His son Virginio, and others, have left a variety of anecdotes corroborating points in his character.  I shall give them all, for they put us into his company.  It is recorded, as an instance of his reputation for honesty, that an old kinsman, a clergyman, who was afraid of being poisoned for his possessions, would trust himself in no other hands; but the clergyman was his own grand-uncle and namesake, probably godfather; so that the compliment is not so very great.

In his youth he underwent a long rebuke one day from his father without saying a word, though a satisfactory answer was in his power; on which his brother Gabriel expressing his surprise, he said that he was thinking all the time of a scene in a comedy he was writing, for which the paternal lecture afforded an excellent study.

He loved gardening better than he understood it; was always shifting his plants, and destroying the seeds, out of impatience to see them germinate.  He was rejoicing once on the coming up of some “capers,” which he had been visiting every day to see how they got on, when it turned out that his capers were elder-trees!

He was perpetually altering his verses.  His manuscripts are full of corrections.  He wrote the exordium of the Orlando over and over again; and at last could only be satisfied with it in proportion as it was not his own; that is to say, in proportion as it came nearer to the beautiful passage in Dante from which his ear and his feelings had caught it.[33]

He, however, discovered that correction was not always improvement.  He used to say, it was with verses as with trees.  A plant naturally well growing might be made perfect by a little delicate treatment; but over-cultivation destroyed its native grace.  In like manner, you might perfect a happily-inspired verse by taking away any little fault of expression; but too great a polish deprived it of the charm of the first conception.  It was like over-training a naturally graceful child.  If it be wondered how he who corrected so much should succeed so well, even to an appearance of happy negligence, it is to be considered that the most impulsive writers often put down their thoughts too hastily, then correct and re-correct them in the same impatient manner; and so have to bring them round, by as many steps, to the feeling which they really had at first, though they were too hasty to do it justice.

Ariosto would have altered his house as often as his verses, but did not find it so convenient.  Somebody wondering that he contented himself with so small an abode, when he built such magnificent mansions in his poetry, he said it was easier to put words together than blocks of stone.[34]

He liked Virgil; commended the style of Tibullus; did not care for Propertius; but expressed high approbation of Catullus and Horace.  I suspect his favourite to have been Ovid.  His son says he did not study much, nor look after books; but this may have been in his decline, or when Virginio first took to observing him.  A different conclusion as to study is to be drawn from the corrected state of his manuscripts, and the variety of his knowledge; and with regard to books, he not only mentions the library of the Vatican as one of his greatest temptations to visit Rome, but describes himself, with all the gusto of a book-worm, as enjoying them in his chimney-corner.[35]