_Due Dialogi dell' Inventione Poetica di Alessandro Lionardi_ (Venice, 1554). No one carries the _ventosa loquacitas_ about the origin of laws, and virtues, and opinions, and what not, farther than Lionardi; no one is more set on defining “_the_ Historian,” “_the_ Orator,” “_the_ Poet,” &c.; no one pays more attention to all the abstractions. At p. 18 he has a curious catalogue, occupying the greater part of a small quarto page, and capable of being extended to a large folio, or many large folios, of “subjects” and “effects,” in regard to history, enmity, discord, war, peace; in short, all the contents of the dictionary. “Perdonatemi,,” says another interlocutor, “se interrompo i vostri ragionamenti,” and indeed they might have gone on for ever. But the new man has his catalogue ready, too. Footnote 69: Venice, 1562. It is very short and very general. There are some literary touches in his _Lettere_ (2 vols., Venice, 1562), especially a correspondence with Cinthio on the _Amadigi_. Footnote 70: _Della Vera Poetica_, Venice, 1555. Footnote 71: His volume appears to be almost _introuvable_ for sale; but the British Museum has no less than three copies. I wish it would give me one of them. ----- More important than these to us, though less technically critical, and therefore in some cases commending themselves less to students of the subject from some points of view, are some poets and men of letters of the earlier and middle parts of the century who have touched critical subjects. [Sidenote: _Il Lasca._] I should myself regard the Prologues[72] of Grazzini (“Il Lasca”)—in which he repeatedly and unweariedly protests against the practice of moulding Italian comedy upon Plautus and Terence, regardless of the utter change in manners, and so forth—as worth shelves full of “in-the-air” treatises. For this application of the _speculum vitæ_[73] notion, the idea of _The Muses’ Looking-glass_, which was obtained from Cicero through Donatus, was the salvation of the time, keeping Comedy at least free from the fossilising influences of the false Imitation. Although the unwary might reasonably take the author of the famous caution not to read St Paul for fear of spoiling style (there are at least half-a-dozen of the greatest pieces of style in the world to be found in the two _Epistles to the Corinthians_ alone) as either a silly practitioner of undergraduate paradox or a serious dolt, yet the _Della Volgar Lingua_ of Bembo[74] is by no possibility to be neglected in taking account of the critical attitude of Italy at the time. [Sidenote: _Bembo._] It is of course too purist and “precious”; it “sticks in the letter” to a perilous extent; but there is real appreciation in it of what the writer can appreciate, and among the things that he can appreciate are good and great things. [Sidenote: _Caro._] Annibale Caro has (and deserves) a bad name, not