The narratives of the nymphs, and indeed the whole of the prose portions of the work, are composed in a style of surcharged and voluptuous beauty, congested with lengthy periods, and accumulated superlatives and relative clauses, which, in its endeavour to maintain itself and its subject at the highest possible pitch, only succeeds in being intensely and almost uniformly monotonous and dull. It is perfectly true that the work possesses some at least of the qualities of its defects. There are passages which argue a feeling for beauty, none the less real for being of a somewhat conventional order, while we not seldom detect a certain rich luxuriance about the descriptions; but it must be admitted that on the whole the style exhibits most of Boccaccio's faults and few of his merits. The verse interspersed throughout is in terza rima, and offers small attraction to the ordinary reader: 'meschinissima cosa' is a verdict which, if somewhat severe, will probably find few to contradict it.
In a certain passage, speaking of Poliziano's Orfeo, Symonds remarks that 'while Arcady became the local dreamland of the new ideal, Orpheus took the place of its hero.' Without inquiring too closely how far the writers of the renaissance actually connected the hero of music, as a power of civilization, with their newly discovered country, it is interesting to note that the earliest work in the Italian language containing in however amoebean a state the pastoral ideal opens with an allusion to Orpheus.
Quella vertù, che già l'ardito Orfeo
Mosse a cercar le case di Plutone,
Allor che forse lieta gli rendeo
La cercata Euridice a condizione,
E dal suon vinto dell' arguto legno,
E dalla nota della sua canzone,
Per forza tira il mio debile ingegno
A cantar le tue Iode, o Citerea,
Insieme con le forze del tuo regno[[53]].
Orpheus, however, does not stand alone. Venus, Phoebus, Mars, Cupid, and finally Jove, are each in turn invoked, to say nothing of the incidental mention of Aeneas, Mirra, and Europa. This love of mythology in and out of season is one of the most prominent features of the work. One of the nymphs describes her youth in the following words:
il padre mio .... visse eccellentissimo ne' beni pubblici tra' reggenti, e de' beni degli iddii copioso: me a lui donata da loro, nominò Mopsa, e vedentemi nella giovanetta età mostrante già bella forma, ai servigi dispose di Pallade, la quale me benivola ricevente nelle sante grotte del cavallo Gorgoneo, tra le sapientissime Muse commise, là dov' io gustai l'acque Castalie, e l'altezza di Cirra tentante, le stelle cercai con ferma mano; e i pallidi visi, quelli luoghi colenti, sempre con riverenza seguii; e molte volte sonando Apollo la cetera sua, lui nel mezzo delle nove Muse ascoltai[[54]].
She continues for pages in the same strain with illustrative allusions to Caius Julius, Claudius, and Britannicus.
At the risk of devoting to the Ameto an altogether disproportionate amount of the space at my disposai I must before passing on attempt to give some notion of the kind of narrative contained in the romance, all the more so as it is little known except to students. With this object I have translated a characteristic passage from the tale of Agape[[55]].
I came from my home nigh unto the temple, before whose altars, with due devotion, I began thus to pray: 'O Venus, full of pity, sacred goddess whose altars I am joyful to approach, lend thou thy merciful ears unto my prayer; for I come to thee a young girl, though fairly fashioned yet ill-starred in love, fearful lest my empty years lead comfortless to a chill old age; therefore, if my beauty merit that I be counted among thy followers, enter thou into my breast who so desire thee, and grant that in the love of a youth not unworthy of my beauty, and through whom my wasted hours may be with delight made good, I may feel those fires of thine which many times and endlessly I have heard praised.' I know not whether while I was thus engrossed in prayer I fell on sleep, and sleeping saw those things whereof I am about to tell, or whether, indeed, I was rapt thence in bodily form to see them; all I can tell is that suddenly I found myself borne through the heavens in a gleaming chariot drawn by white doves, and that inclining my eyes to things below I beheld the fruitful earth shrunk to a narrow room, and the rivers thereof after the fashion of serpents; and after that I had left behind the pleasant lands of Italy and the rugged mountains of Emathia, I beheld the waters of the Dircean fount and the ancient walls raised by the sound of Amphion's lyre, and soon there appeared to me the pleasant Cytherean mount, and on it resting the holy chariots drawn by the spotless birds. Whereon having alighted I went straying, alike uncertain of the way and of the fortune that might await me, when, as to Aeneas upon the Afric shore, so to me there amid the myrtles there appeared the goddess I had invoked, and I was filled with wonder such as I had never known before. She was disrobed except for the thinnest purple veil, which hid but little of her form, falling in double curve with many artful foldings over her left side; her face shone even as the sun, and her head was adorned with great length of golden hair rippling down over white shoulders; her eyes flashed with light never seen till then. Why should I labour to tell the loveliness of her mouth and of her snowy neck, of her marble breast and of her every part, since to do so lies so far beyond my powers, and even where I able, hardly should my words gain credence? But whereas she was now at hand I bowed my knees before her godhead, and with such voice as I could command, repeated my petition in her presence. She listened thereto, and approaching bade me rise, saying, 'Follow me; thy prayer is heard, thy desire granted,' and thereupon withdrew me to a somewhat loftier spot. There hidden amidst the dense foliage she discovered to me her only son, upon whom gazing in admiration, I found his beauty such that in all things did he appear fashioned like unto her, except in so far as being he a god and she a goddess. O how oft, remembering Psyche, I counted her happy and unhappy; happy in the possession of such a husband, unhappy in his loss, most happy in receiving him again from Jove. But even as I gazed, he, beating the air with his sacred wings that gleamed with clearest gold, departed with his load of newly fashioned arrows from those parts, and at the bidding of the goddess I turned to the