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152 by tragedy or scandal. In fact, this most wildly imaginative of the Italian poets seems to have had less than most poets of the poetic temperament, and the amiability for which he is universally praised was not accompanied by any remarkable acuteness of feeling. His virtues were those of an excellent man of the world; he was liberal, courteous, sensible, just, and sincere.

The success of the Orlando Furioso, which Bernardo Tasso, writing in 1559, affirms to be better known and more talked of than Homer, naturally produced the same effect as the popularity of Scott and Byron produced in England—"All could raise the flower, for all had got the seed." The two most important of these imitations, the Girone il Cortese of Luigi Alamanni and the Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso—both good poets, to be mentioned again in other departments of literature—resemble Pygmalion's image before the interposition of Venus; all the constituents of a fine poem are there, but the breath of life is wanting. "The Girone," says Ginguené, "is a very dignified, very rational, and generally well-written poem, but cold and consequently somewhat tiresome." If there is more warmth in the Amadigi, there is also more loquacity, and the power of the author, an excellent writer on a small scale, is quite inadequate to sustain continuous interest through a hundred cantos. The comparison which he necessarily courts with the old romance of Vasco Lobeira, the best work of its class, is always unfavourable to him. His copious employment of elfin machinery gave him opportunities of which he failed to avail himself. The best of him as an epic writer is his gift of brilliant description. The younger Tasso's Rinaldo is a very extraordinary production for a youth of eighteen, but the impulse towards the