Guido Reni is apostrophized as: _Reni onde il maggior Reno all'altro cede_[197] We are never safe in reading his pages from the whirr and whistle of such verbal fireworks.

And yet it must be allowed that Marino's style is on the whole freer from literary affectations than that of our own Euphuists.

It is only at intervals that the temptation to make a point by clever trickery seems irresistible.

When he is seriously engaged upon a topic that stirs his nature to the depth, as in the eighth canto, description flows on for stanza after stanza with limpid swiftness.
Another kind of artifice to which he has resort, is the repetition of a dominant word: [Footnote 197: There is a streamlet called Reno near Bologna.] Con tai lusinghe il lusinghiero amante La lusinghiera Dea lusinga e prega.
* * * * * Godiamci, amiamei.

Amor d'amor mercede, Degno cambio d'amore e solo amore.
This play on a word sometimes passes over into a palpable pun, as in the following pretty phrase: O mia dorata ed adorata Dea.
Still we feel that Shakespeare was guilty of precisely the same verbal impertinences.