The age of Ariosto is remarkable for the first appearance of blank verse in the Italian language. The _Italia Liberata_ of TRISSINO, on the subject of the victories of Belisarius over the Goths, is the first work in that metre. Trissino thought himself a second Homer, and his epic is full of injudicious imitations of the _Iliad._ The scene between Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida is transferred to Justinian and Theodora, in the Palace of Constantinople, with very voluptuous amplifications More than with this ponderous epic, Trissino did his country service by writing the first Italian tragedy, _Sofonisba,_ a work containing passages almost worthy of Euripides. With a style less languid and prosaic, Trissino might have achieved considerable success in the drama.
The poet who came nearest to Ariosto in elegance of style, though far indeed from possessing equal fire and genius, was FRANCESCO BERNI, mentioned in a previous chapter, as having recast the _Orlando Innamorato_ of Bojardo. He cannot have had a very original mind, or he would not have submitted to the drudgery of re-writing, line for line, the work of another man, when he might have been employed on poems of his own; but he had plenty of vivacity and raciness, as his Satires and Sonnets attest. So popular did they become, that light and comic poetry came to be called after him, _Poesia Bernesca._ His end was more tragic than his works. Unfortunately for himself, he lived in Florence in the intimacy of the Medici family. A bitter feud arose between the Duke Alexander and Cardinal Ippolito. The Duke endeavoured to bribe Berni to poison the Cardinal, and on his refusing to be a party to so terrible a crime, Alexander had him poisoned in his turn, lest he should reveal the secret of his guilt.
LUIGI ALAMANNI was an indefatigable writer of poetry. He wrote two enormous epics, _Giron il Cortese_ and the _Avarchide;_ but it would require the musical diction of Ariosto to make such productions live; and, unfortunately, Alamanni, though a scholarly and painstaking writer, had nothing like Ariosto's powers of versification. The work by which he is most honourably remembered is a didactic poem, _La Coltivazione,_ on the same subject as the _Georgics._