem of the Cinque Cento to the epic of the Sei Cento, it is indispensable that notice should be taken of the Pastor Fido and its author. Giambattista Guarini forms a link between Vasso and the poets of the seventeenth century. He belonged less to the Renaissance, more to the culture of the age created by the Council of Trent, than did Tasso. His life, in many of its details similar, in others most dissimilar, to that of Tasso, illustrates and helps us in some measure to explain the latter. It must therefore form the subject of a somewhat detailed study.
Guarini drew his blood on the paternal side from the illustrious humanist Guarino of Verona, who settled at Ferrara in the fifteenth century as tutor to Leonello d'Este.[176] By his mother he claimed descent from the Florentine house of Machiavelli. Born in 1537, he was seven years older than Torquato Tasso, whom he survived eighteen years, not closing his long life until 1612. He received a solid education both at Pisa and Padua, and was called at the early age of eighteen to profess moral philosophy in the University of Ferrara. Being of noble birth and inheriting a considerable patrimony, Guarini might have enjoyed a life of uninterrupted literary leisure, if he had chosen to forego empty honors and shun the idle distractions of Courts. But it was the fate of distinguished men in that age to plunge into those quicksands. Guarini had a character and intellect suited to the conduct of state affairs; and he shared the delusion prevalent among his contemporaries, that the petty Italian principalities could offer a field for the exercise of these talents. 'If our country is reduced to the sole government of a prince,' he writes, 'the man who serves his prince will serve his country, a duty both natural and binding upon all.'[177] Accordingly, soon after his marriage to Taddea of the noble Bendedei family, he entered the service of Alfonso II. This was in 1567. Tasso, in his quality of gentleman to Cardinal d'Este, had already shed lustre on Ferrara through the past two years. Guarini first made Tasso's friendship at Padua, where both were Eterei and house-guests of Scipione Gonzaga. The two poets now came together in a rivalry which was not altogether amicable. The genius of Tasso, in the prime of youth and heyday of Court-favor, roused Guarini's jealousy. And yet their positions were so different that Guarini might have been well satisfied to pursue his own course without envy. A married and elder man, he had no right to compete in gallantry with the brilliant young bachelor. Destined for diplomacy and affairs of state, he had no cause to grudge the Court poet his laurels. Writing in 1595, Guarini avers that 'poetry has been my pastime, never my profession'; and yet he made it his business at Ferrara to rival Tasso both as a lyrist and as a servant of dames. Like Tasso, he suffered from the spite of Alfonso's secretaries, Pigna and Montecatino, who seem to have incarnated the malevolence of courtiers in its basest form. So far, there was a close parallel between the careers of the two men at Ferrara.
But Guarini's wealth and avowed objects in life caused the duke from the first to employ him in a different kind of service. Alfonso sent him as ambassador to Venice, Rome, and Turin, giving him the rank of Cavaliere in order that he might perform his missions with more dignity. At Turin, where he resided for some time, Guarini conceived a just opinion of the growing importance of the House of Savoy. Like all the finest spirits of his age, Tassoni, Sarpi, Chiabrera, Marino, Testi, he became convinced that if Italy were to recover her independence, it could only be by the opposition of the Dukes of Savoy to Spain. How nearly the hopes of these men were being realized by Carlo Emmanuele, and how those hopes were frustrated by Roman intrigues and the jealousy of Italian despots, is matter of history. Yet the student may observe with interest that the most penetrating minds of the sixteenth century already discerned the power by means of which, after the lapse of nearly three hundred years, the emancipation of Italy has been achieved.
In 1574 Guarini was sent to Poland, to congratulate Henri III. upon his election to that monarchy. He went a second time in the following year to conduct more delicate negotiations. The crown of Poland was now thrown open to candidature; and more than one of the Italian Princes thought seriously of competing for this honor. The Grand Duke of Tuscany entertained the notion and abandoned it. But Alfonso II. of Ferrara, who had fought with honor in his youth in Hungary, made it a serious object of ambition. Manolesso, the Venetian envoy in 1575 at Ferrara, relates how the duke spent laborious hours in acquiring the German language, 'which no one learns for pleasure, since it is most barbarous, nor quickly, but with industry and large expenditure of time.' He also writes: 'The duke aspires to greatness, nor is satisfied with his present State; and therefore he has entered into the Polish affair, encouraged thereto by his brother the Cardinal and by his ambassador in Poland.'[178]
These embassies were a serious drain upon Guarini's resources; for it appears certain that if he received any appointments, they were inadequate to the expenses of long journeys and the maintenance of a becoming state. He therefore returned to Ferrara, considerably burdened with debts; and this was just the time at which Tasso's mental derangement began to manifest itself. Between 1575 and 1579, the date of Tasso's imprisonment at Sant' Anna, the two men lived together at the Court. Guarini's rivalry induced him at this period to cultivate poetry with such success that, when the author of the Gerusalemme failed, Alfonso commanded him to take the vacant place of Court poet. There is an interesting letter extant from Guarini to his friend Cornelio Bentivoglio, describing the efforts he made to comply with the Duke's pleasure. 'I strove to transform myself into another man, and, like a play actor, to reassume the character, manners and emotions of a past period. Mature in age, I forced myself to appear young; exchanged my melancholy for gayety: affected loves I did not feel; turned my wisdom into folly, and, in a word, passed from philosopher to poet.'[179] How ill-adapted he was to this masquerade existence may be gathered from another sentence in the same letter. 'I am already in my forty-fourth year, burdened with debts, the father of eight children, two of my sons old enough to be my judges, and with my daughters to marry.'
