The lover of real poetry regards this romanticist's terrible drama of Lucretia Borgia as a grotesque manifestation of the art, while the historian laughs at it; the poet, however, may excuse himself on the ground of his ignorance, and of his belief in a myth which had been current since the publication of Guicciardini's history.
Roscoe, doubting the truth of this legend, endeavored to disprove it, and his apology for Lucretia was highly gratifying to the patriotic Italians.

To it is due the reaction which has recently set in against this conception of her.

The Lucretia legend may be analyzed most satisfactorily and scientifically where documents and mementos of her are most numerous; namely, in Rome, Ferrara, and Modena, where the archives of the Este family are kept, and in Mantua, where those of the Gonzaga are preserved.

Occasional publications show that the interesting question still lives and remains unanswered.
The history of the Borgias was taken up again by Domenico Cerri in his work, _Borgia ossia Alessandro VI, Papa e suoi contemporanei_, Turin, 1858.

The following year Bernardo Gatti, of Milan, published Lucretia's letters to Bembo.