It is not at all improbable that _Poetics_ in one form or another, both Italian and “Tedescan,” may exist in MSS. of this period: [Sidenote: _Augustinus Olmucensis: his_ Defence of Poetry.] there is certainly work, even in print, of which very little notice has been taken hitherto. For instance, a few months ago my friend Mr Gregory Smith saw in a catalogue, bought, and very kindly lent to me, a _Dialogus in Defensionem Poetices_, printed at Venice in 1493, and written by a certain Augustinus Moravus Olmucensis.[31] This writer’s family name in vernacular appears to have been Käsenbrot; and he was one of the early German Humanists whose most famous chiefs were Reuchlin earlier, Conrad Celtes and Eobanus Hessus later, who achieved much tolerable verse, and in the _Epistolæ Obscurorum_ one immortal piece of prose, but who were whelmed in the deluge of the Reformation struggles, and accomplished little of the good which they might have done to Germany. The _Dialogus_—which has the perhaps not quite accidental interest of having appeared in the year between the writing of Savonarola’s somewhat dubious backing of Poetry, and the first printing of Boccaccio’s uncompromising and generous championship thereof—cannot be said to be of much intrinsic importance. The author gives, or rather adopts, the definition of Poetry as “a metrical structure of true or feigned narration, composed in suitable rhythm or feet, and adjusted to utility _and_ pleasure.” But his text is rather rambling. A parallel with Medicine (the piece seems to have been written at Padua, which helps it to its place here) is not very well worked out, and the latter part is chiefly occupied with rather dull-fantastic allegorisings of the stories of Tiresias, the Gorgons, the geography of Hades, and so forth. Still it is a sign, and welcome as such. ----- Footnote 31: A fellow-citizen and contemporary printer generally appears in biographical dictionaries under the heading “Olmucensis.” The history of Olmütz, by W. Müller (Vienna, 1882), has not come in my way, so I do not know whether Augustinus appears there. The _Dialogus_ is duly in Hain, but has not, I think, been much noticed by literary historians. -----