Note 361 — Chapter IV · MODERN WIT AND SATIRE.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
A modest beginning Opera, p. 421, sqq., in Rerum Memorandarum Libri IV. Again, in Epp. Seniles, x. 2. Comp. Epp. Fam. ed. Fracass. i. 68 sqq., 70, 240, 245. The puns have a flavour of their mediæval home, the monasteries. Petrarch’s invectives ‘contra Gallum,’ ‘contra medicum objurgantem,’ and his work, De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia; perhaps also his Epistolæ sine Titulo,’ may be quoted as early examples of satirical writing.