Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/347

Rh of Serafino. "Pending the fatal issue of this duel Serafino is the benefactor of his kind. Carry him into the desert and he will supply water from his eyes, fire from his heart.  If a besieged castle is in want of water, call for him.  Does a mariner desire wind to fill his sails, bring the poet.  Is an unfortunate person freezing in winter, let him draw near.  Love has put water in his eyes, the wind in his mouth, fire in his heart.  And the proof that he is all fire is just that he is all water.  He is like green wood which gives out water when it burns." In this poetry at the same time the more ideal conception of love gave place to the classical and sensual.

Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano endeavoured to give new life to the Italian lyric by refining and enriching the fresh and living songs of the people; but the inspirer of cinquecentist lyric poetry was Cardinal Bembo, who revived a purer but still quite artificial Petrarchian tradition which—except in the sonnets of Michael Angelo—was little more than an exercise in style. Marino's hyperboles and ingenuities are not more extravagant than those of many of his predecessors, and the prettiness which is their characteristic had appeared already, at any rate in Tasso's poetry.

Nor, although he boasted that like his townsman