[Footnote 516: The Papal Court was attacked by him; but none other that I can discover. The only Prince who felt the rough side of his tongue was the Farnese:
Impara tu, Pierluigi ammorbato, Impara, Ducarel da sei quattrini, Il costume d"un Re si onorato.
Cardinal Gaddi and the Bishop of Verona were pretty roughly treated.
So was Clement VII. But all these personages made their peace with Aretino, and paid him homage.]
[Footnote 517: See the curious epistle written to Messer Pompeo Pace by the Conte di Monte Labbate, and included among the _Lettere all"Aretino_, vol. iv. p. 385. Speaking of Aretino"s singular worth and excellent qualities, it discusses the question of the terror he inspired, which the author attributes to a kind of justifiable _chantage_. That Aretino was the inventor of literary _chantage_ is certain; but that it was justifiable, does not appear.]
[Footnote 518: Aretino made no secret of his artificial method of flattery. In a letter to Bembo (_Lettere_, ii. 52), he openly boasts that his literary skill enables him to "swell the pride of grandees with exorbitant praises, keeping them aloft in the skies upon the wings of hyperboles." "It is my business," he adds, "to transform digressions, metaphors, and pedagogeries of all sorts into capstans for moving and pincers for opening. I must so work that the voice of my writings shall break the sleep of avarice; and baptize that conceit or that phrase which shall bring me crowns of gold, not laurels."]
[Footnote 519: As a sample of his begging style, we may extract the following pa.s.sage from a letter (1537), referring to the king of France (_Lettere_, i. 111): "I was and ever shall be the servant of his Majesty, of whom I preached and published what appears in all my utterances and in all my works. But since it is my wonted habit not to live by dreams, and since certain persons take no care for me, I have with glory to myself made myself esteemed and sought by those who are really liberal. The chain was three years delayed, and four have gone without so much as a courtesy to me from the King"s quarter. Therefore I have turned to one who gives without promising--I speak of the Emperor. I adored Francis; but never to get money from the stirring of his liberality, is enough to cool the furnaces of Murano."]
[Footnote 520: See Cromwell"s letter, in the _Lettere all"Aretino_, vol. ii. p. 15.]
[Footnote 521: _Lettere all"Aretino_, vol. i. p. 245; vol. iv. pp.
281, 289, 300, contain allusions to this project, which is said to have originated with the Duke of Parma. The first citation is a letter of t.i.tian"s.]
[Footnote 522: "Divino," "Divinissimo," "Precellentissimo,"
"Unichissimo," "Onnipotente," are a few of the epithets culled from the common language of his flatterers.]
[Footnote 523: I will translate pa.s.sages from two letters, which, by their very blasphemies, emphasize this contradiction. "One might well say that you, most divine Signor Pietro, are neither Prophet nor Sibyl, but rather the very Son of G.o.d, seeing that G.o.d is highest truth in heaven, and you are truth on earth; nor is any city but Venice fit to give you harborage, who are the jewel of the earth, the treasure of the sea, the pride of heaven; and that rare cloth of gold, bedecked with gems, they place upon the altar of S. Mark"s, is naught but you" (_Lettere scritte a P. Aretino_, vol. iii. p. 176). The next is more extraordinary, since it professes to be written by a monk: "In this our age you are a column, lantern, torch and splendor of Holy Church, who, could she speak, would give to you the revenues of Chieti, Farnese, Santa Fiore, and all those other idlers, crying out--Let them be awarded to the Lord Pietro, who distinguishes, exalts and honors me, in whom unite the subtlety of Augustine, the moral force of Gregory, Jerome"s profundity of meaning, the weighty style of Ambrose. It is not I but the whole world that says you are another Paul, who have borne the name of the Son of G.o.d into the presence of kings, potentates, princes of the universe; another Baptist, who with boldness, fearing naught, have reproved, chastised, exposed iniquities, malice, hypocrisy before the whole world; another John the Evangelist, for exhorting, entreating, exalting, honoring the good, the righteous, and the virtuous. Verily he who first called you Divine, can claim the words Christ spake to Peter: Beatus es, quia caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi, sed Pater noster qui in coelis est" (_Ibid._ p. 142).]
Sometimes he met with men stout enough to treat him as he deserved.
