collections of that memorable visit,
in the following terms: "Do you remember, Scandiano, with what
enthusiasm we dedicated our days to poetical composition? Then did I
first appreciate the importance of association with the learned and to
what degree the mind of youth is elevated in the amiable society of
serious men: then, for the first time, I ventured to think myself a
man and to hope that I might become somebody." The summer of 1481 may,
therefore, be held to mark his intellectual awakening and the birth of
his definite ambitions. Endowed by nature with the qualities necessary
to success, intimate association with men of eminent culture inspired
him with the determination to emulate them, and from this ideal he
never deflected. The remaining six years of his life in Rome were
devoted to the pursuit of knowledge, and in the art of deciphering
inscriptions and the geography of the ancients he acquired singular
proficiency.

During the pontificate of Innocent VIII., Francesco Negro, a Milanese
by birth, was governor of Rome and him Peter Martyr served as
secretary; a service which, for some reason, necessitated several
months' residence in Perugia. His relations with Ascanio Sforza,
created cardinal in 1484, continued to be close, and at one period he
may have held some position in the cardinal's household or in that
of Cardinal Giovanni Arcimboldo, Archbishop of Milan, though it is
nowhere made clear precisely what, while some authorities incline to
number him merely among the assiduous courtiers of these dignitaries
from his native Lombardy.

The fame of his scholarship had meanwhile raised him from the position
of disciple to a place amongst the masters of learning, and in his
turn he saw gathering about him a group of admirers and adulators.
Besides Pomponius Laetus, his intimates of this period were Theodore of
Pavia and Peter Marsus, the less celebrated of the Venetian brothers.
He stood in the relation of preceptor or mentor to Alonso Carillo,
Bishop of Pamplona, and to Jorge da Costa, Archbishop of Braga, two
personages of rank, who did but follow the prevailing fashion that
decreed the presence of a humanist scholar to be an indispensable
appendage in the households of the great. He read and commented the
classics to his exalted patrons, was the arbiter of taste, their
friend, the companion of their cultured leisure, and their confidant.
Replying to the praises of his disciples, couched in extravagant
lang