got nothing by the first edition, whatever he may have done by the
second. He expressly tells us, in the satire which he wrote on declining
to go abroad with Ippolito, that all his poetry had not procured him
money enough to purchase a cloak.[20] Twenty years afterwards, when he
was dead, the poem was in such request, that, between 1542 and 1551,
Panizzi calculates there must have been a sale of it in Europe to the
amount of a hundred thousand copies.[21]

The second edition of the _Furioso_ did not extricate the author from
very serious difficulties; for the next year he was compelled to apply
to either to relieve him from his necessities, or permit him to look for
some employment more profitable than the ducal service. The answer of
this prince, who was now rich, but had always been penurious, and who
never laid out a farthing, if he could help it, except in defence of his
capital, was an appointment of Ariosto to the government of a district in
a state of anarchy, called 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