The fame of this great undertaking attracted universal attention to Poliziano. It is probable that Ficino first introduced him to Lorenzo de' Medici, who received the young student into his own household, and made himself responsible for his future fortunes. 'The liberality of Lorenzo de' Medici, that great and wise man,' wrote Poliziano in after years, 'raised me from the obscure and humble station where my birth had placed me, to that degree of dignity and distinction I now enjoy, with no other recommendation than my literary abilities.' Before he had reached the age of thirty, Poliziano professed the Greek and Latin literatures in the University of Florence, and received the care of Lorenzo's children. If Lorenzo represents the statecraft of his age, Poliziano is no less emphatically the representative of its highest achievements in scholarship. He was the first Italian to combine perfect mastery over Latin and a correct sense of Greek with a splendid genius for his native literature. Filelfo boasted that he could write both classic languages with equal ease, and exercised his prosy muse in _terza rima_. But Filelfo had no fire of poetry, no sense of style. Poliziano, on the contrary, was a born poet, a _sacer vates_ in the truest sense of the word. I shall have to speak elsewhere of his Italian verses: those who have studied them know that the 'Orfeo,' the 'Stanze,' and the 'Rime' justify Poliziano's claim to the middle place of honour between Petrarch and Ariosto. Italian poetry took a new direction from his genius, and everything he penned was fruitful of results for the succeeding generation. Of his Latin poetry, in like manner, I propose to treat at greater length in the following chapter. The spirit of Roman literature lived again in Poliziano. If he cannot be compared with the Augustan authors, he will pass muster at least with the poets of the silver age. Neither Statius nor Ausonius produced more musical hexameters, or expressed their feeling for natural beauty in phrases marked with more spontaneous grace. Of his Greek elegiacs only a few specimens survive. These, in spite of certain licenses not justified by pure Greek prosody, might claim a place in the 'Anthology,' among the epigrams of Agathias and Paulus Silentiarius.[325] The Doric couplets on two beautiful boys, and the love sonnet to the youth Chrysocomus, read like extracts from the [Greek: Mousa paidikê].[326] What is remarkable about the Greek and Latin poetry of Poliziano is that the flavour of the author's Italian style transpires in them. They are no mere imitations of the classics. The 'roseate fluency' of the 'Rime' reappears in these _prolusiones_, making it manifest that the three languages were used with equal facility, and that on each of them the poet set the seal of his own genius.