CARDINAL BEMBO AND HIS VILLA 



example and sought the advice of this one man whose 

 authority was supreme in literary matters. 



Meanwhile Bembo's own studies were not neglected. 

 " Here I am," he wrote to a Roman prelate, a few 

 weeks after his return to the Villa in 1525, "busy 

 once more with my old friends, the books, whose 

 good graces, I flatter myself, I have recovered. They 

 had good reason to be vexed with me, as I had not 

 looked at them during the whole winter, although, 

 God knows, this was not my fault." A few years 

 later he wrote to his old secretary Avila, " I read and 

 write more now than I have ever done before." 

 Much of his leisure was devoted to the annotation of 

 his old favourites, Petrarch and Dante, and to the 

 collation of classical texts, but he found time to study 

 Provengal poetry and Spanish literature, and even 

 wrote verses in Spanish to please Duchess Lucrezia. 

 During these years he revised most of his earlier works 

 for publication. Gli Asolani, the Latin dialogues 

 Etna, De ducibus, and the Prose were all printed 

 at the Aldine Press in 1530, as well as the volume 

 of Rime, of which no fewer than thirty editions 

 were published before the close of the century. 



So happy and content amid these varied occupations 

 was the great scholar, that he never stirred from home, 

 and did not even go to Venice for two years. But in 



1 Lettere^ ii. vi. 15, ii. 200. 



