poet part of the way on a journey to Rome and Urbino; but Ariosto fell ill, and had leave to return.  He confesses that his illness was owing to an anxiety of love; and he even makes an appeal to the cardinal’s experience of such feelings; so that it might seem he was not afraid of Ippolito’s displeasure in that direction.  But the weakness which selfish people excuse in themselves becomes a “very different thing” (as they phrase it) in another.  The appeal to the cardinal’s experience might only have exasperated him, in its assumption of the identity of the case.  However, the poet was, at all events, left this time to the indulgence of his love and his poetry; and in the course of the ensuing year, a copy of the first edition of the Orlando Furioso, in forty cantos, was put into the hands of the illustrious person to whom it was dedicated.

The words in which the cardinal was pleased to express himself on this occasion have become memorable.  “Where the devil, Master Lodovick,” said the reverend personage, “have you picked up such a parcel of trumpery?” The original term is much stronger, aggravating the insult with indecency.  There is no equivalent for it in English; and I shall not repeat it in Italian.  “It is as low and indecent,” says Panizzi, “as any in the language.”  Suffice it to say that, although the age was not scrupulous in such matters, it was one of the last words befitting the lips of the reverend Catholic; and that, when Ippolito of Este (as Ginguene observes) made that speech to the great poet, “he uttered—­prince, cardinal, and mathematician as he was—­an impertinence."[15]

Was the cardinal put out of temper by a device which appeared in this book?  On the leaf succeeding the title-page was the privilege for its publication, granted by Leo in terms of the most flattering personal recognition.[16] So far so good; unless the unpoetical Este patron was not pleased to see such interest taken in the book by the tasteful Medici patron.  But on the back of this leaf was a device of a hive, with the bees burnt out of it for their honey, and the motto, “Evil for good” (Pro bono malum).  Most biographers are of opinion that this device was aimed at the cardinal’s ill return for all the sweet words lavished on him and his house.  If so, and supposing Ariosto to have presented the dedication-copy in person, it would have been curious to see the faces of the two men while his Eminence was looking at it.  Some will think that the good-natured poet could hardly have taken such an occasion of displaying his resentment.  But the device did not express at whom it was aimed:  the cardinal need not have applied it to himself if he did not choose, especially as the book was full of his praises; and good-natured people will not always miss an opportunity of covertly inflicting a sting.  The device, at all events, shewed that the honey-maker had got worse than nothing by his honey; and the house of Este could not say they had done any thing to contradict it.