Marsilio is this, of Montevecchio, Whom heaven has filled with its own special grace, That to the world its mirror he may be? This is that faithful follower of the Muses, In whom are grace and wisdom aye united, And never separated one from other; From us and all worthy of highest honour.[8] Cristoforo Landino stands far below Marsilio Ficino in scientific importance. But both as a professor and in the learned circle of the Medici he held a peculiar position; and by one of his literary works he opened out a path which hundreds trod after him without taking away the relative value of his labours. His life was not like that of his contemporary and friend, dedicated solely to literature. As Chancellor of the Magistracy of the Guelphic party, and one of the secretaries of the Republic, he was concerned in public affairs till a late period of his life.[9] During the lifetime of Pope Eugene IV. he passed some time in Rome, and studied those antiquities the decay of which made a painful impression on him, as on other Florentines of his time. But when complaining, like others, that the travertine of the amphitheatre is broken up and burnt for chalk, and that the antique sculptures lie about mutilated, he exaggerates strangely when he says:[10] Though round the mighty city thy gaze contemplative wanders, Vainly around does it look for monuments vanished and gone. In January, 1458, he accepted the professorship of eloquence and poetry at the University, and gathered round him a continually renewed circle of hearers, his influence being equalled by that of no contemporary save Ficino. In 1460 he began to lecture on the Italian poems of Petrarca, being desirous to stem the tide of contempt for the vulgar tongue which still existed in learned circles. Though in this respect he deserves all praise, yet his remarks on contemporaries, on Bruni, Alberti, Palmieri, show how he was himself still prejudiced in his view of the philological treatment of the language. His labours in the field of classical philology have no great weight. He wrote a commentary on Horace and one on Virgil, the former of which he dedicated to Guidobaldo of Montefeltro, and the latter to the young Piero de’ Medici. He also translated Pliny’s ‘Natural History,’ and undertook translations of modern Italian works, such as Giovanni Simonetta’s Latin ‘History of Francesco Sforza,’ which was published at Milan in 1490. He composed a letter-writer and a formulary for speeches, which was printed two years later, with a dedication to Duke Ercole d’Este. But the true centre of his activity and its importance lies elsewhere—in his relation to and share in that intellectual movement amid which the Medici lived, and in his position as a leader of the revival of the study of Dante. In illustration of the first point, his ‘Disputationes Camaldulenses,’ which belong to the history of Lorenzo’s youth, deserve especial consideration.