Students of Renaissance thought and letters have long recognized the importance of Marsilio Ficino's Commentarium in Convivium Phtonis De Amore. Thanks to the edition of M. l'Abbé Raymond Marcel, we also know for certain the date and the manner of its origin, and, in outline, the history of the manuscript tradition. The purpose of this note is to summarize and confirm Marcel's account and to add to it some details which have recently come to light.

To begin with, Marcel has laid to rest forever the thesis of A. della Torre that Ficino composed two versions of the De Amore but for religious reasons allowed only one to survive. There was only one Commentarium, occasioned, at least, by the conversation at a real banquet which Ficino and his friends held at Careggi on November 7, 1468, to celebrate the birthday of Plato.

The sixteenth-century biography of Cardinal Gasparo Contarini which is attributed to Giovanni Della Casa was only written in part by the author of the Galateo. He did not finish the work, which was completed by his friend and editor, the Florentine philologist Pier Vettori. The biography itself appeared for the first time in the editio princeps of Della Casa's Latin works in 1564 in Florence with the characters of the printing shop of the sons of Bernardo Giunti. The edition, which Vettori prepared, contained also the treatise De officiis inter tenuiores et superiores amicos, Cardinal Pietro Bembo's biography, the Latin poems, and translations of Thucydides’ orations.

The purpose of the present article is to record a decisive period in Charles Tessier's career as a professional lutenist: his residence in England which led to the publication of his first collection of court airs. Tessier's journey to England is no novelty, but whereas information so far was limited to the London publication of his court airs, three unedited letters he addressed to Anthony Bacon now make it possible to project his visit and his publication against their social background. The paper accordingly is a contribution to the as yet unknown biography of Charles Tessier.

Anthony Bacon appears to hold the key to explaining Tessier's visit to England. Their acquaintance may go back to some time between 1579 and 1592 when Bacon was residing in France, studying continental politics and gathering intelligence with a view to putting his experience at the disposal of the English government.

Jonson himself began the practice of identifying passages in his work which were virtually translations from the classics. In the margins of the quarto edition of Sejanus (1605), for instance, there appeared an elaborate apparatus intended to enlighten the reader who might not recognize the way in which Jonson had employed material from Tacitus, Persius, Juvenal, Seneca, et al. Furthermore, Jonson sought to explain his reason for including such apparatus in his ‘Note to to the Readers’ of Sejanus: ‘Least in some nice nostrill, the Quotations might savour affected, I doe let you know, that I abhor nothing more; and have onely done it to shew my integrity in the Story.’ Although his purpose has in large part been ignored, his practice has not. Commentators and annotators since Jonson's time have striven to augment his efforts, whether, like John Upton in 1749, to show that Jonson was merely piecing together those writings he was pleased to call ‘Poems,’ or for reasons more benign.