ulture! Yet this impossible
task lies ever before the historian. Few characters are more patently
difficult to comprehend than that of Sarpi. Ultimately, so far as it is
possible to formulate a view, I think he may be defined as a Christian
Stoic, possessed with two main governing ideas, duty to God and duty to
Venice. His last words were for Venice; the penultimate consigned his
soul to God. For a mind like his, so philosophically tempered, so versed
in all the history of the world to us-wards, the materials of dispute
between Catholic and Protestant must have seemed but trifles. He stayed
where he had early taken root, in his Servite convent at S. Fosca,
because he there could dedicate his life to God and Venice better than
in any Protestant conventicle. Had Venice inclined toward rupture with
Rome, had the Republic possessed the power to make that rupture with
success, Sarpi would have hailed the event gladly, as introducing for
Italy the prospect of spiritual freedom, purer piety, and the overthrow
of Papal-Spanish despotism. But Venice chose to abide in the old ways,
and her Counselor of State knew better than any one that she had not the
strength to cope with Spain, Rome, Jesuitry and Islam single-handed.
Therefore he possessed his soul in patience, worshiping God under forms
and symbols to which he had from youth been used, trusting the while
that sooner or later God would break those mighty wings of Papal
domination.

CHAPTER XI.

GUARINO, MARINO, CHIABRERA, TASSONI.

Dearth of Great Men--Guarini a Link between Tasso and the
Seventeenth Century--His Biography--The _Pastor Fido_--Qualities of
Guarini as Poet--Marino the Dictator of Letters--His Riotous Youth
at Naples--Life at Rome, Turin, Paris--Publishes the _Adone_--The
Epic of Voluptuousness--Character and Action of Adonis--Marino's
Hypocrisy--Sentimental Sweetness--Brutal Violence--Violation of
Artistic Taste--Great Powers of the Poet--Structure of the
_Adone_--Musical Fluency--Marinism--Marino's Patriotic
Verses--Contrast between Chiabrera and Marino--An Aspirant after
Pindar--Chiabrera's Biography--His Court Life--Efforts of Poets in
the Seventeenth Century to attain to Novelty--Chiabrera's
Failure--Tassoni's Life--His Thirst to Innovate--Origin of the
_Secchia Rapita_--Mock-Heroic Poetry--The Plot of this Poem--Its
Peculiar Humor--Irony and Satire--Novelty of the Species--Lyric