["He always chose to have company with him, if it were only a child; for he loved children, and took pleasure in talking with those that had been well trained" (_Life of John Locke_, by H. R. Fox-Bourne, ii. 537). Lady Masham's daughter Esther, and "his wife" Betty Clarke, aged eleven years, were among his child-friends.] [mg] {354} _Which dies not nor can ever pass away_.--[MS. M. erased.] [mh] _The tomb a hell--and life one universal gloom_.--[MS. M. erased.] [415] [Byron passed a single day at Ferrara in April, 1817; went over the castle, cell, etc., and a few days after wrote _The Lament of Tasso_, the manuscript of which is dated April 20, 1817. The Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_ was not begun till the end of June in the same year.] [416] [Of the ancient family of Este, Marquesses of Tuscany, Azzo V. was the first who obtained power in Ferrara in the twelfth century. A remote descendant, Nicolo III. (b. 1384, d. 1441), founded the University of Parma. He married for his second wife Parisina Malatesta (the heroine of Byron's _Parisina_, published February, 1816), who was beheaded for adultery in 1425. His three sons, Lionel (d. 1450), the friend of Poggio Bracciolini; Borso (d. 1471), who established printing in his states; and Ercolo (d. 1505), the friend of Boiardo,--were all patrons of letters and fosterers of the Renaissance. Their successor, Alphonso I. (1486-1534), who married Lucrezia Borgia, 1502, honoured himself by attaching Ariosto to his court, and it was his grandson, Alphonso II. (d. 1597), who first befriended and afterwards, on the score of lunacy, imprisoned Tasso in the Hospital of Sant' Anna (1579-86).]