ce
of Livy, in constant association with the highest minds of the time,
as a member of a University then the most famous in Europe, numbering
no less than ten thousand students from all parts of the world,
without his intellectual life being greatly quickened.

During ten months of enthusiastic work he produced his first great
poem, which, considering his age--for he was then only in his
eighteenth year--and the short time occupied in its composition, is
one of the most remarkable efforts of genius. He called his poem
_Rinaldo_, after the name of the knight whose romantic adventures it
celebrates--not the Rinaldo of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, but the
Paladin of whom so much is said in the poems of Boiardo and
Ariosto,--and dedicated it to Cardinal Lewis of Este, then one of the
most distinguished patrons of literature in Italy. It contains a
beautiful allusion to his father's genius as the source of his own
inspiration. It abounds in the supernatural incidents and personified
abstractions characteristic of the romantic school of poetry; and
though Galileo said of it that it reminded him of a picture formed of
inlaid work, rather than of a painting in oil, it has nevertheless a
unity of plot, a sustained interest, and a uniform elevation of style,
which distinguishes it from all the poetry of the period. Our own
Spenser has imbibed the spirit of some of its most beautiful passages;
and several striking coincidences between his _Faerie Queen_ and the
_Rinaldo_ can be traced, particularly in the account of the lion tamed
by Clarillo, and the well-known incident of Una and the lion in
Spenser. The poem of _Rinaldo_ will always be read with interest, as
it strikes the keynote of Tasso's great epic, the _Gerusalemme
Liberata_, many of the finest fictions of which were adopted with very
little modification from the earlier work. His letter asking his
father's permission to publish it came at a very inopportune moment.
Bernardo was smarting just then under the disappointments connected
with the reception of his own poem, the _Amadigi_. It produced little
impression upon the general public; the copies which he distributed
among the Italian nobles procured him nothing but conventional thanks
and polite praise; while the magnificent edition which he prepared
specially for presentation to Philip II. of Spain, in the hope that he
might thereby be induced to interest himself in the restoration of his
wife's property at Naples, was