Guarini, the friend of Tasso, whom he helped in the labour of revising and correcting _Jerusalem Delivered_, was unquestionably his pupil. Tasso having written a bucolic poem, _Aminta_, Guarini wrote a bucolic poem, _The Faithful Shepherd_, which has been one of the greatest literary successes ever known. It was a kind of irregular drama mingled with songs and dances, highly varied, poetic, pathetic sometimes in a rather insipid way. All the _pastorals_, whether French or Italian, and later the opera itself, can be traced to Guarini, or at least the taste for the eclogue may be derived from the dramas Guarini originated. This was a man whose influence has been considerable not only on literature, but also on manners, customs, and morals. DECADENCE OF LITERATURE.--In the seventeenth century Italian literature indisputably was in decadence. In verse more especially, but also in prose, it was the period of ability without depth and even without foundation, of elegant and affected verbiage or burlesque lacking alike in power, thought, and passion. Marini loomed large with his _Adonis_, an ingenious mythological epic, sometimes brilliant but also lame, sometimes full of points, but also with trifles. Great as was his reputation in Italy, it was perhaps surpassed in France, where he was welcomed and flattered by Marie de' Medici and hyperbolically praised by Voiture, Balzac, Scudéry, etc. SALVATOR ROSA; TASSONI; MAFFEI.--The great painter Salvator Rosa devoted himself hardly less to literature; he left lyrical poems and particularly satires which are far from lacking spirit, though often destitute of taste. Satiric, too, was the paradoxical Tassoni, who scoffed at Petrarch, and who in his _Thoughts_, long prior to J.J. Rousseau, was the first, perhaps (but who knows?), to maintain that literature is highly prejudicial to society and humanity, and who achieved fame by his _Rape of the Bucket_: that is, by a burlesque poem on the quarrel between the Bolognese and the inhabitants of Modena about a bucket. Maffei (intruding somewhat on the eighteenth century), good scholar and respected historian, produced in 1714 his _Merope_, which was an excellent tragedy, as Voltaire well knew and also testified.