When her poems were published, says T. Adolphus Trollope, in his life of this charming woman, "copies were as eagerly sought for as the novel of the season at a nineteenth-century circulating library. Cardinals, bishops, poets, wits, diplomatists, passed them from one to another, made them the subject of their correspondence with each other and with the fair mourner." Hallam says, "The rare virtues and consummate talents of this lady were the theme of all Italy in that brilliant age of her literature." Vittoria Colonna is one of the best illustrations in history of what a noble and intellectual woman can do for the upbuilding of society. Many gifted men gave her a sincere affection, and she held that affection while life lasted. She was well read in history, religious matters, and classic literature. Her first visit to Rome was a continued ovation. Even the Emperor Charles V. called upon her. Unselfish, sympathetic, with a gentle and winsome manner that drew every one into confidence, she proved herself a companion for the most highly educated, and a helper for the lowly. When she visited Ferrara, Duke Hercules II., who had married Renée of France, the daughter of Louis XII., received her, says Trollope, "with every possible distinction on the score of her poetical celebrity, and deemed his city honored by her presence. He invited, we are told, the most distinguished poets and men of letters of Venice and Lombardy to meet her at Ferrara. And so much was her visit prized that when Cardinal Giberto sent thither his secretary, Francesco della Torre, to persuade her to visit his episcopal city, Verona, that ambassador wrote to his friend Bembo, at Venice, that he had like to have been banished by the Duke, and stoned by the people, for coming there with the intention of robbing Ferrara of its most precious treasure, for the purpose of enriching Verona."... The learned and elegant Bembo writes of her that he considered her poetical judgment as sound and authoritative as that of the greatest masters of the art of song.... Bernardo Tasso made her the subject of several of his poems. Giovio dedicated to her his life of Pescara, and Cardinal Pompeo Colonna his book on "The Praises of Women;" and Contarini paid her the far more remarkable compliment of dedicating to her his work "On Free Will." "Paul III. was," as Muratori says, "by no means well disposed towards the Colonna family. Yet Vittoria must have had influence with the haughty and severe old Farnese. For both Bembo and Fregoso, the Bishop of Naples, have taken occasion to acknowledge that they owed their promotion to the purple in great measure to her."