Fortune was kinder to him than she often shows herself to others
who no less assiduously cultivate her favour, nor was his patience
over-taxed by long waiting. With the return of peace, Queen Isabella's
interest in her plan for encouraging a revival of learning amongst
her courtiers re-awakened. It was her desire that the Spanish nobles
should cultivate the arts and literature, after the fashion prevailing
in Italy. Lucio Marineo Siculo, also a disciple of Pomponius Lætus,
had preceded Martyr in Spain by nearly two years, and was professor of
poetry and grammar at Salamanca. He was the first of the Italians who
came as torch-bearers of the Renaissance into Spain, to be followed
by Peter Martyr, Columbus, the Cabots, Gattinara, the Geraldini and
Marliano. Cardinal Mendoza availed himself of the propitious moment,
to propose Martyr's name for the office of preceptor to direct the
studies of the young noblemen. In response to a welcome summons, the
impatient canon left Granada and repaired to Valladolid where the
Court then resided.[4] The ungrateful character and dubious results
of the task before him were obvious, the chief difficulties to be
apprehended threatening to come from his noble pupils, whose minds
and manners he was expected to form. Restive under any save military
discipline, averse by temperament and custom to studies of any sort,
it was hardly to be hoped that they would easily exchange their gay,
idle habits for schoolroom tasks under a foreign pedagogue. Yet this
miracle did Peter Martyr work. The charm of his personality counted
for much, the enthusiasm of the Queen and the presence in the school
of the Infante Don Juan, whose example the youthful courtiers dared
not disdain, for still more, and the house of the Italian preceptor
became the fashionable rendezvous of young gallants who, a few months
earlier, would have scoffed at the idea of conning lessons in grammar
and poetry, and listening to lectures on morals and conduct from a
foreigner. Of his quarters in Saragossa in the first year of his