Ariosto’s latest biographer, Panizzi, thinks he never served under any other leader than the cardinal; but I cannot help being of opinion with a former one, whom he quotes, that he once took arms under a captain of the name of Pio, probably a kinsman of his friend Alberto Pio, to whom he addresses a Latin poem.  It was probably on occasion of some early disgust with the cardinal; but I am at a loss to discover at what period of time.  Perhaps, indeed, he had the cardinal’s permission, both to quit his service, and return to it.  Possibly he was not to quit it at all, except according to events; but merely had leave given him to join a party in arms, who were furthering Ippolito’s own objects.  Italy was full of captains in arms and conflicting interests.  The poet might even, at some period of his life, have headed a troop under another cardinal, his friend Giovanni de’ Medici, afterwards Leo the Tenth.  He had certainly been with him in various parts of Italy; and might have taken part in some of his bloodless, if not his most military, equitations.

Be this as it may, it is understood that Ariosto was present at the repulse given to the Venetians by Ippolito, when they came up the river Po against Ferrara towards the close of the year 1509; though he was away from the scene of action at his subsequent capture of their flotilla, the poet having been despatched between the two events to Pope Julius the Second on the delicate business of at once appeasing his anger with the duke for resisting his allies, and requesting his help to a feudatary of the church.  Julius was in one of his towering passions at first, but gave way before the address of the envoy, and did what he desired.  But Ariosto’s success in this mission was nearly being the death of him in another; for Alfonso having accompanied the French the year following in their attack on Vicenza, where they committed cruelties of the same horrible kind as have shocked Europe within a few months past,[12] the poet’s tongue, it was thought, might be equally efficacious a second time; but Julius, worn out of patience with his too independent vassal, who maintained an alliance with the French when the pope had ceased to desire it, was to be appeased no longer.  He excommunicated Alfonso, and threatened to pitch his envoy into the Tiber; so that the poet was fain to run for it, as the duke himself was afterwards, when he visited Rome to be absolved.  Would Julius have thus treated Ariosto, could he have foreseen his renown?  Probably he would.  The greater the opposition to the will, the greater the will itself.  To chuck an accomplished envoy into the river would have been much; but to chuck the immortal poet there, laurels and all, in the teeth of the amazement of posterity, would have been a temptation irresistible.