“Nature seemed to have showered on this man, or hero, all her gifts. He was tall and finely moulded, from his face a something of divinity shone forth. Acute, and gifted with prodigious memory, in his studies he was indefatigable, in his style perspicuous and eloquent. You could not say whether his talents or his moral qualities conferred on him the greater lustre. Familiar with all branches of philosophy and the master of many languages, he stood on high above the reach of praise.” Pico della Mirandola showed remarkable abilities at a very early age. His mother, a niece of Boiardo the knightly poet of “Orlando Innamorato,” sent him at the age of fourteen to Bologna. There he mastered the humanities and what was taught of mathematics, logic, philosophy and oriental languages, and then went to Paris, the headquarters of scholastic theology. His memory was wonderful, a single reading served to fix the language and the matter of the text on his mind for ever. Pico was about twenty when he came to Florence, and his beauty, noble manners and great learning made him the idol of society. But every year he inclined more and more to grave and abstruse studies, and as Symonds notes: “at last the Prince was merged in the philosopher, the man of letters in the mystic.”[26] In a letter to Jacopo Antiquario Poliziano, after describing the malady from which Lorenzo had been suffering for some time, continues: “The day before his death, being at his villa of Careggi, he grew so weak that all hope of saving him vanished. Perceiving this, like a wise man, he called before all else for the confessor to purge himself of his past sins. This same confessor told me afterwards that he marvelled to see with what courage and constancy Lorenzo prepared himself for death; how well he ordered all things pertaining thereunto, and with what prudence and religious feeling he thought on the life to come. Towards midnight, while he was quietly meditating, he was informed that the priest, bearing the Holy Sacrament, had arrived. Rousing himself, he exclaimed, ‘It shall never be said that my Lord, who created and saved me, shall come to me—in my room—raise me I beg of you, raise me quickly, so that I may go and meet Him.’ Saying this he raised himself as well as he could, and supported by his servants advanced to meet the priest in the outer room, there crying he knelt.” Poliziano here gives the text of a long prayer which Lorenzo recited and then continues: “these and other things he said sobbing, while all around cried bitterly. At length the priest ordered that he should be raised from the ground and carried to bed, so as to receive the Viaticum in more comfort. For some time he resisted, but at last out of respect to the priest he obeyed. In bed, repeating almost the same prayer and with much gravity and devotion, he received the body and blood of Christ. Then he devoted himself to consoling his son Pietro, for the