It was not, however, during this his last residence here that the "Pastor Fido" was written, but long previously. It was doubtless his habit to escape from the cares of official life in Ferrara from time to time as he could; and it must have been in such moments that the celebrated pastoral was written.[59]
The idea of a scholar and a poet, full of years and honours, passing the quiet evening of his life in a tranquil retirement in his own house on his own land, is a pleasing one. But it is to be feared that in the case of the author of the "Pastor Fido" it would be a fallacious one. Guarini would not have come to live on his estate if he could have lived contentedly in any city. We may picture him to ourselves sitting under his fig-tree, or pacing at evening under the trees of the straight avenue between his house and the village, or on the banks of one of the sluggish streams slowly finding their way through the flat fields towards the Po; but I am afraid the picture must be of one "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," with eyes bent earthwards, and discontented mind: "remote," because to the Italian mind all places beyond the easy reach of a city are so; "unfriended," because he had quarrelled with everybody; "melancholy," because all had gone amiss with him, and his life had been a failure; "slow," because no spring of hope in the mind gave any elasticity to his step.
One other "haunt" of the aged poet must, however, be mentioned, because it is a very characteristic one. During this last residence at Guarina, he hired an apartment at Ferrara, selecting it in a crowded part of the centre of the city, especially frequented by the lawyers, that he might be in the midst of them, when he went into the city on the various business connected with his interminable lawsuits. The most crowded part of the heart of the city of Ferrara! It would be difficult to find any such part now. But the picture offered to the imagination, of the aged poet, professor, courtier, haunting the courts, the lawyers' chambers, leaving his, at least, tranquil retreat at St. Bellino, to drag weary feet through the lanes of the city in which he had in earlier days played so different a part, is a sad one. But there are people who like contention so much that such work is a labour of love to them. And certainly, if the inference may be drawn from the fact of his never having been free from lawsuits in one quarrel or another, Guarini must have been one of these. But it is passing strange that the same man should have been the author of the "Pastor Fido."
They pursued him to the end, these litigations; or he pursued them! And at last he died, not at Guarina, but at Venice, on the 7th of October, 1612, where, characteristically enough, he chanced to be on business connected with some lawsuit.
And now a few words must be said about his great work, the "Pastor Fido." It is one of the strangest things in the range of literary history that such a man should have written such a poem. He was, one would have said, the last man in the world to produce such a work. The first ten years of his working life were spent in the labour of a pedagogue; the rest of it in the inexpressibly dry, frivolous, and ungenial routine of a small Italian court, or in wandering from one to the other of them in the vain and always disappointed search for such employment. We are told that he was a punctilious, stiff, unbending, angular man; upright and honourable, but unforgiving and wont to nurse his enmities. He was soured, disappointed, discontented with everybody and everything, involved in litigation first with his father, and then with his own children. And this was the man who wrote the "Pastor Fido," of all poems comparable to it in reputation the lightest, the airiest, and the most fantastic! The argument of it is as follows:
The Arcadians, suffering in various ways from the anger of Diana, were at last informed by the oracle that the evils which afflicted them would cease when a youth and a maiden, both descended from the Immortals, as it should seem the creme de la creme of Arcadian society mostly was, should be joined together in faithful love. Thereupon Montano, a priest of the goddess who was descended from Hercules, arranged that his only son Silvio should be betrothed to Amaryllis, the only daughter of Tytirus, who was descended from Pan. The arrangement seemed all that could be desired, only that a difficulty arose from the fact that Silvio, whose sole passion was the chase, could not be brought to care the least in the world for Amaryllis. Meantime Mirtillo, the son, as was supposed, of the shepherd Carino, fell desperately in love with Amaryllis. She was equally attached to him, but dared not in the smallest degree confess her love, because the law of Arcadia would have punished with death her infidelity to her betrothed vows. A certain Corisca, however, who had conceived a violent but unrequited passion for