He returned to Italy in the same year, and was received with the utmost enthusiasm in Rome, and in Naples where he died two years later.
It is clear from any careful study of the references to Marino's work that his poems circulated in Works. manuscript before they were published. When he came to Rome he was already a well-known poet, yet he had printed only a single sonnet. In 1602 he collected and issued his earliest verses in two parts, the first consisting of sonnets (amorose, marittime, boscherecce, lugubri, sacre e varie), the second of madrigals and canzoni. The Rime of 1602 was enlarged by a book in 1614 and given the title of La Lira. The other works published in his lifetime, besides some panegyrics, and the sonnets on Murtola, were the Galleria (1619), a collection of madrigals on pictures and characters, mythical and historical, many of which are translated from Lope da Vega's Epitafios; the Sampogna (1620), a series of diffuse, operatic idylls; and the Adone. A sacred poem, the Strage degli Innocenti, was issued after his death, but of the long list of works which Claretti, in his preface to the third book of the Lira, described as finished and awaiting immediate publication, some were never issued, others would seem to have been melted down into the Adone.
The Lira—especially the first two parts—and the Adone are Marino's most representative works, the La Lira. one of his earlier, the other of his later manner, and a just criticism would distinguish them in passing sentence on the writer. In
