into the history of his native place; and he requited them so generously
for their information, that it was customary with them to say, when they
wished good fortune to one another, "Heaven send Boiardo to your house!"
There is said to have been a tradition at Scandiano, that having tried in
vain one day, as he was riding out, to discover a name for one of his
heroes, expressive of his lofty character, and the word _Rodamonte_
coming into his head, he galloped back with a pleasant ostentation to his
castle, crying it out aloud, and ordering the bells of the place to be
rung in its holiour; to the astonishment of the good people, who took
"Rodamonte" for some newly-discovered saint. His friend Paganelli of
Modena, who wrote a Latin poem on the _Empire of Cupid_, extolled
the Governor of Reggio for ranking among the deity's most generous
vassals,--one who, in spite of his office of magistrate, looked with
an indulgent eye on errors to which himself was liable, and who was
accustomed to prefer the study of love-verses to that of the law. The
learned lawyer, his countryman Panciroli, probably in resentment, as
Panizzi says, of this preference, accused him of an excess of benignity,
and of being fitter for writing poems than punishing ill deeds; and in
truth, as the same critic observes, "he must have been considered crazy
by the whole tribe of lawyers of that age," if it be true that he
anticipated the opinion of Beccaria, in thinking that no crime ought to
be punished with death.

The great work of this interesting and accomplished person, the _Orlando
Innamorato_, is an epic romance, founded on the love of the great Paladin
for the peerless beauty Angelica, whose name has enamoured the ears of
posterity. The poem introduces us to the pleasantest paths in that track
of reading in which Milton has told us that his "young feet delighted to
wander." Nor did he forsake it in his age.