merely for the unfair manner in which he carried on his controversy with Castelvetro (see next chapter), but for the tedious logomachy of the controversy itself, which on his side, besides filling a regular _Apologia_ and other pieces, overflows constantly into his letters.[75] [Sidenote: _Varchi._] But this very controversy testifies to the zest and the undoubted sincerity with which literary matters were dealt with by the Italians, and it served further as a starting-point for the elaborate _Ercolano_[76] of Varchi, who in divers lectures, &c., also dealt with the more abstract questions of the nature of poetry, the status of the poet, and the like. In short, the documents on the subject have already reached the condition referred to by the warning given in the introductory chapter to the first volume of this book, that while in that volume we had to search for and discuss every scrap bearing on the subject, here large classes of document would have to be treated by summary and representation only. ----- Footnote 72: Especially in those to _La Strega_ and _l’Arzigoglio_ (_Commedie di A. Grazzini_, ed. Fanfani, Florence, 1897), pp. 173 and 435. Gelli and others do much the same. Footnote 73: The proper quotation is _imitatio vitæ, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis_. It is given as early as by Robortello (see note opposite). But with that intelligent operation of the _communis sensus_ which pedants dislike, _speculum vitæ_ was what took the general. Footnote 74: In _Prose Scelte di P. Bembo_, ed. Costero (Milan, 1880), pp. 141-278. Footnote 75: Ed. Costero, 2 vols. (Milan, 1879 and 1884). Footnote 76: Ed. Costero (Milan, 1888). -----