13. EPIC AND LYRIC POETRY.--Marini (1569-1625), the celebrated innovator on classic Italian taste, is considered as the first who seduced the poets of the seventeenth century into a labored and affected style. He was born at Naples and educated for the legal profession, for which he had little taste, and on publishing a volume of poems, his indignant father turned him out of doors. But his popular qualities never left him without friends. He was invited to the Court of France, obtained the favor of Mary de' Medici, and the situation of gentleman to the king. He became exceedingly popular among the French nobility, many of whom learned Italian for the sole purpose of reading his works. It was here that he published the most celebrated of his poems, entitled "Adonis." He afterwards purchased a beautiful villa near Naples, to which he retired, and where he soon after died. The Adonis of Marini is a mixture of the epic and the romantic style, the subject being taken from the well-known story of Venus and Adonis. He renounced all keeping and probability, both in his incidents and descriptions; if he could present a series of enchanted pictures, he was little solicitous as to the manner of their arrangement. But the work has much beauty and imagination, and is often animated by the true spirit of poetry. Its principal faults are that it is sadly wire-drawn, and abounds in puns, endless antitheses, and inventions for surprising or bewildering the reader; graces which were greatly admired by the contemporaries of the poet. Marini was a voluminous writer, and was not only extolled in his own country above its classic authors, and in France, but the Spaniards held him in the highest esteem, and imitated and even surpassed him in his own eccentric career. He had also innumerable imitators in Italy, many of whom attained a high reputation during their lives, and afterwards sank into complete oblivion. Filicaja (1642-1709) stands at the head of the lyric poets of the seventeenth century. His inspiration seems first to have been awakened when Vienna was besieged by the Turks in 1683, and gallantly defended by the Christian powers. His verses on this occasion awoke the most enthusiastic admiration, and called forth the eulogies of princes and poets. The admiration which he excited in his day is scarcely to be wondered at; for, though this judgment has not been ratified by posterity, Filicaja has at least the merit of having raised the poetry of Italy from the abject service of mere amorous imbecility to the noble office of embodying the more manly and virtuous sentiments; and though his style is infected with the bombastic spirit of the age, it is even in this respect singularly moderate, compared with that of his contemporaries.