cities, provoked by a trifling cause (the carrying off
La secchia
Rapita. of a well-bucket during a raid), waged by
realistic everyday Italians of the seventeenth century, in a style in which the dignified and picturesque diction of epic is interchanged with coarse
and dialectal colloquialism, and with all the machinery
of the heroic poem, was undoubtedly suggested to
Tassoni by Don Quixote, to which he more than once
makes reference. There is little of Cervantes' sympathetic humour, however, in the dry crackling laughter
with which Tassoni describes the exploits of the Potta
and his followers and foes. His characters are utterly
unattractive, and the episodes in which the Conte di
Culagna (who stands for the poet's chief enemy,
Alessandro Brusantini) is proved "a coward and a
cuckold-knave" are more malevolent than amusing.
But the scheme of a mock-epic is sustained with the
greatest skill, and Tassoni, who evidently had read
the romantic epics with the same pleasure that Cervantes read romances, does not let the intention of
parody prevent his describing the battles with vigour
and gusto; and he has two episodes in the picturesque,
voluptuous style of Marino. With a larger purpose
and a little of Cervantes' humanity Tassoni might
have written a great as well as a clever poem. His
strangely critical and negative mind touched with
acid all the literary idols of Italy, but he indicated
no fresh direction and descried no new ideals.
Mellifluous verse is the most unequivocal excellence of Marino's Sampogna and Adone, and it was in the linking of flowing verse of no very high poetical
