of disputed successions, and
not to be what his birth cannot make him--if nature has not supplied the
materials. Besides, the cardinal, in his quality of a mechanical-minded
man with no taste, might with reason have complained of his servant's
attending to poetry when it was "not in his bond;" when it diverted
him from the only attentions which his employer understood or desired.
Ippolito candidly confessed, as Ariosto himself tells us, that he not
only did not care for poetry, but never gave his attendant one stiver in
patronage of it, or for any thing whatsoever but going his journeys and
doing as he was bidden.[17] On the other hand, the cardinal's payments
were sorry ones; and the poet might with justice have thought, that he
was not bound to consider them an equivalent for the time be was expected
to give up. The only thing to have been desired in this case was, that he
should have said so; and, in truth, at the close of the explanation which
he gave on the subject to his friends at court, he did--boldly desiring
them, as became him, to tell the cardinal, that if his eminence expected
him to be a "serf" for what he received, he should decline the bargain;
and that he preferred the humblest freedom and his studies to a slavery
so preposterous.[18] The truth is, the poet should have attached himself
wholly to the Medici. Had he not adhered to the duller house, he might
have led as happy a life with the pope as Pulci did with the pope's
father; perhaps have been made a cardinal, like his friends Bembo and
Sadolet. But then we might have lost the _Orlando_.

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 th