The English emba.s.sador at Venice cudgeled him within an inch of his life. Pietro Strozzi threatened to a.s.sa.s.sinate him if he showed his face abroad, and Aretino kept close so long as the _condottiere_ remained in Venice. Tintoretto offered to paint his portrait; and when he had got the fellow inside his studio, grimly took his measure with a cutla.s.s. Aretino never resented these insults. Bully as he was, he bowed to blows, and kissed the hand that dared to strike him. We have already seen how he waited till Berni"s death before he took revenge for the famous sonnet. All this makes the general adulation of society for the "divine Aretino" the more unintelligible. We can only compare the treatment he received with the mingled contempt and flattery, the canings and the invitations, showered at the present time on editors of scandal-mongering journals.
The miracle of Aretino"s dictatorship is further enhanced by the fact that he played with cards upon the table. His epistles were continually being printed--in fact, were sent to the press as soon as written. Here all the world could see the workings of his mind, his hypocrisies, his contradictions, the clamorousness of his demands for gold, the grossness and universality of his flatteries, his cynical obscenity, his simulation of a superficial and disgusting piety. Yet the more he published of his correspondence, the louder was the acclamation of society. The charlatan of genius knew his public, and won their favor by effronteries that would have ruined a more cautious impostor. Some of his letters are masterpieces of infernal malice.
The Marchioness of Pescara had besought him to change his mode of life, and to dedicate his talents only to religion.[524] This is how he answers her:[525] "It gives me pleasure, most modest lady, that the religious pieces I have written do not displease the taste of your good judgment. Your doubt, whether to praise me or to dispraise me for expending my talents on aught else than sacred studies, is prompted by that most excellent spirit which moves you to desire that every thought and every word should turn toward G.o.d, forasmuch as He is the giver of virtue and of intellectual power. I confess that I am less useful to the world, and less acceptable to Christ, when I exhaust my studious energies on lying trifles, and not on the eternal verities.
But all this evil is caused by the pleasure of others, and by my own necessities; for if the princes were as truly pious as I am indigent, I would employ my pen on nothing else but Misereres. Excellent my lady, all men are not gifted with the graces of divine inspiration.
_They_ are ever burning with l.u.s.tful desires, while _you_ are every hour inflamed with angelic fire. For _you_ the services of the Church and sermons are what music and comedies are for _them_. _You_ would not turn your eyes to look at Hercules upon his pyre, nor yet on Marsyas without his skin: while _they_ would hardly keep a S. Lawrence on the gridiron or a flayed Bartholomew in their bedroom. There"s my bosom friend Bruciolo; five years ago he dedicated his Bible to the King, who calls himself Most Christian, and yet he has not had an answer. Perhaps the book was neither well translated nor well bound.
On this account my _Cortigiana_, which drew from his Majesty the famous chain of gold, abstained from laughing at his _Old Testament_; for this would be indecent. So you see I ought to be excused if I compose jests for my livelihood and not for evil purpose. Anyhow, may Jesus inspire you with the thought of paying me through M. Sebastiano of Pesaro--from whom I received your thirty crowns--the rest, which I owe, upon my word and honor. From Venice. The 9th of January, 1537."
[Footnote 524: Her letter may be read in the _Lettere all"Aretino_, vol iii. p. 28.]
[Footnote 525: _Lettere_, ii. 9.]
This letter, one long tissue of sneers, taunts and hypocritical sarcasms, gives the complete measure of Aretino"s arrogance. Yet the ill.u.s.trious and pious lady to whom it was addressed, suffered the writer--such was this man"s unaccountable prestige--to remain her correspondent. The collection of his letters contains several addressed to Vittoria Colonna, of which the date is subsequent to 1537.[526] Not less remarkable were Aretino"s dealings with the proud, resentful, solitary Michelangelo. Professing the highest admiration for Buonarroti"s genius, averring that "the world has many kings but one only Michelangelo," Aretino wrote demanding drawings from the mighty sculptor, and giving him advice about his pictures in the Sistine. Instead of treating these impertinent advances with silence or sending a well-merited rebuff, we have a letter from Michelangelo addressed to "M. Pietro, my lord and brother," requesting the dictator to write something concerning him:[527] "Not only do I hold this dear, but I implore you to do so, since kings and emperors regard it as the height of favor to be mentioned by your pen." Was this the depth of humility, or the acme of irony, or was it the acquiescence of a n.o.ble nature in a fashion too prevalent to be examined by the light of reason? Let those decide who have read a portion of Aretino"s letters to his "singularly divine Buonaruoto." For my own part, in spite of their strange but characteristic fusion of bullying and servility, I find in these epistles a trace of Aretino"s most respectable quality--his worship of art, and his personal attachment to great artists. It may be said in pa.s.sing that he never shows so well as in the epistles to Sansovino and t.i.tian, men from whom he could gain but indirectly, and to whom he clung by an instinct of what was truest and sincerest in his nature. It is, therefore, not improbable that Michelangelo gave him credit for sincerity, and, instead of resenting his importunity, was willing to accept his advances in a kindly spirit.[528]
[Footnote 526: She wrote to him again in 1539; see _Lettere all"Aretino_, vol. iii. p. 30. The series of letters from the virtuous Veronica Gambara are equally astonishing (_ib._ vol. i. pp. 318-333).]
