[49] Gregory was accompanied to Rimini by Leonardo Aretino, who sent to Niccolo Niccoli an interesting and elegant account of the remains of antiquity which then existed in that city. Towards the close of his letter on this subject, Leonardo dilates with great eloquence upon the praises of Carlo Malatesta. After enlarging upon his merits as a soldier and a statesman, he thus proceeds.—“So liberal has nature been in her gifts to him, that he seems to possess an universal genius. He reads with the utmost grace—he writes verses—he dictates the most elegant prose, and his hand-writing is so neat, that it is superior to that of professed scribes. I should not have mentioned this fact, had I not found the same circumstance recorded with respect to Augustus, and Titus son of Vespasian.”—_Leonardi Aretini Ep., l. iii. ep. ix._ [50] _Platina ut supra._ [51] _Platina, p. 389._ [52] A manuscript, containing an account of the lives of several of the pontiffs, which is printed by Muratori, in his magnificent collection of the writers of Italian history, contains the following encomium on Alexander V. “This pontiff, who truly deserved the name of Alexander, would have surpassed in liberality all his predecessors, to the extent of a distant period, had he not been embarrassed by the insufficiency of his revenues. But so great was his poverty, after his accession to the papal chair, that he was accustomed to say, that when he was a bishop he was rich, when he became a cardinal he was poor, and when he was elected pontiff he was a beggar.” A little while before his death he summoned the cardinals, who were then attendant on his court, to his bed-side, and after earnestly exhorting them to adopt such measures after his decease as were likely to secure the tranquillity of the church, he took leave of them, by repeating the words of our Saviour, “Peace I give you, my peace I leave unto you.” In a manuscript volume, which formerly belonged to the house of Este, there occurs the following epitaph on this pontiff, the two concluding lines of which are so uncouth and obscure, that we may reasonably suspect some error on the part of the transcriber. Divus Alexander, Cretensi oriundus ab orâ Clauditur hoc saxo, summo venerandus honore. Antea Petrus erat, sed celsâ sede potitus Quintus Alexander fit, ceu sol orbe coruscans, Relligione minor, post ad sublime vocatus. _Muratori Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, tom. vi. p. 842._ [53] _Platina, tom. i. p. 389, 390._ [54] _Mehi Vita Leonardi Aretini, p. xxxix. xl._ _Leonardi Aretini Epistolæ, lib. iii. ep. xvii._ Leonardo Aretino was esteemed by his contemporaries too attentive to the minutiæ of œconomy. From the perusal of the following letter from Ermolao Barbaro to Pietro Cara, however, it should seem, that in the fifteenth century, complaints of the expensiveness of matrimony were by no means destitute of foundation.