The
other received a rigid bent toward decorum, in religious observances, in
ethical severity, and in literature of a strictly scholastic type.

Yet Chiabrera was not without the hot blood of Italian youth. His uncle
died, and he found himself alone in the world. After spending a few
years in the service of Cardinal Cornaro, he quarreled with a Roman
gentleman, vindicated his honor by some act of violence, and was
outlawed from the city. Upon this he retired to Savona; and here again
he met with similar adventures. Wounded in a brawl, he took the law into
his own hands, and revenged himself upon his assailant. This punctilio
proved him to be a true child of his age; and if we may credit his own
account of both incidents, he behaved himself as became a gentleman of
the period. It involved him, however, in serious annoyances both at Rome
and Savona, from which he only extricated himself with difficulty and
which impaired his fortune. Up to the age of fifty he remained
unmarried, and then took a wife by whom he had no children. He lived to
the ripe age of eighty-four, always at Savona, excepting occasional
visits to friends in Italian cities, and he died unmolested by serious
illness after his first entrance into the Collegio Romano. How he
occupied the leisure of that lengthy solitude may be gathered from his
published works--two or three thick volumes of lyrics; four bulky poems
of heroic narrative; twelve dramas, including two tragedies; thirty
satires or epistles; and about forty miscellaneous poems in divers
meters. In a word, he devoted his whole life to the art of poetry, for
which he was not naturally gifted, and which he pursued in a gravely
methodical spirit. It may be said at once that the body of his work,
with the exception of some simple pieces of occasion, and a few chastely
written epistles, is such as nobody can read without weariness.

Before investigating Chiabrera's claim to rank among Italian poets, it
may be well to examine his autobiography in those points which touch
upon the temper of society. Short as it is, this document is precious
for the light it casts upon contemporary custom. As a writer, Chiabrera
was distinguished by sobriety of judgment, rectitude, piety, purity of
feeling, justice toward his fellow-workers in literature, and an earnest
desire to revive the antique virtues among his countrymen. There is no
reason to suppose that these estimable qualities did not distinguish him
in privat