He is for ever bursting into rockets of rhetoric, while the epithets fly out in sheets as of sparks from an anvil. What he means or is endeavouring to prove is far from being always clear, not because his language is obscure, for on the contrary his sentences are commonly simple enough, but because there was always far more passion and emotion in Giordano Bruno than reasoning power. The title of his dialogues, ‘The Heroic Furies,’ is in a way a description of his whole work. There is in him a constant heroic fury of effort towards some vaguely indicated manifestations of individual force and greatness. This of itself is attractive. With all his smoky obscurity there is a very real fire in Giordano Bruno, which finds its best expression in verse. Whether he is profitable to read is perhaps doubtful, but he is most interesting to look at. He was a real Faust, who strove to grasp-- “Was die Welt Im Innersten zusammenhält;” who thought he had read the riddle, and who justified an illimitable intellectual arrogance, often superbly expressed, by his imaginary discovery. The fall from Tasso and Bruno to any of their contemporaries is very great. There was abundant interest of a kind in literary matters, there was no want of criticism, and the Academies were active. The long controversy over the _Jerusalem_ in which Tasso allowed himself to be entangled is, if valuable for nothing else, at least a proof that Italians read poetry, and could talk about it.[120] What they could not at this period do was to produce anything original and valuable--with the exception of Tasso himself, and of Bruno. The once famous _Pastor Fido_ of Giambattista Guarini (1537-1612) is in fact a terrible example of what may happen to a literature when its writers have become extremely cultivated in all that is mere matter of language, but have unfortunately nothing to say--or, if they have something to say, are cowed into insignificance by the fear of compromising themselves.[121] Guarini was a man of character, a little querulous, and afflicted by a vanity which caused him to be for ever comparing himself to Tasso, and complaining of his contemporary’s greater fame, but by no means without parts or knowledge. Yet his _Pastor Fido_ is a mere echo of the _Aminta_. Guarini’s play--if play it can be called--was first acted at Turin in 1585, and was published in Venice in 1590. From the _Aminta_, and through the _Pastor Fido_, came the line of the Italian literary opera of later times. The verse is flowing with touches of a somewhat sensual lusciousness--but withal it is nerveless and imitative. FOOTNOTES: [117] _Opere._ Edited by Giov. Rosini. Pisa, 33 vols., 1821-1832.