, vernacularly Giacomo Sannazaro, a celebrated Italian and Latin poet, was
, vernacularly Giacomo Sannazaro, a celebrated Italian and Latin poet, was born at Naples, July 28, 1458. His family is said to have been originally of Spanish extraction, but settled at an Dearly period at Santo Nazaro, a flourishing town situated between' the Tessino and the Poj where it was long conspicuous for nobility and opulence. Reduced at length by the calamities of war, the more immediate progenitors of our poet removed to Naples. His father dying while this son was very young, his mother, unable from her poverty, to keep up her former rank, retired with her family to Nocera di Pagani, in Umbria, where Sannazarius passed a considerable portion of his youth. He had previously to his removal from Naples acquired the elements of the Greek and Latin languages, under the tuition of Junianus Maius, who conceiving a high opinion of his talents, prevailed on his mother to return again to Naples, where he might continue his education. Here he was admitted a member of the Academia Pontana, and took the name of Actius Sync-ems. He had formed an early attachment of the most tender kind to Carmosina Bonifacia, a young Neapolitan lady, but not being a favoured lover, uttered his disappointment in many of those querulous sonnets and canzoni which are still extant. In compositions of this kind Sannazarius is considered as having surpassed every other poet from the days of Petrarch. To dissipate his uneasiness, he tried the effect of travelling; but on his return, his grief was heightened by the report of the death of his mistress. She is understood to be the lamented Phyllis of his Italian and Latin poems.