until two centuries after
Marino penned these patriotic stanzas, that her prayer was answered. And
the reflection forced upon us when we read the _Pianto d'Italia_, is
that Marino composed it to flatter a patron who at that moment
entertained visionary schemes of attacking the Spanish hegemony.

To make any but an abrupt transition from Marino to Chiabrera would be
impossible. It is like passing from some luxurious grove of oranges and
roses to a barren hill-top without prospect over sea or champaign. We
are fortunate in possessing a few pages of autobiography, from which
all that is needful to remember of Gabriello Chiabrera's personal
history may be extracted. He was born in 1552 at Savona, fifteen days
after his father's death. His mother made a second marriage, and left
him to the care of an uncle, with whom at the age of nine he went to
reside in Rome. In the house of this bachelor uncle the poor little
orphan pined away. Fever succeeded fever, until his guardian felt that
companionship with boys in play and study was the only chance of saving
so frail a life as Gabriello's. Accordingly he placed the invalid under
the care of the Jesuits in their Collegio Romano. Here the child's
health revived, and his education till the age of twenty throve apace.
The Jesuits seem to have been liberal in their course of training; for
young Chiabrera benefited by private conversation with Paolo Manuzio and
Sperone Speroni, while he attended the lectures of Muretus in the
university.

How different was this adolescence from that of Marino! Both youths grew
to manhood without domestic influences; and both were conspicuous in
after life for the want of that affection which abounds in Tasso. But
here the parallel between them ends. Marino, running wild upon the
streets of Naples, taking his fill of pleasure and adventure, picking up
ill-digested information at hap-hazard, and forming his poetic style as
nature prompted; Chiabrera, disciplined in piety and morals by Jesuit
directors, imbued with erudition by an arid scholar, a formal pedant
and an accomplished rhetorician, the three chief representatives of
decadent Italian humanism: no contrast can be imagined greater than that
which marked these two lads out for diverse paths in literature. The one
was formed to be the poet of caprice and license, openly ranking with
those

Che la ragion sommettono al talento,

and making _s'ei piace ei lice_ his rule of conduct and of art.