“Let us bear the penalty of our faults rather than the state should expiate them to its injury.
“Content not thyself with being upright, but find others who resemble thee to serve thy country.
“It is by boldness and conquest a kingdom is enlarged, and not by those counsels that seem to the timid full of wisdom and prudence.”
Such were the maxims instilled into Sannazzaro’s youthful mind. They have a flavor of antiquity. The Academy of Naples still exists, but holds its meetings in the cell of St. Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico’s, where royalty itself used to attend the lectures of the Angelic Doctor. In the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples—where Tasso found shelter—there is a striking group of figures in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, gathered in sorrowful attitudes around the dead Christ—all life-size likenesses of celebrities in the time of the artist, Modanin of Modena. Sannazzaro is represented as Joseph of Arimathea; Pontano as Nicodemus; Alfonso II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand beside him.
Sannazzaro has celebrated a young Neapolitan girl in classical measure, under the Greek names of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne, which signify joy, love, and the immortal; but he veiled his passion, if it was one, under mythological allusions. He took as his device an urn of black pebbles, among which was a single white one with the motto, Æquabit nigras candida sola dies, as if in time he hoped to please his lady. But she died young, and he bewailed her in suitable elegies. In spite of this somewhat fantastic attachment—perhaps only a poetic fancy—it is sure Sannazzaro was all his life rather a votary of Diana than of Venus, as became one destined to sing the praises of the Purissima.
Admitted to familiarity with Frederick of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand of Naples, Sannazzaro was appointed director of the royal festivities, and in this capacity composed dramas in the language of the lazzaroni for the amusement of the court. These soon became as popular in the streets as in the palace, and were the germs of the modern Italian comedy, which finds its broadest expression in Pulcinella’s farces at San Carlino. One of these plays is spoken of with particular admiration, composed in 1492 to celebrate the conquest of Granada, and acted at the Castello Capuano in presence of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.
Sannazzaro became so attached to his royal patron that he accompanied him in an expedition against the Turks, where he acquired the reputation of a courageous soldier. And when the prince was deprived of the throne to which he had succeeded, and retired to France, the poet, more faithful in misfortune than Pontano to Frederick I., generously sold two paternal estates to provide for his sovereign’s wants, and accompanied him into exile. It was in the following lines he bade adieu to Naples, which to leave is a kind of death:
“Parthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren,
Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tuæ;
Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis