He had a ruling passion for horses, and then several smaller
passions quite as wasteful and idle. He was driven from place to place
by a demon of unrest, and was mainly concerned, after reaching a city,
in getting away from it as soon as he could. He gives anecdotes enough
in proof of this, and he forgets nothing that can enhance the surprise
of his future literary greatness. At the Ambrosian Library in Milan
they showed him a manuscript of Petrarch's, which, "like a true
barbarian," as he says, he flung aside, declaring that he knew nothing
about it, having a rancor against this Petrarch, whom he had once
tried to read and had understood as little as Ariosto. At Rome the
Sardinian minister innocently affronted him by repeating some verses
of Marcellus, which the sulky young noble could not comprehend. In
Ferrara he did not remember that it was the city of that divine
Ariosto whose poem was the first that came into his hands, and
which he had now read in part with infinite pleasure. "But my poor
intellect," he says, "was then sleeping a most sordid sleep, and every
day, as far as regards letters, rusted more and more. It is true,
however, that with respect to knowledge of the world and of men I
constantly learned not a little, without taking note of it, so many
and diverse were the phases of life and manners that I daily beheld.
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