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Finer and more ornamental varieties of volcanic stone were introduced from a distance, such as the peperino or grayish-green tufa of the Alban Hills, the Lapis Albanus of the ancients, with its glittering particles of mica interspersed throughout its mass; the hard basaltine lava from a quarry near the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, on the Appian Way, and from the bed of the Lago della Colonna, once the celebrated Lake Regillus, to which the name of Lapis Tusculanus or Selce was given; and the Lapis Gabinus or Sperone, a compact volcanic concrete found in the neighbourhood of the ancient Gabii on the road to Tivoli, extensively used in the construction of the earliest monuments, particularly the Tabularium and the huge Arco de Pantani.

Trissino, a very great man in his day, and the would-be restorer of the ancient epic, had the face, in return for the poet's too honourable mention of him, to speak, in his own absurd verses, of "Ariosto, with that Furioso of his, which pleases the vulgar:" "L' Ariosto Con quel Furioso suo the piace al volgo." What has become of the swan Sperone?

Efficaciously supported by their artillery, their infantry carried with the bayonet a strong line of intrenchments and redoubts along the southern slopes of Monte Pari Cimadoro and the crags of Monte Sperone. On the following day, however, April 12, 1916, the Austro-Hungarians, by violent surprise attacks, succeeded in rushing a part of the trenches taken by the Italians at Monte Sperone.

This was probably the reason of a circumstance that would be otherwise unaccountable, and that was ridiculously charged against him as a proof of despairing envy by the despairing envy of Sperone; namely, his never having once mentioned the name of his predecessor.

In 1559, he accompanied his father to Venice, and there perused the best Italian authors, especially Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The next year he went to the University of Padua, where, under Sperone Speroni and Sigonio, he studied Aristotle and the critics; and by Piccolomini and Pandasio he was taught the moral and philosophical doctrines of Socrates and Plato.

It is contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing him in the Gerusalemme, and was the first to apply the ominous word 'madman' to the unfortunate poet.

In the evening, after an intense preparation by artillery, Italian infantry counterattacked, reoccupying the lost positions, after a deadly hand-to-hand struggle and extending their occupation to the slopes of Monte Sperone. This was followed by a still further extension on April 16, 1916.

Constitutionally disposed to melancholy, irritable and sensitive to the last degree, he brooded over the fancied wrongs and slights which he had received; and at first he was disposed to accept the advice of his father's friend, the well-known Sperone, who strongly dissuaded him from going to the court of Ferrara, painting the nature of the life he would lead there in the most forbidding colours.