of them, happening to see me, stood still, and looked at me curiously, as those desirous to buy are wont to do. They whispered to each other, with uncouth gestures, “That is Poliziano—that is the rhymester who has suddenly dressed himself up as a philosopher,” and then they hurried away like wasps robbed of their sting. What they meant by their discourse is not clear to me; whether it displeases them that a man should be a philosopher, which, however, I am not, or that I venture to play the philosopher without having the material to do so. Let us now see what sort of a creature it is that men call a philosopher. You will soon perceive that I do not belong to the species. I say this not because I think that you believe it, but that no one may take it into his head to believe it. Not that I should be ashamed of the name, if it agreed with the facts, but because I prefer to keep free from titles which are not due to me: Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olim Grex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum. This therefore is the first point. The second is, whether the condition of a philosopher is bad. When I have proved the contrary I will speak to you briefly of myself and the subject of my lectures.’ After this introduction follows a sketch of the course of Grecian philosophy, and an exposition of the work of the later schools of thought. The man who raised to such a height the poetry of his native tongue, and the idiom from which it sprang, was deeply interested in popular poetry. He went hand in hand with his patron and friend in efforts to bring back language and literature ‘from the constraint of false rules to truth and nature.’ Both found the popular minstrelsy in the peculiar shape it retains to the present day, and differing completely in tone from the songs of other lands. In the _rispetti_ the ottava rima predominates, treated freely as it was in Boccaccio’s days for epic poetry. Even the sentimental pieces are epigrammatically pointed, and full of antitheses, which give an impression of artificiality and imitation of the antique, more especially in southern Tuscany and the Roman district. They are not narratives, nor do they develope a state of mind, but they vividly describe momentary emotion. Without making up a whole history with such little songs, like Pulci and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano composed a series of _rispetti_ describing joy and sorrow, accepted and especially despised love. They are partly in dialogue, frequently in a natural easy style, which reminds us of improvisations, more tender in expression, more flexible in diction than the two writers above mentioned, who not unfrequently betray that they are mocking at their own work. Other similar songs, but without internal connection, display a versatility resulting naturally from the way in which they originated. These fugitive poems grew within the Medicean circle, products of social intercourse in the villa and in