'By the results that my unexpected appearance has caused in your hearts, discreet and pleasing company, you can gather that it is not by virtue of evil spirits that this form of mine has been fashioned which presents itself here to you; for one of the means by which we recognise whether a vision be good or bad, is by the results it produces on the mind of him who beholds it. For in the case of the good, though it cause in him wonder and alarm, such wonder and alarm comes mingled with a pleasant disturbance which in a little while calms and satisfies him, contrary to what is caused by the malignant vision, which brings alarm, discontent, terror, but never assurance. Experience will make clear to you this truth when you know me, and when I tell you who I am, and the cause that has moved me to come from my distant dwelling-place to visit you. And because I do not wish to keep you in suspense with the desire you have to know who I am, know, discreet shepherds and beauteous shepherdesses, that I am one of the nine maidens, who on the lofty and sacred peaks of Parnassus have their own and famous abode. My name is Calliope, my duty and disposition it is to favour and aid the divine spirits, whose laudable practice it is to busy themselves in the marvellous and never duly lauded science of poetry. I am she who made the old blind man of Smyrna, famous only through him, win eternal fame; she who will make the Mantuan Tityrus live for all the ages to come, until time end; and she who makes the writings, as uncouth as learned, of the most ancient Ennius, to be esteemed from the past to the present age. In short, I am she who favoured Catullus, she who made Horace renowned, Propertius eternal, and I am she who with immortal fame has preserved the memory of the renowned Petrarch, and she who made the famous Dante descend to the dark circles of Hell, and ascend to the bright spheres of Heaven. I am she who aided the divine Ariosto to weave the varied and fair web he fashioned; she who in this country of yours had intimate friendship with the witty Boscan, and with the famous Garcilaso, with the learned and wise Castillejo, and the ingenious Torres Naharro, by whose intellects and by their fruits your country was enriched and I satisfied. I am she who moved the pen of the celebrated Aldana, and that which never left the side of Don Fernando de Acuña; and she who prides herself on the close friendship and converse she always had with the blessed soul of the body that lies in this tomb. The funeral rites performed by you in his honour not only have gladdened his spirit, which now paces through the eternal realm, but have so satisfied me that I have come perforce to thank you for so laudable and pious a custom as this is, which is in use among you. Therefore I promise you, with the sincerity that can be expected from my virtue, in reward for the kindness you have shown to the ashes of my dear beloved Meliso, always to bring it to pass that on your banks