It appears that Ariosto, one day passing a potter's shop in Ferrara, heard the owner singing a stanza of the Orlando Furioso. Attracted by his own poetry, he listened, and found that the potter mangled it most miserably, rendering a most beautiful passage rank nonsense. This so enraged the poet, that, having a stick in his hand, he laid about him lustily, and broke every thing he could reach. When the poor devil of a potter expostulated with him for destroying the property of a man who had never done him any injury, he replied " 'Tis false, you have done me the deepest injury; you have murdered my verses; I have caught you in the very fact." When pressed to pay the poor man for some of his property, his only answer was " Let him learn to sing my poetry, and I will leave alone his pottery."