Mirtillo, perceiving or guessing the love of Amaryllis for him, hating her accordingly, and hoping that, if she could be got out of the way, she might win Mirtillo's love, schemes by deceit and lies to induce Mirtillo and Amaryllis to enter together a cave, which they do in perfect innocence, and without any thought of harm. Then he contrives that they should be caught there, and denounced by a satyr; and Amaryllis is condemned to die. The law, however, permits that her life may be saved by any Arcadian who will voluntarily die in her stead; and this Mirtillo determines to do, although he believes that Amaryllis cares nothing for him, and also is led by the false Corisca to believe that she had gone into the cave for the purpose of meeting with another lover. The duty of sacrificing him devolves on Montano the priest; and he is about to carry out the law, when Carino, who has been seeking his reputed son Mirtillo, comes in, and while attempting to make out that he is a foreigner, and therefore not capable of satisfying the law by his death, brings unwittingly to light circumstances that prove that he is in truth a son of Montano, and therefore a descendant of the god Hercules. It thus appears that a marriage between Mirtillo and Amaryllis will exactly satisfy the conditions demanded by the oracle. There is an under-plot, which consists in providing a lover and a marriage for the woman-hater Silvio. He is loved in vain by the nymph Dorinda, whom he unintentionally wounds with an arrow while out hunting. The pity he feels for her wound softens his heart towards her, and all parties are made happy by this second marriage.
Such is a skeleton of the story of the "Pastor Fido." It will be observed that there is more approach to a plot and to human interest than in any previous production of this kind, and some of the situations are well conceived for dramatic effect. And accordingly the success which it achieved was immediate and immense. Nor, much as the taste of the world has been changed since that day, has it ever lost its place in the estimation of cultivated Italians.
It would be wholly uninteresting to attempt any account of the wide-spreading literary controversies to which the publication of the "Pastor Fido" gave rise. The author terms it a tragi-comedy; and this title was violently attacked. The poet himself, as may well be imagined from the idiosyncrasy of the man, was not slow to reply to his critics, and did so in two lengthy treatises entitled from the name of a contemporary celebrated actor, "Verato primo," and "Verato secondo," which are printed in the four-quarto-volume edition of his works, but which probably no mortal eye has read for the last two hundred years!
The question of the rivalry between the "Aminta" of Tasso and the "Pastor Fido" has an element of greater interest in it. It is certain that the former preceded the latter, and doubtless suggested it. It seems probable that Ginguené is right in his suggestion, that Guarini, fully conscious that no hope was open to him of rivalling his greater contemporary and townsman in epic poetry, strove to surpass him in pastoral. It must be admitted that he has at least equalled him. Yet, while it is impossible to deny that almost every page of the "Pastor Fido" indicates not so much plagiarism as an open and avowed purpose of doing the same thing better, if possible, than his rival has done it, the very diverse natural character of the two poets is also, at every page, curiously indicated. Specially the reader may be recommended to compare the passages in the two poems where Tasso under the name of Thyrsis, and Guarini under the name of Carino (Act 5, scene 1), represent the sufferings both underwent at the court of Alphonso II. The lines of Guarini are perhaps the most vigorous in their biting satire. But the gentler and nobler nature of Tasso is unmistakable.
It is strange that the Italian critics, who are for the most part so lenient to the licentiousness of most of the authors of this period, blame Guarini for the too great warmth, amounting to indecency, of his poem. The writer of his life in the French "Biographie Universelle" refers to certain scenes as highly indecent. I can only say that, on examining the passages indicated carefully, I could find no indecency at all. It is probable that the writer referred to had never read the pages in question. But it is odd that those whose criticism he is no doubt reflecting should have said so. No doubt there are passages, not those mentioned by the writer in the "Biographie," but for instance the first scene of the second act, when a young man in a female disguise is one among a party of girls, who propose a prize for her who can give to one of them, the judge, the sweetest kiss, which prize he wins, which might be deemed somewhat on the sunny side of the hedge that divides the permissible from the unpermissible. But in comparison with others of that age Guarini is pure as snow.