descriptions which he had given of sumptuous palaces, beautiful
porticoes, and pleasant fountains, in his _Orlando Furioso_, he replied,
"that words were combined together with less expense than stones." To
such a degree was he charmed with his own verse, and so much did he also
excel in his manner of reading, that he was always disgusted if he heard
his own writings repeated with an ill grace and accent. Accordingly, it
is said, that, when he accidentally heard a potter singing a stanza of
his _Orlando_ in an incorrect and ungraceful manner, he was so incensed,
that he rushed into his shop and broke several of the pots which were
exposed to sale; when the potter expostulated with him for this
unprovoked injury, Ariosto replied, "I indeed have broken half a dozen
of your pots, which are not worth so many halfpence, and you have
spoiled a stanza of mine, which is worth a considerable sum of gold." He
was so attached to a plain and frugal mode of life, that he says of
himself in one of his poems, "that he was a fit person to have lived in
the world when acorns were the food of mankind." His constitution was
delicate and infirm; and, notwithstanding his temperance and general
abstemiousness, his health was often interrupted. He bore his last
sickness with uncommon resolution and serenity; affirming, "that he was
willing to die on many accounts, and particularly because he found that
the greatest divines were of opinion that we shall know one another in
the other world;" and he observed to those who were with him, "that many
of his friends were departed, whom he desired to visit, and that he
thought every moment tedious till he gained that happiness."

Dante, the celebrated Italian poet, has been described by Boccacio, as
of a middle stature, of a pensive and melancholy expression in his
countenance. He was courteous and civil, and his way of living extremely
temperate. He is said to have been a very absent man, of which instances
have been recorded; once meeting with a book in an apothecary's, which