The man, however, was an admirable stylist, the inventor of a new epistolary manner.

He is our first deliberate and conscious stylist, the forerunner of Charles Lamb, of Stevenson (whose Virginibus Puerisque is modelled on his method of treatment) and of the stylistic school of our own day.

BEMBO, PIETRO, cardinal, an erudite man of letters and patron of literature and the arts, born at Venice; secretary to Pope Leo X.; historiographer of Venice, and librarian of St. Mark's; made cardinal by Paul III., and bishop of Bergamo; a fastidious stylist and a stickler for purity in language (1470-1547).