The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature Part 11

"If human actions, my most kind readers," he begins, "always bore marked on the front of them the aims and motives which have produced them, or if those who talk about them were always well informed enough to be able to judge of them without injury to the persons of whom they speak, I should not be compelled, at my age, and after so many years of a life led in the eyes of the world, and often busied in defending the honour of others, to defend this day my own, which has always been dearer to me than my life.

Having heard, then, that my having left the service of His Serene Highness the Duke of Ferrara and entered that of the Duke of Savoy has given occasion to some persons, ignorant probably of the real state of the case, to make various remarks, and form various opinions, I have determined to publish the truth, and at the same time to declare my own sentiments in the matter.

"I declare, then, that previously to my said departure I consigned to the proper person everything, small as it was, which was in my hands regarding my office, which had always been exercised by me uprightly and without any other object in view than the service of my sovereign and the public welfare. Further, that I, by a written paper under my own hand (as the press of time and my need rendered necessary), requested a free and decorous dismissal from the Duke in question, and also, that I set forth in all humility the causes which led me to that determination; and I added (some of the circ.u.mstances in which I was compelling me to do so) that if His Serene Highness did not please to give me any other answer, I would take his silence as a consent to my request of dismissal. I declare further that the paper was delivered to the princ.i.p.al Minister of his Serene Highness, and lastly, that my salary was, without any further communication with me, stopped, and cancelled from the roll of payments.

And as this is the truth, so it is equally true that my appointment as reformer of the University of Turin, and Counsellor of State with six hundred crowns yearly, was settled and concluded with His Serene Highness the Duke of Savoy, and that I declined to bind myself, and did not bind myself, to ask any other dismissal from His Serene Highness the Duke of Ferrara than that which I have already spoken. And, finally, it is true that, as I should not have gone to Turin if I had not been engaged for that service and invited thither, so I should not have left, or wished to leave this place,[55] had I not known that I received my dismissal in the manner above related. Now, as to the cause which may have r.e.t.a.r.ded and may still r.e.t.a.r.d the fulfillment of the engagement above mentioned, I have neither object, nor obligation, nor need to declare it. Suffice it that it is not r.e.t.a.r.ded by any fault of mine, or difficulty on my side. In justification of which I offered myself, and by these presents now again offer myself, to present myself wheresoever, whensoever, and in whatsoever manner, and under whatsoever conditions and penalties, as may be seen more clearly set forth in the instrument of agreement sent by me to His Highness. From all which, I would have the world to know, while these affairs of mine are still in suspension, that I am a man of honour, and am always ready to maintain the same in whatsoever manner may be fitting to my condition and duty. And as I do not at all doubt that some decision of some kind not unworthy of so just and so magnanimous a prince will be forthcoming; so, let it be what it may, it will be received by me with composure and contentment; since, by G.o.d's grace, and that of the serene and exalted power under the most just and happy dominion of which I am now living, and whose subject, if not by birth, yet by origin and family, I am,[56] I have a comfortable and honoured existence. And may you, my honoured readers, live in happiness and contentment. Venice, February 1, 1589."

We must, I think, nevertheless be permitted to doubt the contentment and happiness of the life he led, as it should seem, for the next four years, at Venice. No such decision of any kind, as he hoped from the Duke of Savoy, was forthcoming. He was shunted! He had quarrelled with his own sovereign, and evidently the other would have none of him. The Italians of one city were in those days to a wonderful degree foreigners in another ruled by a different government; and there can be little doubt that Guarini wandered among the quays and "calle" of Venice, or paced the great piazza at the evening hour, a moody and discontented man!

At last, after nearly four years of this sad life, there came an invitation from the Duke of Mantua proposing that Guarini should come to Mantua together with his son Alessandro, to occupy honourable positions in that court. The poet, heartily sick of "retirement," accepted at once, and went to Mantua. But there, too, another disappointment awaited him. The "magnanimous" Duke Alphonso would not tolerate that the man who had so cavalierly left his service should find employment elsewhere. It is probable that this position was obtained for him by the influence of his old friend and fellow-member of the "Etherials" at Padua, Scipione Gonzaga; and it would seem that he occupied it for a while, and went on behalf of the Duke of Mantua to Innspruck, whence he wrote the wonderful letters which have been quoted.

