share my reveries. I do not find my dear Mona Lucretia in her room, to whom I could pour forth my complaints, and I die of ennui."[82] At the age of twenty-nine, he was appointed to the professorship of Greek and Latin eloquence in the university of Florence. Happy in the friendship of his patron, his life was disturbed only by literary squabbles, in which he usually conducted himself with forbearance and dignity. He was held in high repute throughout Italy, and received preferment in the church, and on one occasion was sent ambassador to the papal court. His life for many years was one of singular good fortune and happiness: adversity ensued on the death of Lorenzo. [Sidenote: 1492. Ætat. 38.] There is a long letter of his to Jacopo Antiquario[83], which describes the last days of his beloved patron in affecting and lively terms. He speaks of the counsels he gave his son, and his interview with his confessor, during which he prepared himself for death with astonishing calmness and fortitude. On one occasion he made some enquiry of the servants, which Politian answered,--"Recognising my voice," he writes, "and looking kindly on me, as he ever did, 'O Angelo,' said he, 'are you there? and stretching out his languid arms, clasped tightly both my hands. I could not repress my sobs and tears, yet, trying to conceal them, I turned my face away; while he, without being at all agitated, still held my hands: but when he found that I could not speak for weeping, by degrees and naturally he set me free, and I hurried into the near cabinet, and gave vent to my grief and tears." The disasters that befel the Medici family after the death of Lorenzo, are supposed to have broken Politian's heart. The presumption and incapacity of Piero caused him and all who bore his name to be exiled. The French troops at that time invaded Italy under Charles VIII.: they entered Florence, and, in conjunction with the ungrateful citizens, plundered and destroyed the palace of the Medici; and the famous Laurentian library was dispersed and carried off in the tumult. Politian had composed a pathetic Latin monody on Lorenzo.[84] "Who from perennial streams shall bring, Of gushing floods a ceaseless spring? That through the day in hopeless woe, That through the night my tears may flow. As the reft turtle mourns his mate, As sings the swan his coming fate, As the sad nightingale complains, I pour my anguish and my strains. Oh! wretched, wretched past relief; O grief! beyond all other grief!" While singing these verses, after Lorenzo's death, afflicted at the sad loss they commemorated, and by the adverse events which followed, a spasm of grief seized him, his heart suddenly broke from excess of feeling, and he died on the spot. He died on the 24th of September, 1494, having just completed his 40th year, and having survived his illustrious friend little more than two years. BERNARDO PULCI