was the first to attempt to reduce the vernacular versification to the measure of the Latins.[397] In October, 1441, the _Scena dell' Amicizia_ of Leonardo Dati was composed and recited before the Accademia Coronaria at Florence.[398] The first two parts of this piece are written in hexameters, the third in Sapphics, the fourth in sonnet form and rhymed. The prologues of Ariosto's comedies, the _Negromante_ and the _Cassaria_, are also in classical metres. But the remarkable collection of Claudio Tolomei, _Versi e Regole de la Nuova Poesia Toscana_, published at Rome in 1539, marked an epoch in sixteenth-century letters. In this work the employment of classical metres in the vulgar tongue is defended, and rules for their use given; then follows a collection of Italian verse written after this fashion by a large number of scholars and poets, among them Annibal Caro and Tolomei himself. This group of scholars had formed itself into an esoteric circle, the Accademia della Nuova Poesia; and from the tone of the verses addressed to Tolomei by the members of this circle, it would seem that he regarded himself, and was regarded by them, as the founder and expositor of this poetic innovation.[399] Luigi Alamanni, whose life was chiefly spent at the Court of France, published in 1556 a comedy, _La Flora_, written in classical metres; and two years later Francesco Patrizzi published an heroic poem, the _Eridano_, written in hexameters, with a defence of the form of versification employed.[400]