226 Italian literature. Fune 20> 
wifh to write on pastoral, or piscatorial subjects. 
The applause and good reception which this his first 
production experienced puffed up his spirits, and his 
stile, the purity of which in his heroic, moral, and 
sacred poems is entirely altered. His zdy/iiums and 
epithalamiums are full of extravagancies ; as dike- 
-wise his famous poem of done, which has many 
great beauties, but so filled up, as his other small 
poems, with strange turns of phrases, with many 
false ideas, or concettz, and with such tedious ver- 
bosity, that it is sufficient to disgust any one, who 
has formed his taste on the pure models of the 
Greek, Latin, and best Italian authors. Yet Ma- 
rini’s fame daily increased, and, for a whole cen- 
tury, the Italian poets contended among themselves 
who could write, either in prose or in verse, in a stile 
still more extravagant than his. Fulvio Testi, and 
Gabriello Chiabrera, who flourifhed m this time, 
may be in some measure excepted. For though they» 
are not free from faults, yet they have such beauties 
as tomake them worthy to be ranked amongst the good 
poets. The former, in his odes, rivals the vivacity, 
the truth, and the brilliancy of Horace ; whilst the 
latter has transfused into our language the graces of 
Anacreon, conjoined with the fire of Pindar ; and has 
thus introduced into the Italian poetry, that force and 
tendernefs which is the distinguifhed characteristic of 
the Greek poets. 
Among the crowd of the concettisti, the first place, 
next to Marini, may be given to Ciro di Pers, Gi- 
rolamo Preti, Battisti, and Achillint: This last 
