Among these must be placed the treatise, which often took the shape of a dialogue.[568] In this case it was borrowed directly from Cicero. In order to do anything like justice to this class of literature--in order not to throw it aside at first sight as a bore--two things must be taken into consideration. The century which escaped from the influence of the Middle Ages felt the need of something to mediate between itself and antiquity in many questions of morals and philosophy; and this need was met by the writer of treatises and dialogues. Much which appears to us as mere commonplace in their writings, was for them and their contemporaries a new and hardly-won view of things upon which mankind had been silent since the days of antiquity. The language too, in this form of writing, whether Italian or Latin, moved more freely and flexibly than in historical narrative, in letters, or in oratory, and thus became in itself the source of a special pleasure. Several Italian compositions of this kind still hold their place as patterns of style. Many of these works have been, or will be mentioned on account of their contents; we here refer to them as a class. From the time of Petrarch’s letters and treatises down to near the end of the fifteenth century, the heaping up of learned quotations, as in the case of the orators, is the main business oi most of these writers. The whole style, especially in Italian, was then suddenly clarified, till, in the ‘Asolani,’ of Bembo, and the ‘Vita Sobria,’ of Luigi Cornaro,[569] a classical perfection was reached. Here too the decisive fact was, that antiquarian matter of every kind had meantime begun to be deposited in encyclopædic works (now printed), and no longer stood in the way of the essayist.