Carried to its extreme in Italy, this minute attention to elaborate expression produced an irritating artificiality in the literature of the seventeenth century. The _seicentisti_ produced many fine words, but little important substance. Literature declined into a plaything. Marini’s affected figures of speech, far-fetched comparisons, and tricks of verbiage, as illustrated particularly in his romantic _Adone_, characterized a generation of writers. “Marinism” in Italian literature, like “Alexandrianism” in the Greek, is now a term of reproach in letters. We cannot, indeed, in fairness, always attribute a mania of style to some definite inventor. Nor can we always draw clear distinction between one class of frigid, and finally exasperating, artifice and another. Unfortunately each new example is a new temptation, since exaggerations and tricks are always easier to imitate than the quiet and unaccentuated perfections of the consummate masters. The strained conceits of Donne and Crashaw, and in general of the “Fantastic” and “Metaphysical” school of our early seventeenth century, are one manifestation of the same spirit which was working in Italy. But Donne follows in the track of Euphuism, with new developments from his own talents, while others of the “Fantastics” go directly to the school of Marini. Among these must be included Crashaw, who both translates and imitates the Italian poet, and Cowley, whose early poems reproduce many of the Italian conceits. * * * * *