by Giulio Romano, and his epitaph was written by Bembo. “Love rules the court, the camp, the grove.” The _Asolani_ of Bembo, therefore, a disquisition on Love from different points of view, composed in imitation of Cicero’s Tusculan Questions, should take precedence of Castiglione’s _Cortegiano_, but it can hardly be said that it does. The _Cortegiano_ is a piece of real life, indicating, if not precisely what the highest Italian society was, at all events what it felt it ought to be. Bembo’s dialogues, or rather monologues, might have been composed in any age of refinement; they are purely academical in form, and the perpetual justice of the sentiments is purchased by perpetual commonplace. Seldom, however, have commonplaces been set off with such harmony and polish of style, or with more ingenious eloquence, especially at the conclusion, where the Hermit reconciles Love’s advocates and his accusers by descanting on the charms of ideal beauty. If it be true that to have read it was the indispensable passport to good society, the circumstance is creditable to the age’s literary taste, and still more so to its standard of ideal excellence. Bembo’s prose is more satisfactory than his poetry, perhaps because it raises less expectation; in verse the wonder is that he attains no further, and in prose that he attains so far. _Gli Asolani_, first published in 1505, was written at the age of twenty-eight, and was dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. On the strength of it Bembo is made the chief interlocutor in Castiglione’s _Cortegiano_ when the question of love is touched upon.