fate and the will of God, yet it is within the limits of possibility. For the present the following conclusion is enough. Our native speech has all the excellencies of a language in abundance, and we ought not to be dissatisfied with it, nor ought any one to blame me for writing in a tongue to which I was born and in which I was educated. Hebrew and Latin originally were no more than vulgar tongues, yet those who hold an honoured place in literature cultivated them to a degree of perfection that was never attained by the mass of the people.’ These remarks, which are followed by others on the sonnet and on Tuscan rhythm and metre, show that from his youth up Lorenzo de’ Medici thought much of the nature and history of the language of his country. His poems opened out no new path, but served with those of many among his contemporaries to give more freedom and grace of movement to the language, more facility for applying it to manifold aims and objects, and a richer variety of idiomatic forms. His masterly handling of the language was equalled by his command of versification. Harshness he has, and that force which will not avoid a difficulty. Nor is he wanting in archaic forms and illegitimate turns of expression, while he has echoes of the artificial manner which in the poet’s youth was regarded as modern classicism. We do not always meet with the refinement of ear, accuracy of taste, and fulness of harmony, which give such importance to his contemporary Poliziano, and mark him as the true leader of the great literary movement of the fifteenth century, a movement which, in its last decade, put an end to a state of things in which it is hard to say whether stagnation or perverted energy was the worst feature. Nevertheless, Lorenzo de’ Medici takes a conspicuous and peculiar place in this movement. Had he been only a literary man, he would have shone as such. As in his whole character, so also as a poet, is he the true representative of his time, a time that strove with pious care to restore the old, while it joyfully if doubtfully anticipated the opening of new vistas and formed the threshold between two great epochs, the blending of the sunset and the dawn. Lorenzo de’ Medici, while rightly estimating the character of the literature of Dante’s age, and perceiving that it and not the pedantry of the humanistic poets contained life and hope for the future, was, nevertheless, still influenced by the great fact of the first half of his century, the revival of classical culture. Even when he most nearly approaches the lyric poets who preceded him, it is not in imitation, like Bembo’s imitation of Petrarca. Even when Dante or Guido Cavalcanti, with their subtle dissection of feelings, partaking somewhat of the character of scholasticism, and their habit of treating even earthly things with a certain unearthly solemnity of tone, have been most evidently his guiding lights—still, through