the mediaeval notions of tragedy and comedy were transferred to similar compositions in the vernaculars. Dante’s _Divina Commedia_ is just a story which begins in Hell and ends in Paradise[630]. Boccaccio[631], Chaucer[632], and Lydgate[633] use precisely similar language. And, right up to the end of the sixteenth century, ‘tragedy’ continues to stand for ‘tragical legend’ with the authors of the _Mirror for Magistrates_ and their numerous successors[634]. Long before this, of course, humanistic research, without destroying their mediaeval sense, had restored to the wronged terms their proper connotation. There is a period during which it is a little difficult to say what, in certain instances, they do mean. When Robert Bower, in 1447, speaks of _comoediae_ and _tragoediae_ on the theme of Robin Hood and Little John, it is a matter for conjecture whether he is referring to dramatized May-games or merely to ballads[635]. Bale, in writing of his contemporaries, certainly applies the words to plays; but when he ascribes _tragoedias vulgares_ to Robert Baston, a Carmelite friar of the time of Edward II, it is probable that he is using, or quoting a record which used, an obsolescent terminology[636]. What the _comoediae_ of John Scogan, under Edward IV, may have been, must remain quite doubtful[637]. It is in the early fourteenth century and in Italy that a renewed interest in the Latin dramatists, other than Terence, can first be traced. Seneca became the subject of a commentary by the English Dominican Nicholas Treveth, and also attracted the attention of Lovato de’ Lovati and the scholarly circle which gathered round him at Padua. The chief of these was Albertino Mussato, who about 1314 was moved by indignation at the intrigues of Can Grande of Verona to write his _Ecerinis_ on the fate of that Ezzelino who, some eighty years before, had tyrannized over Padua. This first of the Senecan tragedies of the Renascence stirred enthusiasm amongst the growing number of the _literati_. It was read aloud and Mussato was laureated before the assembled university. Two learned professors paid it the tribute of a commentary. The example of Mussato was followed in the _Achilleis_ (1390) of Antonio de’ Loschi of Vicenza and the _Progne_ (†1428) of Gregorio Corraro of Mantua. Petrarch was familiar not only with Terence, but also with Seneca and Plautus, and his _Philologia_, written before 1331 and then suppressed, may claim to take rank with the _Ecerinis_ as the first Renascence comedy. It was modelled, says Boccaccio, upon Terence. A fresh impulse was given to the study and imitation of Latin comedy in 1427 by the discovery of twelve hitherto unknown Plautine plays, including the _Menaechmi_ and the _Miles Gloriosus_, and various attempts were made to complete the imperfect plays. In 1441 Leonardo Dati of Florence introduced a motive from the _Trinummus_ into his, not comedy, but tragedy of _Hiempsal_[638].