led Garfagnana, which had nominally returned to
his rule in consequence of the death of Leo, who had wrested it from him.
It was a wild spot in the Apennines, on the borders of the Ferrarese and
papal territories. Ariosto was there three years, and is said to have
reduced it to order; but, according to his own account, he had very
doubtful work of it. The place was overrun with banditti, including the
troops commissioned to suppress them. It required a severer governor than
he was inclined to be; and Alfonso did not attend to his requisitions for
supplies. The candid and good-natured poet intimates that the duke might
have given him the appointment rather for the governor's sake than the
people's; and the cold, the loneliness and barrenness of the place, and,
above all, his absence from the object of his affections, oppressed him.
He did not write a verse for twelve months: he says he felt like a bird
moulting[22]. The best thing got out of it was an anecdote for posterity.
The poet was riding out one day with a few attendants--some say walking
out in a fit of absence of mind--when he found himself in the midst of
a band of outlaws, who, in a suspicious manner, barely suffered him
to pass. A reader of Mrs. Radcliffe might suppose them a band of
_condottieri_, under the command of some profligate desperado; and such
perhaps they were. The governor had scarcely gone by, when the leader of
the band, discovering who he was, came riding back with much earnestness,
and making his obeisance to the poet, said, that he never should have
allowed him to pass in that manner had he known him to be the Signor
Ludovico Ariosto, author of the _Orlando Furioso_; that his own name was
Filippo Pacchione (a celebrated personage of his order); and that his men
and himself, so far from doing the Signor displeasure, would have the
honour of conducting him back to his castle. "And so they did," says
Baretti, "entertaining him all along the way with the various excellences
they had discerned in his poem, and bestowing upon it the most rapturous
praises[23]."

On his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto is understood to have made several
journeys in Italy, either with or without the duke his master; some of
them to Mantua, where it has been said that he was crowned with laurel by
the Emperor Charles the Fifth. But the truth seems to be, that he only
received a laureate diploma: it does not appear that Charles made him any
other gift. His majesty, and