"Ferrara, all Italy, and even Europe, lamented Ariosto as the first poet of the age, and as worthy of being enrolled in the same chart of fame with the greatest that had ever lived. His funeral was rendered remarkable by the attendance of a large body of monks, who to honour his memory, followed him, contrary to the rules of their order, to the grave. His son, Virginio, shortly after built a small chapel in his garden, and formed a mausoleum to which he intended to remove his remains, but the same monks prohibited it, and the body was left in the humble tomb in which it was originally deposited, till the new church of S. Benedetto was built, when Agostino Mosti, a gentleman of Ferrara, raised above it a monument more worthy of the poet. In 1612 his great grandson, Ludovico, erected a still nobler one, and removed the ashes of his ancestor from the tomb of Agostino, as the latter had done from the one in which they were originally deposited. This monument of Ludovico, which still exists, is built of the most costly marble, and adorned with two statues representing Glory and Poetry, together with an effigy of the poet in alabaster." Lord Byron illustrates a singular circumstance respecting the tomb of Ariosto. "Before the remains were removed from the Benedictine Church to the Library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away:-- "'The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurels' mimic'd leaves; Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel-wreath which glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies below Whate'er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now.'"[4] The transfer of these sacred ashes on the 6th of June, 1801, was one of the most brilliant spectacles of the short-lived Italian republic, and to consecrate the memory of the ceremony, the once famous fallen _Intrepidi_ were revived, and re-formed into the Ariostean academy. The large public place through which the procession paraded, was then for the first time called Ariosto Square.[5] We must return to Mr. Stebbing's delightful _Lives of the Italian Poets_, which work has so frequently aided us in the previous columns. [1] For these Lord B. acknowledges his obligation to his excellent friend J.C. Hobbouse, Esq. M.P. [2] In "Lives of the Italian Poets." By the Rev. Henry Stebbing, vol. ii. [3] Few persons will be disposed to question this extreme sensitiveness, since instances of similar effects on men of genius are by no means rare. Whoever has read Mr. Moore's _Life of Byron_ must have remarked the asperity with which he inveighs against blundering printers in the Letters to Mr. Murray, his publisher.