ther natives or foreigners. The ducal library was filled
with a valuable collection of manuscripts and printed books,
and as soon as twelve new plays of Plautus had been found in
Germany, the Marquis Lionel of Este was impatient to obtain
a fair and faithful copy of that ancient poet. Nor were
these elegant pleasures confined to the learned world. Under
the reign of Hercules I. a wooden theatre at a moderate
cost of a thousand crowns was constructed in the largest
court of the palace, the scenery represented some houses, a
seaport and a ship, and the _Menechmi_ of Plautus, which had
been translated into Italian by the Duke himself, was acted
before a numerous and polite audience. In the same language
and with the same success the _Amphytrion_ of Plautus and
the _Eunuchus_ of Terence were successively exhibited. And
these classic models, which formed the taste of the
spectators, excited the emulation of the poets of the age.
For the use of the court and theatre of Ferrara, Ariosto
composed his comedies, which were often played with
applause, which are still read with pleasure. And such was
the enthusiasm of the new arts that one of the sons of
Alphonso the First did not disdain to speak a prologue on
the stage. In the legitimate forms of dramatic composition
the Italians have not excelled; but it was in the court of
Ferrara that they invented and refined the _pastoral
comedy_, a romantic Arcadia which violates the truth of
manners and the simplicity of nature, but which commands our
indulgence by the elaborate luxury of eloquence and wit. The
_Aminta_ of Tasso was written for the amusement and acted in
the presence of Alphonso the Second, and his sister Leonora
might apply to herself the language of a passion which
disordered the reason without clouding the genius of her
poetical lover. Of the numerous imitations, the _Pastor
Fido_ of Guarini, which alone can vie with the fame and
merit of the original, is the work of the Duke's secretary
of state. It was exhibited in a private house in Ferrara....
The father of the Tuscan muses, the sublime but unequal
Dante, had pronounced that Ferrara was never honoured with
the name of a poet; he would have been astonished to behold
the chorus of bards, of melodious swans (their own
allusio