ABSTRACT
Of all the noble doctrines which the world owes to the Italian Renaissance, that which had the greatest appeal to men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the duality in education of arms and letters. This scholastic gospel was brought to full literary maturity in the Cortegiano of Count Baldassare Castiglione, which, published originally in Venice in 1528, was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561. The protagonist of what became, almost immediately, an integral part in the French educational system was Antoine de Pluvinel, a pupil of that famous master of equitation, Pignatelli of Naples. Apparently even Solomon Faubert was unable to persuade investment to abandon its traditional reserve when invited to back a project for a national academy, for nothing came of the proposal, and it is also curious that the Minutes of the Royal Society contain no reference whatever to any such motion as that so definitely stated by the diarist.
