As a scholar Poggio is entitled to distinguished praise. By a course of assiduous study, commenced at an early period of his life and continued to its close, he became intimately conversant with the works of the Roman classic authors; and though he was somewhat advanced in age when he began to direct his attention to Grecian literature, by dint of methodic industry he made a considerable proficiency in a knowledge of the writings of the Greek philosophers and historians. From those enlightened preceptors he imbibed those principles, which in his graver treatises he applied with fidelity and skill to the investigation of moral truth. To them, also, he was in no small degree indebted for that noble spirit of independence, and for that frankness of sentiment, which gave so much animation to his writings. The pictures of life and manners which he exhibits in his works are sketched by the decisive hand of a master, and are vividly coloured. His extensive erudition supplied him with that abundance of apt illustration with which his compositions are enriched. His Latin style is singularly unequal. In the letters which he wrote in haste, and which he addressed to his familiar friends, there occur frequent specimens of a phraseology in which his native idiom is thinly covered, as it were, with a transparent Roman robe. But in his more elaborate compositions he manifested the discernment of true taste, in selecting as his exemplar the style of Cicero. His spirited endeavours to imitate this exquisite model were far from being unsuccessful. His diction is flowing, and his periods are all well balanced; but, by the occasional admission of barbarous words and unauthorized phraseology, as well as his evident want of an intimate acquaintance with the philosophy of grammar, he reminds his reader that at the time when he wrote, the Iron age of literature was but lately terminated. His most striking fault is diffuseness—a diffuseness which seems to arise, not so much from the copiousness of his thoughts, as from the difficulty which he experienced in clearly expressing his ideas. It must, however, be observed, that he did not, like many modern authors who are celebrated for their Latinity, slavishly confine himself to the compilation of centos from the works of the ancients. In the prosecution of his literary labours he drew from his own stores; and those frequent allusions to the customs and transactions of his own times, which render his writings so interesting, must, at a period when the Latin language was just rescued from the grossest barbarism, have rendered their composition peculiarly difficult. When compared with the works of his immediate predecessors, the writings of Poggio are truly astonishing. Rising to a degree of elegance, to be sought for in vain in the rugged Latinity of Petrarca and Coluccio Salutati, he prepared the way for the correctness of Politiano, and of the other eminent scholars, whose gratitude has reflected such splendid