died.  He is said to have had a taste for mathematics, as his brother had for mechanics.  The truth seems to be, that he and the duke, who lived in troubled times, and had to exert all their strength to hinder Ferrara from becoming a prey to the court of Rome, were clever, harsh men, of no grace or elevation of character, and with no taste but for war; and if it had not been for their connexion with Ariosto, nobody would have heard of them, except while perusing the annals of the time.  Ippolito might have been, and probably was, the ruffian which the anecdote of his brother Giulio represents him; but the world would have heard little of the villany, had he not treated a poet with contempt.

The admirers of our author may wonder how he could become the servant of such a man, much more how he could praise him as he did in the great work which he was soon to begin writing.  But Ariosto was the son of a man who had passed his life in the service of the family; he had probably been taught a loyal blindness to its defects; gratuitous panegyrics of princes had been the fashion of men of letters since the time of Augustus; and the poet wanted help for his relatives, and was of a nature to take the least show of favour for a virtue, till he had learnt, as he unfortunately did, to be disappointed in the substance.  It is not known what his appointment was under the cardinal.  Probably he was a kind of gentleman of all work; an officer in his guards, a companion to amuse, and a confidential agent for the transaction of business.  The employment in which he is chiefly seen is that of an envoy, but he is said also to have been in the field of battle; and he intimates in his Satires, that household attentions were expected of him which he was not quick to offer, such as pulling off his eminence’s boots, and putting on his spurs.[9] It is certain that he was employed in very delicate negotiations, sometimes to the risk of his life from the perils of roads and torrents.  Ippolito, who was a man of no delicacy, probably made use of him on every occasion that required address, the smallest as well as greatest,—­an interview with a pope one day, and a despatch to a dog-fancier the next.

His great poem, however, proceeded.  It was probably begun before he entered the cardinal’s service; certainly was in progress during the early part of his engagement.  This appears from a letter written to Ippolito by his sister the Marchioness of Mantua, to whom he had sent Ariosto at the beginning of the year 1509 to congratulate her on the birth of a child.  She gives her brother special thanks for sending his message to her by “Messer Ludovico Ariosto,” who had made her, she says, pass two delightful days, with giving her an account of the poem he was writing.[10] Isabella was the name of this princess; and the grateful poet did not forget to embalm it in his verse.[11]