We have seen that Petrarch is considered the founder of the Renaissance in Italy. He died in 1374, and it took a century and more to complete the work he inaugurated. The whole of the fifteenth century is of importance in the history of Italian literature, not so much for what it produced, as for the fact that it prepared the way for the so-called "Golden Age" of the sixteenth century. During these hundred years classical scholarship became more and more widely diffused, being no longer confined to a few cities or princely courts, but spread over all Italy and through all classes of society. Yet Florence still remained the great center of this influence. Under the powerful family of the Medici the city had risen to great power and prosperity, and amid all the political confusion of the times it continued to be characterized by a keen intellectual and æsthetic life. The immediate successors of Petrarch and Boccaccio in the spread of the new learning, Luigi Marsili and Coluccio Salutati, lived and worked at Florence. Later came Poggio Bracciolini, who equaled Petrarch himself as an eager and successful collector of manuscripts; Marsilio Ficino, who founded under Cosimo de' Medici the famous Platonic academy; Pico della Mirandola, the youthful prodigy of learning and mystical enthusiast; and Politian, the greatest scholar and most elegant poet of his day. These men studied not only Latin as Petrarch had done, but obtained a good knowledge of Greek. They plunged eagerly into the study of Plato, who for so many centuries had been unknown to western Europe, and who now threatened to take the place of Aristotle in the world of philosophy. They gathered statues, coins, and inscriptions, and studied ruins in order to obtain as clear an idea as possible of the ancient world. It is hard for us to-day to get an idea of the eager enthusiasm and intense delight in study of these men of the Renaissance; they must have felt as Wordsworth did when he cried out: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven." The scholars of the time enjoyed an immense popularity. A new caste of society arose, not dependent on birth or wealth, but on learning and intelligence. Princes and cities sought for their services, for which they paid large sums. Everywhere they were received as equal to the noblest in the land. The movement reached its highest point in the first half of the sixteenth century, when the intellectual and artistic life of Italy was of almost incredible greatness. In proof of this statement we need only mention a few names, such as Michel Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Ariosto, and Macchiavelli; Tasso belongs to the same group, though born out of due season.