[Footnote 527: _Lettere all"Aretino_, vol. ii. p. 335.]
[Footnote 528: Giorgio Vasari, the common friend of Pietro Aretino and M.A. Buonarroti, had no doubt something to do with the acquiescent courtesy of the latter.]
Thus far we have been dealing with Aretino"s relation to sovereigns, ladies, and people of importance in the world of art. That he should have imposed upon them is singular. But his position in the republic of letters offers still stranger food for reflection. In an age of literary refinement and cla.s.sical erudition, this untaught child of the people arrogated to himself the fame of a prominent author, and had his claims acknowledged by men like Bembo, Varchi, Molza, Sperone.[529] All the Academies in Italy made him their member with extraordinary honors, and he corresponded with every writer of distinction. He treated the scholars of his day as he treated the princes of Italy, abusing them collectively for pedantry, and showering the epithets of _divino, divinissimo_, upon them individually. With his usual sagacity, Aretino saw how to command the public by running counter to the prejudices of his century, and proclaiming his independence of its principles. He resolved to win celebrity by contrast, by piquancy of style, by the a.s.sertion of his individual character, by what Machiavelli termed _virtu_. As he had boasted of the baseness of his origin, so now he piqued himself upon his ignorance. He made a parade of knowing neither Latin nor Greek, derided the puristic veneration for Petrarch and Boccaccio then in vogue, and a.s.serted that his mother-wit was the best source of inspiration. This audacity proved successful. While the stylists of the day were polishing their labored periods to smoothness, he expressed such thoughts as occurred to him in the words which came first to hand, seeking only vivacity, relief and salience. He wrote as he talked; and the result was that he acquired a well-won reputation for freshness, wit, originality and vigor. This is how he dictates the terms of epistolary style to Bernardo Ta.s.so:[530] "I, who am more your brother in benevolence than you show yourself to be my friend in honor, did not believe that the serenity of my mind would ever again be dimmed by those clouds, which, after thunders and lightnings, burst in the bolt that sent Antonio Broccardo beneath the earth. Pride and vanity, for certain, prompted you to tell the excellent and ill.u.s.trious Annibale Caro that no writer of letters is worthy to be imitated at the present day, sagaciously hinting at yourself as the right man to be imitated. Without doubt, your inordinate self-love, combined with your inattention to the claims of others, brought your judgment to this pa.s.s. I published letters before you, and you borrowed your style, in so far as it is worth anything, from me. Yet you cannot produce even a counterfeit of my manner. My sentences and similes are made to live; yours issue stillborn from your mind. It is time that you copy a few of my familiar phrases, word by word. What else can you do? Your own taste is rather inclined to the scent of flowers than the savor of fruits. You have the graces of a certain celestial style, fit for epithalamial odes and hymns. But all that sweetness is out of place in epistles, where we want the salience of invention, not the illuminated arabesques of artifice. I am not going to sing my own praises, nor to tell you that men of merit ought to mark my birthday with white chalk--I, who without scouring the post-roads, without following Courts, without stirring from my study, have made every living duke, prince, sovereign, tributary to my virtue--I, who hold fame at my discretion through the universe--I, whose portrait is revered, whose name is honored in Persia and the Indies. To end this letter, I salute you with the a.s.surance that n.o.body, so far as your epistles go, blames you for envy"s sake, while many, very many, praise you through compa.s.sion for your having written them." There was no limit to his literary self-confidence.[531] "Of the three opinions current respecting the talents which keep my name alive, time has refuted that, which, hearing I had no erudition, judged my compositions to be nonsense, together with that other, which, finding in them some gust of genius, affirmed they were not mine. Whence it follows that only one remains, the opinion, to wit, that I, who never had a tutor, am complete in every branch of knowledge. All this comes from the poverty of art, which ever envies the wealth of nature, from whom I borrow my conceptions. Wherefore, if you are of the number of those who, in order to deprive me of nature"s favor, attribute to me the learning that comes from study, you deceive yourself, for I swear by G.o.d I hardly understand my mother tongue."
