to a close by exaggerating its previous defects.  Yet, as a man, Marino is interesting, more interesting in many respects than the melancholy discontented Tasso.  He accepted the conditions of his age with genial and careless sympathy, making himself at once its idol, its interpreter, and its buffoon.  Finally, he illustrates the law of change which transferred to Neapolitans in this age the scepter which had formerly been swayed by Tuscans and Lombards.[186]

Giovanni Battista Marino was born at Naples in 1569.  His father, a jurist of eminence, bred him for the law.  But the attractions of poetry and pleasure were irresistible by this mobile son of the warm South—­

      La lusinga del Genio in me prevalse,
    E la toga deposta, altrui lascisi
    Parolette smaltir mendaci e false. 
    Ne dubbi testi interpretar curai,
    Ne discordi accordar chiose mi calse,
    Quella stimando sol perfetta legge
    Che de’sensi sfrenati il fren corregge. 
      Legge omai piu non v’ ha la qual per dritto
    Punisca il fallo o ricompensi il merto. 
    Sembra quando e fin qui deciso e scritto
    D’opinion confuse abisso incerto. 
    Dalle calumnie il litigante afflitto
    Somiglia in vasto mar legno inesperto,
    Reggono il tutto con affetto ingordo,
    Passion cieca ed interesse sordo.

[Footnote 186:  Telesio, Bruno, Campanella, Salvator Rosa, Vico, were, like Marino, natives of the Regno.]

Such, in the poet’s maturity, was his judgment upon law; and probably he expressed the same opinion with frankness in his youth.  Seeing these dispositions in his son, the severe parent cast him out of doors, and young Marino was free to indulge vagabond instincts with lazzaroni and loose companions on the quays and strands of Naples.  In that luxurious climate a healthy native, full of youth and vigor, needs but little to support existence.  Marino set his wits to work, and reaped too facile laurels in the fields of Venus and the Muses.  His verses speedily attracted the notice of noble patrons, among whom the Duke of Bovino, the Prince of Conca, and Tasso’s friend the Marquis Manso have to be commemorated.  They took care that so genuine and genial a poet should not starve.  It was in one of Manso’s palaces that Marino had an opportunity of worshiping the singer of Armida and Erminia at a distance.  He had already acquired dubious celebrity as a juvenile Don Juan and a writer of audaciously licentious lyrics, when disaster overtook him.  He assisted one of his profligate friends in the abduction of a girl.  For this breach of the law both were thrown together into prison, and Marino only escaped justice by the sudden death of his accomplice.  His patrons now thought it desirable that he should leave Naples for a time.  Accordingly they sent him with letters of recommendation to Rome, where he was well received by members of the Crescenzio and Aldobrandino families.