The Cardinal's influence, however, was not strong enough to prevail against the spite of a neighbouring sovereign. There are two letters extant from the Duke, or his private secretary, to that same Coccapani whom we saw so scandalized at Guarini's hurried and informal departure from Ferrara, and who was residing as Alphonso's representative at Mantua, in which the Minister is instructed to represent to the Duke of Mantua that his brother of Ferrara "did not think it well that the former should take any of the Guarini family into his service, and when they should see each other he would tell him his reasons. For the present he would only say that he wished the Duke to know that it would be excessively pleasing to him if the Duke would have nothing to say to any of them."

This was in 1593; and the world-weary poet found himself at fifty-six once again cast adrift upon the world. The extremity of his disgust and weariness of all things may be measured by the nature of the next step he took. He conceived, says his biographer Barotti, that "G.o.d called him by internal voices, and by promise of a more tranquil life, to accept the tonsure." His wife had died some little time before; and it was therefore open to him to do so. He went to Rome accordingly for the purpose of there taking orders. But during the short delay which intervened between the manifestation of his purpose and the fulfilment of it, news reached him that his friend and protectress the d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino, Alphonso's sister, had interceded for him with the Duke, and that he was forgiven! It was open to him to return to his former employment! And no sooner did the news reach him than he perceived that "the internal voices" were altogether a mistake. G.o.d had never called him at all, and Alphonso had! All thoughts of the Church were abandoned on the instant, and he hastened to Ferrara, arriving there on the 15th of April, 1595.

But neither on this occasion was he destined to find the tranquillity which he seemed fated never to attain! And this time the break-up was a greater and more final one than the last. Duke Alphonso died in 1597; and the Pontificial Court, which had long had its eye on the possibility of enforcing certain pretended claims to the Duchy of Ferrara, found the means at Alphonso's death of ousting his successor the Duke Cesare, who remained thenceforward Duke of Modena only, but no longer of Ferrara.

Guarini was once more adrift! Nor were the political changes in Ferrara the only thing which rendered the place no longer a home for him. Other misfortunes combined to render a residence in the city odious to him. His daughter Anna had married a n.o.ble gentleman of Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, by whom she was on the 3rd of May, 1598, murdered at his villa of Zanzalino near Ferrara. Some attempt was made to a.s.sert that the husband had reason to suspect that his wife was plotting against his life. But there seems to have been no foundation for any accusation of the sort; and the crime was prompted probably by jealousy. Guarini, always on bad terms with his sons, and constantly involved in litigation with them, as he had been with his father, was exceedingly attached to this unfortunate daughter.

But even this terrible loss was not the only bitterness which resulted from this crime. Guarini composed a long Latin epitaph, in which he strongly affirms her absolute innocence of everything that had been laid to her charge, and speaks with reprobation of the husband's[57] crime. But scarcely had the stone bearing the inscription been erected than the indignant father was required by the authorities of the city to remove it.

A declaration, which he published on the subject, dated June 15, 1598, is still extant. "On that day," he writes, "the Vice-legate of Ferrara spoke with me, in the name of the Holy Father, as to the removing of the epitaph written by me on Anna my daughter in the church of Sta. Catherina. He said that there were things in it that might provoke other persons to resentment, and occasion much scandal; and that, besides that, there were in the inscription words of Sacred Scripture, which ought not to be used in such a place. I defended my cause, and transmitted a memorial to his Holiness, having good reason to know that these objections were the mere malignity of those who favour the opposite party, and of those who caused the death of my innocent child. But at last, on the 22nd, I caused the epitaph to be removed, intimating that it was my intention to take up the body, and inter it elsewhere. On which it is worthy of remark, that having made my demand to that effect, I was forbidden to do so." He further adds: "Note! news was brought to me here that my son Girolamo, who was evidently discovered to be the accomplice, and princ.i.p.al atrocious author of the death of his sister Anna, received from the Potesta of Rovigo licence to come into the Polisina with twelve men armed with arquebuses."

