Bembo was a model man of letters, to whom in this capacity the Italian language and Italian culture are infinitely beholden. As a poet he is perhaps best characterised by the forty drawers through which he is said to have successively passed his sonnets, making some alteration for the better in every one of them. If there had been any originality in any of them, this would hardly have survived the twentieth drawer, but there never had been, and since the polish was always meant to be the merit, there hardly could be too much polishing. Bembo’s poetry at all events serves to refute the heresy which identities genius with industry; and if we admit with Roscoe that “any person of good taste and extensive reading might, _by a due portion of labour_, produce works of equal merit,” we must nevertheless allow that it will probably be long ere such a capacity for labour reappears. He entirely fulfilled the requirements of his own age, by which he was simply idolised. The quintessence of his contemporaries’ admiration is concentrated in Vittoria Colonna’s humble yet dignified remonstrance with him for having failed to celebrate the death of her husband: _Unkind was Fate, prohibiting the rays Of my great Sun your kindling soul to smite; For thus in perpetuity more bright Your fame had been, more glorious his praise. His memory, exalted in your lays, That ancient times obscure, and ours delight, Had 'scaped in fell Oblivion’s despite The second death, that on the spirit preys. If in your bosom might infusèd be My ardour, or my pen as yours inspired, Great as the dead should be the elegy. But now I fear lest Heaven with wrath be fired; Toward you, for overmuch humility; Toward me, who have too daringly aspired._