At a first glance we shall be astonished to find that this poet, who may justly be regarded as the corypheus of Circean orgies in the seventeenth century, left in MS. a grave lament upon the woes of Italy.  Marino’s Pianto d’Italia has no trace of Marinism.  It is composed with sobriety in a pedestrian style of plainness, and it tells the truth without reserve.  Italy traces her wretchedness to one sole cause, subjection under Spanish rule.

    Lascio ch’un re che di real non tiene
    Altro che il nome effemminato e vile
    A sua voglia mi reggi, e di catene
    Barbare mi circondi il pie servile.

This tyrant foments jealousy and sows seeds of discord between the Italian states.  His viceroys are elected from the cruelest, the most unjust, the most rapacious, and the most luxurious of the courtiers crawling round his throne.  The College of Cardinals is bought and sold.  No prince dares move a finger in his family or state without consulting the Iberian senate; still less can he levy troops for self-defense.  Yet throughout Europe Spanish victories have been obtained by Italian generals; the bravest soldiers in foreign armies are Italian exiles.  Perhaps it may be argued that the empty titles which abound in every petty city, the fulsome promises on which those miserable vassals found their hopes, are makeweights for such miseries.  Call them rather chains to bind the nation, lures and birdlime such as snarers use.  There is but one quarter to which the widowed and discrowned Queen of Nations can appeal for succor.  She turns to Carlo Emmanuele, Duke of Savoy, to the hills whence cometh help.  It was not, however, until two centuries after Marino penned these patriotic stanzas, that her prayer was answered.  And the reflection forced upon us when we read the Pianto d’Italia, is that Marino composed it to flatter a patron who at that moment entertained visionary schemes of attacking the Spanish hegemony.

To make any but an abrupt transition from Marino to Chiabrera would be impossible.  It is like passing from some luxurious grove of oranges and roses to a barren hill-top without prospect over sea or champaign.  We are fortunate in possessing a few pages of autobiography, from which all that is needful to remember of Gabriello Chiabrera’s personal history may be extracted.  He was born in 1552 at Savona, fifteen days after his father’s death.  His mother made a second marriage, and left him to the care of an uncle, with whom at the age of nine he went to reside in Rome.  In the house of this bachelor uncle the poor little orphan pined away.  Fever succeeded fever, until his guardian felt that companionship with boys in play and study was the only chance of saving so frail a life as Gabriello’s.  Accordingly he placed the invalid under the care of the Jesuits in their Collegio Romano.  Here the child’s health revived, and his education till the age of twenty throve apace.  The Jesuits seem to have been liberal in their course of training; for young Chiabrera benefited by private conversation with Paolo Manuzio and Sperone Speroni, while he attended the lectures of Muretus in the university.