BERNARDINO BALDI[*141] has a double claim upon our attention, as the most prolific writer whom the duchy has produced, and as one who devoted a large share of his literary labours to the illustration of his native state. He was born at Urbino in 1553, of a family which, during several generations, had held with credit various important situations in the magistracy. By force of that extraordinary diligence, which continued to stimulate his entire life, his youthful studies advanced with precocious success; yet it is singular to find him confessing that his early inclinations were all towards painting, and that his preference of his pencil to his grammatical exercises often brought him into intimate acquaintance with the birch. We cannot echo the observation of his biographer Affò,[*142] that this discipline may have deprived Urbino of a second Raffaele; but though he assuredly was gifted neither with the lofty genius nor the pervading sense of beauty which characterised his countryman, a deep devotional feeling would doubtless have inspired his paintings. The peculiar connection which existed at Urbino between the exact sciences and the liberal arts frequently attracts our notice; and this it may have been which led the thwarted painter to turn with his accustomed energy to mathematical studies, under Federigo Comandino, for whose edition of Euclid, published in 1572, he is said to have drawn the diagrams. It was about this time, that, urged by his parents to choose between law and medicine for a profession, he preferred the latter, rather, as he tells us, from its analogy with philosophical inquiries than with any special liking for the healing art. With these views he was sent to the University of Padua, where he brought his vast application successively to bear upon logic, and ethical and physical philosophy, varied by his favourite mathematics, and by a comprehensive cycle of Greek literature. To that seat of learning there then resorted the youth of ultramontane lands, whose harsh language so piqued Baldi's curiosity, and developed his prodigious philological talents, that in an inconceivably short time he mastered French and German. But these multifarious pursuits did not suffice his versatile mind, so he enlivened them by draughts of the Castalian spring. There may seem something ludicrous in an epic, entitled "Artillery," and illustrative of gunnery practice; but a theme so ponderous for poetry was suited to the spirit of the age, as well as congenial to its author's thoughts. A visit to the mountain home of Petrarch, at Arqua, gave, however, a lighter turn to his muse, and taught his number to flow in madrigals, to the honour of some nameless Laura of his love or fancy, containing more borrowed classicism than inspired passion.