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classical literature, in refining and settling the native tongue, 

 and improving the general taste, cannot be doubted. But it 

 is equally clear that in very many instances they offered only 

 an arena for trifling disputation and ostentatious sciolism. 

 They adopted quaint, and sometimes unintelligible, appellations, 

 and were regulated by laws calculated rather to sustain the con- 

 ceits and prejudices of the framers of them than to promote the 

 cause of science and literature. Among the earliest was the So- 

 ciety of Intronati or Blockheads, established at Sienna, whose 

 device was an empty pumpkin, surmounted by a couple of pes- 

 tles, and bearing the motto of ' Meliora latent.' An allusion is 

 here made to the Tuscan method of storing salt, namely, ram- 

 ming it, by means of pestles, into scooped and dry pumpkins. 

 But as these, when well filled with salt, become very valuable, 

 so may an empty head, (Intronato,) proverbially called in 

 Italy a pumpkin, become stored with useful knowledge by 

 dint of education and assiduity.* Nearly at the same period 

 flourished several Academies bearing equally quaint titles. 

 Bologna, besides its Institute and University, boasted its In- 

 qnieti and Oziosi — Brescia, its Occulti — Florence, its Umidi — 

 Perugia, its Insensati — Bonie, its Umorkti — Pavia, its Cavallieri 

 del Sole, its Affidati, and its Chiave d'Oro, of which last Alciato 

 was a distinguished member. Each had its device and motto. 

 Nor was this all. It became the practice for every individual 

 member to take to himself a distinctive Device and Motto, and 

 even an Academic name. On reference, for example, to the 

 Ragionamento, published by Luca Contile in the year 1574, we 

 find a full description of the Device, Motto, and assumed name 

 of all the 115 academicians who then composed the society of 

 Affidati at Pavia. Among these, the good Archbishop of Milan, 



* Both Dr. Johnson and Mr. Todd express their uncertainty as to the derivation 

 of the English word bumpkin. It certainly appears to have heen originally the same 

 with punipion or pumpkin, and to have drawn ils meaning from the Italian proverb. 

 In the " Merry Wives of Windsor," Shakespear makes Mrs. Ford say of Falstaff, 

 " We '11 use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion. We'll teach 

 him to know turtles from jays." 



