rhymes. Plebeian saws, salient images, dry sentences of metaphysical
speculation, logical summaries, and fiery tirades are hurled together--
half crude and cindery scoriae, half molten metal and resplendent ore--
from the volcano of his passionate mind. Such being the nature of
Campanella's style, when in addition it is remembered that his text is
sometimes hopelessly corrupt and his allusions obscure, the
difficulties offered by his sonnets to the translator will be readily
conceived.


IV.

At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth
centuries, philosophy took a new point of departure among the Italians,
and all the fundamental ideas which have since formed the staple of
modern European systems were anticipated by a few obscure thinkers. It
is noticeable that the States of Naples, hitherto comparatively inert
in the intellectual development of Italy, furnished the five writers
who preceded Bacon, Leibnitz, Schelling, and Comte. Telesio of Cosenza,
Bruno of Nola, Campanella of Stilo, Vanini and Vico of Naples are the
chief among these _novi homines_ or pioneers of modern thought. The
characteristic point of this new philosophy was an unconditional return
to Nature as the source of knowledge, combined with a belief in the
intuitive forces of the human reason: so that from the first it showed
two sides or faces to the world--the one positive, scientific,
critical, and analytical; the other mystical, metaphysical, subjective.
Modern materialism and modern idealism were both contained in the
audacious guesses of Bruno and Campanella; nor had the time arrived for
clearly separating the two strains of thought, or for attempting a
systematic synthesis of knowledge under one or the other head.