When compared with contemporary efforts, these specimens, and others which it would be easy to add, deserve a better fate than the neglect to which, in common with most of their author's works, they have been consigned; nor do they bear out the imputation of careless haste, alleged by Tiraboschi as the prevailing error of his very numerous and various productions. The paucity of these which have issued from the press may, however, be taken as confirming that judgment, as well as the suppression of his narrative of the campaign of Finale in 1447, after it had been printed by Muratori for his Scriptores. But poetry may be accounted his forte,--a somewhat remarkable circumstance, considering the unrivalled reputation he established as an _improvisatore_ of verses on any number not exceeding one hundred themes suddenly proposed, as such facility has rarely been conjoined with true poetic fire. It were to be desired that we knew more of his intercourse with Duke Federigo. In one of his dedicatory epistles, after alluding to the likelihood of that prince reading the work, he, in a vein of fulsome compliment and impudent conceit, complains of neglect from friends, and hints at a visit to Urbino. It is difficult to glean facts from the vague common-places of such letters; but in 1468 he thanks his patron for retaining at his court Demetrio Castreno, a learned Greek fugitive from Constantinople. Equally mannered and cold are his flattery and his condolence, on the death of Countess Battista in 1472. Next year he writes that, having begun a commentary on Federigo's life, and completed two books, he had been induced to submit them to the Duke of Milan, from whom he never could recover the manuscript. * * * * *