Meanwhile his tirades against the purists are full of excellent good sense. "O mistaken mult.i.tude, I tell you again, and yet again that poetry is a caprice of nature in her moments of gladness; it depends on a man"s own inspiration, and if this fails, a poet"s singing is but a tambourine without rattles, a bell-tower without bells. He who attempts to write verses without the gift is like the alchemists, who, for all their industry and eager avarice, never yet made gold, while nature, without labor, turns it out in plenty, pure and beautiful.
Take lessons from that painter, who, when he was asked whom he imitated, pointed to a crowd of living men, meaning that he borrowed his examples from life and reality. This is what I do, when I write or talk. Nature herself, of whose simplicity I am the secretary, dictates that which I set down."[532] And again: "I laugh at those pedants, who think that learning consists in Greek and Latin, laying down the law that one who does not understand these languages, cannot open his mouth. It is not because I do not know them, that I have departed from Petrarch"s and Boccaccio"s precedents; but because I care not to lose time, patience, reputation, in the mad attempt to convert myself into their persons. The true aim of writing is to condense into the s.p.a.ce of half a page, the length of histories, the tedium of orations; and this my letters clearly show that I have done." "It is far better to drink out of one"s own wooden cup than another"s golden goblet; and a man makes a finer show in his own rags than in stolen velvets. What have we to do with other people"s property?"[533] "What have we to do with words which, however once in common use, have now pa.s.sed out of fashion?"[534] At times he bursts into a fury of invective against erudition: "Those pedants, the a.s.ses of other people"s books, who, after ma.s.sacring the dead, rest not till they have crucified the living! It was pedantry that murdered Duke Alessandro, pedantry that flung the Cardinal of Ravenna into prison, and, what is worse, stirred up heresy against our faith through the mouth of that arch-pedant Luther."[535] This is admirable. It plunges to the very root of the matter. Sharpened by his hostility to the learning he did not share, and the puerile aspects of which he justly satirized, this acute and clairvoyant critic is enabled to perceive that both Italian tyrannicide and German Reformation had their origin in the humanistic movement of the fifteenth century. He is equally averse to either consequence. Erudition spoils sport, stiffens style, breaks in upon the pastimes of the princ.i.p.alities and papacies, which breed the l.u.s.ts on which an Aretino lives.
[Footnote 529: The adulation with which all the chief literary men of Italy greeted Aretino, is quite incredible. One must read their letters in the _Lettere all"Aretino_ to have any conception of it. See in particular those of Varchi (_ib._ vol. ii. pp. 186-202), of Dolce (vol. ii. pp. 277-295), of Paolo Giovio (vol. iii. pp. 59-64), of Niccol Martelli (vol. iii. pp. 116-125), of Annibale Caro (_ib._ p.
163), of Sperone (_ib._ pp. 324-330), of Firenzuola (_ib._ p. 345), of Doni (vol. iv. p. 395). Molza, terrified by one of Aretino"s threats, cringes before him (vol. i. p. 340). Doni signs himself "Il Doni dell"Aretino," and Vergerio, Bishop of Capo d"Istria, "Il Vescovo dell"Aretino." Even the excellent Bishop of Fos...o...b..one pays him courtly compliments (vol. ii. pp. 61-67). The pitch attained by these flatteries may be understood from this opening of a letter: "Bella armonia, e soave concento, dovea essere nel cielo, Signor Pietro divino, e fra le stelle amiche, il d, che Iddio e la Natura di voi fece altero dono a questa nostra etade," etc. _ad. inf._ (vol. iv. p.
269). Here is another fragment: "Manifestamente si vede e si conosce che da Iddio per conservazione de la sua gloria e per utilita del mondo v"abbi fra tanti avversari," etc. (vol. iv. p. 398).]
[Footnote 530: _Lettere_, v. 184. The above is only a condensed paraphrase of a very long tirade.]
[Footnote 531: _Lettere_, ii. 242.]
[Footnote 532: _Lettere_, i. 123.]
[Footnote 533: _Lettere_, ii. 182.]
[Footnote 534: _Lettere_, i. 210.]
[Footnote 535: _Lettere_, i. 143.]
