The stout post quarto, with its vignette of an exceedingly determined-looking owl standing on a prostrate pitcher and hooting _Kekrika_, is dedicated to Maximilian II. [Sidenote: _The_ Poetica.] It is arranged on a system equally simple and thorough. First comes a section of the Greek Text; then a short Italian summary of its contents; then the Italian translation; and then the _spositione_—the Commentary—which may be long or short as circumstances require. Often, on a Greek text of a few lines, it will run to as many quarto pages, full-packed with small print. Not the least advantageous part of this quadripartite arrangement is that the summaries—being, though very brief, to the point—are capable of being put together as a table of contents. This, however, but partially applies to Castelvetro’s commentary, which is often not a little discursive from the text. The defect was, however, supplied in the second edition by an elaborate index specially devoted to the _Spositioni_, and consisting, not of mere words or names with page references, but of reasoned descriptions of the subjects, as thus— "_Allegrezza._ “Come nasca dalla tristitia, che si sente del male del giusto, e del bene del malvagio. oblica, che si prende dalla miseria, o dalla felicita altrui qual sia,” &c. &c. This is a great help in tackling Castelvetro’s text, the book containing some seven hundred pages, of perhaps as many words each. No analysis of a book of such a size, so necessarily parasitic or satellitic on another in general run, and yet branching and winding with such a self-willed originality of its own, is possible. [Sidenote: _On Dramatic conditions._] One might easily write a folio on Castelvetro’s quarto. Here we can only, as in most other cases now, except those of books or parts of books at once epoch-making in character and moderate in bulk, give an idea of the author’s most important views on general and particular points. It was necessary, since Castelvetro is revolving round Aristotle, that the greater part of his treatise should deal with the drama: and perhaps nowhere is that originality which has been praised more visible than here, whether it lead him wrong or right. He has undoubtedly made a step, from the mathematical towards the æsthetic view of literature, in conditioning, as he does, his view of the Drama by a consideration of the stage. To literary _a-priorists_ this is of course horrible; to those who take the facts of literature, as they take the facts of life, it is a welcome and reconciling discovery. The conditions of the Greek stage were admittedly such as can never be naturally reproduced, and therefore, however great and perfect the Greek Tragedy may be in its own way, it cannot usurp the position of “best in all ways”; and can still less pretend to dictate to other kinds that they shall not be good at all in ways different from its own.