Thus wrote Lorenzo de’ Medici apparently in 1466. On a subsequent occasion, in a gloss on his own poems such as it was the custom then for an author himself or some of his friends to write, he gave his opinion on the much-disputed question of the value of the vulgar tongue as the language of poetry. ‘If we want,’ he wrote, ‘to prove the worth of our language, we need only apply this test: does it express with ease all our thoughts and all our feelings? Nothing can be more satisfactory than the answer given us by experience. Our countrymen Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, have in their verses and discourses, whether grave or gay, proved clearly that every thought and feeling finds easy and natural expression in this tongue of ours. Whoever reads the “Commedia” sees various questions of theology and nature discussed with as much skill as success. He finds there the three degrees of style specified by orators—the simple, the florid, and the sublime, nay, more—Dante in himself presents a union of all the qualities which Greek and Latin writers display separately. Who again can deny the warmth, tenderness, and gaiety of Boccaccio? In his love poems he shows a mingled grace and fervour that neither Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius nor Catullus have equalled. Dante’s pithy sonnets and canzoni are scarcely surpassed by anything in prose or verse, and the readers of Boccaccio, whose learning was as great as the polish of his style, must admit that in him the faculty of invention contends with the variety and eloquence of his language. Any one who examines his “Decameron” with its endless diversity of subject, its descriptions of every conceivable situation produced by love and hate, hope or fear; its exhibition of countless intrigues and artifices; its characteristic representation of diverse natures, and its expression of every passion, will be convinced that for all this no language can be better adapted than our own. It is not the language that has been unfavourable to writers, but there has been a dearth of authors who could use it. To any one with a little practice, it is full of power, harmony, and grace. It appears to me richly endowed with all that constitutes the excellence of a language, and I am persuaded that a knowledge of what has been written in it is not only useful but necessary—more especially the works of Dante, which are both solid and profound. The commentaries of learned men on the “Commedia” bear witness to this no less than the allusions made to the work from the pulpit. We may look forward to the appearance of other excellent works in this language, which still preserves its freshness and is growing in elegance and copiousness. A prospect of still greater perfection is before it, should the dominion of Florence be extended, a thing not merely to be hoped but to be striven for by our gallant citizens with all their energies of body and mind. Though such a consummation cannot positively be predicted, since it depends on