Note 68 — Chapter II · EARLY ITALIAN CRITICS.

Due Dialogi dell' Inventione Poetica di Alessandro Lionardi (Venice, 1554). No one carries the ventosa loquacitas about the origin of laws, and virtues, and opinions, and what not, farther than Lionardi; no one is more set on defining “the Historian,” “the Orator,” “the Poet,” &c.; no one pays more attention to all the abstractions. At p. 18 he has a curious catalogue, occupying the greater part of a small quarto page, and capable of being extended to a large folio, or many large folios, of “subjects” and “effects,” in regard to history, enmity, discord, war, peace; in short, all the contents of the dictionary. “Perdonatemi,,” says another interlocutor, “se interrompo i vostri ragionamenti,” and indeed they might have gone on for ever. But the new man has his catalogue ready, too.