It was Aretino"s boast that he composed as fast as the pen would move across the paper, and that his study contained no books of reference--nothing but the quire of paper and the bottle of ink, which were necessary to immortalize the thick-crowding fancies of his brain.
His comedy of the _Filosofo_ was written in ten mornings; the _Talanta_ and the _Ipocrita_ in "the hours robbed from sleep during perhaps twenty nights."[536] Referring to his earlier fertility in 1537, he says:[537] "Old age begins to stupefy my brains, and love, which ought to wake them up, now sends them off to sleep. I used to turn out forty stanzas in a morning; now I can with difficulty produce one. It took me only seven mornings to compose the _Psalms_; ten for the _Cortigiana_ and the _Marescalco_; forty-eight for the two _Dialogues_; thirty for the _Life of Christ_." The necessary consequences of this haste are discernible in all his compositions.
Aretino left nothing artistically finished, nothing to which it is now possible to point in justification of his extraordinary celebrity. His sonnets are below contempt. Frigid, inharmonious, pompous, strained, affected, they exhibit the worst vices to which this species of poetry is liable. His _Capitoli_, though he compared them to "colossal statues of gold or silver, where I have carved the forms of Julius, a Pope, Charles, an Emperor, Catherine, a Queen, Francesco Maria, a Duke, with such art that the outlines of their inner nature are brought into relief, the muscles of their will and purpose are shown in play, the profiles of their emotions are thrown into salience"[538]--these _Capitoli_ will not bear comparison for one moment with Berni"s. They are coa.r.s.e and strident in style, threadbare in sentiment, commonplace in conception, with only one eminent quality, a certain gross prolific force, a brazen clash and clangor of ant.i.thesis, to compensate for their vulgarity. Yet, such as they are, the _Capitoli_ must be reckoned the best of his compositions in verse.
Of his comedies I have already spoken. These will always be valuable for their lively sketches of contemporary manners, their free satiric vein of humor. The _Dialoghi_, although it is scarcely possible to mention them in a decent book of history, are distinguished by the same qualities of veracity, ac.u.men, prolific vigor, animal spirits, and outspokenness. Aretino"s religious works, it need hardly be said, are worthless or worse. Impudent romances, penned by one of the most unscrupulous of men, frankly acknowledged by their author to be a tissue of "poetical lies," we are left to marvel how they could have deceived the judgment and perverted the taste of really elevated natures.[539] That the Marchioness of Pescara should have hailed the coa.r.s.e fictions of the Life of S. Catherine, which Aretino confessed to have written out of his own head, as a work of efficient piety, remains one of the wonders of that extraordinary age.
[Footnote 536: _Lettere_, iii. 84. Letter at the end of the _Talanta_.]
[Footnote 537: _Lettere_, i. 99.]
[Footnote 538: _Lettere_, vi. 4.]
[Footnote 539: See _Lettere_, ii. 168, iii. 169, for his method of composing these books.]
What then, it may finally be asked, was Aretino"s merit as an author?
Why do we allude to him at all in writing the history of sixteenth-century literature? The answer can be given in two words--originality and independence. It was no vain boast of Aretino that he trusted only to nature and mother-wit. His intellectual distinction consisted precisely in this confidence and self-reliance, at a moment when the literary world was given over to pedantic scruples and the formalities of academical prescription. Writing without the fear of pedagogues before his eyes--seeking, as he says, relief, expression, force, and brilliancy of phrase, he produced a manner at once singular and attractive which turned to ridicule the pretensions of the purists. He had the courage of his personality, and stamped upon his style the very form and pressure of himself. As a writer, he exhibited what Machiavelli demanded from the man of action--_virtu_, or the virility of self-reliance. That was the secret of his success. The same audacity and independence characterize all his utterances of opinion--his criticisms of art and literature--his appreciation of natural beauty. In some of the letters written to painters and sculptors, and in a description of a Venetian sunset already quoted in this book, we trace the dawnings of a true and natural school of criticism, a forecast of the spontaneity of Diderot and Henri Beyle. This naturalness of expression did not save Aretino from glaring bad taste. His letters and his dedicatory introductions abound in confused metaphors, extravagant _concetti_, and artificial ornaments. It seems impossible for him to put pen to paper without inventing monstrous and ridiculous periphrases. Still the literary impropriety, which would have been affectation in any one else, and which became affectation in his imitators, was true to the man"s nature. He could not be true to himself without falseness of utterance, because there was in him an inherent insincerity, and this was veiled by no scholastic accuracy or studied purity of phrase.
