Nor was it only as a man of science that he claimed the admiration of the world. As a writer, he stands foremost in his age. His prose is clear, unaffected, graceful, and occasionally eloquent and impressive. His scientific treatises are models of lucidity. He himself, when praised for that quality, attributed it in a large measure to his constant perusal of the works of Ariosto. Clearness, indeed, is the especial merit of that great poet. In his youth he wrote an essay to prove the superiority of Ariosto to Tasso. He said Tasso gave us words, and Ariosto, realities. This assertion may be somewhat sweeping, but it has a foundation of truth. Still, he admitted that Tasso had many qualities that please the reader, and that it was only the sharp scrutiny of criticism which he could not sustain. The works of Galileo are not very voluminous. First and foremost in importance, comes the _Dialogue on the Two Systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus._ His _Saggiatore_ is hardly less important. His _Problems_ contain descriptions of many experiments, and his Letters are as remarkable for wit and vivacity as for strength and boldness of thought. His Essay on the comparative merits of Ariosto and Tasso has already been mentioned. He took great delight in poetry, and we are assured by his biographers that he knew by heart many passages from Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and the Tragedies attributed to Seneca. In Italian, he derived the greatest pleasure from Ariosto, and next to him, from Petrarch and Berni. Dante is not mentioned, but it would be extraordinary if the most profound and graphic of all poets did not appeal to him, although the vagaries of taste are incalculable. It must be remembered that in the Seventeenth Century the appreciation of Dante had sunk to its lowest ebb. Among those who signed the decree condemning the errors of the illustrious Galileo, was Cardinal GUIDO BENTIVOGLIO, who, in spite of that unfortunate circumstance, deserves honourable mention as an historian and writer of Memoirs. He was employed as Nuncio by several Popes in Flanders and in France. Gregory XV raised him to the Roman purple, and when the Conclave met in 1644, after the death of Urban VIII, there is every reason to believe that he would have been elected Pope, had he not fallen ill and died on the seventeenth of September. There is a magnificent portrait of him by Vandyke at Bologna.