but secondary planets, dimly reflecting, through a hazy atmosphere, the borrowed beams of luminaries, themselves obscured by distance, as well as imperfectly seen from partial eclipses. It would then have been the glory of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, to have written what Virgil, Cicero, and Horace would have as little relished in diction as they could have comprehended in substance, where things, persons, customs, and arts, un existent in their time, were the burthen of every original theme. On the other hand, equally simple, obvious, and beautiful, was the only living use that could be made of the dead languages (beyond the profit and delight of studying them in their surviving models); namely, that which time has made of them by transmutation and transfusion into modern tongues of such terms as were congenial to the latter, or could be rendered so by being employed, first, in technical or peculiar, and afterwards in elegant and familiar senses, to obviate the necessity of inventing new and inexpressive words, as the occasion of science and taste required. The Italian, French, Spanish, and English languages have thus been enriched and adorned with classical interpolations, so gradually adopted, that they seemed to grow naturally out of their respective stocks, as the sphere of knowledge increased, and its details became more multiform. This golden age of Ariosto's life was shortened by the death of his father; who left to his eldest son, with means exceedingly small, the responsibility of supporting his mother, and training up his nine brothers and sisters. In the sixth of his Satires,--satires which are almost wholly personal and autobiographic,--he says, that on this occasion he was obliged, at four and twenty years of age, to abandon Thalia, Euterpe, and all the nine Muses; to turn from quiet studies to active duties, and exchange Homer for waste-books and ledgers, (_squarci e vacchette_). These trusts, the young, ambitious, fiery-minded poet faithfully and self-denyingly fulfilled; and he who, under parental injunction, at the most docile period of life, would not submit to the profitable drudgery of the law, now, in the very flower and pride of his genius, with filial piety and fraternal affection, yielded to a domestic yoke, and became the father of his family. In this honourable character he so well husbanded his narrow patrimony, that he portioned off now one, then another sister, and provided education for his four brothers, who, as they grew up, entered into the service of sundry princes and nobles, as was the custom with the minor gentry in that half-feudal age. Gabriele cultivated literature, and excelled in the composition of Latin verse; but, making Statius his model, he was never worthy to compete, even in this respect, with his more illustrious brother. Galasso entered into the church, which was then the wealthy and lavish patroness of those, who, by their subserviency to her domination, or their able