The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature / All volumes

by Various

But this second attempt to submit himself to the service, to the caprices and exigencies of a master and of a court ended in a quicker and more damaging catastrophe than the first. In a diary kept by the poet's nephew, Marcantonio Guarini, under the date of July 13, 1587, we find it written that "the Cavalier Batista Guarini, Secretary of the Duke, considering that his services did not meet with sufficient consideration in proportion to his worth, released himself from that servitude." The phrase here translated "released himself" is a peculiar one—si licenzio—"dismissed himself." To receive licenza, or to be licenziato, is to be dismissed, or at least parted with in accordance with the will of the employer. But the phrase used by the diarist seems intended to express exactly what happened when the poet, once more discontented, took himself off from Ferrara and its Duke. He seems to have done so in a manner which gave deep and lasting offence. In a subsequent passage of the above-quoted diary we read, "the Cavaliere Batista Guarini having absented himself from Ferrara, disgusted with the Duke, betook himself to Florence, and then, by the intermedium of Guido Coccapani the agent, asked for his dismissal in form and obtained it." We happen, however, to have a letter written by this Coccapani, who seems to have been the Duke's private secretary and managing man, in which he gives his version of the matter. He was "stupefied," he says, "when he received the extravagant letter of the Cavaliere Guarini, and began to think that it would be with him as it had been with Tasso," who by that time had fallen into disgrace. There is reason to think that he left Ferrara secretly, without taking leave of the Duke, or letting anybody at court know where he had gone. He did, however, obtain his formal dismissal, as has been said, but the Duke by no means forgave him.

Though it would appear that on leaving Ferrara in this irregular manner he went in the first instance to Florence, it seems that he had had hopes given him of a comfortable position and honourable provision at Turin. He was to have been made a Counsellor of State, and entrusted with the task of remodelling the course of study at the university, with a stipend of six hundred crowns annually. But on arriving at Turin he found difficulties in the way. In fact, the angry Duke of Ferrara had used his influence with the Duke of Savoy to prevent anything being done for his contumacious Secretary of State. Guarini, extremely mortified, had to leave Turin, and betook himself to Venice.

His adventure, however, was of a nature to cause great scandal in that clime and time. As usual, the Italians were offended at the "imprudence" of which Guarini's temper had led him to be guilty, more than they would have been by many a fault which among ourselves would be deemed a very much worse one. A violence of temper or indignation shown in such a manner as to injure one's own interests is, and in a yet greater degree was, a spectacle extremely disgusting to Italian moral sentiment.

The outcry against Guarini on this occasion was so great that he found himself obliged to put forth an exculpatory statement.

"If human actions, my most kind readers," he begins, "always bore marked on the front of them the aims and motives which have produced them, or if those who talk about them were always well informed enough to be able to judge of them without injury to the persons of whom they speak, I should not be compelled, at my age, and after so many years of a life led in the eyes of the world, and often busied in defending the honour of others, to defend this day my own, which has always been dearer to me than my life. Having heard, then, that my having left the service of His Serene Highness the Duke of Ferrara and entered that of the Duke of Savoy has given occasion to some persons, ignorant probably of the real state of the case, to make various remarks, and form various opinions, I have determined to publish the truth, and at the same time to declare my own sentiments in the matter.

