One of the earliest prose writers in our language when style was beginning to be cultivated, has aptly described, by a domestic but ingenious image, the effect of our youth gathering the burdens of grammatical faggots in the Sylva of antiquity. It is Sir THOMAS ELYOT who speaks, in "The Boke of the Governor," printed in 1531: "By that time the learner cometh to the most sweet and pleasant rendering of old authors, the sparks of fervent desire are extinct with the burthen of grammar, like as a little fire is even quenched with a great heap of small sticks, so that it can never come to the principal logs, where it should burn in a great pleasant fire." It was Italy, the Mother and the Nurse of Literature (as the filial zeal of her sons has hailed her), which first opened to the nations of Europe the possibility of each creating a vernacular literature, reflecting the image not of the Greeks and of the Romans, but of themselves. Three memorable men, of the finest and most contrasted genius, appeared in one country and at one period. With that contempt for the language of the people in which the learned participated, busied as they were at the restoration of letters by their new studies and their progressive discoveries, PETRARCH contemned his own Italian "Rime," and was even insensible to the inspiration of a mightier genius than his own,--that genius who, with a parental affection, had adopted the orphan idiom of his father-land; an orphan idiom, which had not yet found even a name; for it was then uncertain what was the true language of Italy. DANTE had at first proposed to write in Latin; but with all his adoration of his master Virgil, he rejected the verse of Virgil, and anticipated the wants of future ages. A peculiar difficulty, however, occurred to the first former of the vernacular literature of Italy. In the state of this unsettled language--composed of fragments of the latinity of a former populace, with the corruptions and novelties introduced by its new masters--deformed by a great variety of dialects--submitted, in the mouths of the people, to their caprices, and unstamped by the hand of a master--it seemed hopeless to fix on any idiom which, by its inherent nobleness, should claim the distinguished honour of being deemed Italian. DANTE denied this envied grace to any of the rival principalities of his country. The poet, however, mysteriously asserted that the true Italian "volgare" might be discovered in every Italian city; but being common to all, it could not be appropriated by any single one. Dante dignified the "volgare illustre" which he had conceived in his mind, by magnificent titles;--it was "illustrious," it was "cardinal," it was "aulic," it was "courtly," it was the language of the most learned who had composed in the vulgar idiom, whether in Sicily, in Tuscany, in Puglia, even in Lombardy, or in the marshes of Ancona! This fanciful description of the Italian language appeared