xlii INTRODUCTION

in aesthetic imitation',' and so on. I cannot say whether in
the De Poetfica he is less soporific than some others of his day,
but most readers who should persevere to the end of any one of
these three dialogues would agree with Mencke that they have
no life, no vigor; "hic, crede mihi, secure dormies'.

De Intellectione

Psychologists do not seem to pay much attention to the second
dialogue, Turrius sive De IWellechione, in which Fracastorius
wears the mask of G. B. della Torre the astronomer.  He
discusses the various mental activities, memory, fancy, imagina—
tion etc., the nature of induction and the syllogism—(this is
probably an echo of his youthful studies when he taught Logic
at Padua)—, the will, the delusions of fever and madness; and
dreams, with two curious examples of dreams that came true.
Bembo's? mother dreamed that her son was wounded in the
hand by a man against whom he had a lawsuit; he persisted in
going into eourt, and the thing happened, precisely as in the
dream. The poet, Flaminio!s lost a book, dreamed that a

: Spingarn, History of Läterary Criticism in the Renaissance, New
Vork, 1899. Saintsbury, Hisfory of Crificism, London, 1902,
Vol. II, says: '*The fifty pages of his Dialogue are almost a locus
classicus for the first drawing up of the creed which converted
8Sidney". Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship II. 117, calls
this dialogue a monuwumentum aere perennius. 'The most thorough
appreciation and criticism of the De PDoelica is Bundy's Introduc—
tion to R. Kelso's translation, for which see Bibliography., He
points out the dependence of Fracastorius on the tradition of the
rhetoricians, especially on Cicero, De Oratore, rather than on the
interpreters of Aristotle and Horace.

: Since he says that Bembo has lately been made Cardinal, he
was writing soon after 1539.

s Marcantonio Flaminio (1498—1550), the distinguished poet and
scholar, was an intimate friend of Fracastorius and also had a villa
on Lake Garda. In a poem written about 1534, Fraeastorius who
has been presented with a villa at Malcesine, wishes that Giberti
would give Flaminio one near his own. Flaminio, also, was under
the patronage of Cardinal Farnese, to whom he dedicated & volume
of poems. He was for a time under suspicion for heretical views,
and barely escaped, by concessions, the persecution of the inqui—
sitorial Pope Paul IV, who is notorious for having proscribed
sixty—one printing—presses. In a poem addressed to Fracastorius,
(Carmina Book V), Flaminio says that he is ill with a pessima fabes
and begs his friend to cure him and not to let him die young. There