It was a merit of the Sei Cento, a sign of grace, that the Italians now at last threw orthodox aesthetic precepts to the winds, and avowed their inability to carry the Petrarchistic tradition further.

The best of them, Campanella and Bruno, molded vulgar language like metal in the furnace of a vehement imagination, making it the vehicle of fantastic passion and enthusiastic philosophy.

From their crucible the Sonnet and the Ode emerged with no resemblance to academical standards.

Grotesque, angular, gnarled, contorted, Gothic even, these antiquated forms beneath their wayward touch were scarcely recognizable.

They had become the receptacles of burning, scalding, trenchant realities.