Nothing is told us by his biographers of the person of Boiardo: and it is not safe to determine a man's physique from his writings, unless perhaps with respect to the greater or less amount of his animal spirits; for the able-bodied may write effeminately, and the feeblest supply the defect of corporal stamina with spiritual.

"If you think," he tells the young student, "that you can be a Cynic merely by wearing an old cloak, and sleeping on a hard bed, and using a wallet and staff, and begging, and rebuking every one whom you see effeminately dressed or wearing purple, you don't know what you are aboutget you gone; but if you know what a Cynic really is, and think yourself capable of being one, then consider how great a thing you are undertaking.

Did the last of the Greeks provide themselves with tents,effeminately impede their progress with luggage?

Priests and women are often classed together, but not because the priests are regarded as effeminately "helpless"; rather because both are recognized as ministers of sacred mysteries, both belong to the spiritual sphere, and have commerce with the occult holiness of things.

They were preachers to the corporate conscience of Israel, and dealt with subjects which the modern pulpit effeminately shuns.