membra disunito lasso,
E l' esser perdo con la vita, e l nome."

{296}

Three more sonnets by this illustrious man are printed by Salvini in his
_Fasti_, of which he says:

"I quali esendo parto di si gran mente, mi concedera la gloria il
benigno lettore, che io, ad honore della Toscana Poesia, gli esponga il
primo alla publica luce."

Dr. Fellowes was not singular in confounding Dati and Deodati; it has been
done by Fenton and others: but that Dr. Symmons, in his _Life of Milton_
(p. 133.), should transform _La Tina_ into a _wine-press_, is ludicrously
amusing. _La Tina_ is the rustic mistress to whom the sonnets are supposed
to be addressed; and every one knows that _rusticale_ and _contadinesca_ is
that naive and pleasing rustic style in which the Florentine poets
delighted, from the expressive nature of the patois of the Tuscan
peasantry; and it might have been said of Malatesti's sonnets, as of
another rustic poet:

"Ipsa Venus laetos jam nunc migravit in agros
Verbaque Aratoris Rustica discit Amor."

I may just remark that the _Clementillo_ of Milton should not be rendered
_Clementini_, but _Chimentelli_. As Rolli tells us,--

"Clementillus fu quel Dottore _Valerio Chimentelli_ di cui leggesi una
vaghissima Cicalata nel sesto volume delle Prose Fiorentine."

S. W. SINGER.

Mickleham.

* * * * *

ATTAINMENT OF MAJORITY.

(Vol. viii., pp. 198. 250.)

I greatly regret that there should be anything in the matter or manner of
my Query on this subject to induce MR. DE MORGAN to reply to it more as if
repelling an offence, than assisting in the investigation of an interesting
question on a subject with which he is supposed to be especially
conversant. I can assure him that I had no other object in writing _ninth_
numerically instead of literally, or in omitting the words he has restored
in brackets, or in italicising two words to which I wished my question more
particularly to refer, than that of economising space and avoiding needless
repetition; and in the use of the word "usage" rather than "law," of which
he also complains, I was perhaps unduly influenced by the title of his own
treatise, from which I was quoting. But however I may have erred from exact
quotation, it is manifest I did not misunderstand the sense of the passage,
since MR. DE MORGAN now repeats its substance in these words,--

"I cannot make out that the law ever recognise