About the same time he commenced, at the desire of the ruler of the neighbouring Shirvan, his second romantic poem, the famous Bedouin love-story of Laila and Majnun, which has so many points in common with Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and finished it in the short space of four months.
A little way off is the university, which has faculties of law, medicine and natural science (hardly too students in all); the library has valuable MSS., including part of that of the Orlando Furioso and letters by Tasso.
But the victor's laurels were reserved for Ariosto, whose Orlando Furioso is the purest and most perfect extant example of Renaissance poetry.
The island is the Lopadusa of Strabo, and the Lipadosa of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, the scene of the landing of Roger of Sicily and of his conversion by the hermit.
Besides the works already enumerated, it contained the Sermones de motu gravium composed at Pisa between 1589 and 1591; his letters to his friends, with many of their replies, as well as several of the essays of his scientific opponents; his laudatory comments on the Orlando Furioso, and depreciatory notes on the Gerusalemme Liberata, some stanzas and sonnets of no great merit, together with the sketch of a comedy; finally, a reprint of Viviani's Life, with valuable notes and corrections.
