Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/30



In a celebrated series of sonnets, Giovanni Guidiccioni exhorts Italy to be true to her former self, urging her, by her memories of old, to recover her lost liberty from those who once adorned her triumphs, closing with an inspired picture of the return of peace and freedom to the land (2). Nor are such ideas confined to the polished lyrics of the Petrarchists, who may be regarded as merely following in the steps of Petrarca himself. We find them expressed, with uncouth vigour, by the greatest realist among the Italian poets of the Cinquecento: Teofilo Folengo (Merlino Coccaio). What his latest editor, Alessandro Luzio, well calls the "magnanimo orgoglio di italianità," appears alike in the hexameters of his maccheronic epic, Baldus, and the unpolished octaves of his Italian poem, Orlandino:— 18