LIX.  This is in some respects the most sublime and most pathetic of Campanella’s sonnets.  He is the Prometheus (see last line of No.  I.) who will not slay himself, because he cannot help men by his death, and because his belief in the permanency of sense and thought makes him fear lest he should carry his sufferings into another life.  God’s will with regard to him is hidden.  He does not even know what sort of life he lived before he came into his present form of flesh.  Philip, King of Spain, has increased the discomforts of his dungeon, but Philip can do nothing which God has not decreed, and God never by any possibility can err.

LX.  Arguments from design make us infer an all wise, all good Maker of the world.  The misery and violence and sin of animate beings make us infer an evil and ignorant Ruler of the world.  But this discord between the Maker and Ruler of the world is only apparent, and the grounds of the contradiction will in due time be revealed.  See No.  XIII. and note.

APPENDIX I

I have translated one Canzone out of Campanella’s collection, partly as a specimen of his style in this kind of composition, partly because it illustrates his personal history and throws light on many of the sonnets.  It is the first of three prayers to God from his prison, entitled by Adami Orazioni tre in Salmodia Metafisicale congiunte insieme.

I.

    Almighty God! what though the laws of Fate
    Invincible, and this long misery,
    Proving my prayers not merely spent in vain
    But heard and granted crosswise, banish me
    Far from Thy sight,—­still humbly obstinate
    I turn to Thee.  No other hopes remain. 
    Were there another God with vows to gain,
    To Him for succour I would surely go: 
    Nor could I be called impious, if I turned
    In this great agony from one who spurned,
    To one who bade me come and cured my woe. 
    Nay, Lord!  I babble vainly.  Help!  I cry,
    Before the temple where Thy reason burned,
    Become a mosque of imbecility!

II.

    Well know I that there are no words which can
    Move Thee to favour him for whom Thy grace
    Was not reserved from all eternity. 
    Repentance in Thy counsel finds no place: 
    Nor can the eloquence of mortal man
    Bend Thee to mercy, when Thy sure decree
    Hath stablished that this frame of mine should be
    Rent by these pangs that flesh and spirit tire. 
    Nay if the whole world knows my martyrdom—­
    Heaven, earth, and all that in them have their home—­
    Why tell the tale to Thee, their Lord and Sire? 
    And if all change is death or some such state,
    Thou deathless God, to whom for help I come,
    How shall I make Thee change, to change my fate?