The favour which Vergilio obtained in Adrian's eyes was partly owing to his success in cultivating the niceties of the Latin tongue, to restore which in its purity was a favourite project of the Cardinal. Before quitting Italy he had dedicated to Guidobaldo I. his _Proverbiorum Libellus_, a volume scarcely meriting the controversy upon which he entered with Erasmus as to the priority of suggesting such a collection. In 1499 he finished his treatise _De Inventoribus Rerum_, which was placed in the index of prohibited works, in consequence of tracing certain liturgical observances back to pagan superstitions; Grossi, however, vindicates his orthodoxy by ascribing the obnoxious passages to heretical interpolation. His essay _De Prodigiis_ is an attempt to explain upon natural principles all omens, auguries, and other superstitious observances. As it is inscribed to Duke Francesco Maria I., he probably returned to Italy before 1538. But what chiefly interests us is a Latin _History of England_, which he is said to have undertaken at the suggestion of Henry VII., or more probably of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who procured him access to certain archives. This work, from being the first general compilation of the sort given to the public, obtained more consideration than its superficial and inaccurate matter deserved; and Mr. Roscoe well observes that it has not gained the suffrages of posterity, either by ability or freedom from bias. Among the impugners of its veracity are Whear, Humphrey Lloyd, Henry Savile, and Bishop Bale. Some of these excuse his blunders on the questionable plea of his ignorance of English government, dialects, and manners, while Leland regrets that a writer so little trustworthy should have cast over his deceptions the graces of style. Anticipating perhaps such an aspersion, he, in his dedication of the work to Henry VIII., dated from London in 1530, compared the chronicles of Bede and Gildas, crude in form and phraseology, to meat served without the salt which it was his object to supply. Yet while the English blame him for misrepresentations,--avenged in the stinging Latin epigram, "Maro and Polydore bore Virgil's name; One reaps a poet's, one a liar's fame,"-- Giovio cites the testimony of French and Scotch authors to his partiality for the land of his adoption. More serious, but unestablished, is a charge greatly resented by his countrymen, that, after garbling records and ancient muniments thrown open to his examination, he consummated the outrage by destroying the evidence of his villainy. It may, however, be well to keep in view that, although Bale claims him as a willing reformer of certain Romish abuses, his adherence to that Church brought on him distrust of the Protestants, in an age when theological disputes were matter affecting life and limb.