Elaborate
descriptions of natural scenery, it is true, are very rare, for the
reason that, in this energetic age, poetry had something else to paint
nature vigorously, but no effort to appeal by their reader, which they
endeavor to reach solely by their narrative and characters. Letter-
writers and the authors of philosophical dialogues are, in fact, better
evidence of the growing love of nature than the poets. The novelist
Bandello, for example, observes rigorously the rules of his department
of literature; he gives us in his novels themselves not a word more
than is necessary on the natural scenery amid which the action of his
tales takes place, but in the dedications which always precede them we
meet with charming descriptions of nature as the setting for his
dialogues and social pictures. Among letter-writers, Aretino
unfortunately must be named as the first who has fully painted in words
the splendid effect of light and shadow in an Italian sunset.
We sometimes find the feeling of the poets, also, itself with
tenderness to graceful scenes of country Strozzi, about the year 1480,
describes in a Latin elegy the dwelling of his mistress. We are shown
an old ivy-clad house, half hidden in trees, and adorned with weather-
stained frescoes of the saints, and near it a chapel much damaged by
the violence of the River Po, which flowed hard by; not far off, the
priest ploughs his few barren roods with borrowed cattle.
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