Rome, and made him cardinal in 1539. When he died in 1547 he was buried not far from Leo in the Church of the Minerva. A fair slab of marble marks his grave. [Footnote 381: 'De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini Ducibus.'] Bembo succeeded Poliziano in the dictatorship of Italian letters. Like Poliziano, he was both a scholar and a writer of Italian; but he was far from possessing the comprehensive understanding or the genius of his predecessor. Of all the 'apes of Cicero' scoffed at by Erasmus, he stood first and foremost. His exclusive devotion to one favourite author made his Latin stiff and mannered. Tuscan critics again have complained that his Italian style lacks nerve and idiom. He wrote like an alien, not one to the manner born. In his dread of not writing correctly, he ended by expressing tame thoughts with frigid formality. Even a foreigner can see that he used Italian, as he used Latin, without yielding to natural impulse, and with the constant effort to attain a fixed ideal. The mark of the file may be observed on every period. Raciness and spontaneity are words that have no meaning when applied to him. The decadence of Italian prose composition into laboured mannerism and meticulous propriety should be traced in a great measure to his influence. Yet Bembo deserves credit for having braved the opinion of the learned by his cultivation of the vulgar tongue; and on this point some verses from a Latin poem to Ercole Strozzi deserve quotation in a note.[382] [Footnote 382: Nam pol quâ proavusque avusque linguâ Sunt olim meus et tuus loquuti, Nostræ quâque loquuntur et sorores Et matertera nunc et ipsa mater, Nos nescire loqui magis pudendum est, Qui Graiæ damus et damus Latinæ Studi tempora duplicemque curam, Quam Graiâ simul et simul Latinâ. Hac uti ut valeas tibi videndum est, Ne dum marmoreas remotâ in orâ Sumtu construis et labore villas, Domi te calamo tegas palustri. _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, p. 25.]