century previous, when Obizzo the Third of Este, Marquess of Ferrara,
married a lady belonging to it, whose Christian name was Lippa. Niccolò
Ariosto, besides holding the same office as Boiardo had done, at Modena
as well as at Reggio, was master of the household to his two successive
patrons, the Dukes Borso and Ercole. He was also employed, like him,
in diplomacy; and was made a count by the Emperor Frederick the Third,
though not, it seems, with remainder to his heirs.

Lodovico was the eldest of ten children, five sons and five daughters.
During his boyhood, theatrical entertainments were in great vogue at
court, as we have seen in the life of Boiardo; and at the age of twelve,
a year after the decease of that poet (who must have been well known to
him, and probably encouraged his attempts), his successor is understood
to have dramatised, after his infant fashion, the story of Pyramus and
Thisbe, and to have got his brothers and sisters to perform it. Panizzi
doubts the possibility of these precocious private theatricals; but
considering what is called "writing" on the part of children, and that
only one other performer was required in the piece, or at best a third
for the lion (which some little brother might have "roared like any
sucking-dove"), I cannot see good reason for disbelieving the story. Pope
was not twelve years old when he turned the siege of Troy into a play,
and got his school-fellows to perform it, the part of Ajax being given to
the gardener. Man is a theatrical animal ([Greek: zoon mimaetikon]), and
the instinct is developed at a very early period, as almost every family
can witness that has taken its children to the "playhouse."

At fifteen the young poet, like so many others of his class, was
consigned to the study of the law, and took a great dislike to it. The
extreme mobility of his nature, and the wish to please his father, appear
to have made him enter on it willingly enough in the first instance;[2]