What the "things patched up among them" may have been is unknown.

It is curious enough that his acquaintance with the Italian literati should have been the means of preserving one of their own compositions, the "Tina" of Antonio Malatesti, a series of fifty sonnets on a mistress, sent to him in manuscript by the author, with a dedication to the _illustrissimo signore et padrone osservatissimo_.

The pieces were not of a kind to be approved by the laureate of chastity, and annoyance at the implied slur upon his morals may account for his omission of Malatesti from the list of his Italian acquaintance.

He carried the MS.

home, nevertheless, and a copy of it, finding its way back to Italy in the eighteenth century, restored Malatesti's fifty indiscretions to the Italian Parnassus.