At last, abandoning this uncongenial strain upon his faculties, Guarini retired in 1582 to the villa which he had built upon his ancestral estate in the Polesine, that delightful rustic region between Adige and Po. Here he gave himself up to the cares of his family, the nursing of his dilapidated fortune, and the composition of the Pastor Fido. It is not yet the time to speak of that work, upon which Guarini's fame as poet rests; for the drama, though suggested by Tasso's Aminta, was not finally perfected until 1602.[180] Yet we may pause to remark upon the circumstances under which he wrote it. A disappointed courtier, past the prime of manhood, feeling his true vocation to be for severe studies and practical affairs, he yet devoted years of leisure to the slow elaboration of a dramatic masterpiece which is worthy to rank with the classics of Italian literature. During this period his domestic lot was not a happy one. He lost his wife, quarreled with his elder sons, and involved himself in a series of lawsuits.[181] Litigation seems to have been an inveterate vice of his maturity, and he bequeathed to his descendants a coil of legal troubles. Having married one of his daughters, Anna, to Count Ercole Trotti, he had the misery of hearing in 1596 that she had fallen an innocent victim to her husband's jealousy, and that his third son, Girolamo connived at her assassination. In the midst of these annoyances and sorrows, he maintained a grave and robust attitude, uttering none of those querulous lamentations which flowed so readily from Tasso's pen.
Tasso had used the Pastoral Drama to idealize Courts. Guarini vented all the bitterness of his soul against them in his Pastor Fido. He also wrote from his retirement: 'I am at ease in the enjoyment of liberty, studies, the management of my household.'[182] Yet in 1585, while on a visit to Turin, he again accepted proposals from Alfonso. He had gone there in order to superintend the first representation of his Pastoral, which was dedicated to the Duke of Savoy. Extremely averse to his old servants taking office under other princes, the Duke of Ferrara seems to have feared lest Guarini should pass into the Court of Carlo Emmanuele. He therefore appointed him Secretary of State; and Guarini entered upon the post in the same year that Tasso issued from his prison. This reconciliation did not last long. Alfonso took the side of Alessandro Guarini in a lawsuit with his father; and the irritable poet retired in indignation to Florence. The Duke of Ferrara, however, was determined that he should not serve another master. At Florence, Turin, Mantua and Rome, his attempts to obtain firm foothold in offices of trust were invariably frustrated; and Coccapani, the Duke's envoy, hinted that if Guarini were not circumspect, 'he might suffer the same fate as Tasso.' To shut Guarini up in a madhouse would have been difficult. Still he might easily have been dispatched by the poniard; and these words throw not insignificant light upon Tasso's terror of assassination.
The Duke Alfonso died in 1597, and Ferrara reverted to the Holy See. Upon this occasion, Guarini was free to follow his own inclinations. He therefore established himself at the Court of the Grand Duke, into whose confidence he entered upon terms of flattering familiarity. Ferdinando de'Medici 'fell in love with him as a man may with a fine woman,' says his son Alessandro in one of his apologetic writings. This, however, meant but little; for compliments passed freely between princes and their courtiers; which, when affairs of purse or honor were at stake, soon turned to discontent and hatred. So it fared with Guarini at Florence. His son, Guarino, made a marriage of which he disapproved, but which the Grand Duke countenanced. So slight a disagreement snapped the ties of friendship, and the restless poet removed to the Court of Urbino. There the last duke of the House of Rovere, Francesco Maria II., Tasso's schoolfellow and patron, was spending his widowed years in gloomy Spanish pride. The mortmain of the Church was soon to fall upon Urbino, as it had already fallen on Ferrara. Guarini wrote: 'The former Court in Italy is a dead thing. One may see the shadow, but not the substance of it nowadays. Ours is an age of appearances, and one goes a-masquerading all the year.' A sad but sincere epitaph, inscribed by one who had gone the round of all the Courts of Italy, and had survived the grand free life of the Renaissance.
These words close Guarini's career as courtier. He returned to Ferrara in 1604, and in 1605 carried the compliments of that now Pontifical city to Paul V. in Rome on his election to the Papacy. Upon this occasion Cardinal Bellarmino told him that he had inflicted as much harm on Christendom by his Pastor Fido as Luther and Calvin by their heresies. He retorted with a sarcasm which has not been transmitted to us, but which may probably have reflected on the pollution of Christian morals by the Jesuits. In 1612 Guarini died at Venice, whither he was summoned by one of his innumerable and interminable lawsuits.