Andrews, where the lists
had been set up for the determination of the question.
had been set up for the determination of the question.
Stories from the Italian Poets
He had but to uncork it, and set it under his
nose, and the wit shot up to its place at once. Turpin acknowledges that
the Paladin, for a long time afterwards, led the life of a sage man,
till, unfortunately, a mistake which he made lost him his brains a second
time. [15]
The Evangelist now presented him with the vial containing the wits of
Orlando, and the travellers quitted the vale of Lost Treasure. Before
they returned to earth, however, the good saint chewed his guest other
curiosities, and favoured him with many a sage remark, particularly on
the subject of poets, and the neglect of them by courts. He shewed him
how foolish it was in princes and other great men not to make friends of
those who can immortalise them; and observed, with singular indulgence,
that crimes themselves might be no hindrance to a good name with
posterity, if the poet were but feed well enough for spices to embalm the
criminal. He instanced the cases of Homer and Virgil.
"You are not to take for granted," said he, "that Æneas was so pious
as fame reports him, or Achilles and Hector so brave. Thousands and
thousands of warriors have excelled them; but their descendents bestowed
fine houses and estates on great writers, and it is from their honoured
pages that all the glory has proceeded. Augustus was no such religious or
clement prince as the trumpet of Virgil has proclaimed him. It was his
good taste in poetry that got him pardoned his iniquitous proscription.
Nero himself might have fared as well as Augustus, had he possessed as
much wit. Heaven and earth might have been his enemies to no purpose, had
he known how to keep friends with good authors. Homer makes the Greeks
victorious, the Trojans a poor set, and Penelope undergo a thousand
wrongs rather than be unfaithful to her husband; and yet, if you would
have the real truth of the matter, the Greeks were beaten, and the
Trojans the conquerors, and Penelope was a --. [16] See, on the other
hand, what infamy has become the portion of Dido. She was honest to her
heart's core; and yet, because Virgil was no friend of hers, she is
looked upon as a baggage.
"Be not surprised," concluded the good saint, "if I have expressed myself
with warmth on this subject. I love writers, and look upon their cause as
my own, for I was a writer myself when I lived among you; and I succeeded
so well in the vocation, that time and death will never prevail against
me. Just therefore is it, that I should be thankful to my beloved Master,
who procured me so great a lot. I grieve for writers who have fallen
on evil times--men that, with pale and hungry faces, find the doors of
courtesy closed against all their hardships. This is the reason there are
so few poets now, and why nobody cares to study. Why should he study? The
very beasts abandon places where there is nothing to feed them. "
At these words the eyes of the blessed old man grew so inflamed with
anger, that they sparkled like two fires. But he presently suppressed
what he felt; and, turning with a sage and gracious smile to the Paladin,
prepared to accompany him back to earth with his wonted serenity.
He accordingly did so in the sacred car: and Astolfo, after receiving his
gentle benediction, descended on his hippogriff from the mountain, and,
joining the delighted Paladins with the vial, his wits were restored, as
you have heard, to the noble Orlando.
The figure which is here cut by St. John gives this remarkable satire a
most remarkable close. His association of himself with the fraternity of
authors was thought a little "strong" by Ariosto's contemporaries. The
lesson read to the house of Este is obvious, and could hardly have been
pleasant to men reputed to be such "criminals" themselves. Nor can
Ariosto, in this passage, be reckoned a very flattering or conscientious
pleader for his brother-poets. Resentment, and a good jest, seem to have
conspired to make him forget what was due to himself.
The original of St. John's remarks about Augustus and the ancient poets
must not be omitted. It is exquisite of its kind, both in matter and
style. Voltaire has quoted it somewhere with rapture.
"Non fu sì santo nè benigno Augusto
Come la tuba di Virgilio suona:
L'aver avuto in poesia buon gusto
La proscrizion iniqua gli perdona.
Nessun sapria se Neron fosse ingiusto,
Nè sua fama saria forse men buona,
Avesse avuto e terra e ciel nimici,
Se gli scrittor sapea tenersi amici.
Omero Agamennon vittorioso,
E fe' i Trojan parer vili et inerti;
E che Penelopea fida al suo sposo
Da i prochi mille oltraggi avea sofferti:
E, se tu vuoi che 'l ver non ti sia ascoso,
Tutta al contrario l'istoria converti:
Che i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice,
E che Penelopea fu meretrice.
