The Paduan sage describes his charge as a fit model of those infantine Cupids whom painters delight to introduce in their pictures of the Queen of Love. Nor were his dispositions less engaging; gentle and just to all, generous but prudent beyond his years. Neglecting the childish toys suitable to his age, his whole mind was concentrated on his studies and on manly sports, occasioning in many those anxious fears that so generally attend the premature development of early talent. Such was the genius committed to the care of Odasio, who seems to have rendered it ample justice. Besides his native tongue, Guidobaldo rapidly acquired the Latin language, and although Greek was then a comparatively rare accomplishment, he so thoroughly mastered its difficulties as to write it with freedom and Attic grace. Possessing great powers of application, his reading included all the best classical authors. The poets were his delight in boyhood, but by degrees he attached himself more to the severer studies of philosophy and ethics. Nor was his attention limited to abstract literature. Geography engaged in turn his versatile talents, accompanied with practical information as to the inhabitants by whom various countries were peopled, their manners, their political relations, and the character of their respective governments. But what his preceptor considered as the great aim of a princely education was the development of his powers of eloquence, and an extensive acquaintance with history; to these, therefore, he drew Guidobaldo's attention with entire success. In detailing to us these interesting particulars, Odasio takes little credit for the progress of his pupil, whose quick apprehension rendered his duty that of a companion and observer rather than of a teacher. His powers of memory were especially remarkable, and by judicious and habitual exercise were extended with advancing manhood. He is said to have possessed that rarest gift, of never forgetting anything he wished to recollect, and to have repeated with perfect accuracy successive pages which he had read only once, some ten or fifteen years before.