ideas, evidently appeal to the Italian temperament, so that the praises of Pescara and his widow’s stilted complaints, couched in the elegant language of the Renaissance, are still read and appreciated to-day by her compatriots. As time passed, and the ghost of sorrowful remorse was supposed to be decently laid, the sonnets contain somewhat less of hero-worship, and assume a religious and speculative character. Some critics have even gone so far as to affect to perceive a latent spirit of Protestantism underlying the graceful platitudes and commonplace but grandly expressed ideas. Very likely the Lady of the Rock dabbled in the fashionable heterodoxy of the hour, as it is at least certain that she was on terms of intimacy with the celebrated Princess Renée, the “Protestant” Duchess of Ferrara. On the other hand, several of her acquaintances and correspondents were amongst the most prominent of the unyielding Churchmen of the day; in their number being, it is interesting to note, Cardinal Reginald Pole, great-nephew of King Edward IV. of England and afterwards Queen Mary’s Archbishop of Canterbury, who was certainly not likely to encourage Vittoria’s unorthodox or reforming tendencies. “The more opportunity,” so writes the poetess to Cardinal Cervino, afterwards Pope Marcellus II., “I have had of observing the actions of his Eminence the Cardinal of England, the more clear has it seemed to me that he is a true and sincere servant of God. Whenever, therefore, he charitably condescends to give me his opinion on any point, I conceive myself safe from error in following his advice.” And on the strength of Cardinal Pole’s astute counsels, Vittoria promptly broke off all communication with the leading reformer, Bernardino Ochino, and (a thing which does not strike us as particularly honourable) forwarded his letters to herself unopened to his spiritual adversaries. But it is evident that Vittoria’s “Protestantism” was a mere pose, assumed at a time when adverse criticism from all sides was being levelled at the political abuses of the Papacy and at the various scandals in the Church which were patent to the eyes of all onlookers. In short her religious verses are if anything more frigid and artificial than those which compose the _In Memoriam_ to her husband, her _Bel Sole_, as she usually terms him. Whilst admitting considerable merit in Vittoria’s compositions, we find it at this distance of time very difficult to understand the extravagant praise which was showered upon her poems by the Italian critics of the day, or to conceive how a sonnet from the gifted pen of the Marchioness of Pescara could possibly have been considered an important event in the literary world by cardinals, princes, poets, wits and scholars. From Naples to Rome, from Rome to Ferrara, from Ferrara to Mantua and Milan, the precious manuscript containing the last-born sonnet of the illustrious Lady of Ischia was eagerly passed along.