His poem in Ottava Rima on a tournament given by Giniano de Medici, was interrupted by the tragic death of his patron in the conspiracy organised by the Pazzi family, nor was the loss of the remainder of the poem the least deplorable consequence of that great crime. Politian died in the prime of life in 1494. It is reasonable to suppose that if his years had been prolonged, he might have enriched the literature of his country with works of even greater beauty.
A poet of true tenderness and fire, but more remarkable for the extraordinary perfection of his Latin poems than for any other productions of his muse, was Jacopo Sannazzaro, a Neapolitan. He survived until the year 1530, but his Italian poems are the productions of his youth. His Arcadia, a pastoral romance in prose with poems interspersed, acquired a great celebrity and undoubtedly served as model to Sir Philip Sydney's work of the same name. It is tender and graceful, but the extreme unreality of the Nymphs and Shepherds makes it rather cloying to a modern taste. His Italian poems have not nearly so much melody and fire as those he wrote in Latin, which are, indeed, so perfect that they cannot be distinguished, as far as rhythm is concerned, from those of Virgil himself.
These names practically exhaust the band of Italian writers of the Fifteenth Century, truly a meagre list, and in striking contrast to the countless painters who were an ornament to their country during the same period.
[1] The Chorus from the Orfeo—
"Noi seguiamo, Bacco, te;
Bacco, Bacco, evoè, evoè!"
is quoted by George Eliot in Romola.