of the word, as catholic as its predecessor, yet
certainly a far more Roman Catholic, and at the same time very delightful
fiction. The circle of fabulous narrative was thus completed, and a link
formed, though in a very gentle and qualified manner, both with Dante's
theocracy and the obvious regularity of the _Aeneid_, the oldest romance
of Italy.

The author of this epic of the Crusades was of a family so noble and
so widely diffused, that, under the patronage of the emperors and the
Italian princes, it flourished in a very remarkable manner, not only in
its own country, but in Flanders, Germany, and Spain. There was a
Tasso once in England, ambassador of Philip the Second; another, like
Cervantes, distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto; and a third
gave rise to the sovereign German house of Tour and Taxis. _Taxus_ is the
Latin of Tasso. The Latin word, like the Italian, means both a badger
and a yew-tree; and the family in general appear to have taken it in the
former sense. The animal is in their coat of arms. But the poet, or his
immediate relatives, preferred being more romantically shadowed forth by
the yew-tree. The parent stock of the race was at Bergamo in Lombardy;
and here was born the father of Tasso, himself a poet of celebrity,
though his fame has been eclipsed by that of his son.

Bernardo Tasso, author of many elegant lyrics, of some volumes of
letters, not uninteresting but too florid, and of the _Amadigi_, an epic
romance now little read, was a man of small property, very honest and
good-hearted, but restless, ambitious, and with a turn for expense beyond
his means. He attached himself to various princes, with little ultimate
advantage, particularly to the unfortunate Sanseverino, Prince of
Salerno, whom he faithfully served for many years. The prince had a high
sense of his worth, and would probably have settled him in the wealth and
honours he was qualified to adorn, but for those Spanish oppressions in
the history of Naples which ended in the ruin of both master and servant.
Bernardo, however, had one happy interval of prosperity; and during this,
at the age of forty-six, he married Porzia di Rossi, a young lady of a
rich and noble family, with a claim to a handsome dowry. He spent some
delightful years with her at Sorrento, a spot so charming as to have been
considered the habitation of the Sirens; and here, in the midst of his
orange-trees, his verses, and the breezes of an aromatic coast