spring wherein he used to temper his golden darts fresh forged with fiercest fire. Its silver waters, gushing of themselves from the earth and shaded along the margin by a growth of myrtle and dogwood, were neither violated in their purity by the approach of bird or beast, nor suffered aught from the sun's distemperature, and as I leaned forward to catch the reflection of my own figure I could discern the clear bottom free from every trace of mud[[56]]. The goddess, for that the hour was already hot, had doffed her transparent veil and plunged her into the cool water, and now commanded me that having stripped I too should enter the spring. We were yet disporting ourselves in the lovely fountain, when, raising my head and gazing with longing eyes around, I saw amid the leaves a youth, pale and shy of appearance, who with slow steps was advancing towards the sacred water. As I looked on him he was pleasant in my eyes, but that he should behold me naked filled me with shame, and I turned away to hide my unwonted blushes. And in like manner at the sight of me he too changed colour and was troubled; he stayed his steps and advanced no further. Then at the pleasure of the goddess leaving the water we resumed our apparel, and crowned with myrtle sought a neighbouring glade, full of finest grass and diapered with many flowers, where in the freshness we stretched our limbs to rest. Thereupon the goddess, having called the youth to us, began to speak in these words: 'Agape, most dear to me, this youth, Apyros by name, whom thou seest thus shy amid our glades, shall satisfy thy longing; but see that with care thou preserve inviolate our fires, which in thy heart thou shalt bear with thee hence.' I was about to make answer when my tender breast was of a sudden pierced by the flying arrow loosed by the strong hand of the son of her who added these unto her former words: 'We give him thee as thy first and only servant; he lacks nought but our fires, which, kindled even now by thee in him, be it thy care to nourish, that the frost that bound him like to Aglauros being driven from his heart, he may burn with the divine fire no less than father Jove himself.' She ceased; and I, trembling yet with fear, no sooner opened my lips to assent to her command, than I found myself once more in prayer before her altars; whereat marvelling not a little, and casting my eyes around in search of Apyros, I became aware of the golden arrow in my breast, and near me the pale youth, his intent gaze fixed upon me, and like me wounded by the god; and so seeing him inflamed with a passion no other than that which burned in me, I laughed, and filled with contentment and desire, made sign to him to be of hopeful cheer.
The advance in style that marks the transition from the Ameto to the Arcadia must be largely accredited to Boccaccio himself. The language of the Decameron became the model of cinquecento prose. Sannazzaro, however, wrote in evident imitation not of the structural method only, but of the actual style of the Ameto. Something, it is true, he added beyond the greater mastery of literary form due to training. Even in his most luxuriant descriptions and most sensuous images we find that grace and clearness of vision which characterize the early poetry of the Renaissance proper, and combine in literature the luminous purity of Botticelli and the gem-like detail of Pinturicchio. The mythological affectation of the elder work appears in the younger modified, refined, subordinated; there is the same delight in detailed description, but relieved by greater variety of imagination; while, even in the most laboured passages, there is a poetical feeling as well as a more subjective manner, which, combined with a remarkable power of visualization, saves them from the danger of the catalogue. Again, there is everywhere visible the same artificiality of style which characterizes the Ameto, but purged of its more extravagant elements and less affected and conceited than it became in the works of Lyly and Sidney. Like the Ameto, lastly, but unlike its Spanish and English successors, the Arcadia is purely pastoral, free from any chivalric admixture.
The narrative interest in the Arcadia is of the slightest. It opens with a description of the 'dilettevole piano, di ampiezza non molto spazioso,' lying at the summit of Parthenium, 'non umile monte della pastorale Arcadia,' which was henceforth to be the abode sacred to the shepherd-folk. There, as in Vergil's Italy and in Browne's Devon, in Chaucer's dreamland, and in the realm of the Faery Queen, 'son forse dodici o quindici alberi di tanto strana ed eccessiva bellezza, che chiunque li vedesse, giudicherebbe che la maestra natura vi si fosse con sommo diletto studiata in formarli.'[[57]] The shepherds, who are assembled with their flocks, are about to seek their homes at the approach of night, when they meet Montano playing upon his pipe, and a musical contest ensues between him and Uranio. Next day is celebrated the feast of Pales, an account of which is given at length, and is followed by a song in which Galicio sings the praises of his mistress Amaranta, of whom the narrator proceeds to give a minute description. After another singing-match between Logisto and Elpino the company betake themselves to the tomb of Androgeo, whose praises are set forth in prose and rime. There follows a song by the old shepherd Opico, on the superiority of the 'former age'; after which Carino asks the narrator, Sincero--the pseudonym under which Sannazzaro travelled in the realm of shepherds--to recount his history, which he does at length, ending with a lament in sestina form. By way of consoling him in his exile Carino, in return, tells the tale of his own amorous adventures. Next the reverend Opico is induced to discourse of the powers of magic as the shepherds proceed to the sacred grove of Pan, who shares with Pales the honours of Arcadian worship, and to the games held at the tomb of sibyllic Massilia--a name under which Sannazzaro is said to have commemorated his own mother. At this point the narrator is troubled by a dream portending death to the lady of his love. As, tormented by this thought, he wanders lonely in the chill dawn he meets a nymph, who leads him through a marvellous cavern into the depths of the earth, where he beholds the springs of many famous rivers, and finally, following the course of the Sabeto, arrives at his native city of Naples, where he learns the truth of his sorrowful forebodings.