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 1 5 2 “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. 1 
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. 
HI 
