rited. The critic, whose duty forces
him to read through the _Adone_, will be left bewildered by the
spectacle of such profuse wealth so wantonly squandered.[195] In spite
of fatigue, in spite of disgust, he will probably be constrained to
record his opinion that, while Tasso represented the last effort of
noble poetry struggling after modern expression under out-worn forms of
the Classical Revival, it was left for Marino in his levity and license
to evoke a real and novel though _rococo_ form, which nicely
corresponded to the temper of his times, and determined the immediate
future of art. For this reason he requires the attention which has here
been paid him.

[Footnote 195: In support of this opinion upon Marino's merit as a poet,
I will cite the episode of Clizio (canto i. p. 17); the tale of Psyche
(iv. 65); the tale of the nightingale and the boy--which occurs both in
Ford and Crashaw, by the way (vii. 112); the hymn to pleasure (vii.
116); the passage of Venus and Adonis to the bath (viii. 133); the
picture of the nymph and satyr (viii. 135); the personification of the
Court (x. 167); the Cave of Jealousy (xii. 204-206); the jewel-garden of
Falserina (xii. 218); Falserina watching Adonis asleep (xii. 225);
Falserina's incantations (xiii. 233); Mars in the lap of Venus
surrounded by the loves (xiii. 245); Venus disguised as a gypsy (xv.
290); the game of chess (xv. 297); the leave-taking of Venus and Adonis
(xvii. 332); the phantom of dead Adonis (xviii. 357); the grief of Venus
(xviii. 358-362); the tales of Hyacinth and Pampinus (xix. 372-378). The
references are to ed. Napoli, Boutteaux, 1861.]

But how, it may be asked, was it possible to expand the story of Venus
and Adonis into an epic of 45,000 lines? The answer to this question
could best be given by an analysis of the twenty cantos: and since few
living students have perused them, such a display of erudition would be
pardonable. Marini does not, however, deserve so many pages in a work
devoted to the close of the Italian Renaissance. It will suffice to say
that the slender narrative of the amour of Venus and her boyish idol,
his coronation as king of Cyprus, and his death by the boar's tusk, is
ingeniously interwoven with a great variety of episodes. The poet finds
occasion to relate the principal myths of Hellenic passion treating
these in a style which frequently reminds us of Ovid's Metamorphoses; he
borrows tales from Apuleius, Lucian, and the pastor