Happy the man who paced his vineyards, dreaming musically of Arcadia! Happy the man who rolled in Circe's pigsty! Happy the man who sat in his study and laughed! Therefore the most meritorious productions of the time, Boccalini's _Ragguagli di Parnaso_, Bracciolini's _Scherno degli Dei_, have a touch of Tassoni's humor in them; while Achillini and Preti limp somewhat feebly after Marino's Alcibidean swagger, and endless pastorals pullulate from Guarini's tragi-comedy.

We need not occupy our minds with these secondary writers, nor do more than indicate the scholarly niceness with which Filicaja in the second half of the seventeenth century continued Chiabrera's tradition.

But one word must be said in honor of Fulvio Testi, the Modenese poet and statesman, who paid for the fame of a Canzone with his head.

He has a double interest for us: first, because Leopardi esteemed him the noblest of Italian lyrists after Petrarch; secondly, because his fate proved that Tasso's dread of assassination was not wholly an illusion.

Reading the ode addressed to Count Raimondo Montecuccoli, _Ruscelletto orgoglioso_, the ode which brought Testi to the block in a dungeon of the Estensi, we comprehend what Leopardi meant by his high panegyric.