The only sinecure which the poet is now supposed to have retained, was a grant of twenty-five crowns every four months on the episcopal chancery of Milan:  so, to help out his petty income, he proceeded to enter into the service of Alfonso, which shews that both the brothers were not angry with him.  He tells us, that he would gladly have had no new master, could he have helped it; but that, if he must needs serve, he would rather serve the master of every body else than a subordinate one.  At this juncture he had a brief prospect of being as free as he wished; for an uncle died leaving a large landed property still known as the Ariosto lands (Le Arioste); but a convent demanded it on the part of one of their brotherhood, who was a natural son of this gentleman; and a more formidable and ultimately successful claim was advanced in a court of law by the Chamber of the Duchy of Ferrara, the first judge in the cause being the duke’s own steward and a personal enemy of the poet’s.  Ariosto, therefore, while the suit was going on, was obliged to content himself with his fees from Milan and a monthly allowance which he received from the duke of “about thirty-eight shillings,” together with provisions for three servants and two horses.  He entered the duke’s service in the spring of 1518, and remained in it for the rest of his life.  But it was not so burden-some as that of the cardinal; and the consequence of the poet’s greater leisure was a second edition of the Furioso, in the year 1521, with additions and corrections; still, however, in forty cantos only.  It appears, by a deed of agreement,[19] that the work was printed at the author’s expense; that he was to sell the bookseller one hundred copies for sixty livres (about 5_l_. 12_s_.) on condition of the book’s not being sold at the rate of more than sixteen sous (1_s_. 8_d_.); that the author was not to give, sell, or allow to be sold, any copy of the book at Ferrara, except by the bookseller; that the bookseller, after disposing of the hundred copies, was to have as many more as he chose on the same terms; and that, on his failing to require a further supply, Ariosto was to be at liberty to sell his volumes to whom he pleased.  “With such profits,” observes Panizzi, “it was not likely that the poet would soon become independent;” and it may be added, that he certainly got nothing by the first edition, whatever he may have done by the second.  He expressly tells us, in the satire which he wrote on declining to go abroad with Ippolito, that all his poetry had not procured him money enough to purchase a cloak.[20] Twenty years afterwards, when he was dead, the poem was in such request, that, between 1542 and 1551, Panizzi calculates there must have been a sale of it in Europe to the amount of a hundred thousand copies.[21]