Much of the bad taste of the later Renaissance (the tropes of Marini and the absurdities of _seicentismo_) may be ascribed to the fascination exercised by this strange combination of artificiality and naturalness in a style remarkable for vigor. Who, for instance does not feel that the mannerism of our euphuistic prosaists is shadowed forth in the following pa.s.sage from the introduction to the _Talanta_?[540] The Prologue, on the drawing of the curtain, takes the audience into his confidence, and tells them that he long had hesitated which of the Immortal G.o.ds to personate. Mars, Jupiter, Phoebus, Venus, Mercury, and all the Pantheon in succession were rejected, for different appropriate reasons, till the G.o.d of Love appeared. "When at last it came to Cupid"s turn, I immediately said Yes! and having so a.s.sented, I felt wings growing at my shoulders, the quiver at my side, the bow within my hands. In a moment I became all steel, all fire; and eager to be ware what things are done in love, I cast a glance upon the crowd of lovers; whence I soon could see who has the rendezvous, who is sent about his business, who prowls around his mistress" house, who enters by the door, who clambers up the walls, who scales the rope, who jumps from the window, who hides himself within a tub, who takes the cudgel, who gets a gelding for his pains, who is stowed away by the chambermaid, who is kicked out by the serving-man, who goes mad with anxiety, who bursts with pa.s.sion, who wastes away in gazing, who cuts snooks at hope, who lets himself be hoodwinked, who spends a fortune on his mistress to look grand, who robs her for a freak, who saps her chast.i.ty with threats, who conjures her with prayers, who blabs of his success, who hides his luck, who bolsters up his vaunt with lies, who dissembles the truth, who extols the flame that burns him, who curses the cause of his heart"s conflagration, who cannot eat for grief, who cannot sleep for joy, who compiles sonnets, who scribbles billets-doux, who dabbles in enchantments, who renews a.s.saults, who takes counsel with bawds, who ties a favor on his arm, who mumbles at a flower the wench has touched, who tw.a.n.gles the lute, who hums a glee, who thrusts his rival through the body, who gets killed by his compet.i.tors, who eats his heart out for a mylady, who dies of longing for a strumpet. When I understood the things aforesaid, I turned round to these female firebrands, and saw how the devil (to chastise them for the perverse ways they use toward men who serve them, praise them, and adore them) gives them up, easy victims, to a pedant, a plebeian, a simpleton, a loon, a groom, a graceless clown, and to a certain mange that catches them."
[Footnote 540: I have purposely chosen an extract where the style is keen and mobile. Had I taken examples from the Letters, I could have produced a far closer parallel to Lilly"s rhetoric.]
Aretino congregated round him a whole cla.s.s of literary Bohemians, drawing forth the peccant humors of more than one Italian city, and locating these greedy adventurers in Venice as his satellites. It is enough to mention Niccol Franco, Giovanni Alberto Albicante, Lorenzo Veniero, Doni, Lodovico Dolce. They were, most of them, hack writers, who gained a scanty livelihood by miscellaneous work for the booksellers and by selling dedications to patrons. More or less successfully, they carried on the trade invented and developed by Aretino; remaining on terms of intimacy with him, at first as friends or secretaries, afterwards as enemies and rivals. We have already seen what use was made of Albicante for the mutilation of Berni"s _Innamoramento_. This poetaster was a native of Milan, who published a history of the war in Piedmont, which Aretino chose to ridicule in one of his _Capitoli_.[541] Albicante replied with another poem in _terza rima_, and Aretino seems to have perceived that he had met a worthy adversary. It was Albicante"s glory to be called _furibondo_ and _b.e.s.t.i.a.le_. He affected an utter indifference to consequences, an absolute recklessness concerning what he did and said. Whether Aretino was really afraid of him, or whether he wished to employ him in the matter of Berni"s _Innamoramento_, is not certain. At any rate, he made advances to Albicante in a letter which begins: "My brother, the rage of poets is but a frenzy of stupidity." The antagonists were reconciled, and the Academy of the Intronati at Siena thought this event worthy of commemoration in a volume: "Combattimento poetico del divino Aretino e del b.e.s.t.i.a.le Albicante occorso sopra la Guerra di Piemonte, e la pace loro celebrata nella Accademia de gli Intronati a Siena."
