The chief of this class were such men as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and our English Chaucer. Soon after the founding of colleges, and the great uprising of the human mind, these four "stars of literature" arose almost simultaneously. It pleased God, in His infinite wisdom, to use the writings of these men, and many others, for the exposure of the evils of the Romish system, and for the weakening of its power. And while many of lesser note, and for smaller crimes, suffered bonds, imprisonment, and death, these writers were allowed, not only to escape the vengeance of the church, but to pursue their own course. Their attractive literary productions gave them such favor generally, that the priests were afraid to molest them. Thus, in the providence of God, the hitherto half-concealed corruption of morals which prevailed among the clergy, monks, and every order of the system, was brought out into broad daylight; under the veil of popular poems, pleasant tales, and satires, the corrupt state of the whole ecclesiastical system was exposed. The unbridled passions and the unblushing immoralities of the court of Avignon, and the vices of the clergy generally, became the chief subject of song and jest in almost every country in Europe. But neither the poetry nor the prose of such writers is fit to be repeated in the pages of our "Short Papers."
Dante, who is considered the father of Italian poetry, and celebrated chiefly for his imaginative description of purgatory, hell, and heaven, died A.D. 1321. Petrarch, who was some years younger, had even a greater reputation for prose; less is said of Boccaccio, his writings being of a grosser character. Chaucer is well known in this country as the author of "Canterbury Tales." He was born in 1328, and died in 1400. But enough of this class, we now turn to -