Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. "Pluck some leafy branch," he says, "and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their strife":-- "The two warring bands joyful unite, And foe embraces foe: each with its lips Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast, Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed, And all inebriate with delight." So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle. [Footnote 6: "Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme; Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua, Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci; E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini; Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge Ne' le spumanti tazze," etc. ] Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm like the chirping of a bird;--as where he paints (in the very first scene of the "Pastor Fido") the little sparrow flitting from fir to beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, "How I love! how I love!" And the bird-mate ("_il suo dolce desio_") twitters in reply, "How I love, how I love, too!" "_Ardo d' amore anch' io._" Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a flower,--except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think of him as I think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning _deshabille_ with only the added improvisation of a rose.