utmost limit of vision and ecstasy; and it is in dedicating this
translation to Lorenzo de' Medici that Ficino has recorded these
incidents.

It was after many wanderings, wanderings of the intellect as well
as physical journeys, that Pico came to rest at Florence. Born in
1463, he was then about twenty years old. He was called
Giovanni at baptism, Pico, like all his ancestors, from Picus,
nephew of the Emperor Constantine, from whom they claimed to
be descended, and Mirandola from the place of his birth, a little
town afterwards part of the duchy of Modena, of which small
territory his family had long been the feudal lords. Pico was the
youngest of the family, and his mother, delighting in his
wonderful memory, sent him at the age of fourteen to the famous
school of law at Bologna. From the first, indeed, she seems to
have had some presentiment of his future fame, for, with a faith
in omens characteristic of her time, she believed [39] that a
strange circumstance had happened at the time of Pico's birth--
the appearance of a circular flame which suddenly vanished
away, on the wall of the chamber where she lay. He remained
two years at Bologna; and then, with an inexhaustible, unrivalled
thirst for knowledge, the strange, confused, uncritical learning of
that age, passed through the principal schools of Italy and France,
penetrating, as he thought, into the secrets of all ancient
philosophies, and many Eastern languages. And with this flood
of erudition came the generous hope, so often disabused, of
reconciling the philosophers with one another, and all alike with
the Church. At last he came to Rome. There, like some knight-
errant of philosophy, he offered to defend nine hundred bold
paradoxes, drawn from the most opposite sources, against all