He is all sentiment, sighs, tears, pliability, and sweetness.
[Footnote 192: The hypocrisy of the allegory is highly significant for this phase of Italian culture.

We have seen how even Tasso condescended to apply it to his noble epic, which needed no such miserable pretense.
Exquisitely grotesque was the attempt made by Centorio degli Ortensi to sanctify Bandello's _Novelle_ by supplying each one of them with a moral interpretation (ed.

Milano: Gio.

Antonio degli Antoni, 1560, See Passano's _Novellieri in Prosa_, p.

28).] [Footnote 193: What I have elsewhere, called 'the tyranny of the kiss' in Italian poetry, begins in Tasso's _Rinaldo_, acquires vast proportions in Guarino's _Pastor Fido_, and becomes intolerable in Marino's _Adone_.] This emasculate nature displays itself with consummate effect in the sobbing farewell, followed by the pretty pettishnesses, of the seventeenth canto.
As a contrast to his over-sweet and cloying ideal of lascivious grace, Marino counterposes extravagant forms of ugliness.