attention of Italian students. Out of many which he composed, only two were printed. The Amphitheatre is, in the opinion of Mr. Owen (Sceptics of the Italian Renaissance), decidedly orthodox, the Dialogues are as decidedly free-thinking, but it is not always quite clear how far the author is speaking in his own person.
While these adventurous speculators were infusing a ferment into the quiescent thought of their day, the edifice of modern jurisprudence was receiving important additions from Alberico Gentili, a Protestant exile, happily in safety at Oxford, whose works, nevertheless, belong rather to moral science than to literature. Much at the same time prose literature was enriched by the ethical prolusions of the most distinguished poet of the age. Though suffering from delusions sometimes amounting to frenzy, Tasso's brain was clear on all subjects to which these delusions did not extend. He could reason powerfully and gracefully on any question of taste or morals, arrange his ideas with symmetry, and support his views with appropriate quotations. The form which he adopted was the dialogue, requiring not only judgment and memory, but an accurate discrimination between the interlocutors, which he always maintains. Even the discourse with his familiar spirit, although composed in the hospital for lunatics, and containing many fantastic notions, is consecutive and rational. It is perhaps the most interesting of any, from its close relation to the writer; although almost as much may be said for the Gonzaga, in which Tasso celebrates the noble conduct of his father in preferring public duty to private interest; and the Paterfamilias, in which he describes a personal adventure. His other dialogues, all models of elegance and urbanity, usually
