works on metaphysics, mathematics, politics, and aesthetics which Campanella gave to the press, were composed during his long imprisonment.  How they came to be printed, I do not know; but it is obvious that he cannot have been strictly debarred from writing by his jailors.  In prison, too, he made both friends and converts.  We have seen that we owe the publication of a portion of his poems to the visit of a German knight.

V.

The sonnets by Campanella translated in this volume might be rearranged under four headings—­Philosophical; Political; Prophetic; Personal.  The philosophical group throw light on Campanella’s relation to his predecessors and his antagonism to the pseudo-Aristotelian scholasticism of the middle ages.  They furthermore explain his conception of the universe as a complex animated organism, his conviction that true knowledge can only be gained by the interrogation of nature, his doctrine of human life and action, and his judgment of the age in which he lived.  The political sonnets fall into two groups—­ those which discuss royalty, nobility, and the sovereignty of the people, and those which treat of the several European states.  The prophetic sonnets seem to have been suggested by the misery and corruption of Italy, and express the poet’s belief in the speedy triumph of right and reason.  It is here too that his astrological opinions are most clearly manifested; for Campanella was far from having outgrown the belief in planetary influences.  Indeed, his own metaphysical speculations, involving the principle of immanent vitality in the material universe, gave a new value to the dreams of the astrologers.  Among the personal sonnets may be placed those which refer immediately to his own sufferings in prison, to his friendships, and to the ideal of the philosophic character.

I have thought it best, while indicating this fourfold division, to preserve the order adopted by Adami, since each of the reprints accessible to modern readers—­both that of Orelli and that of D’Ancona—­ maintains the arrangement of the editio princeps. Two sonnets of the prophetic group I have omitted, partly because they have no bearing on the world as it exists for us at present, and partly because they are too studiously obscure for profitable reproduction.[13] As in the case of Michael Angelo, so also in that of Campanella, I have left the Canzoni untouched, except by way of illustration in the notes appended to my volume.  They are important and voluminous enough to form a separate book; nor do they seem to me so well adapted as the sonnets for translation into English.