All this is very sad; and whether these terrible suspicions may or may not have had any foundation other than the envenomed temper generated by the family litigations, it must equally have had the effect of making the life of Guarini a very miserable one, and contributing to his determination to abandon finally his native city.

More surprising is it that, after so many disgusts and disappointments, he should once again have been tempted to seek, what he had never yet been able to find there, in a court. In a letter written in November, 1598, he informs the Duke Cesare (Duke of Modena, though no longer of Ferrara) that the Grand Duke of Florence had offered him a position at Florence. And his Serene Highness, more kindly and forgiving than the late Duke, wrote him an obliging and congratulatory letter in the following month.

At Florence everything at first seemed to be going well with him, and he seemed to stand high in favour with the Grand Duke Ferdinand. But very shortly he quitted Florence in anger and disgust on the discovery of the secret marriage of his third son, Guarini, with a woman of low condition at Pisa, with at least the connivance, as the poet thought, whether justly or not there is nothing to show, of the Grand Duke.

After that his old friend the d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino once again stood his friend, and he obtained a position in the court of Urbino, then one of the most widely famed centres of cultivation and letters in Italy. And for a while everything seemed at last to be well with him there. On the 23rd of February, 1603, he writes to his sister, who apparently had been pressing him to come home to Ferrara:--"I should like to come home, my sister. I have great need and a great desire for home; but I am treated so well here, and with so much distinction and so much kindness, that I cannot come. I must tell you that all expenses for myself and my servants are supplied, so that I have not to spend a farthing for anything in the world that I need. The orders are that anything I ask for should be furnished to me. Besides all which, they give me three hundred crowns a year; so that, what with money and expenses, the position is worth six hundred crowns a year to me. You may judge, then, if I can throw it up. May G.o.d grant you every happiness!

Your brother, B. GUARINI."

But all would not do. He had been but a very little time in this little Umbrian Athens among the Apennines before he once again threw up his position in anger and disgust, because he did not obtain all the marks of distinction to which he thought that he was ent.i.tled. This was in 1603. He was now sixty-six, and seems at length to have made no further attempt to haunt at court. Once again he was at Rome in 1605, having undertaken, at the request of the citizens of Ferrara, to carry their felicitations to the new Pope, Paul the Fifth. And with the exception of that short expedition his last years were spent in the retirement of his ancestral estate of Guarina.

The property is situated in the district of Lendinara, on the fat and fertile low-lying region between Rovigo and Padua, and belongs to the commune--parish, as we should say--of St. Bellino. The house, dating probably from the latter part of the fifteenth century, is not much more than a hundred yards or so from the _piazza_ of the village, which boasts two thousand inhabitants. The road between the two is bordered with trees.

The whole district is as flat as a billiard table, and as prosaical in its well-to-do fertility as can be imagined. It is intersected by a variety of streams, natural and artificial. About a couple of miles from the house to the south is the Ca.n.a.lbianco; and a little farther to the north the Adigetto. To the east runs the Scortico. St. Bellino, from whom the village is named, was, it seems, enrolled among the martyrs by Pope Eugenius the Third in 1152. He has a great specialty for curing the bite of mad dogs. There is a grand cenotaph in his honour in the village church, which was raised by some of the Guarini family. But this, too, like all else, became a subject of trouble and litigation to our poet. A certain Balda.s.sare Bonifaccio of Rovigo wanted to transport the saint to that city. Guarini would not hear of this; litigated the matter before the tribunals of Venice, and prevailed. So the saint still resides at St.