"I declare, then, that previously to my said departure I consigned to the proper person everything, small as it was, which was in my hands regarding my office, which had always been exercised by me uprightly and without any other object in view than the service of my sovereign and the public welfare. Further, that I, by a written paper under my own hand (as the press of time and my need rendered necessary), requested a free and decorous dismissal from the Duke in question, and also, that I set forth in all humility the causes which led me to that determination; and I added (some of the circumstances in which I was compelling me to do so) that if His Serene Highness did not please to give me any other answer, I would take his silence as a consent to my request of dismissal. I declare further that the paper was delivered to the principal Minister of his Serene Highness, and lastly, that my salary was, without any further communication with me, stopped, and cancelled from the roll of payments. And as this is the truth, so it is equally true that my appointment as reformer of the University of Turin, and Counsellor of State with six hundred crowns yearly, was settled and concluded with His Serene Highness the Duke of Savoy, and that I declined to bind myself, and did not bind myself, to ask any other dismissal from His Serene Highness the Duke of Ferrara than that which I have already spoken. And, finally, it is true that, as I should not have gone to Turin if I had not been engaged for that service and invited thither, so I should not have left, or wished to leave this place,[55] had I not known that I received my dismissal in the manner above related. Now, as to the cause which may have retarded and may still retard the fulfillment of the engagement above mentioned, I have neither object, nor obligation, nor need to declare it. Suffice it that it is not retarded by any fault of mine, or difficulty on my side. In justification of which I offered myself, and by these presents now again offer myself, to present myself wheresoever, whensoever, and in whatsoever manner, and under whatsoever conditions and penalties, as may be seen more clearly set forth in the instrument of agreement sent by me to His Highness. From all which, I would have the world to know, while these affairs of mine are still in suspension, that I am a man of honour, and am always ready to maintain the same in whatsoever manner may be fitting to my condition and duty. And as I do not at all doubt that some decision of some kind not unworthy of so just and so magnanimous a prince will be forthcoming; so, let it be what it may, it will be received by me with composure and contentment; since, by God's grace, and that of the serene and exalted power under the most just and happy dominion of which I am now living, and whose subject, if not by birth, yet by origin and family, I am,[56] I have a comfortable and honoured existence. And may you, my honoured readers, live in happiness and contentment. Venice, February 1, 1589."

We must, I think, nevertheless be permitted to doubt the contentment and happiness of the life he led, as it should seem, for the next four years, at Venice. No such decision of any kind, as he hoped from the Duke of Savoy, was forthcoming. He was shunted! He had quarrelled with his own sovereign, and evidently the other would have none of him. The Italians of one city were in those days to a wonderful degree foreigners in another ruled by a different government; and there can be little doubt that Guarini wandered among the quays and "calle" of Venice, or paced the great piazza at the evening hour, a moody and discontented man!

At last, after nearly four years of this sad life, there came an invitation from the Duke of Mantua proposing that Guarini should come to Mantua together with his son Alessandro, to occupy honourable positions in that court. The poet, heartily sick of "retirement," accepted at once, and went to Mantua. But there, too, another disappointment awaited him. The "magnanimous" Duke Alphonso would not tolerate that the man who had so cavalierly left his service should find employment elsewhere. It is probable that this position was obtained for him by the influence of his old friend and fellow-member of the "Etherials" at Padua, Scipione Gonzaga; and it would seem that he occupied it for a while, and went on behalf of the Duke of Mantua to Innspruck, whence he wrote the wonderful letters which have been quoted.

The Cardinal's influence, however, was not strong enough to prevail against the spite of a neighbouring sovereign. There are two letters extant from the Duke, or his private secretary, to that same Coccapani whom we saw so scandalized at Guarini's hurried and informal departure from Ferrara, and who was residing as Alphonso's representative at Mantua, in which the Minister is instructed to represent to the Duke of Mantua that his brother of Ferrara "did not think it well that the former should take any of the Guarini family into his service, and when they should see each other he would tell him his reasons. For the present he would only say that he wished the Duke to know that it would be excessively pleasing to him if the Duke would have nothing to say to any of them."

This was in 1593; and the world-weary poet found himself at fifty-six once again cast adrift upon the world. The extremity of his disgust and weariness of all things may be measured by the nature of the next step he took. He conceived, says his biographer Barotti, that "God called him by internal voices, and by promise of a more tranquil life, to accept the tonsure." His wife had died some little time before; and it was therefore open to him to do so. He went to Rome accordingly for the purpose of there taking orders. But during the short delay which intervened between the manifestation of his purpose and the fulfilment of it, news reached him that his friend and protectress the Duchess of Urbino, Alphonso's sister, had interceded for him with the Duke, and that he was forgiven! It was open to him to return to his former employment! And no sooner did the news reach him than he perceived that "the internal voices" were altogether a mistake. God had never called him at all, and Alphonso had! All thoughts of the Church were abandoned on the instant, and he hastened to Ferrara, arriving there on the 15th of April, 1595.