Such is the tenor of the Dialogue _On the Unhappiness of Princes_, in which Poggio dwells with so much energy on the vices of exalted rank, that it may reasonably be suspected that resentment and indignation had at least as much influence in its composition as the suggestions of philosophy. In perusing this work, the reader is perpetually led to recollect, that its author was a citizen of a proud republic, and a zealot in the cause of learning. His democratic asperity bursts forth in copious enumerations of the follies and vices of sovereign princes. His literary spleen is discernible in the sarcastic observations which he introduces by the medium of Niccolo Niccoli, on the indifference with which the rulers of Italy regarded his researches after the lost works of the writers of antiquity; in the detail which he gives of the neglect and scorn which Dante, Petrarca, and Bocaccio experienced from the great men of their times; and in the general observations which he makes upon the contempt with which mighty potentates too frequently regard the labours of the learned. The effusions of moroseness which occur in this dialogue are, however, interspersed with precepts of sound morality, and the historic details with which it abounds are at once entertaining and instructive. To which it may be added, that Poggio has exhibited in this composition a striking, and in all probability a correct delineation of the temper and manners of the splenetic, but sagacious disputant Niccolo Niccoli.[352]