Population studies from parish registers. A selection of readings from Local Population Studies

Fracastoro was, like Leonardo, a universal man, and, perhaps for that very reason, has lacked an adequate biography. Rossi is jejune and outdated, and the harvest of Fracastoro's manuscripts is only just beginning. Hence, the old biography of W. P. Greswell, 1801, ed. 2, 1805, still has its uses, for it concentrates almost entirely on Fracastoro as a poet and philosopher and uses many primary texts. Dr Eatough speculates on possible contacts, including Copernicus, Fracastoro's contemporary at Padua (although no actual texts mention a meeting, and certainly not instruction), but fails to explore the ramifications of the group around Giberti in Verona. A closer study of Maddison's 1965 life of Marco Antonio Flaminio would have revealed long contacts between the poets, and attributed Fr. 2 to its rightful author, Flaminio himself. Perhaps most serious in a work which aims to set Fracastoro in a literary context, there is little discussion of neo-Latin epic or its place in contemporary literary theory. Walter Ludwig has given us many hints, particularly in his study of Scaliger and Fracastoro (Antike u. Abendland, 1979, pp. 33-37) and his survey of renaissance didactic poetry (Festschrift flur Leonard Forster, 1982, pp. 151-180), but these have not been exploited here. I would gladly have dispensed with the long computer index in favour of a more detailed and coherent introduction that integrated Fracastoro more fully into the mainstream of renaissance ideas. That is a task that needs to be done, and the material is there for any intrepid researcher. Within his own limits, Dr Eatough has produced an excellent edition and commentary, but he has not been bold enough to break with a traditionary literary form. Vivian Nutton Wellcome Institute