.\\77o.VAr. POETRy. 447 



va/ione." Trissino endeavoured to compose an epic ]>ooin upon the deliver- 

 ance of Italy from the Goths, and he used blank verse, which was not very 

 \\rll received by the fervent admirers of the ottani ninn. Italian poetry 

 had not, therefore, any influence upon Spanish poetry, which was devoted 

 almost entirely to works touching upon love and gallantry. Boscan Almo- 

 gaver and Garcilaso de la Vega were very successful in shaping their 

 inspirations into the compass of the sonnet ; and while the latter was bringing 

 the pastoral into fashion, Diego Ilurtado de Mendoza wrote epistles in imita- 



Fig. 347. Portrait of Ariosto. Reduced Fac-simile of an anonymous Engraving of the Sixteenth 

 Century, published at Rome by Ant. Salamanca. In the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin- 

 Didot, Paris. 



tion of Horace. The pastoral was always the favourite style of poetry with 

 the Portuguese, and Ribeiro surpassed all his predecessors in this style. 



The breath of the Italian renaissance was not felt in France till after 

 the reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. The poetry which was then in 

 greatest favour at the court was still tainted with Flemish influence, and 

 people admired the jingle of such rhymes &s fraternisecs, bribes, equiroquees, 



