This passage fairly represents the pervading spirit of Italian biographies and local histories, though probably containing a latent sneer from Baldi at the earlier work of Muzio, whose "petty details," with those scantily supplied by Vespasiano, will be greedily gathered in a future page of this volume. Little deemed the reverend pedant how independent the historic muse would become of the stilts on which he, and many of his contemporaries, so unfortunately elevated her, or how infinitely posterity would have preferred his despised omissions to his solemn prosings! Nor is this our only complaint. His illustrations of the Urbino court, thus magniloquently ushered, consist of a dull catalogue of twelve or fifteen noble names, ending with an apology for such trespass on his reader's patience, and a reference to some unpublished manuscript for details. This excuse is offered after devoting six pages, out of eight hundred, to the home interests and adminstrations of his hero. In supplement to these unsatisfactory allusions, we have recourse to such MSS. as detail the establishment which gained for Federigo's court the high reputation it enjoyed as a model of princely taste and munificence. Its constitution may be seen at a glance, from this minute return of its members, by one of their number.[116] [Footnote 116: Vat Urb. MSS. No. 829, f. 55. Other nearly similar lists of his household are preserved in No. 1248 of that library, and in Vat. Ottob. MSS. No. 3141, f. 144, and Oliveriana MSS. No. 384, f. 1. There is no date affixed to any of these, but they were probably drawn up after he had attained the ducal dignity.]