Those theological studies which usually precede ordination were in his case followed out with his wonted energy, after obtaining the preferment to which they are generally intended to lead, and it was probably then that he added Hebrew and Chaldee to his accomplishments. But his first great undertaking, after thus gaining a position of leisure and independence, was a General Biography of famous mathematicians. This he never completed for the press; but a sort of vidimus of the three hundred and sixty lives, which it was intended to contain, was printed after his death, with the title _Cronica de' Mathematici_. Several minor works in science and literature at the same time occupied his pen, among which were his Description of the Urbino palace, his Eulogy of that state, and his History of Guastalla. Nor were his poetic inspirations neglected, and, besides a variety of occasional effusions, his _Nautica_, or the Art of Navigation, was printed at Venice in 1590. We may include among his lighter labours an Essay on History, dedicated in 1611 to the Duke of Urbino, and lately published by Cardinal Mai.[144] Although, like most similar essays, some of its observations are trite and even trivial, the various topics are well handled, and many useful suggestions are offered as to the best method and style for history, the qualities requisite in its author and desirable for its students. It would have been well had Baldi attended, in his historical biographies, to his own recommendation, that the prolix and copious diction of Livy should be chastened by that terse and sententious manner found in Tacitus and Sallust. Nor were it amiss that he had construed less literally the maxim by which Pliny the Younger pleads for mediocrity, Content yourself to do much indifferently, if it be beyond you to do a little well.[145] [Footnote 144: _Spicilegium Romanum_, I., xxviii., from Vat. Urb. MSS.] [Footnote 145: Satius est plurima mediocriter facere, si non possis aliquid insigniter. Lib. V., Epist. 5.] Although Baldi appears to have entered the Church rather from temporal considerations than any spiritual vocation, no priest was ever more tenacious of rights and privileges; and it was his misfortune to find, in the exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, ever-recurring misunderstandings with his clergy or the civil authorities, and even with the superior tribunals at Rome. Through these we shall not follow him. As early as 1590, the Duke of Urbino interfered as a friendly counsellor to recommend him moderate measures; but new jars from time to time recurred, and in 1609 he carried into effect a step which he had proposed seventeen years before, by resigning his benefice, under reservation of two-fifths of its income. But these wranglings penetrated not within the portal of his study, where his active mind and adamantine pen laboured assiduously, through good report and bad, upon the most incongruous matters.