The following beautiful and touching lines, in which he alludes to the worst period of his life,--his separation from his mother, when called away from Naples to join his father at Rome,--have been absurdly attributed to him as actually penned at this date. Hoole, and even Hunt, two of his modern translators, have fallen into this error; whereas a moment's consideration would convince any man, who understood the difference between adult poetry and puerile attempts at rhyming, that such verses, at such an age, (nine years!) would have been sufficiently remarkable to justify belief in the fables of his babyhood, when he sat talking pretty unbroken Italian on his mother's knee, before he was twelve months old. The passage occurs in a figurative canzonet on the river Metauso, but addressed to the duke of Urbino, imploring refuge and protection in his adversity. Though left unfinished, the fragment is acknowledged to be one of the most exquisitely wrought of all the author's lyrics:-- "Me dal sen della madre empia Fortuna Pargoletto divelse: ah! di que' baci, Ch' ella bagnò di lagrime dolenti, Con sospir mi rimembra, e degli ardenti Preghi, che sen portar l' aure fugaci, Ch' io giunger non dovea più volto à volto Fra quelle braccia accolto Con nodi così stretti, e sì tenaci. Lasso! e seguii con mal sicure piante, Qual Ascanio, o Cammilla, il padre errante." "Me, from a tender mother's breast, Stern Fortune, while an infant, tore; Ah! I remember how she press'd. Press'd me, and kiss'd me, o'er and o'er, Bathed with her tears, with doleful sighs, Breathed for me many a fervent prayer, Which, ere it reach'd the skies, Was scatter'd by the passing air. "For I was nevermore to meet That parent face to face, Clasp'd in her clear embrace, With folds so strait, so binding and so sweet. Alas! 't was mine thenceforth to roam With ill-supporting feet, And, like Ascanius o'er the trackless floods, Or young Camilla, cast on wilds and woods, Follow a wandering father without home."