my efforts will be the means of exciting others, whose abilities will do ample justice to your merits.”[325] If it was the intention of the duke of Milan, by thus honouring Poggio with the offer of his friendship, to make an experiment upon his vanity, the tenor of the foregoing answer to his condescending epistle must have convinced him that his experiment had entirely failed. Divesting himself of the humility of the papal secretary, Poggio addressed his illustrious correspondent with the firm ingenuousness of a citizen of a free state. He pleaded the cause of his country with all the energy of liberty; and though he prudently smoothed the harshness of distrust by the polish of urbanity, the penetration of Filippo would easily discern, that he was far from giving implicit credit to his professions of friendship for the Florentine republic. Whatever might be the views of the duke in this affair, not many months had elapsed after the occurrence of this interchange of suspicious civility, before he found that the privileged walls of the palace of Milan could not protect a literary delinquent from the rage of scholastic vengeance; and that the interposition of his patronage could not deter Poggio from reiterating his attacks upon Francesco Filelfo. It has been already related, that this wandering professor, when he was compelled to fly from Florence, withdrew to Siena, where he arrived early in the year 1435. In this city he commenced a series of lectures on rhetoric, for which he was remunerated by the payment of an annual salary of three hundred and fifty gold crowns.[326] His literary labours were however disturbed by the apprehensions which he entertained of the machinations of his adversaries. But his fears for his personal safety did not restrain the intemperance of his pen. On the thirteenth of August, 1437, he transmitted to one of his friends, named Pietro Pierleoni, a new satire against Poggio and Cosmo de’ Medici. Soon after the publication of this satire, he visited the baths of Petriolæ, where he had not long resided before he received a letter from Siena, informing him that a man of a very suspicious appearance had been making minute inquiries into his present situation and habits of life. On the receipt of this letter Filelfo returned to Siena, where he soon recognized in the person in question, the ruffian who had formerly made an attack upon him in the streets of Florence. He immediately gave the necessary information to the captain of the city guard. This officer without loss of time apprehended the villain, from whom, according to the barbarous practice of the times, he endeavoured to extract a declaration of the object of his visit to Siena by the pains of the rack. By this uncertain mode of investigation, the prisoner was compelled to confess, that he came to that city for the purpose of assassinating Filelfo. The captain of the guard did not deem it necessary to inquire whether any person had suborned him to perpetrate