f at the age of sixteen to
philosophise, travelled with Adami, and with him visited Campanella in
prison at Naples. Campanella cast his horoscope and predicted for him a
splendid career, exhorting him to make war upon the pernicious school
of philosophers, who encumbered the human reason with frauds and
figments, and prevented the free growth of a better method.

LVIII. Adami, to whom we owe the first edition of these sonnets,
visited Campanella in the Castle of S. Elmo, having wandered through
many lands, like Diogenes, in search of a man. Line 5: this, says
Adami, 'refers to a dream or vision of a sword, great and marvellous,
with three triple joints, and arms, and other things, discovered by
Tobia Adami, which the author interpreted by his primalities'--that is,
I suppose, by the trinity of power, love, wisdom, mentioned in No. VII.
Line 6: Abaddon is the opposite of Christ, the lord of the evil of the
age. Cp. note to No. XLI.

LIX. This is in some respects the most sublime and most pathetic of
Campanella's sonnets. He is the Prometheus (see last line of No. I.)
who will not slay himself, because he cannot help men by his death, and
because his belief in the permanency of sense and thought makes him
fear lest he should carry his sufferings into another life. God's will
with regard to him is hidden. He does not even know what sort of life
he lived before he came into his present form of flesh. Philip, King of
Spain, has increased the discomforts of his dungeon, but Philip can do
nothing which God has not decreed, and God never by any possibility can
err.

LX. Arguments from design make us infer an all wise, all good Maker of
the world. The misery and violence and sin of animate beings make us
infer an evil and ignorant Ruler of the world. But this discord between
the Maker and Ruler of the world is only apparent, and the grounds of
the contradiction will in due time be revealed. See No. XIII. and note.

APPENDIX I

I have translated one Canzone out of Campanella's collection, partly as
a specimen of his style in this kind of composition, partly because it
illustrates his personal history and throws light on many of the
sonnets. It is the first of three prayers to God from his prison,
entitled by Adami _Orazioni tre in Salmodia Metafisicale congiunte
insieme_.

I.

Almighty God! what though the laws of Fate
Invincible, and this long misery,
Proving my prayers not merely spent in vain