ys, the duchess and
her daughters took pleasure in lighter forms of literature, and
encouraged the songs and romances which courtly poets wrote for their
benefit in the _lingua vulgare_. A new school of Italian poets sprang up
at Ferrara in the last years of the century. Antonio Tebaldeo, the
friend of Castiglione and Raphael--"our Tebaldeo," whom Pietro Bembo
declared Raphael had painted in so lifelike a manner that he was not so
exactly himself in actual life as in this portrait--had his home at
Ferrara in these early days, and enjoyed the favour of the Marchioness
Isabella in his later years. While the elder Strozzi, Tito, had the
reputation of being the best Latin poet of the day, his son Ercole
belonged to the circle of younger scholars, and, like his friends Bembo
and Ariosto, wrote elegant Italian verses as well as Latin epistles and
orations. Then there was the blind poet Francesco Bello, the author of
the "Mambriano," that heroic poem on the favourite Carlovingian legend;
Andrea Cossa of Naples, who sang his own _rime_ and _strambotti_ to the
music of the lute; Niccolo da Correggio, called by Isabella d'Este and
Sabba da Castiglione "the most accomplished gentleman of the age, the
foremost man in all Italy, in the art of poetry and in courtesy," who
devoted his muse to the service of gentle ladies, and composed _canzoni_
and _capitoli_ or set Petrarch's sonnets to music for Isabella and
Beatrice's pleasure. And among Ercole's courtiers at Ferrara there was
one still greater, Matteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, who was intimate
with both duke and duchess, and held many high posts at court. He was a
member of the splendid suite sent in 1473 to escort Leonora from Naples
to Ferrara, and afterwards held the important post of Governor of Modena
during many years. But in the midst of official labours and court
duties, Matteo was all the while engaged in writing his great work
of the "Orlando Innamorato," that wonderful epic in which classic and
romantic ideas are mingled together as strangely as in Piero di Cosimo
or Sandro Botticelli's paintings. The first cantos of his poem, begun in
1472, were published at Venice in 1486, with a dedication to Duke
Ercole, and the work was continued at intervals throughout his life, and
was only interrupted by the death of the poet. This took place in 1494,
when the first French armies were first seen descending upon Italy, and
the sweet singer of high romance broke off abruptly with