Da l'altra parte odi che fama lascia
Elissa, ch'ebbe il cor tanto pudico;
Che riputata viene una bagascia,
Solo perchè Maron non le fu amico. "
Canto xxxv. st. 26. ]
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: See p. 192. ]
[Footnote 2: Ariosto is here imitating Pulci, and bearding Dante. See
vol. i. p. 336. ]
[Footnote 3: I know of no story of a cruel Lydia but the poet's own
mistress of that name, whom I take to be the lady here "shadowed forth. "
See Life, p. 114. ]
[Footnote 4: The story of Anaxarete is in Ovid, lib. xiv. Every body
knows that of Daphne, who made Apollo, as Ariosto says, "run so much"
(correr tanto). Theseus and Jason are in hell, as deserters of Ariadne
and Medea; Amnon, for the atrocity recorded in the Bible (2 Samuel, chap.
xiii. ); and Æneas for interfering with Turnus and Lavinia, and taking
possession of places he had no right to. It is delightful to see the
great, generous poet going upon grounds of reason and justice in the
teeth of the trumped-up rights of the "pious Æneas," that shabby deserter
of Dido, and canting prototype of Augustus. He turns the tables, also,
with brave candour, upon the tyrannical claims of the stronger sex to
privileges which they deny the other; and says, that there are more
faithless men in Hell than faithless women; which, if personal infidelity
sends people there, most undoubtedly is the case beyond all comparison. ]
[Footnote 5: "Che di soävità l'alma notriva" is beautiful; but the
passage, as a whole, is not well imitated from the Terrestrial Paradise
of Dante. It is not bad in itself, but it is very inferior to the one
that suggested it. See vol. i. p. 210, &c. Ariosto's Terrestrial Paradise
was at home, among the friends who loved him, and whom he made happy. ]
[Footnote 6: This is better; and the house made of one jewel thirty miles
in circuit is an extravagance that becomes reasonable on reflection,
affording a just idea of what might be looked for among the endless
planetary wonders of Nature, which confound all our relative ideas of
size and splendour. The "lucid vermilion" of a structure so enormous, and
under a sun so pure, presents a gorgeous spectacle to the imagination.
Dante himself, if he could have forgiven the poet his animal spirits
and views of the Moon so different from his own, might have stood in
admiration before an abode at once so lustrous and so vast. ]
[Footnote 7:
"De' frutti a lui del Paradiso diero,
Di tal sapor, ch'a suo giudizio, sanza
Scusa non sono i due primi parenti,
Se pur quei fur si poco ubbidienti. "
Canto xxxiv. st. 60. ]
[Footnote 8: Modern astronomers differ very much both with Dante's and
Ariosto's Moon; nor do the "argent fields" of Milton appear better placed
in our mysterious satellite, with its no-atmosphere and no-water, and its
tremendous precipices. It is to be hoped (and believed) that knowledge
will be best for us all in the end; for it is not always so by the way.
It displaces beautiful ignorances. ]
[Footnote 9: Very fine and scornful, I think, this. Mighty monarchies
reduced to actual bladders, which, little too as they were, contained big
sounds. ]
[Footnote 10: Such, I suppose, as was given at convent-gates. ]
[Footnote 11: The pretended gift of the palace of St. John Lateran, the
foundation of the pope's temporal sovereignty. This famous passage was
quoted and translated by Milton.
"Di varii fiori ad on gran monte passa
Ch'ebbe già buon odore, or putia forte.
Questo era il dono (se però dir lece)
Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece. "
Canto xxxiv. st. 80.
