was no lack of professors of the
humane sciences in Rome, where they were in a nourishing condition, and
the Academy as well as the University attracted thither many talented
men. In the papal city there were numerous teachers who conducted
schools, and swarms of young scholars, ambitious academicians, sought
their fortune at the courts of the cardinals in the capacity of
companions or secretaries, or as preceptors to their illegitimate
children. Lucretia, also, received instruction in classic literature
from these masters. Among the poets who lived in Rome she found teachers
to instruct her in Italian versification and in writing sonnets, an art
which was everywhere cultivated by women as well as men. She doubtless
learned to compose verses, although the writers on the history of
Italian literature, Quadrio and Crescimbeni, do not place her among the
poets of the peninsula. Nowhere do Bembo, Aldus, or the Strozzi speak of
her as a poet, nor are there any verses by her in existence. It is not
certain that even the Spanish canzoni which are found in some of her
letters to Bembo were composed by her.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] See Adinolfi's notice quoted by the author in his Geschichte der
Stadt Rom im Mittelalter. 2d Aufl. vii, 312.

[9] The letter, with the inscription "A Messer Carlo Canale," is printed
in the edition of Milan, 1808. Angelo Poliziano, Le Stanze e l'Orfeo ed
altre poesie.

[10] In the archives of Mantua there is a letter from the Marchesa
Isabella to Carlo Canale, dated December 4, 1499.

[11] Lodovico Gonzaga to Bartolomeo Erba, Siamo contenti contrahi in
nome nro. compaternita cum M. Carolo Canale, et cussi per questa nostra
ti commettiamo et constituimo nostro Procuratore. Note by Affo in his
introduction to the Orfeo, p. 113.

[12] Ma Adriana Ursina, la quale e socera de la dicta madona Julia
(Farnese), che ha sempre governata essa sposa (Lucrezia) in casa propria
per esser in loco de nepote del Pontifice, la fu figliola de messer
Piedro de Mila, noto a V. Ema Sigria, cusino carnale del Papa. Despatch
from the above named to Ercole, Rome, June 13, 1493, in the state
archives of Modena. And again she is mentioned in a despatch of May 6,
1493, as madona Adriana Ursina soa governatrice figliola che fu del
quondam messer Pietro del Mila.

[13] Jacobus Burgomensis _de claris mulieribus_, Paris, 1521.

CHAPTER V

NEPOTISM--GIULIA FARNESE--LUCRETIA'S BETROTHALS

It is not difficult to imagin