spirit of an age reformed or deformed by the
Catholic Revival, Marino parades cynical hypocrisy. The eighth canto of
_Adone_ is an elaborately-wrought initiation into the mysteries of
carnal pleasure. It is a hymn to the sense of touch:[191]

Ogni altro senso puo ben di leggiero
Deluso esser talor da falsi oggetti:
Questo sol no, lo qual sempre e del vero
Fido ministro e padre dei diletti.
Gli altri non possedendo il corpo intero,
Ma qualche parte sol, non son perfetti.
Questo con atto universal distende
Lesue forze per tutto, e tutto il prende.

[Footnote 191: I have pleasure in inviting my readers to study the true
doctrine regarding the place of touch among the senses as laid down by
Ruskin in _Modern Painters_, part iii. sec. 1, chap. ii.]

We are led by subtle gradations, by labyrinthine delays, to the final
beatification of Adonis. Picture is interwoven with picture, each in
turn contributing to the panorama of sensual Paradise. Yet while
straining all the resources of his art, with intense sympathy, to seduce
his reader, the poet drops of set purpose phrases like the following:

Flora non so, non so se Frine o Taide
Trovar mai seppe oscenita si laide.

Here the ape masked in the man turns around and grins, gibbering vulgar
words to point his meaning, and casting dirt on his pretended decency.
While racking the resources of allusive diction to veil and to suggest
an immodest movement of his hero (Adonis being goaded beyond the bounds
of boyish delicacy by lascivious sights), he suddenly subsides with a
knavish titter into prose:

Cosi il fanciullo all'inonesto gioco.

But the end of all this practice is that innocent Adonis has been
conducted by slow and artfully contrived approaches to a wanton's
embrace, and that the spectators of his seduction have become, as it
were, parties to his fall. To make Marino's cynicism of hypocrisy more
glaring, he prefaces each canto with an allegory, declaring that Adonis
and Venus symbolize the human soul abandoned to vice, and the
allurements of sensuality which work its ruin. In the poem itself,
meanwhile, the hero and heroine are consistently treated as a pair of
enviable, devoted, and at last unfortunate lovers.[192]

It is characteristic of the mood expressed in the _Adone_ that
voluptuousness should not be passionate, but sentimental. Instead of
fire, the poet gives us honeyed tears to drink, and rocks the soul upon
a