[Footnote 541: See the article on Albicante in Mazzuch.e.l.li"s _Scrittori Italiani_, vol. i.]
Niccol Franco was a native of Benevento, whom Aretino took into his service, as a kind of secretary.[542] Being deficient in scholarship, he needed a man capable of supplying him with Greek and Latin quotations, and who could veneer his coa.r.s.e work with a show of humanistic erudition. Franco undertook the office; and it is probable that some of Aretino"s earlier works of piety and learning--the _Genesis_, for instance--issued from this unequal collaboration. But their good accord did not last long. Franco proved to be a ruffian of even fiercer type than his master. If Aretino kept a literary poignard in the scabbard, ready to strike when his utility demanded, Franco went about the world with unsheathed dagger, stabbing for the pleasure of the sport. "I would rather lose a dinner," he writes, "than omit to fire my pen off when the fancy takes me." The two men could not dwell together in union. When Aretino published the first series of his letters, Franco issued a rival volume, in the last epistle of which, addressed to Envy, he made an attack on his patron. Ambrogio degli Eusebi, an _ame d.a.m.nee_ of the Aretine, about whom many scurrilous stories were told, stabbed Franco, while Aretino published invective after invective against him in the form of letters. Franco left Venice, established himself for a while at Casale in the lordship of Montferrat, opened a school at Mantua, and ran a thousand infamous adventures, pouring forth satirical sonnets all the while at Aretino.
In the course of his wanderings, he completed a Latin commentary on the _Priapea_. These two works together--the centuries of sonnets against Aretino, and the Priapic lucubrations--obtained a wide celebrity. Speaking of the book, Tiraboschi is compelled to say that "few works exist which so dishonor human nature. The grossest obscenities, the most licentious evil-speaking, the boldest contempt of princes, Popes, Fathers of the Council, and other weighty personages, are the gems with which he adorned his monument of perverse industry." Franco proved so obnoxious to polite society that he was at last taken and summarily hanged in 1569. The curious point about this condemnation of a cur is, that he was in no whit worse than many other scribblers of the day. But he made more noise; he had not the art to rule society like Aretino; he committed the mistake of trusting himself to the perilous climates of Lombardy and Rome. His old master drove him out of Venice, and the unlucky reprobate paid the penalty of his misdeeds by becoming the scapegoat for men whom he detested.
[Footnote 542: For what follows see Tiraboschi, tom. vii. part 3, lib.
iii.]
Doni began his Venetian career as a friend of Aretino, whose companion he was in the famous Academy of the Pellegrini. They quarreled over a present sent to Doni by the Duke of Urbino, and the bizarre Florentine pa.s.sed over to the ranks of Aretino"s bitterest enemies. In 1556 he declared war, with a book ent.i.tled "Terremoto del Doni Fiorentino."
The preface was addressed to "the infamous and vicious Pietro Aretino, the source and fountain of all evil, the stinking limb of public falsehood, and true Antichrist of our century." Soon after the appearance of this volume, followed Aretino"s death. But Doni pursued his animosity beyond the grave, and was instrumental in causing his rival"s writings to be subjected to ecclesiastical interdiction.
We tire of these low literary quarrels. Yet they form an integral part of the history of Italian civilization; and the language of invective used in them, originating with Aretino and improved upon by Doni and Franco, became the model of vituperative style in Europe. Doni"s "Earthquake, with the Ruin of a great b.e.s.t.i.a.l Colossus, the Antichrist of our age," brings to mind a score of pamphlets, published in Europe during the conflict of the Church with Reformation. We find an echo of its strained metaphors in the polemical writings of Bruno and Campanella. The grotesque manner of the seventeenth century begins with Aretino and his satellites, just as its far-fetched conceits may be traced in the clear language of Guarini. Gongora, Marini, Euphues, and the _Precieuses Ridicules_ of the Hotel Rambouillet are contained, as it were, in germ among this little knot of refugees at Venice, who set their wits against the academical traditions of pure Italian taste.
A characteristic legend is told of Aretino"s death. Two of his sisters kept, it is said, a house of ill fame; and the story runs that he died of immoderate laughter, flinging himself backward in his chair and breaking his neck, on hearing some foul jest reported by them. It is difficult to believe that this tale has any foundation in fact. We must take it as a scurrilous invention, proving the revolution of public opinion, which since his books had been put upon the Index in 1559, undoubtedly took place. Of like tenor is the epitaph which was never really placed upon his grave:[543]