But classical affectation was the fashion of that day.  A certain Bolognese noble, Bero by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs:  Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar, Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which, with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of “Cynegeticon”; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed three books on kitchen-gardening.  I name these writers only out of sympathy with their topics:  I would not advise the reading of them:  it would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the treatise of Crescenzi.  The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses, or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry, Crescenzi was still the man.

I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the “empurpled hill-sides” of Tuscany.  Shall I name Sannazaro, with his “Arcadia"?—­a dead book now,—­or “Amyntas,” who, before he is tall enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has a store of cattle, “richissimo d’armenti”?

Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to be Governor of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and yet has left a poem of fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees.  In his suggestions for the allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln.  “Pluck some leafy branch,” he says, “and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their strife":—­

            “The two warring bands joyful unite,
    And foe embraces foe:  each with its lips
    Licking the others’ wings, feet, arms, and breast,
    Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed,
    And all inebriate with delight.”

So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget outrage.  It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.