The number of writers at this period who, if not always moral, may be described as moralists, is very considerable. ALESSANDRO PICCOLOMINI, afterwards Archbishop of Patras, wrote a complete institution of the citizen which is not devoid of merit; but he is better remembered by a sin of his youth, the _Dialogo della bella creauza delle donne_, in which an Italian Martha successfully exhorts an Italian Margaret to add a lover to a husband. The literary merits of this otherwise reprehensible performance are considerable; it is also an authority on cosmetics. Sperone Speroni, eminent for the dignity of his life and the elegance of his style, has the further honour of having first employed the dialogue in the discussion of purely ethical questions. Lodovico Dolce and A. F. Doni, industrious _littérateurs_, obtained a reputation in their own day which posterity has not ratified. The former, says Tiraboschi, wrote much in every style and well in none; the latter is tersely characterised by Niceron as “grand diseur de riens.” Far superior is GIOVANNI BATTISTA GELLI, the learned tailor of Florence, who had the great advantage over the other moralists of being able to clothe his wit and wisdom in an objective form. In his _Circe_, Ulysses is represented as unsuccessfully endeavouring to persuade his metamorphosed companions to reassume human shape. They know better, and their argumentation might well have suggested the machinery of Dryden’s _Hind and Panther_; even as that of Gelli’s _Capricci_, where Giusto disputes with his own soul, was very probably copied in Smollett’s _Adventures of an Atom_.