He tells the disgusting story of Cinisca with the same fluent ease as the lovely tale of Psyche; passes with the same light touch over Falserina at the bedside of Adonis and Feronia in his dungeon; uses the same palette for the picture of Venus caressing Mars and the struggles of the nymph and satyr.

All he demanded was a basis of soft sensuality, from which, as from putrescent soil, might spring the pale and scented flower of artful luxury.
[Footnote 189: With the stanza quoted above Marino closes the cycle which Boccaccio in the _Amoroso Visione_ (canto xlix.) had opened.] [Footnote 190: On this point I may call attention to the elaborate portraits drawn by Marino (canto xvi.) of the seven young men who contend with Adonis for the prize of beauty and the crown of Cyprus.
Quite as many words are bestowed upon their costumes, jewelry and hair-dressing as upon their personal charms.] In harmony with the spirit of an age reformed or deformed by the Catholic Revival, Marino parades cynical hypocrisy.

The eighth canto of _Adone_ is an elaborately-wrought initiation into the mysteries of carnal pleasure.

It is a hymn to the sense of touch:[191] Ogni altro senso puo ben di leggiero Deluso esser talor da falsi oggetti: Questo sol no, lo qual sempre e del vero Fido ministro e padre dei diletti.
Gli altri non possedendo il corpo intero, Ma qualche parte sol, non son perfetti.
Questo con atto universal distende Lesue forze per tutto, e tutto il prende.
[Footnote 191: I have pleasure in inviting my readers to study the true doctrine regarding the place of touch among the senses as laid down by Ruskin in _Modern Painters_, part iii.sec.1, chap.

ii.] We are led by subtle gradations, by labyrinthine delays, to the final beatification of Adonis.