quite a nest of Zinanos, mostly written about that year 1590, which seems to have been this curious writer’s most active time; and I bought two of them as specially appurtenant to our subject. One is a _Discorso della Tragedia_, appended (though separately paged and dedicated) to the author’s tragedy of _Almerigo_; the other _Le Due Giornate della Ninfa overo del Diletto e delle Muse_, all printed by Bartholi, at Reggio, and the two prose books or booklets dated 1590. The _Discorso_ is chiefly occupied with an attack on the position that Tragedy (especially according to Aristotle) ought to be busied with true subjects only. The _Giornate_ (which contain another reference to Patrizzi) deal—more or less fancifully, but in a manner following Boethius, which is interesting at so late a date—with philosophy and things in general, rather than with literature. P. 322, bk. IV. chap. i. I ought, perhaps, to have noticed in this context a book rather widely spread—Sorel’s _De La Connaissance des Bons Livres_, Paris, 1671. It contains some not uninteresting things on literature in general, on novels, poetry, comedy, &c., on the laws of good speaking and writing, on the “new language of French.” But it is, on the whole, as anybody acquainted with any part of the voluminous work of the author of _Francion_ would expect, mainly not disagreeable nor ignorant _chat_—newspaper work before the newspaper. P. 350. The opposition of the two “doctors” is perhaps too sharply put. P. 436. I should like to add as a special “place” for Dennis’s criticism, his comparatively early _Remarks on_ Prince Arthur _and Virgil_ (title abbreviated), London, 1696. It is, as it stands, of some elaboration; but its author tells us that he “meant” to do things which would have made it an almost complete Poetic from his point of view. It is pervaded with that refrain of “this _ought_ to be” and “that _must_ have been” to which I have referred in the text; and bristles with purely arbitrary preceptist statements, such as that Criticism cannot be ill-natured because Good Nature in man cannot be contrary to Justice and Reason; that a man must not like what he ought not to like—a doctrine underlying, of course, the whole Neo-classic teaching, and not that only; almost literally cropping up in Wordsworth; and the very formulation, in categorical-imperative, of La Harpe’s “monstrous beauty.” The book (in which poet and critic are very comfortably and equally yoked together) is full of agreeable things; and may possibly have suggested one of Swift’s most exquisite pieces of irony in its contention that Mr Blackmore’s Celestial Machines are directly contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of England.