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Matteo is valuable for the general reflections which form exordia to the eleven books that bear his name. Filippo was more of a rhetorician. He is known as the public lecturer upon the Divine Comedy, and as the author of some interesting but meager lives of eminent Florentines, his predecessors or contemporaries.

A very fatal book was one entitled Opus de anno primitivo ab exordia mundi, ad annum Julianum accommodato, et de sacrorum temporum ratione. Augustae-Vindelicorum, 1621, in folio magno. It is a work of Jerome Wecchiettus, a Florentine doctor of theology. The Inquisition attacked and condemned the book to the flames, and its author to perpetual imprisonment.

But in the exordia and perorations to the several books, as well as in sundry digressions, may be found matter of greater value, embodying the poet's views on the great questions of philosophy. On the whole he must be reckoned as a Stoic, though not a strictly dogmatic one.

I will study Demosthenes and Cicero, not to discover an old Athenian or Roman custom, nor to puzzle myself with the value of talents, mines, drachms, and sesterces, like the learned blockheads in us; but to observe their choice of words, their harmony of diction, their method, their distribution, their exordia, to engage the favor and attention of their audience; and their perorations, to enforce what they have said, and to leave a strong impression upon the passions.

I will study Demosthenes and Cicero, not to discover an old Athenian or Roman custom, nor to puzzle myself with the value of talents, mines, drachms, and sesterces, like the learned blockheads in us; but to observe their choice of words, their harmony of diction, their method, their distribution, their exordia, to engage the favor and attention of their audience; and their perorations, to enforce what they have said, and to leave a strong impression upon the passions.

Justinian II. had by no means forgotten the injuries he had received at the hands of the Ravennati: "ad Ravennam," says Agnellus, "corda revolvens retorsit, et per noctem plurima volvens, infra se taliter agens; heu quid agam et contra Ravennam quae exordia sumam?" "What can I do against Ravenna?" What he did was this.

Even these May-morning exordia, in which he was but following a fashion faithfully observed both by the French trouveres and by the English romances translated from their productions, and not forgotten by the author of the earlier part of the "Roman de la Rose" always come from his hands with the freshness of natural truth.

Though, to deceive the public, he abhorred villainy in word, he never concealed his admiration in deed of a 'highwayman who robs like a gentleman. 'There is a beauty in all the works of nature, he observes in one of his wittiest exordia, 'which we are unable to define, though all the world is convinced of its existence: so in every action and station of life there is a grace to be attained, which will make a man pleasing to all about him and serene in his own mind. Some there are, he continues, who have placed 'this beauty in vice itself; otherwise it is hardly probable that they could commit so many irregularities with a strong gust and an appearance of satisfaction. Notwithstanding that the word 'vice' is used in its conventional sense, we have here the key to Captain Smith's position.