The works of Galileo are not very voluminous. First and foremost in importance, comes the _Dialogue on the Two Systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus._ His _Saggiatore_ is hardly less important. His _Problems_ contain descriptions of many experiments, and his Letters are as remarkable for wit and vivacity as for strength and boldness of thought. His Essay on the comparative merits of Ariosto and Tasso has already been mentioned. He took great delight in poetry, and we are assured by his biographers that he knew by heart many passages from Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and the Tragedies attributed to Seneca. In Italian, he derived the greatest pleasure from Ariosto, and next to him, from Petrarch and Berni. Dante is not mentioned, but it would be extraordinary if the most profound and graphic of all poets did not appeal to him, although the vagaries of taste are incalculable. It must be remembered that in the Seventeenth Century the appreciation of Dante had sunk to its lowest ebb.
Among those who signed the decree condemning the errors of the illustrious Galileo, was Cardinal GUIDO BENTIVOGLIO, who, in spite of that unfortunate circumstance, deserves honourable mention as an historian and writer of Memoirs. He was employed as Nuncio by several Popes in Flanders and in France. Gregory XV raised him to the Roman purple, and when the Conclave met in 1644, after the death of Urban VIII, there is every reason to believe that he would have been elected Pope, had he not fallen ill and died on the seventeenth of September. There is a magnificent portrait of him by Vandyke at Bologna.
He had many qualities of an able, though not of a great, writer. He had the advantage of seeing and observing much, and the impress of his experience is discernible in all he wrote. Ranke extols his Memoirs as giving an attractive picture of his age, and, in truth, he is one of the few authors, not of French nationality, who approach in merit the great memoir-writers of France. He also wrote an account of his missions as Nuncio, numerous Letters, and a History of the War of Independence of the Netherlands against the despotism of Spain. The _History_ is a readable and spirited narrative, and the historian is seldom prejudiced or bitter. Having himself lived so long in Flanders, he is able to give graphic descriptions of the localities he mentions. Ambrosoli censures his style for its monotony, but I cannot say I ever detected that defect. On the contrary, it seems to me to be as flowing and animated as can be desired. A writer on historical subjects cannot be expected to indulge in the fanciful digressions of novelists or essayists. If Bentivoglio had lived to be Pope, he would doubtless have distinguished his Pontificate in a manner worthy of his abilities.