The said “Hermaphroditus” so called, “because”, says La Monnoye, “all the filth in connection with both sexes forms the theme of the volume”, is a collection of Latin Epigrams filled out with a patchwork of quotations from Virgil, Ovid and Martial, in which memory has a much larger share than imagination, and which has never appeared to us to possess any great literary value. But the mishaps the book has had to encounter, its having been publicly burnt in manuscript in the market places of Bologna, Ferrara and Milan, the anathemas hurled against it by some savants, and the favour with which it was received by others, who were glad to awaken by its perusal old reminiscences, have given it a kind of reputation. The Abbé Mercier de Saint-Léger was the first to publish it in Paris, together with the works of four other poets of the same sort: Ramusius de Rimini, Pacificus Maximus, Jovianus Pontanus, and Joannes Secundus[1]. But Forberg, whilst fully appreciating the work and particularly the courage of the learned Frenchman, found much to find fault with; the Epigrams of Panormitanus were not numbered, which made citations from them troublesome, a great number of readings were faulty, and, thanks to his manuscript, he could correct them; lastly, Mercier de Saint-Léger had omitted to give any running commentary on his author, to explain his text by means of notes and the comparison of parallel passages, whereas, according to Forberg a book of this character required notes by tens and hundreds, each verse, each hemistich, each word, offering matter for philosophical reflections and highly interesting comparisons. He therefore took the book in hand and began to collect with inquisitive care everything the Ancients had written upon the delicate subjects treated in the “Hermaphroditus.” But having come to the end of his task, he found that his commentary would drown the book, that hardly would he be able to get in a verse of it every two or three pages, all the remainder of the book being taken up by his notes, and that the result would be chaos. Dividing his work into two parts, he left the smaller one in the shape of annotations, reduced to the merest indispensable explanations, to the “Hermaphroditus”, while of the second and more copious harvest of his erudite researches he composed a special treatise, which he had printed as a supplement under the title, “Apophoreta”, or “Second Course”; this treatise being in his eyes only a kind of dessert, following upon the substantial repast furnished by the Latin Poet of the XVIth. century. The whole forms a volume much sought after by amateurs: “Antonii Panormitae _Hermaphroditus;_ primus in Germania edidit et Aphoreta adjecit Frider. Carol. Forbergius. Coburgi, sumtibus Meuseliorum, 1824, 8vo.”[2].