The _furor poeticus_ of Politian put him much beyond other Humanists in critical respects. His contemporary and friend, [Sidenote: _Petrus Crinitus: his_ De Poetis Latinis.] Petrus Crinitus,[30] was, if not quite of the same caste as Politian, by no means of the mere ordinary Humanist type. His kissing-verses, _Dum te Neæra savior_, are among the best of their kind between Petronius and Johannes Secundus; and his curious _pot-pourri_, _De Honesta Sapientia_, is quite worth reading, though one may know most of its constituents well enough beforehand. Yet the literary inquiries here are surprisingly few, and treated in no critical spirit whatsoever, so that there is no disappointment in one sense, though there may be in another, with his three books, _De Poetis Latinis_. These consist of a large number of separate articles in more or less chronological order, by no means ill-written in the classical-dictionary fashion: _Genitus est_ here; _obiisse traditur_ there, and in such a year; _totum se dicavit poeticæ facultati_, and the rest. The taste as expressed by preferences is not bad, and the approaches (they are hardly more) to critical estimate, though very obvious and mostly traditional, are sound enough and fairly supported by quotation. But of original attempt to grasp and to render the character of Latin poetry generally, or of any one Latin poet by himself, there is hardly a vestige. ----- Footnote 30: My copy is the edition of Gryphius (Lugduni, 1554). Crinitus (Ricci or Riccio) had dedicated it nearly fifty years earlier, and just before his own death, I believe, to Cosmo Pazzi, Bishop of Arezzo, on November 1, 1505. -----