ABSTRACT
Giambattista Marini was born at Naples on the 18th of October, 1569. His father, a celebrated jurisconsult, was desirous of bringing up his son to the same profession; but the youth felt an unconquerable distaste to the career of the law. Marini possessed a fervid and lively imagination, and a facility in the composition of poetry which determined, without a question, his destiny in life. Marini repaid him by a panegyric, which he called “Il Ritratto,” or the Portrait, and was rewarded by the gift of a gold chain, and made cavalier of the order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus. The popularity of this poem was extraordinary; nothing was spoken of but it and its author, and the rapid sale enriched Marini, though it also exposed him to much literary enmity, and the censures of the church.
