papal brieves, extended by the same writer, which despoiled of his inheritance the Duke's adopted child, blasphemously ejecting him from the pale of Christendom, give a higher opinion of the sincerity of this ungrateful sycophant. [Footnote 80: Vol. I., p. 298, 392; II., 114.] His other works, having no immediate reference to our subject, may be dismissed with few words. _The Prose_, a treatise upon rhetoric, intended to fix the standard of pure Italian composition, is a dialogue, to which Giuliano de' Medici and Federigo Fregoso are parties. _Gli Asolani_, a more juvenile production, was named from the castle of Asolo, at which some youths are represented as discussing the tender passion in all its moods and modifications. This theme, notwithstanding the tedious manner in which it is treated, gave it great popularity over western Europe in the sixteenth century, but the style and substance alike render it unpalatable to modern amateurs of light reading. His Latin treatise _De Imitatione_ is a dull defence of his Ciceronian mannerisms; his essay in the same language upon Virgil and Terence a laboured philological critique; his _De Ætna Liber_ a report of physical observations during an early residence near that volcano. His poetry, both Latin and Italian, enjoyed high reputation at a period when imitations of Petrarch had degenerated into common-place; for he succeeded in brushing away the rust of ages, and restoring much of the bright polish peculiar to the bard of Arqua. Lastly, his very numerous private and official letters have preserved to us a valuable store of facts, and much curious illustration of coeval manners and individual character. * * * * *