Another Transalpine may be admitted here, for reasons of time rather than of place, to introduce two undoubted Italians. [Sidenote: _Paradoxical attacks on it by Cornelius Agrippa, Landi, Berni._] It is customary to mention the name at least of Cornelius Agrippa,[32] if not exactly as a critic, at any rate as being a denouncer, though no mean practitioner, of literature. It is perhaps a just punishment for his blasphemy that no one who only knew this would dream that the adept of Nettesheim was as good a man of letters as he is. It constitutes the fourth chapter of the _De Vanitate Scientiarum_ (1527), and is a mere piece of hackneyed railing at the art which _aures stultorum demulcet_, which is _architectrix mendaciorum et cultrix perversorum dogmatum_, which is _pertenuis et nuda, insulsa, esuriens, famelica_. Alas! if some tales are true, Cornelius (who really was a clever man) found that Occultism could starve its votaries as well as Poetry. His attack is, in fact, nothing but an instance of that measles of the Renaissance (nor of the Renaissance only) paradox-quackery; and it has no solid foundation whatever. The later (1543) _Paradossi_ of Ortensio Landi[33] exhibit more frankly the same spirit, but in regard to individuals, especially Aristotle, rather than to poetry and literature generally. And it is probably not absent from Berni’s _Dialogo contra i Poeti_[34] (1537, but written earlier), in which Poetry is dismissed by this agreeable poet as suitable enough pastime for a gentleman, but out of the question as a regular vocation or serious business. ----- Footnote 32: I have used the _Opera_, 2 vols., Lugduni, 1531, 8vo. The passages cited will be found at ii. 14 _sq._ Footnote 33: For Landi or Lando, see an interesting paper by Mr W. E. A. Axon, in vol. xx. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. Footnote 34: This, which is very amusing, opens the ed. of Berni’s _Opere_ in the Sonzogno collection (Milan, 1888). -----