to have made shipwreck.  It is at first sight ratifier a severe indictment to bring against Guarini’s play, especially when we remember that a work of art is more often an index than a cause of social corruption.  After what has been said, however, of the nature of the sentiment both in the Pastor fido and the Aminta, the charge can hardly be dismissed as altogether unfounded.  It is only fair to add that very different views have been held with regard to the moral aspect of the play, the theory of its essential healthiness finding an eloquent advocate in Ugo Angelo Canello[190].

Little as it became him, Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a guardian of morals, and Bellarmino’s words clearly possessed a special sting.  This pose was in truth but a part of the general attitude he assumed towards the author of the Aminta.  His superficial propriety authorized him, in his own eyes, to utter a formal censure upon the amorous dream of the ideal poet.  He paid the price of his unwarranted conceit.  Those passages in which he was at most pains to contrast his ethical philosophy with Tasso’s imaginative Utopia are those in which he most clearly betrayed his own insufferable pedantry; while critics even in his own day saw through the unexceptionable morality of his frigid declamations and ruthlessly exposed the sentimental corruption that lay beneath.  When we compare his parody in the fourth chorus of the Pastor fido with Tasso’s great ode; his sententious ‘Piaccia se lice’ with Tasso’s ‘S’ ei piace, ei lice’; his utterly banal

    Speriam:  che ’l sol cadente anco rinasce;
      E ’l ciel, quando men luce,
      L’ aspettato seren spesso n’ adduce,

with Tasso’s superb, even though borrowed, paganism: 

    Amiam:  che ’l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
      A noi sua breve luce
      S’ asconde, e ’l sonno eterna notte adduce—­

when we make this comparison we have the spiritual measure of the man.  A similar comparison will give us his measure as a poet.  Take the graceful but over-elaborated picture: 

    Quell’ augellin che canta
    Si dolcemente, e lascivetto vola
    Or dall’ abete al faggio,
    Ed or dal faggio al mirto,
    S’ avesse umano spirto
    Direbbe:  ‘Ardo d’ amore, ardo d’ amore!’

Compare with this the spontaneous sketch of Tasso: 

    Odi quell’ usignuolo
    Che va di ramo in ramo
    Cantando:  ’Io amo, io amo!’[191]

Or again, with the irresistible slyness of the final chorus of the Aminta already quoted compare the sententious lines with which Guarini closed his play: 

    O fortunata coppia,
    Che pianto ha seminato, e riso accoglie! 
    Con quante amare doglie
    Hai raddolciti tu gli affetti tuoi! 
    Quinci imparate voi,
    O ciechi e troppo teneri mortali,
    I sinceri diletti, e i veri mali. 
    Non e sana ogni gioia,
    Ne mal cio che v’ annoia. 
    Quello e vero gioire,
    Che nasce da virtu dopo il soffrire.