to oblige as many as possible at home and abroad, and to have the influence of his personal position felt and understood on all sides. This position was becoming year by year very glaringly exceptional, not only to the eyes of foreign sovereigns but to those of Italian princes as well. The authority which Lorenzo was believed to possess with Innocent VIII., ‘because,’ as he wrote to Lanfredini on August 26, 1489, ‘I am extremely devoted to his Holiness and obliged to him for many favours,’ caused him to be applied to by all parties whenever a petition to Rome was to be presented. Almost simultaneously Guid’Antonio Arcimboldo begged his recommendation to obtain the archbishopric of Milan, and the Duke of Britanny sent a messenger to request his support for the nomination of one of the Duke’s secretaries to the see of Nantes. Lodovico il Moro applied to him to procure the Sienese bishopric of Pienza, and Charles, Duke of Savoy, to have his uncle—that Francis so well known in connection with the episcopal troubles at Geneva—advanced to the cardinalate. When Federigo Sanseverino, Monsignor de’ Grassi, the Archbishop of Auch, and others desired the cardinal’s hat, he was asked to help them to procure it. It was he who recommended to the Pope the young Alessandro Farnese, who in 1489 was studying at Pisa and sought to obtain one of the posts of Apostolic Secretary created by Innocent at the end of 1487. ‘I wish you to know,’ wrote Lorenzo to Lanfredini on April 10,[372] ‘that this gentleman, besides coming of such a noble family (_oltre allo esser nato della casa che è_) has many distinguished qualities, among them unusual learning and excellent morals, being at once very accomplished and a model of virtuous conduct. For these reasons, the weight of which with me you know, I recommend him to you as if he were my own son, and beg you to present him to his Holiness, for which I shall be very grateful.’ This is perhaps the first testimony, and certainly a most honourable one, on behalf of Pomponio Leto’s former pupil, then one-and-twenty, and destined forty-five years later to succeed a Medici on the Papal throne. When the Duke of Ferrara and the lord of Camerino wanted help at Rome, they applied to Lorenzo; when the Duke of Savoy sent an ambassador thither, he recommended him to Lorenzo. King John of Portugal wrote from Santarem, Charles VIII. from Amboise, the Duchess Blanche from Savoy, Anne de Beaujeu and her husband Pierre de Bourbon from Moulins, to the ‘Seigneur Laurens.’ His friendly relations with Matthias Corvinus have been repeatedly mentioned; they seem to have been none the worse for the fact that Matthias was for a long time on bad terms with the Sforza, having, for the sake of his brother-in-law Don Federigo of Aragon, accepted among the conditions of the treaty with Kaiser Frederic in 1477 the proceedings against the ruling house of Milan, which was not recognised by the Empire. To