Guarini

Guarini, GIOVANNI BATTISTA, poet, was born at Ferrara, 10th December 1538, studied at Pisa, Padua, and Ferrara, and was appointed to a chair at Ferrara. At the age of thirty he accepted service at the court of Ferrara, and was entrusted by Duke Alfonso II. with various diplomatic missions to the pope, the emperor, Venice, and Poland. He died in 1612 at Venice. As a poet, he is remarkable for refined grace of language and sweetness of sentiment, while his defects are occasional artificiality, a too constant recurrence of antithetical imagery, and an affected dallying with his ideas. His chief and most popular work, Il Pastor Fido ('The Faithful Swain'), obtained a high measure of popularity on its appearance, and passed through forty editions in the author's lifetime, though it is really an imitation of Tasso's Aminta. An (incomplete) edition of Guarini's varied writings, including sonnets, comedies, satires, and political treatises, was published at Verona in 1737 (4 vols.). See the monograph by Rossi (Turin, 1886).