Chiabrera might be somewhat conventional in style and barren in thought: he was all the more a precious antidote to the dissolute lusciousness of a Marini, and his example exercised a salutary influence throughout the whole of the seventeenth century. So late as 1740, Spence, travelling in Italy, was told that the Italian lyrical poets of the day were divisible into Petrarchists and Chiabrerists. The popularity of so bold an innovator, and the honours and distinctions showered upon him by princes and potentates, are creditable to the age. He wrote his brief autobiography at eighty, and died at eighty-five, exulting to the last in his sanity of mind and body; distinguished also, according to Rossi (Nicius Erythræus), as the ugliest of the poets: “Quis enim qui ejus faciem aspexisset, arbitratus esset, ex illius ore subnigro, tetrico, invenusto, tam candidula, tam vinula, tam venustula carmina posse prodere?” A man congenial to Wordsworth, who has translated some of his stately metrical epitaphs with corresponding dignity.[20] He has many traits of those great modern masters of form, Landor and Platen, but, though no mean sculptor of speech, falls as much behind them in perfection of classic mould as he surpasses them in productiveness.
Chiabrera wrote several epics, dramas, poems on sacred history, and other pieces, and the mass of his poetry is of formidable extent; but apart from his Sermoni, felicitous imitations of Horace, he lives solely by his lyrics. These fall into two classes, which he would have described as Pindaric and Anacreontic. The former are set compositions of great pomp and magnificence; not like Marini’s poems, depending upon verbal beauty alone, but upon a real if formal grandeur of style. They are less like the notes of Apollo’s lyre than orchestras of all sorts of instruments, “flute, violin, bassoon,” but more particularly bassoon. They are splendidly sonorous, and exhibit great art in heightening ordinary ideas by magnificent diction. Of the wild, untutored graces of the woods and fields they have absolutely nothing; their sphere is the court, save for the feeling which Chiabrera, as becomes a Ligurian, occasionally manifests for the sea; and the ideas are seldom absolutely novel, though they often seem so. But there is true elevation of thought and majesty of diction: a lyrical afflatus seems to descend upon the poet and whirl him on, sped, in the absence of a really inspiring subject, by his own excitement, as a courser is urged along by the thunder of his own hoofs. Yet there is no factitious emotion, the theme is really for the moment everything to the poet, while he remains sufficiently master of himself to turn every strong point to the best account.
Like the surviving lyrics of his model Pindar, his odes are usually addressed to particular persons or prompted by some event. Among the best are the long series he poured forth on occasion of the trifling victories gained by the Italian galleys over the Turks, which prove how fine a patriotic poet he might have been if his age had given him anything better to celebrate. His Anacreontics precisely correspond to his Pindarics, brilliant effusions with more glitter than glow, but ingenious, felicitous, and transcending mere rhetoric by the exquisite music of the versification. Chiabrera is not an Italian Pindar or Anacreon, and his natural gift for poetry was inferior to Marini’s; but he is entitled to the great honour of having barred out by a strong dike the flood of false taste, and having conferred dignity upon a most unpropitious age of Italian literature.
Chiabrera’s mantle fell upon Count FULVIO TESTI (1593-1646), in some respects a more genuine poet, though his inferior in splendour of language and harmony of versification, and like him infertile in ideas and contracted in his outlook upon the world. Testi was nevertheless an interesting personage, picturesque in the style of Rembrandt or Caravaggio, an unquiet spirit, haughty, moody, vindictive. Under a free government he might have been a great citizen, but the circumstances of his age left him no other sphere than court or diplomatic employment. He was not the man to run easily in harness, and spent his life in losing and regaining the favour of the Este princes, now come down to be Dukes of Modena, but still with places and pensions in their gift, and died in prison, just as, if the Duke may be believed, he was on the point of being released. If so, the cause of his disgrace was probably nothing graver than his wish to quit the Duke’s service. In any case, the tale of his having been secretly decapitated to appease the resentment of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, satirised in his famous canzone, Ruscelletto orgoglioso, seems to be a mere legend.
This canzone is undoubtedly one of the finest lyrics in the Italian language, magnificent alike in its description of the swollen rivulet and in its application to the inflated upstart. The rest of Testi’s better compositions resemble it; they are odes stately in diction and sonorous in versification, fine examples of the grand style in poetry, and proving what dignity of style can effect even without any considerable opulence or striking novelty of thought. They are usually on subjects personal to himself, sometimes depicting the miseries of court life with the feeling that comes from experience, sometimes affecting a philosophical tranquillity to which he was really a stranger. One stands out from the rest, the poem which he addressed in his youth to the Duke of Savoy, exhorting him to deliver Italy from the Spaniards. Testi was not alone in the prophetic foresight that the redemption of Italy would come from Savoy. Campanella, Chiabrera, and others of the best Italians of the day shared it with him, but no other has given it such direct and eloquent expression. The genius of Italy appears in vision to the poet, enumerates her wrongs, denounces her oppressor, and calls for vengeance in a series of most animated octaves, equally impressive and persuasive.
