INTRODUCTION xiii

we must not reckon him with the *nobly bold' physicians whom
Kipling describes:

*N et when the sickness was sore in the land,
And neither planet nor herb assuaged,
They took their lives in their lancet—hand
And, oh, what a wonderful war they waged!
Nes, when the crosses were chalked on the door—
Nes, when the terrible dead—cart rolled,
Excellent courage our fathers bore—
Excellent heart had our fathers of old.*

At Incafii

He ran other risks by taking his family to the shore of Lake
Garda, where, though the villa lay out of the direct path of the
bands of armed marauders, he can never have felt secure from at—
tack.  Of his life there, especially in the happier years that fol—
lowed the return of the Venetians, we have many details; he
hardly writes a poem without describing the charms of his small
estate which lay on the lower slopes of Monte Baldo between
the river Adige and the lake, well sheltered from the north.'
There, under his chestnut trees he would gaze over to Desenzano
and **olive—silvery Sirmio' made famous by Catullus, and dream
of rivalling Catullus and Virgil. Already he was working on his
poem Syphils.

In 1516 he lost two sons by an illness that he does not specify,
though in a poem in Latin hexameters addressed to G. della
Torre, he laments his inability to cure them. Another Latin
poem written about 1517 is of interest because in it he appeals to
the Venetian Governor Raineri not to allow the destruction of
the College of Physicians at Verona.

During the German. occupation, the Venetians had often as—
saulted the fortifications of Verona, in the vain hope of regaining
the city by arms rather than expensive treaties. 'They had
learned the weak points of the walls, and now, to make them
impregnable, ordered that all buildings outside the city, within
one mile of the walls, should be destroyed. It is not clear

: A detailed description of the villa, a country—house of the simplest
kind, is given by Manara of Verona who visited it in 1842. 'The
illustrations show the study, with the chair of Fraceastorius, and,
after three centuries, Manara did not question the authenticity of
this heirloom.