refore, with regard to name and
fame, it is seen from experience that writings have greater power and
longer life than anything else; for books go everywhere with ease, and
everywhere they command belief, if only they be truthful and not full of
lies. It is no marvel, then, if the famous Leon Batista is known more
for his writings than for the work of his hands.

This man, born in Florence of the most noble family of the Alberti, of
which we have spoken in another place, devoted himself not only to
studying geography and the proportions of antiquities, but also to
writing, to which he was much inclined, much more than to working. He
was excellent in arithmetic and geometry, and he wrote ten books on
architecture in the Latin tongue, which were published by him in 1481,
and may now be read in a translation in the Florentine tongue made by
the Reverend Maestro Cosimo Bartoli, Provost of S. Giovanni in Florence.
He wrote three books on painting, now translated into the Tuscan tongue
by Messer Lodovico Domenichi; he composed a treatise on traction and on
the rules for measuring heights, as well as the books on the "Vita
Civile," and some erotic works in prose and verse; and he was the first
who tried to reduce Italian verse to the measure of the Latin, as is
seen in the following epistle by his pen:

Questa per estrema miserabile pistola mando
A te, che spregi miseramente noi.

Arriving at Rome in the time of Nicholas V, who had turned the whole of
Rome upside down with his manner of building, Leon Batista, through the
agency of Biondo da Forli, who was much his friend, became intimate with
that Pope, who had previously carried out all his building after the
advice of Bernardo Rossellino, a sculptor and architect of Florence, as
will be told in the Life of his brother Antonio. This man, having put
his hand to restoring the Pope's Palace and to certain works in S. Maria
Maggiore, thenceforward, according to the will of the Pope, ever sought
the advice of Leon Batista. Wherefore, using one of them as adviser and
the other as executor, the Pope carried out many useful and
praiseworthy works, such as the restoring of the conduit of the Acqua
Vergine, which was in ruins; and there was made the fountain on the
Piazza de' Trevi, with those marble ornaments that are seen there, on
which are the arms of that Pontiff and of the Roman people.

Afterwards, having gone to Signor Sigismondo Malatesti of Rimini, he
made for hi