hardly have condemned him, for merely presumptuous aspirations after a bright ornament of his harem. Tasso's eulogium, in his grand epic, of the Christian prince who afterwards became his jailer, is an immortal reprobation of the unfeeling tyrant. The wrongs of genius are avenged even by its praise, which, when thus proved to have been undeserved, is satire undisguised. Petrarch and Tasso appear to be the only distinguished laureates of Italy. The rest were mere versifiers, for the most part fluent and insipid. But some Italian poets were complimented with the laurel in Germany, where the poetical college, founded at Vienna by Maximilian I., produced few native laureates worthy of the honour. Yet "the Emperors of Germany," says D'Israeli, who condemned the Abbé Resnel's memoir on the subject, "retained the laureateship in all its splendour. The selected bard was called _Il Poeta Cesareo_. Apostolo Zeno, as celebrated for his erudition as for his poetic powers, was succeeded by that most enchanting poet Metastasio,"--of whom, by-the-by, Sir James Mackintosh has also written in enthusiastic commendation; not, however, for his felicity as a poet, but for the deep and well-digested critical learning displayed in his prose treatise on Aristotle's Art of Poetry. "The French," continues Mr D'Israeli,--and we quote what he borrows from Resnel, because, though they do not tell us much, scarcely any other persons have hitherto told us any thing to the purpose on this matter,--"the French never had a poet-laureate, though they had royal poets, for none were ever solemnly crowned. The Spanish nation, always desirous of titles of honour, seem to have known that of the laureate; but little information concerning it can be gathered from their authors." We fear there must have been something suggestive of the hard, dry, see-saw of the _turpis asella_ in the tone of the Spanish laureates; for Sancho Panza, in his tender consolation to his ass Dapple, when they had both tumbled into the quarry, says, "_Yo prometo de ponerte una corona de laurel en la cabeza que no parezcas sino un laureado poeta, y de darte los piensos dobados._" "I promise to give thee double feeds, and to place a crown of laurel on thy head, that thou mayest look like a poet-laureate."