ed at school, where he soon acquired a
wonderful familiarity with the Greek and Latin authors, then newly
restored to Europe. Highly cultivated, refined, and possessed of great
personal beauty, while manifesting at the same time a peculiar talent
for diplomacy, Bernardo speedily won his way to distinction. His first
work, which was a collection principally of love-poems, celebrating
his passion for the beautiful Genevra Malatesta, who belonged to the
same family as the ill-fated Parasina of Byron, attracted the
attention of the reigning Prince of Salerno, Ferrante Sanseverino,
one of the chief patrons of literature in Italy, who thereupon engaged
him as his private secretary. At the court of this prince he met
Porzia de' Rossi, a lady of noble birth, who was beautiful and
accomplished, and possessed what was considered in those days a large
fortune. After his marriage with this lady Bernardo and his bride
retired to a villa which he had purchased at Sorrento, where he
enjoyed for several years an exceptional share of domestic felicity,
his wife having proved a most devoted helpmeet to him.

In these propitious circumstances the infant that was destined
afterwards to confer the greatest lustre upon the family name was
born. His father was absent at the time with the Prince of Salerno,
who had joined the Spanish army in the new war that had arisen between
Charles V. and Francis I.; a war whose chivalrous and inspiring acts
the Marquis d'Azeglio made use of in 1866 in his romance of history,
_Fieramosca_, to rouse again a spirit of independence in his
countrymen. A friend of his father, therefore, held the child at the
baptismal font, in the cathedral of Sorrento, where he received the
name of Torquato--a name which his elder brother, who lived only a few
days, had previously borne. The treaty of Crepi, which concluded the
war between Charles V. and Francis I., in which the former was
victorious, allowed Bernardo Tasso to return home with his patron ten
months after the birth of his son. By this treaty the French king, who
had previously assumed the title of King of Naples, resigned all
claims upon that State, and the inhabitants were henceforth subjected
entirely to the dominion of the Spanish sovereigns of the house of
Austria. The emperor, Charles V., appointed the Marquis de
Villafranca, better known as Don Pedro de Toledo, to be Viceroy of
Naples, who, like his despotic master, carried out his so-called
reforms with