We possess the whole of Poliziano in the 'Nutricia.' It displays the energy of intellect that carried him on bounding verse through the intricacies of a subject difficult by reason of its scope and magnitude. All his haste is here, his inability to polish or select, his lava-stream of language hurrying the dross of prose and scoriæ of erudition along a burning tide of song. His memory held, as it were, in solution all the matter of antique literature; and when he wrote, he poured details forth in torrents, combining them with critical remarks, for the double purpose of instruction and panegyric. Taken at the lowest valuation by students to whom his copious stores of knowledge are familiar, the vivid and continuous melody of his leaping hexameters places the 'Nutricia' above the lucubrations of more fastidious Latinists. We must also remember that, when it was recited from the professorial Chair of Rhetoric at Florence, the magnetism of Poliziano's voice and manner supplied just that touch of charm the poem lacks for modern readers; nor was the matter so hackneyed at the end of the fifteenth century as it is now. Lilius Gyraldus, subjecting the 'Sylvæ' to criticism at a time when Latin poetry had been artistically polished by the best wits of the age of Leo, passed upon them a judgment which may even now be quoted as final.[424] 'Poliziano's learning was marvellous, his genius fervent and well-trained, his reading extensive and uninterrupted; yet he appears to have composed his verses with more heat than art, using too little judgment both in the selection of his materials and in the correction of his style. When, however, you read his 'Sylvæ,' the impression left upon your mind will be such that for the moment you will lack nothing.' [Footnote 424: 'Dialogus de Poetis nostri Temporis.' _Opp._ vol. ii. p. 388. Edition of Basle, 1580.] The second poem of the 'Sylvæ,' entitled 'Rusticus,' forms an induction to the study of bucolic poets, principally Hesiod and Virgil. It is distinguished by more originality and play of fancy than the 'Nutricia;' some of its delineations of landscape and sketches of country life compete not unfavourably with similar passages in the author's 'Stanze.' To dwell upon these beauties in detail, and to compare Poliziano, the Latin poet, with Poliziano, the Italian, would be a pleasant task. Yet I must confine myself to quoting the last, and in some respects the least imaginative, lines, for the sake of their historical interest. Careggi and Florence, Lorenzo and his circle of literary friends, rise before us in these verses:--