The stories of BANDELLO and of LUIGI DA PORTO have but little to recommend them except the fact that they supplied Shakespeare with some of his plots. Bandello, however, is by no means destitute of vivacity. STRAPAROLA, the author of _Tredici Piacevoli Notti,_ and FIORENTINI, the author of _Il Pecorone,_ also had the honour of furnishing hints to the great dramatist. Too often it happens that the extreme prolixity of the writers of the Sixteenth Century drowns their thoughts in an ocean of words. It is strange that the great convulsion of the Reformation did not produce any theological work written in the Italian language. The controversies were all carried on in Latin, but even in Latin nothing was produced in the Peninsula that is now remembered. Indeed, the great Catholic reaction had the effect of making writers fearful of giving offence. It restricted them more and more within academic grooves, thus unhappily fostering that tendency to conventionality and unreality which immersed Italian literature deeper and deeper into a morass of mediocrity.
It is but seldom that poets are as romantic as their poems, or as interesting as the offspring of their imagination. When, therefore, a poet arises gifted with an interesting personality, the attention he excites becomes universal. Such was the fate of TORQUATO TASSO. It would not be altogether unjust to say that had he not suffered so many misfortunes, his name would not be a household word, for the merit of his poems hardly sustains the dignity of his renown.
His father, BERNARDO, a native of Bergamo, was born in 1493, and died in 1569. He was a writer in prose and verse, his chief work being the _Amadigi,_ an epic of immense length, well and carefully written, but without any spark of genius. He was attached to the Court of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, and when his master was driven out of his dominions by the Emperor Charles V, he followed his fortunes, leaving his wife, Properzia de' Rossi, and three children, the youngest of whom was Torquato, born in 1544, to the care of her relatives. His devotion to the fallen fortunes of the Prince of Salerno was the cause of many of the sorrows of his illustrious son. His patrimony was sequestrated, and when he died, he had nothing to leave to his children. Nor was this the greatest of his trials. He never saw his wife again, and when he wished to have her with him in Rome, she was in a dying condition. All she could do, was to send him the little Torquato, whose training was henceforth confided to the father's care.