with Niccolò Ridolfi, the father of Lorenzo’s son-in-law, suffered on the scaffold in 1497, at the age of thirty-two, a victim to mob-law. The last of these poems, ‘Nutricia,’ was dedicated, in 1491, several years after its composition, to the Cardinal of Sant’Anastasia, Antonio Pallavicino Gentile of Genoa, who had great influence in state affairs under Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., and took much interest in literature and literary men. At the close of the dedication Poliziano gratefully alludes to the cardinal’s efforts to further his cause with the Pope. As we have said, the ‘Sylvæ’ were prolegomena to lectures on literature. To a cycle of another kind, to lectures given at Florence in 1483 on the Aristotelian philosophy, Poliziano composed a prose introduction, probably the strangest ever heard at any university.[44] The very title—‘Lamia’ (the Witch)—sounds strange, and we almost suspect a joke, but find that the author is in earnest. The beginning of this address to his students is highly characteristic. ‘Have you ever heard tell of witches? When I was a little boy my grandmother used to tell me about the witches in the neighbouring wood, who eat up naughty children. Fancy what an image of terror a witch was to me in those days! In the neighbourhood of my little villa at Fiesole there is a little brook, hidden by the shadow of the hill-side, and the women of the place who go there to draw water say that it is a place of meeting for the witches. But what is a witch? Plutarch of Chæronea, who was as grave as he was learned, relates that the witches have artificial eyes which they can put in and take out at their pleasure, just as weak-sighted old people do with their spectacles, which they stick on their noses when they want to look carefully at something and then put back into the case; or as others do with their false teeth, which they lay aside with their clothes when they go to bed;—not to mention your helpmeets, ye married men, with their bought braids and curls. If a witch desires to take a walk she puts in her eyes, and wanders through streets and alleys, squares and markets, churches and offices, taverns and baths, looks at everything, thrusts her nose into everything, meddles with everything, let a man do what he may. She has the eyes of an owl and a spy, like the old maid in Plautus. She can find out a grain of sand, and bury herself in the narrowest cranny. When she gets home, as soon as she reaches the threshold, she takes out her eyes and puts them in her pocket. Out of doors she has eyes like a lynx, at home she is blind. You ask what she does then? She sits spinning yarn, and humming a little song from time to time. Have you Florentines never known such witches, who know nothing of their own business, but are always busy about other people’s? No? Yet there are many of them in all cities, even here in yours. But they go about in disguise—you take them for men and women, but they are witches. Once it befell that some