Jacopo Sannazzaro, known to humanism as Actius Sincerus, disciple of the ‘Accademia Pontana,’ and editor of his master’s works, the greatest explorer, if not the greatest exponent, of the mysteries of Arcadia, was born of parents of Spanish origin at Naples in 1458.  His boyhood was spent at San Cipriano, but he soon returned to Naples, where he fell in love with Carmosina Bonifacia.  His passion does not appear to have been reciprocated, but the lady has her place in literature as the Phillis of the eclogues.  He attached himself to the court of Frederick of Aragon, whom he followed into exile in France.  Returning to Naples after his patron’s death in 1503, he again fell in love, this time with a certain Cassandra Marchesa, to whom he continued to pay court, more Platonico, till his death in 1530.  He is said to have died at her house.

To his Italian work I shall have to return later; here it is his five Latin piscatory eclogues that demand notice.  There is nothing in the subject-matter to arrest attention—­they consist of a lament for Carmosina, a lover’s complaint, a singing match, a panegyric, and a poem in honour of Cassandra—­but the form is interesting.  Of course the claim sometimes put forward for Sannazzaro, as the inventor of the piscatory eclogue, ignores various passages in Theocritus, notably the twenty-first Idyl, whence he presumably borrowed the idea.  But it is certainly refreshing, after wandering in an unreal Sicily and an imaginary Arcadia, and listening to shepherds discourse of the abuses of the Roman Curia, to dive into the waters of the bay of Naples, or wanton in fancy along its sunlit shore from the low rocks of Baiae to the sheer cliffs of Sorrento, and to feel that, even though Jacopo was no Neapolitan fisher-boy, and Carmosina no nymph of Posilipo, yet the poet had at least before him the blue water and the dark rocks, and in his heart the love that formed the theme of his song[31].

Sannazzaro also wrote a mythological poem entitled Salices, in which certain nymphs pursued by satyrs are changed by Diana into willows.  The tale was evidently suggested by Ovid, and cannot strictly be classed as pastoral, though it may have helped to fix in pastoral convention the character of the satyr; who, however, at no time enjoyed a very savoury reputation.  The Latin works were first published at Naples in 1536, and though far from rivalling the popularity of the Arcadia, went through several editions.

The Latin eclogues of the renaissance are distinguished from all other forms of allegory by the obscure and recondite allusions that they affected.  There were few among their authors for whom the narration of simple loves and sorrows or the graces of untutored nature possessed any attraction; we find them either making their shepherds openly discuss contemporary affairs, or more often clothing their references to actual events in a sort of pastoral allegory, fatuous as regards its form and obscure as regards its content.