ntervene between our
intellectual perception and Marino's language, we shall still be able to
translate these outpourings into something which upon the operatic stage
would keep its value. False rhetoric and the inability to stop when
enough and more than enough has been said upon any theme to be
developed, are the incurable defects of Marino. His profuse _fioriture_
compared with the simpler descant of Ariosto or Tasso remind us of
Rossini's florid roulades beside the grace of Pergolese's or the majesty
of Marcello's song.

The peculiar quality of bad taste which is known in Italy as
_Marinismo_, consisted in a perpetual straining after effect by
antitheses, conceits, plans on words degenerating into equivocation, and
such-like rhetorical grimaces. Marino's _ars poetica_ was summed up in
this sentence: 'Chi non sa far stupir, vada alia striglia.' Therefore,
he finds periphrases for the simplest expressions. He calls the
nightingale _sirena de'boschi_, gunpowder _l'irreparabil fulmine
terreno_, Columbus _il ligure Argonauta_, Galileo _il novello
Endimione_. In these instances, what might have been expanded into a
simile, is substituted for the proper word in order to surprise the
reader. When he alludes to Dante, he poses a conundrum on that poet's
surname: _Ben sull'ali liggier tre mondi canta_. The younger Palma is
complimented on wresting the _palm_ from Titian and Veronese. Guido Reni
is apostrophized as: _Reni onde il maggior Reno all'altro cede_[197] We
are never safe in reading his pages from the whirr and whistle of such
verbal fireworks. And yet it must be allowed that Marino's style is on
the whole freer from literary affectations than that of our own
Euphuists. It is only at intervals that the temptation to make a point
by clever trickery seems irresistible. When he is seriously engaged upon
a topic that stirs his nature to the depth, as in the eighth canto,
description flows on for stanza after stanza with limpid swiftness.
Another kind of artifice to which he has resort, is the repetition of a
dominant word:

[Footnote 197: There is a streamlet called Reno near Bologna.]

Con tai lusinghe il lusinghiero amante
La lusinghiera Dea lusinga e prega.

* * * * *

Godiamci, amiamei. Amor d'amor mercede,
Degno cambio d'amore e solo amore.

This play on a word sometimes passes over into a palpable pun, as in the
following pretty phrase:

O mia dorata ed ad