Among Ariosto's patrons, next to Hippolito, Pope Leo X. seems to have most excited and most disappointed his reasonable expectations, not to call them his positive claims; for in some instances at least, where promises have been made to the hope, the iniquity of breaking them to the heart is only not felony, because the law cannot punish it. It is said by one (Gabriele Simeoni in his Satire on Avarice), that "to Leo, the light and mirror of courtesy, we are primarily indebted for the pleasure of hearkening to the lays of Ariosto, that pontiff having given him several hundred crowns to perfect his work." Another apocryphal authority affirms, that pope Leo X. issued a bull in favour of the "Orlando Furioso," denouncing excommunication against any one who should presume to censure its poetry or its morals. This has been explained into a mere matter of form, namely, a licence to print and publish the work, with a denunciation against those who should defraud the author of the lawful profits arising from the sale;--a licence, by the way, of little value; since we have learned already from himself long after the publication of the poem, that from "Apollo and the sacred college of the Muses,"--a palpable hit at the pope and the sacred college of cardinals, against whom he seldom spares a stroke of raillery,--he never received so much as would buy him a cloak. A bull of some kind or other was granted to him by Leo, according to his own confession in Satire VII.; but if that which is once well done is twice done, that which is only half done must be next to nothing: he received only a moiety of the sum raised by it, which seems to have been as little productive as some of our church briefs, or those letters of royal licence to beg, which have been granted in this country to recompense learned men for their labours, as in the case of Stow the antiquary. Paulo Rolli, himself a poet of no mean rank (who translated "Paradise Lost" into Italian), in his note on a passage in the sixth Satire, says that Leo, "otherwise the great friend of the learned, did not promote Ariosto, because his holiness inherited from Julius II. implacable hatred against Alfonso duke of Ferrara, and a greedy desire to possess that city. It did not, therefore, agree with his policy to give Ariosto a cardinal's hat, because, being a subject of Alfonso's, the poet would not only do no wrong to the duke; but, on the contrary, honoured as he was by his sovereign, he would employ all his influence to thwart the injurious designs of the pontiff against the latter. What marvel, then, that Leo, like mighty men in every age, should prefer his own ambition to the great friendship and esteem in which he held Ariosto; since ambition, when united with personal interest, swallows up all other passions!"