Bellino to the comfort of all those bitten by mad dogs in those parts. The house and estate have pa.s.sed through several hands since that time; but a number of old family portraits may still be seen on the walls, together with the family arms, and the motto, "Fortis est in asperis non turbari."

The armchair and writing table of the poet are also still preserved in the house, and a fig-tree is pointed out close by it, under the shade of which the poet, as tradition tells, wrote on that table and in that chair his "Pastor Fido." There is an inscription on the chair as follows: "Guarin sedendo qui canto, che vale al paragon seggio reale."[58]

It was not, however, during this his last residence here that the "Pastor Fido" was written, but long previously. It was doubtless his habit to escape from the cares of official life in Ferrara from time to time as he could; and it must have been in such moments that the celebrated pastoral was written.[59]

The idea of a scholar and a poet, full of years and honours, pa.s.sing the quiet evening of his life in a tranquil retirement in his own house on his own land, is a pleasing one. But it is to be feared that in the case of the author of the "Pastor Fido" it would be a fallacious one. Guarini would not have come to live on his estate if he could have lived contentedly in any city. We may picture him to ourselves sitting under his fig-tree, or pacing at evening under the trees of the straight avenue between his house and the village, or on the banks of one of the sluggish streams slowly finding their way through the flat fields towards the Po; but I am afraid the picture must be of one "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," with eyes bent earthwards, and discontented mind: "remote," because to the Italian mind all places beyond the easy reach of a city are so; "unfriended," because he had quarrelled with everybody; "melancholy," because all had gone amiss with him, and his life had been a failure; "slow," because no spring of hope in the mind gave any elasticity to his step.

One other "haunt" of the aged poet must, however, be mentioned, because it is a very characteristic one. During this last residence at Guarina, he hired an apartment at Ferrara, selecting it in a crowded part of the centre of the city, especially frequented by the lawyers, that he might be in the midst of them, when he went into the city on the various business connected with his interminable lawsuits. The most crowded part of the heart of the city of Ferrara! It would be difficult to find any such part now. But the picture offered to the imagination, of the aged poet, professor, courtier, haunting the courts, the lawyers' chambers, leaving his, at least, tranquil retreat at St. Bellino, to drag weary feet through the lanes of the city in which he had in earlier days played so different a part, is a sad one. But there are people who like contention so much that such work is a labour of love to them. And certainly, if the inference may be drawn from the fact of his never having been free from lawsuits in one quarrel or another, Guarini must have been one of these.

But it is pa.s.sing strange that the same man should have been the author of the "Pastor Fido."

They pursued him to the end, these litigations; or he pursued them! And at last he died, not at Guarina, but at Venice, on the 7th of October, 1612, where, characteristically enough, he chanced to be on business connected with some lawsuit.

And now a few words must be said about his great work, the "Pastor Fido."

It is one of the strangest things in the range of literary history that such a man should have written such a poem. He was, one would have said, the last man in the world to produce such a work. The first ten years of his working life were spent in the labour of a pedagogue; the rest of it in the inexpressibly dry, frivolous, and ungenial routine of a small Italian court, or in wandering from one to the other of them in the vain and always disappointed search for such employment. We are told that he was a punctilious, stiff, unbending, angular man; upright and honourable, but unforgiving and wont to nurse his enmities. He was soured, disappointed, discontented with everybody and everything, involved in litigation first with his father, and then with his own children. And this was the man who wrote the "Pastor Fido," of all poems comparable to it in reputation the lightest, the airiest, and the most fantastic! The argument of it is as follows:

The Arcadians, suffering in various ways from the anger of Diana, were at last informed by the oracle that the evils which afflicted them would cease when a youth and a maiden, both descended from the Immortals, as it should seem the _creme de la creme_ of Arcadian society mostly was, should be joined together in faithful love. Thereupon Montano, a priest of the G.o.ddess who was descended from Hercules, arranged that his only son Silvio should be betrothed to Amaryllis, the only daughter of Tytirus, who was descended from Pan. The arrangement seemed all that could be desired, only that a difficulty arose from the fact that Silvio, whose sole pa.s.sion was the chase, could not be brought to care the least in the world for Amaryllis. Meantime Mirtillo, the son, as was supposed, of the shepherd Carino, fell desperately in love with Amaryllis. She was equally attached to him, but dared not in the smallest degree confess her love, because the law of Arcadia would have punished with death her infidelity to her betrothed vows. A certain Corisca, however, who had conceived a violent but unrequited pa.s.sion for Mirtillo, perceiving or guessing the love of Amaryllis for him, hating her accordingly, and hoping that, if she could be got out of the way, she might win Mirtillo's love, schemes by deceit and lies to induce Mirtillo and Amaryllis to enter together a cave, which they do in perfect innocence, and without any thought of harm. Then he contrives that they should be caught there, and denounced by a satyr; and Amaryllis is condemned to die. The law, however, permits that her life may be saved by any Arcadian who will voluntarily die in her stead; and this Mirtillo determines to do, although he believes that Amaryllis cares nothing for him, and also is led by the false Corisca to believe that she had gone into the cave for the purpose of meeting with another lover. The duty of sacrificing him devolves on Montano the priest; and he is about to carry out the law, when Carino, who has been seeking his reputed son Mirtillo, comes in, and while attempting to make out that he is a foreigner, and therefore not capable of satisfying the law by his death, brings unwittingly to light circ.u.mstances that prove that he is in truth a son of Montano, and therefore a descendant of the G.o.d Hercules. It thus appears that a marriage between Mirtillo and Amaryllis will exactly satisfy the conditions demanded by the oracle. There is an under-plot, which consists in providing a lover and a marriage for the woman-hater Silvio. He is loved in vain by the nymph Dorinda, whom he unintentionally wounds with an arrow while out hunting. The pity he feels for her wound softens his heart towards her, and all parties are made happy by this second marriage.

Such is a skeleton of the story of the "Pastor Fido." It will be observed that there is more approach to a plot and to human interest than in any previous production of this kind, and some of the situations are well conceived for dramatic effect. And accordingly the success which it achieved was immediate and immense. Nor, much as the taste of the world has been changed since that day, has it ever lost its place in the estimation of cultivated Italians.

It would be wholly uninteresting to attempt any account of the wide-spreading literary controversies to which the publication of the "Pastor Fido" gave rise. The author terms it a tragi-comedy; and this t.i.tle was violently attacked. The poet himself, as may well be imagined from the idiosyncrasy of the man, was not slow to reply to his critics, and did so in two lengthy treatises ent.i.tled from the name of a contemporary celebrated actor, "Verato primo," and "Verato secondo," which are printed in the four-quarto-volume edition of his works, but which probably no mortal eye has read for the last two hundred years!

The question of the rivalry between the "Aminta" of Ta.s.so and the "Pastor Fido" has an element of greater interest in it. It is certain that the former preceded the latter, and doubtless suggested it. It seems probable that Ginguen is right in his suggestion, that Guarini, fully conscious that no hope was open to him of rivalling his greater contemporary and townsman in epic poetry, strove to surpa.s.s him in pastoral. It must be admitted that he has at least equalled him. Yet, while it is impossible to deny that almost every page of the "Pastor Fido" indicates not so much plagiarism as an open and avowed purpose of doing the same thing better, if possible, than his rival has done it, the very diverse natural character of the two poets is also, at every page, curiously indicated.

Specially the reader may be recommended to compare the pa.s.sages in the two poems where Ta.s.so under the name of Thyrsis, and Guarini under the name of Carino (Act 5, scene 1), represent the sufferings both underwent at the court of Alphonso II. The lines of Guarini are perhaps the most vigorous in their biting satire. But the gentler and n.o.bler nature of Ta.s.so is unmistakable.

