ned into stone by her glance. He
compared Lucretia's beautiful eyes with the sun, that blinds whosoever
ventures to look at it; like Medusa, whose glance turned the beholder to
stone, yet in this case "the pains of love still continued immortalized
in the stone."

Is it possible to believe that these poets would have written such
verses if they had considered Lucretia Borgia guilty of the crimes
which, even after her father's death, had been ascribed to her by
Sannazzaro?

Antonio Tebaldeo, Calcagnini, and Giraldi sang of Lucretia's beauty and
virtue. Marcelle Filosseno dedicated a number of charming sonnets to
her, in which he compared her with Minerva and Venus. Jacopo Caviceo,
who in the last years of his life (he died in 1511) was vicar of the
bishopric of Ferrara, dedicated to her his wonderful romance
"Peregrino," with an inscription in which he describes her as beautiful,
learned, wise, and modest. The number of poets who threw themselves at
her feet was certainly large, and she doubtless received their flattery
with the same satisfied vanity with which a beautiful woman of to-day
would accept such offerings. Some of these poets may really have been in
love with her, while others burned their incense as court flatterers;
all, doubtless, were glad to find in her an ideal to serve as a platonic
inspiration for their rhymes and verses.

Ariosto excepted, these poets are to us nothing more than names in the
history of literature. The great poet's relations with the princely
house of Ferrara began about 1503, when he entered the service of
Cardinal Ippolito. Soon after this--in the year 1505--he began his great
epic, and the beautiful duchess appears to have had very little
influence on his work. He refers to her occasionally, especially in a
stanza for which she owed the poet little thanks if she foresaw his
immortality--the eighty-third stanza in the forty-second canto of the
_Orlando Furioso_, in which he places Lucretia's portrait in the temple
to woman. The inscription under her portrait says that her fatherland,
Rome, on account of her beauty and modesty must regard her as excelling
Lucretia of old.[202]

A recent Italian writer, speaking of Ariosto's adulation, says, "However
much of it may be looked upon as court flattery, and as due to the
poet's obligations to the house of Este, we know that the art of
flattery had also its laws and bounds, and that one who ascribed such
qualities to a prince who was kn