Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1800 edition. Excerpt: ... The nurse, Luigi Tansillo Villa-Franca, and Viceroy of Naples; and of Don Garzia his son, afterwards Viceroy of Sicily and Catalonia under Philip the second; but the particulars of it have not been preserved to the present times so minutely as his merits seem to have required. --A poet and a soldier, he lived a long, and probably a diversified life; but although some incidents respecting it are of sufficient notoriety, the attempt to trace it through a regular narrative, would now be of no avail. The result of this union of occupations in Tansillo, was exemplified in a want of due attention to his literary productions, few of which were published in his life time, and of the remainder scarcely any one received those advantages of revisal and correction, without which works of taste must must always appear to disadvantage. Notwithstanding these circumstances, his character as a poet stood high even among the most eminent of his contemporaries. In the dialogue of Torquato Tasso, entitled // Gonzago, that celebrated author enumerates Tansillo amongst the few writers to whose sonnets he gives the appellation of leggiadre, or elegant. The same opinion has been confirmed by subsequent critics, cited by Zeno in his Giornale d' Italia, vol. xi. one of whom in particular has not hesitated to assert, that Tansillo is a much better lyric poet than even Petrarca himself. It must however be observed, that this kind of commendation, which is intended to elevate one distinguished character at the expense of another, is of all praise the most equivocal. As every good author has his peculiar excellencies, cellencies, so he will have his peculiar admirers. What purpose is answered by disputing whether the grape, the nectarine,