It is strange that the Italian critics, who are for the most part so lenient to the licentiousness of most of the authors of this period, blame Guarini for the too great warmth, amounting to indecency, of his poem. The writer of his life in the French "Biographie Universelle" refers to certain scenes as highly indecent. I can only say that, on examining the pa.s.sages indicated carefully, I could find no indecency at all. It is probable that the writer referred to had never read the pages in question.

But it is odd that those whose criticism he is no doubt reflecting should have said so. No doubt there are pa.s.sages, not those mentioned by the writer in the "Biographie," but for instance the first scene of the second act, when a young man in a female disguise is one among a party of girls, who propose a prize for her who can give to one of them, the judge, the sweetest kiss, which prize he wins, which might be deemed somewhat on the sunny side of the hedge that divides the permissible from the unpermissible. But in comparison with others of that age Guarini is pure as snow.

It has been said in speaking of the sad story of his daughter Anna, that she was accused of having given her husband cause for jealousy. It would seem very clear that there was no ground for any such accusation. But it was said that the misconduct on her part had been due to the corruption of her mind by the reading of her father's verses. The utter groundlessness of such an a.s.sertion might be shown in many ways. But the savage and malignant cruelty of it points with considerable evidence to the sources of the current talk about the courtier poet's licentiousness.

It is impossible to find room here for a detailed comparison between these two celebrated pastorals; and it is the less needed inasmuch as Ginguen has done it very completely and at great length in the twenty-fifth chapter of the second part of his work.

Guarini also produced a comedy, the "Idropica," which was acted with much success at the court of Mantua, and is printed among his works, as well as some prose pieces of small importance, the princ.i.p.al of which is "Il Secretario," a treatise on the duties of a secretary, not printed among his works, but of which an edition exists in pot quarto (186 pages) printed at Venice in 1594. Neither have his letters been printed among his works. They exist, printed without index or order of any kind, in a volume of the same size as the "Secretario," printed at Venice also in 1595, but by a different printer.

The name, however, of Batista Guarini would have long since been forgotten, had he not written the "Pastor Fido."

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE, in Belgravia.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] The now celebrated pa.s.s of the Ampezzo between Venice and Innspruck.

[49] This must probably be Hall on the Inn, a little below Innspruck.

Certainly any boat which he got there for the descent of the river must have been a sufficiently miserable mode of travelling.

[50] Far, that is, from the bank of the river, where he left his boat at night.

[51] Lettere del Signor Cavaliere Battista Guarini, n.o.bile Ferrarese, di nuovo in questa seconda impressione di alcune altre accrescinte, e dall'

Autore stesso corrette, di Agostino Michele raccolte, et al Sereniss.

Signore il Duca d'Urbino dedicate. Con Privilegio. In Venetia, MDXCV.

Appresso Gio. Battista Ciotti Senese al segno della Minerva.

[52] I translate literally. Old-fashioned people will remember a somewhat similar use of the word "Flame" in English.

[53] I subjoin a literal prose translation in preference to borrowing a rhymed one from any of Ta.s.so's translators. This fellow "flits and circles around more unstable than dry leaves in the wind. Without faith, without love, false are his pretended torments, and false the affection which prompts his sighs. A traitorous lover, he loves and despises almost at the same moment, and in triumph displays the spoils of women as impious trophies."

[54] "See how this fellow, who in vain aims at a lofty goal, by blaming others, and by lying accents, sharpens against himself his teeth, while without reason he is enraged with me.... Of two flames he boasts, and ties and breaks over and over again the same knot; and by these arts (who would believe it!) bends in his favour the G.o.ds!" ...

[55] It is odd that he should so write in a paper dated, as the present is, from Venice. I suppose the expression came from his feeling that he was addressing parsons at Ferrara.

[56] Seeing that, as has been said, his ancestors were of Verona, which belonged to Venice.

[57] Barotti gives it at length; but it is hardly worth while to occupy s.p.a.ce by reproducing it here.

[58] "Guarini sitting here, sang, that which renders the seat the equal of a royal throne."