on his first printed books. Here, in his own turn, he lectured on Greek
and Latin authors to the cultured youth of Ercole's court, and here he
would have set up his printing-press, under his friend Duchess Leonora's
patronage, if the Venetian war had not forced him to leave Ferrara. Both
from the court of Alberto Pio at Carpi, where he found refuge with a
kinsman of the Estes, and at Venice, where he founded his famous
printing-press, he kept up frequent communications with the duke's
family, and dedicated books to young Cardinal Ercole, and bound and
printed choice editions of Petrarch and Virgil for his sister Isabella
d'Este. But if Duke Ercole emulated the zeal of his predecessors in the
encouragement of classical learning, he surpassed them all in his love
of travel, of building, and of theatrical representations. During the
next twenty years he indulged freely in all of these favourite pursuits.

His opportunities of travel, indeed, were limited by the duties of his
position; but whenever he could find leisure, he gratified his roving
taste by paying frequent visits to Milan or Venice, where the
magnificent palace bestowed upon his ancestor Nicolas II. in the last
century, but confiscated during the war with Ferrara, had been restored
to him at the peace of Bagnolo. In 1484, he took Duchess Leonora there
with a suite of seven hundred persons. On this occasion the palace
originally decorated by Duke Borso was sumptuously restored, and the
Doge and Senate entertained their guests with princely hospitality. A
more distant pilgrimage to the shrine of S. Jago of Compostella in
Spain, which Ercole had planned in 1487, had to be abandoned, owing to
the opposition of Pope Innocent VIII.; but eight years later the duke
paid another visit to Florence, on the pretence of discharging a vow
which he had made to Our Lady of the Annunziata. To the last the
adventurous disposition of the Estes, the love of seeing and hearing new
things, marked his character and governed his actions.

Meanwhile his imagination found plenty of food for activity at home, and
nothing interfered with his love of building or with the delight which
he took in the stage. Under him, Ferrara became one of the finest cities
in Italy. Her broad streets and spacious squares, her noble statues and
imposing monuments, the stately symmetry of her well-kept ways, made a
deep impression on Lodovico Sforza when he visited his wife's home. At
the beginning of his re