Another _protégé_ of Duke Federigo was PORCELLIO PANDONIO, of Naples,[*84] whose pen was ever at command of the readiest patron, as historiographer or laureate. From his partiality to the designations of bard and secretary to Alfonso of Naples, it would seem that he chiefly rested his fame on his poetical compositions. From this judgment Muratori differs, protesting that in historical narrative none excelled his ease and elegance of diction.[85] Abject classicism, in thought and style, was then a common weakness of the learned; and however correctly Porcellio may have caught the Latin phraseology, it is difficult to get over the jarring effect of an idiom and nomenclature foreign to the times and incidents which it is his object vividly to portray. In his printed work, on the campaigns of 1451-2, between Venice and Milan, he uniformly disguises Sforza and Piccinino, their respective commanders, as Scipio and Hannibal, under which _noms de guerre_ it requires a constant effort to recognise mediæval warriors, or to recollect that we are considering events dating some two thousand years after those who really bore them had been committed to the dust. The same affectation, common to many authors of his day, mars his unpublished writings which we have had occasion to examine in the Vatican Urbino Library, and their authority is greatly impaired by what Muratori well calls "prodigality of praise" to his heroes, that is, to his generous patrons. In a beautifully elaborated MS. (No. 373) he has collected, under the title of Epigrams, nearly fifty effusions in honour of our Duke and Duchess, and of members of their family or court, a favourite theme being the love-inspired longings of Battista for her lord's return from the wars. In the same volume is his Feltria, an epic composed at Rome about 1472, and narrating Federigo's campaigns, from that of 1460-1, under the banner of Pius II., by whose command Porcellio undertook to sing his general's prowess in three thousand Virgilian verses. Its merits may be fairly appreciated from extracts already given,[86] and from this allusion to the state of Italy at the outbreak of the war:-- "Jamque erat Ausoniæ populos pax alta per omnes, Et tranquilla quies: jam nulli Martis ad aras Collucent ignes; jam victima nulla cadebat. Dantur thura Jovi; fumabat oliva Minervæ: Sus erat in pretio, Cereris aptissima sacris, Pampineique dei caper, et qui vitibus amens Officit, atque merum ante aras cum sanguine fundit."