Chiabrera had the ambition of forming a new style; as he expressed it, he meant to follow the example of his countryman, Columbus, and to find a new world, or be wrecked in the attempt. His wish was, to transfuse the spirit of the Greeks into the Italian language. He perceived that the fault common to the poets of his day, was a certain cowardice of style, and an obedience to arbitrary laws, which limited and chilled the poetic fervour. He shook off these trammels, and adopted every possible mode of versification, and even bent the dialect of Petrarch and Tasso to new and unknown forms of expression. He was no lover of rhyme, preferring to it a majestic harmony in the arrangement of syllables and sound, which he found more musical and expressive than the mere jingle of a concluding word. His style thus became at once novel and exalted. He adorned his verses with pompous epithets and majestic turns of expression: he was harmonious and dignified, fervent and spirited.[43] As he dedicated nearly the whole of his long life to the composition of poetry, he has left a vast quantity, much of which has never been printed,--narrative poems, dramas, odes, canzoni[44], sonnets, &c.; but his canzoni, or lyrics, far excel all the rest. This results from his style being at once more original and beautiful than his ideas. We are apt to say, as we read, we have seen this before, but never so well expressed. He does not, like Petrarch, anatomise his own feelings, and spend his heart in grief: even in his love poetry, while he complains, he does not lament, and there is a sort of laughing and vivacious grace and a liquid softness diffused over these poems in particular, which is infinitely charming. One of his most celebrated, beginning-- "Belle rose porporine," is in praise of his lady's smile. It is impossible for any thing to be more airy and yet heartfelt--he speaks of how the earth is said to laugh, when, at the morning hour, a rivulet or a breeze wanders murmuring amid the grass, or a meadow adorns itself with flowers;--how the sea laughs, when a light zephyr dips its airy feet in the clear waters, so that the waves scarcely play upon the sands;--and how the heavens smile when morning comes forth, amidst roseate and white flowers, adorned in a golden veil, and moving along on sapphire wheels. "When the earth is happy," he says, "she laughs; and the heavens laugh when they are gay: but neither can smile so sweetly and gracefully as you." The flowing measure, the admirable selection and position of the words render this and other similar poems models of lyrical composition. A fairy-like colouring, and a thrilling sweetness, like the scent of flowers, invest them, and render them peculiar in their aerial vivacity and spirited flow.