Plato's Banquet was his gospel, where the quest of truth did not lack the warmth of desire.

Only a fragment remains now of the best of his poems, that which earned the praise of Ficino and the great Lorenzo, and it is significant that the name of the piece was "The Wood of Life." At twenty Philip returned to Beaumanoir after long wanderings.

He was the perfect scholar who had toiled at books and not less at the study of mankind.

But his well-knit body and clear eyes showed no marks of bookishness, and Italy had made him a swordsman.

A somewhat austere young man, he had kept himself unspotted in the rotting life of the Italian courts, and though he had learned from them suavity had not lost his simplicity.