Of Erasmus’ six banquet pieces, the Convivium Profanum was the only one to appear in the earliest versions of the Colloquia. Unlike the others, therefore, it always retained much of the formulary quality that characterized the slender original collection, primarily a series of models after which schoolboys might fashion their conversational Latin. Yet even in Johannes Froben's unauthorized first printing of the pedagogical materials that Erasmus had composed twenty years earlier for use by his pupils at Paris, the purely formulaic matter is interspersed with considerable stretches of lively table talk, the full cast of participants in the convivium is introduced, and distinguishable personalities for the principal interlocutors have begun to be fashioned.

In a prefatory oration in the Florentine Studium in 1462 Cristoforo Landino indicated that his lectures for the coming academic year would be a commentary on Virgil. Hitherto considered lost, this commentary is extant in a complete draft of the lectures, Codex 1368 of the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. The manuscript is an important, new source both for Landino's earlier years and for the revival of philosophical studies in Florence in the 1460's: hence this announcement and brief description.

The manuscript has the form of a word-by-word commentary on the first seven books of the Aeneid, although a title, added on the flyleaf by a later hand, promises a commentary on eight books.

Interpretations of A Midsummer Night's Dream have suffered from a hesitation or a downright refusal on the part of critics to consider the full significance of the ritual of Midsummer, or Saint John's Day, in Shakespeare's comedy. The play, like the ritual which informs its structure, maintains a dual frame of reference, Christian and pagan. Within this frame such seemingly unrelated subjects as the moon and dew imagery, the frequent reference to eyes, and the business of magic plants, particularly the peacemaking ‘Dians bud,’ become thematic components of the comic movement toward reconciliation of natural and lawful love. The lovers’ progression from the night of misrule to the light of the holy day parallels the pagan nature of the Midsummer festival and its Christian conclusion.

The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin has a painting of The Liberation of Jerusalem in its collection (fig. l). One enters the carefully arranged and brilliantly colored composition through the most prominent figure on a rearing horse who signals the onslaught enacted to the right. In sharp contrast is the relaxed and somewhat melancholy allegory of victory reclining in the foreground. By combining a keen historical accuracy with an allegorical figure to suggest the context and purpose of action, the painter reveals himself to be acutely sensitive to Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata. Before pursuing this relationship, however, there is a question of authorship to resolve.

In the course of collecting manuscript copies of the Latin grammar of Guarino Veronese (1376-1460) I recently chanced to examine Codex Palatinus Latinus 1760, which according to the inventory in the Vatican Library contains a copy of Guarino's grammar. The inventory is correct: this manuscript does indeed contain the work in question, but as I quickly discovered, it also contains another grammatical work, unnoticed by the compiler of the inventory.

This is a manuscript of eighty-two leaves, of which the text of Guarino's grammar occupies the first thirty-two (fols. 1-32), and the second work the remainder (fols. 33-82), with a blank page (fol. 32v) between the two.