Marini’s school continued to dominate literary circles, although Rossi assures us that Testi’s simplicity was more acceptable to readers at large. “The sun,” says Vernon Lee, “cooled itself in the waters of rivers which were on fire; the celestial sieve, resplendent with shining holes, was swept by the bristly back of the Apennines; love was an infernal heaven and a celestial hell, it was burning ice and freezing fire, and was inspired by ladies made up entirely of coral, gold thread, lilies, roses, and ivory, on whose lips sat Cupids shooting arrows which were snakes.” Poetry worthy of the name seemed extinct after Testi’s death, and the literature of England being then unknown beyond her own borders, the sceptre over every department of intellectual activity except science passed into the hand of France. After a while, however, signs of revival became apparent. The writers who restored to Italy some share of her ancient glory were all strongly influenced by Chiabrera.
The first of these in order of time was a man who would have been famous if he had never written a verse, FRANCESCO REDI (1626-99), the illustrious physician and naturalist. One would scarcely have expected this eager scrutiniser of nature to have come forward as a Bacchanalian laureate; but certain it is that, neglecting the more imposing side of Chiabrera’s poetical work, Redi applied himself to develop the dithyramb in its strict sense of a Bacchic song. Chiabrera had given excellent examples of this on a small scale; but Redi completely distanced him with his Bacchus in Tuscany, where the jolly god, returned from his Indian conquest, for the benefit of Ariadne passes in review literally and figuratively all the wines of Tuscany, with such consequences as is reasonable to expect. The literary character of the piece cannot be better described than by Salfi, the continuator of Ginguené, as “consisting in the enthusiasm which passes rapidly from one theme to another, and, seeming to say nothing but what it chooses, says, in effect, nothing but what it should.” Dryden evidently had it in mind when he wrote Alexander’s Feast, and the difficulties of translation have been surprisingly overcome by Leigh Hunt. Redi’s sonnets are also remarkable, occasionally tame in subject or disfigured by conceits, but in general nobly thought and nobly expressed, with a strong Platonic element. They nearly all relate to Love, and fall into two well-marked divisions, one upbraiding him as the source of perpetual torment, the other celebrating him as the symbol of Divinity, and the chief agent by which man is raised above himself. The latter thought has seldom been more finely expressed than in the following pair of sonnets, the first of which is translated by Mr. Gosse:
Love is the Minstrel; for in God’s own sight,
The master of all melody, he stands,
And holds a golden rebeck in his hands,
And leads the chorus of the saints in light;
But ever and anon those chambers bright
Detain him not, for down to these low lands
He flies, and spreads his musical commands,
And teaches men some fresh divine delight.
For with his bow he strikes a single chord
Across a soul, and wakes in it desire
To grow more pure and lovely, and aspire
To that ethereal country where, outpoured
From myriad stars that stand before the Lord,
Love’s harmonies are like a flame of fire.
If I am aught, it is Love’s miracle,
He to rough mass gave shape with forming file;
He, as youth bloomed in April’s sunny smile,
Came through the eyes within the heart to dwell.
My Lord and Master he, who bade expel
All sordid thought and apprehension vile,
Sweetness bestowed on rude unmellowed style,
And melody that shall be memorable.
My spirit at his call her pinions bent
To wing the heavenly realm where Time is not;
From star to star he beckoned, and she went:
By him my heart hath chosen for her lot
True honour whose renown shall ne’er be spent;
If aught my soul hath borne, ’twas he begot.
Poets are often found to be gregarious. Redi had two chief friends at the Tuscan court—Menzini, of whom we shall have to speak, and Filicaja, who in an unpoetical age raised the Italian lyric to as great a height as it had ever attained in the Cinque Cento. VINCENZO FILICAJA (1642-1707) is one of the highest examples the world has seen of the academical poet, the man who is rarely hurried away by the god, but who seriously and perseveringly follows poetry as an art, in whose breast the sacred fire is always burning, but always needing to be stirred up. A grave, just magistrate, and a deeply religious man, he was well constituted to sing events of such importance to the Christian commonwealth as the deliverance of Vienna by Sobieski, and, from his point of view, the conversion of Queen Christina. Tender, affectionate, and carrying with him the life-long wound of an unfortunate passion, he was no less qualified to be the laureate of domestic sorrow, while his elevation of mind lent uncommon dignity to many of his occasional pieces, especially his sonnets. If only his scrolls smelt less of the lamp he might deserve Macaulay’s exaggerated praise as the greatest lyrist of modern times, supposing this expression to denote the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.