The success of the _Orlando Furioso_, which Bernardo Tasso, writing in 1559, affirms to be better known and more talked of than Homer, naturally produced the same effect as the popularity of Scott and Byron produced in England--“All could raise the flower, for all had got the seed.” The two most important of these imitations, the _Girone il Cortese_ of Luigi Alamanni and the _Amadigi_ of Bernardo Tasso--both good poets, to be mentioned again in other departments of literature--resemble Pygmalion’s image before the interposition of Venus; all the constituents of a fine poem are there, but the breath of life is wanting. “The _Girone_,” says Ginguené, “is a very dignified, very rational, and generally well-written poem, but cold and consequently somewhat tiresome.” If there is more warmth in the _Amadigi_, there is also more loquacity, and the power of the author, an excellent writer on a small scale, is quite inadequate to sustain continuous interest through a hundred cantos. The comparison which he necessarily courts with the old romance of Vasco Lobeira, the best work of its class, is always unfavourable to him. His copious employment of elfin machinery gave him opportunities of which he failed to avail himself. The best of him as an epic writer is his gift of brilliant description. The younger Tasso’s _Rinaldo_ is a very extraordinary production for a youth of eighteen, but the impulse towards the chivalrous epic was exhausted by his time, and he wisely found another way of rivalling Ariosto. The _Orlandino_ and the _Ricciardetto_ belong rather to the class of the mock heroic, to be treated hereafter. The names of a few of the most remarkable _bona-fide_ attempts at chivalric poetry must suffice: the _Guerino il Meschino_ of Tullia d’Aragona, the _Ogier the Dane_ of Cassiodoro Narni, the _Death of Ruggiero_ of Giambatista Pescatore, the _Triumphs of Charlemagne_ of Francesco de’ Lodovici, the _First Exploits of Orlando_ of Lodovico Dolce, and the _Angelica Innamorata_ of Vincenzo Brusantini.