¹  Thus Trissino's Italia Liberata, the Georgic poems of L. Alamanni and Rucellai, the Sette Giornate of Tasso, &c. and many of the Italian Tragedies are written. It was attempted too by the French in the sixteenth century, as Ronsard in some odes, Blaise Viginelle in his Seven Psalms, &c. but was soon dropped again.
²  i. e. As far as relates to the verse of eleven syllables, or Italian [p. 40] heroic measure. But in shorter verses it had been practised sometimes by the most ancient writers of that nation, particularly in the beginning of the thirteenth century St. Francis wrote an irregular ode, or canticle, without rhyme, for music, in no contemptible strain of poetry. It begins,

"Altissimo Signore
Vostre sono le lodi,
La gloria, e gli onori," &c.
(See Crescimbeni, Comentarj, l. i. c. 10.)