It has always been the policy of despots to supply their subjects with plenty of amusements. Accordingly we find in the Seventeenth Century records of gorgeous pageants and brilliant theatrical entertainments, and the already waning wealth of the nation was further exhausted by reckless prodigality of governments and individuals. Italian Opera took its origin early in the Century, and RINUCCINI was the first Librettist. The theatre more and more engaged the attention of writers, but nothing remarkable was produced, with the exception, perhaps, of the tragedies of CARDINAL DELFINO, Patriarch of Aquilea, which present here and there touches worthy of a fine poet. The death-scene of his _Cleopatra_ bears a striking resemblance to the corresponding scene in _Anthony and Cleopatra,_ although he doubtless never so much as heard of Shakespeare's name. BATTISTA GUARINI, who died in 1612, was pre-eminent, by reason of his _Pastor Fido,_ among writers of Pastoral Plays; but these insipid and unreal creations have no attraction for modern readers. The _Pastor Fido_ is a work of much skill and ingenuity; but it is tainted with that fondness for quibbles and conceits which disfigures so much of the literature of the Seventeenth Century, not only in Italy, but also in other countries. If Italy had her Marino, Spain had her Gongora, France her Benserade, and England her Lyly, Donne, and Cowley. It is curious to remark how a literary fashion spreads from one country to another, and in that age of scanty travel and difficult communication, it is doubly curious. Thus, in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, Byronism became a universal epidemic. The love of far-fetched conceits originated in the latter half of the Sixteenth Century. We see much of it in Shakespeare's early comedies, and the traces of it in Tasso gave ground to Boileau one hundred years later to sneer at those who preferred "the tinsel of Tasso to the gold of Virgil." "A Racan, à Malherbe, préférer Théophile, Et le clinquant du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile." It is, however, unjust to blame Tasso for an inordinate profusion of conceits. He presents some, it is true, but they are almost always ingenious and imaginative, and not so far-fetched as to be unnatural.