The nurse, a poem / Translated from the Italian of Luigi Tansillo by William Roscoe.

  • Tansillo, Luigi, 1510-1568.
Date:
1798
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nurse, a poem / Translated from the Italian of Luigi Tansillo by William Roscoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    year 1566, to Antonio Scarampi, bishop of Noia, accompanying the two poems of the Balia, and the Podere, thus expresses himself, “ You may now judge for yourself, whether I have known how « to distinguish the properties of a good soil, to erect my villa, << and to avail myself of the Mantuan hard, and of other writers.” That Tansillo had entered into the married state, and had su- peradded to the relation of a husband, that of a father, are circum- stances only known from the ensuing poem. The time of his death is not less uncertain than that of his birth. Tiraboschi places this event in 15q6, but Zeno conjectures it to have hap- pened in the year 156g, whilst he was governor of Gaeta. At least in that year it is certain that he received as his guest Scipio Ammirato, then on his way to Florence, who relates in his Opus culi, that Tansillo being much indisposed and advanced in years, did not survive that event many months, nor had Zeno discovered any documents which tended to shew that the life of Tansillo had been extended beyond that year. It is however pro- bable that some error has arisen either in the time assigned by Zeno to his birth, or in that of his death, as a person at the age of fifty-nine, can scarcely be considered as having reached a very ad- vanced period of life. With respect to the poem, of which an English translation is now attempted, it may certainly be considered as a singular and interesting production. As the work of one of the brightest wits in that constellation of Genius which appeared in Italy in the sixteenth