sublime Vegio, and Flavio, the Historian":--

Tuque, Aretine, prior, qui cantas laude poetam,
Karole, sic jubeo, sit tibi primus honos.
Post alii subeant: Orator Poggius ille,
Vegius altiloquus, Flavius Historicus.

Then it would seem that, as Vegio and Biondo Flavio were, in the
opinion of Porcellio, unsurpassed, the first, for the sublimity of
his diction, and the second, by his historical writing, so
Bracciolini was lifted by his oratory above all his
contemporaries. Wit, polish, and keen sarcasm, with abundance of
acute observations on the human character, distinguish his Essay
on Hypocrisy, published at Cologne in 1535 by Orthuinus Gratius
Daventriensis in his "Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum et
Fugiendarum." His Letters are written in an easy, agreeable style,
with constant sportiveness and endless felicity of expression. In
his Dialogues he is delicate, lively, and careful. Facility and
happiness of diction are conspicuous in his "Description of the
Ruins of the City of Rome," along with accuracy and
picturesqueness in representation of objects. But whatever he did,
all his writings (including the Annals), bear the stamp of one
mind: they indicate alike the predominance of three powers
exercised in an equal and uncommon degree, and without which no
one can stand, as he does, on the loftiest pedestal of literary
merit,--sensibility, imagination and judgment, working together
like one compact, indivisible faculty.

In addition to this versatility in composition, which enabled him
to imitate any writer, his career fitted him for the production of