in the piece, or at best a third for the lion (which some little brother might have “roared like any sucking-dove"), I cannot see good reason for disbelieving the story.  Pope was not twelve years old when he turned the siege of Troy into a play, and got his school-fellows to perform it, the part of Ajax being given to the gardener.  Man is a theatrical animal ([Greek:  zoon mimaetikon]), and the instinct is developed at a very early period, as almost every family can witness that has taken its children to the “playhouse.”

At fifteen the young poet, like so many others of his class, was consigned to the study of the law, and took a great dislike to it.  The extreme mobility of his nature, and the wish to please his father, appear to have made him enter on it willingly enough in the first instance;[2] but as soon as he betrayed symptoms of disgust, Niccolo, whose affairs were in a bad way, drove him back to it with a vehemence which must have made bad worse.[3] At the expiration of five years he was allowed to give it up.

There is reason to believe that Ariosto was “theatricalising” during no little portion of this time; for, in his nineteenth year, he is understood to have been taken by Duke Ercole to Pavia and to Milan, either as a writer or performer of comedies, probably both, since the courtiers and ducal family themselves occasionally appeared on the stage; and one of the poet’s brothers mentions his having frequently seen him dressed in character.[4]

On being delivered from the study of the law, the young poet appears to have led a cheerful and unrestrained life for the next four or five years.

He wrote, or began to write, the comedy of the Cassaria; probably meditated some poem in the style of Boiardo, then in the height of his fame; and he cultivated the Latin language, and intended to learn Greek, but delayed, and unfortunately missed it in consequence of losing his tutor.  Some of his happiest days were passed at a villa, still possessed by the Maleguzzi family, called La Mauriziana, two miles from Reggio.  Twenty-five years afterwards he called to mind, with sighs, the pleasant spots there which used to invite him to write verses; the garden, the little river, the mill, the trees by the water-side, and all the other shady places in which he enjoyed himself during that sweet season of his life “betwixt April and May."[5] To complete his happiness, he had a friend and cousin, Pandolfo Ariosto, who loved every thing that he loved, and for whom he augured a brilliant reputation.

But a dismal cloud was approaching.  In his twenty-first year he lost his father, and found a large family left on his hands in narrow circumstances.  The charge was at first so heavy, especially when aggravated by the death of Pandolfo, that he tells us he wished to die.  He took to it manfully, however, in spite of these fits of gloom; and he lived to see his admirable efforts rewarded; his brothers enabled to seek their fortunes, and his sisters properly taken care of.  Two of them, it seems, had become nuns.  A third married; and a fourth remained long in his house.  It is not known what became of the fifth.