Benche abbia l’alma irata e disdegnosa,
  Da ingiusti oltraggi combattuta e vinta,
  A voi gia non l’avro tanto ritrosa.

    In me non e pietade al tutto estinta
  Faccia di voi la prova chi gli pare,
  Sino alla corda, the mi trovo cinta;

  Gli prestero, volendosi impiccare.”

     So!  I’ve got rid of these two creeping things,
  That fain would have scratched up my buried gold. 
  They’re gone; and may the curse of God go with them! 
  May they reach home dust in good time enough
  To break their legs at the first step in doors,
  And necks i’ the second!—­And now then, as to you,
  Good audience,—­groundlings,—­folks who love low places,
  You too perhaps would fain get something of me,
  Ere I take leave.—­Well;—­angered though I be,
  Scornful and torn with rage at being ground
  Into the dust with wrong, I’m not so lost
  To all concern and charity for others
  As not to be still kind enough to part
  With something near to me-something that’s wound
  About my very self.  Here, sirs; mark this;—­
                                 [Untying the cord round his waist. 
  Let any that would put me to the test,
  Take it with all my heart, and hang themselves.

The comedy of Timon, which was chiefly taken from Lucian, and one, if not more, of Boiardo’s prose translations from other ancients, were written at the request of Duke Ercole, who was a great lover of dramatic versions of this kind, and built a theatre for their exhibition at an enormous expense.  These prose translations consist of Apuleius’s Golden Ass, Herodotus (the Duke’s order), the Golden Ass of Lucian, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (not printed), Emilius Probus (also not printed, and supposed to be Cornelius Nepos), and Riccobaldo’s credulous Historia Universalis, with additions.  It seems not improbable, that he also translated Homer and Diodorus; and Doni the bookmaker asserts, that he wrote a work called the Testamento dell’ Anima (the Soul’s Testament) but Mr. Panizzi calls Doni “a barefaced impostor;” and says, that as the work is mentioned by nobody else, we may be “certain that it never existed,” and that the title was “a forgery of the impudent priest.”

Nothing else of Boiardo’s writing is known to exist, but a collection of official letters in the archives of Modena, which, according to Tiraboschi, are of no great importance.  It is difficult to suppose, however, that they would not be worth looking at.  The author of the Orlando Innamorato could hardly write, even upon the driest matters of government, with the aridity of a common clerk.  Some little lurking well-head of character or circumstance, interesting to readers of a later age, would probably break through the barren ground.  Perhaps the letters went counter to some of the good Jesuit’s theology.