Transcriber's Notes: In this text, a caret character indicates that the following letter is superscripted in the original. Other notes follow the text. THE HUMANIST'S LIBRARY Edited by Lewis Einstein VIII GALATEO OF MANNERS AND BEHAVIOURS A RENAISSANCE COURTESY-BOOK GALATEO OF MANNERS & BEHAVIOURS BY GIOVANNI DELLA CASA With an Introduction by J. E. SPINGARN GRANT RICHARDS LTD. LONDON Copyright, 1914, by D. B. Updike A TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ix The Dedication 3 Commendatory Verses 6 The Treatise of Master Jhon Della Casa 13 Bibliographical Note 121 INTRODUCTION One day, in Rome, about the middle of the sixteenth century, the Bishop of Sessa suggested to the Archbishop of Benevento that he write a treatise on good manners. Many books had touched the subject on one or more of its sides, but no single book had attempted to formulate the whole code of refined conduct for their time and indeed for all time. And who could deal with the subject more exquisitely than the Archbishop of Benevento? As a scion of two distinguished Florentine families (his mother was a Tornabuoni), as an eminent prelate and diplomatist, an accomplished poet and orator, a master of Tuscan prose, a frequenter of all the fashionable circles of his day, the author of licentious capitoli, and more especially as one whose morals were distinctly not above reproach, he seemed eminently fitted for the office of arbiter elegantiarum. So it was that some years later, in disfavour with the new Pope, and in the retirement of his town house in Venice and his villa in the Marca Trivigiana, with a gallant company of gentlemen and ladies to share his enforced but charming leisure, the Archbishop composed the little book that had been suggested by the Bishop of Sessa, and that, as a compliment to its "only begetter," bears as a title his poetic or academic name.