The lines were not so bold in the first edition. They stood thus
"Ad un monte di rose e gigli passa,
Ch'ebbe già buon odore, or putia forte,
Ch'era corrotto; e da Giovanni intese,
Che fu un gran don ch'un gran signor mal spese. "
"He came to a mount of lilies and roses, that once had a sweet smell,
but now stank with corruption; and be understood from John that it was a
great gift which a great lord ill expended. "
The change of these lines to the stronger ones in the third edition, as
they now stand, served to occasion a charge against Ariosto of having got
his privilege of publication from the court of Rome for passages which
never existed, and which he afterwards basely introduced; but, as Panizzi
observes, the third edition had a privilege also; so that the papacy
put its hand, as it were, to these very lines. This is remarkable; and
doubtless it would not have occurred in some other ages. The Spanish
Inquisition, for instance, erased it, though the holy brotherhood found
no fault with the story of Giocondo. ]
[Footnote 12: "Sol la pazzia non v'è, poca nè assai;
Che sta quà giù, nè se ne parte mai"
St. 78. ]
[Footnote 13: Part of this very striking passage is well translated by
Harrington
"He saw some of his own lost time and deeds,
And yet he knew them not to be his own. "
I have heard these lines more than once repeated with touching
earnestness by Charles Lamb. ]
[Footnote 14: Readers need not have the points of this exquisite satire
pointed out to them. In noticing it, I only mean to enjoy it in their
company--particularly the passage about the men accounted wisest, and the
emphatic "I mean, sense" (Io dico, il senno). ]
[Footnote 15: Admirable lesson to frailty! ]
[Footnote 16: I do not feel warranted in injuring the strength of the
term here made use of by the indignant apostle, and yet am withheld from
giving it in all its force by the delicacy, real or false, of the times.
I must therefore leave it to be supplied by the reader according to the
requirements of his own feelings. ]
ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.
Argument.
The Duke of Albany, pretending to be in love with a damsel in the service
of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess
herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being
in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the
damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night,
and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived,
disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother
Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, who, according to the laws of
Scotland, is sentenced to death for her supposed lawless passion.
Lurcanio then challenges the unknown paramour (for the duke's face had
not been discerned in the balcony); and Ariodante, who is not dead, is
fighting him in disguise, when the Paladin Rinaldo comes up, discloses
the whole affair, and slays the deceiver.
ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. [1]
Charlemagne had suffered a great defeat at Paris, and the Paladin Rinaldo
was sent across the Channel to ask succours of the King of England; but a
tempest arose ere he could reach the coast, and drove him northwards upon
that of Scotland, where he found himself in the Caledonian Forest, a
place famous of old for knightly adventure. Many a clash of arms had been
heard in its shady recesses--many great things had been done there by
knights from all quarters, particularly the Tristans and the Launcelots,
and the Gawains, and others of the Round Table of King Arthur.
Rinaldo, bidding the ship await him at the town of Berwick, plunged into
the forest with no other companion than his horse Bayardo, seeking the
wildest paths he could find, in the hope of some strange adventure. [2] He
put up, for the first day, at an abbey which was accustomed to entertain
the knights and ladies that journeyed that way; and after availing
himself of its hospitality, he inquired of the abbot and his monks if
they could direct him where to find what he looked for. They said that
plenty of adventures were to be met with in the forest; but that, for the
most part, they remained in as much obscurity as the spots in which they
occurred. It would be more becoming his valour, they thought, to exert
itself where it would not be hidden; and they concluded with telling him
of one of the noblest chances for renown that ever awaited a sword. The
daughter of their king was in need of a defender against a certain baron
of the name of Lurcanio, who sought to deprive her both of life and
reputation. He accused her of having been found in the arms of a lover
without the license of the priest; which, by the laws of Scotland, was a
crime only to be expiated at the stake, unless a champion could be found
to disprove the charge before the end of a month. Unfortunately the month
had nearly expired, and no champion yet made his appearance, though the
king had promised his daughter's hand to anybody of noble blood who
should establish her innocence; and the saddest part of the thing was,
that she was accounted innocent by all the world, and a very pattern of
modesty.
While this horrible story was being told him, the Paladin fell into a
profound state of thought. After remaining silent for a little while,
at the close of it he looked up, and said, "A lady then, it seems, is
condemned to death for having been too kind to one lover, while thousands
of our sex are playing the gallant with whomsoever they please, and
not only go unpunished for it, but are admired! Perish such infamous
injustice! The man was a madman who made such a law, and they are little
better who maintain it. I hope in God to be able to shew them their
error. "
The good monks agreed, that their ancestors were very unwise to make such
a law, and kings very wrong who could, but would not, put an end to it.
So, when the morning came, they speeded their guest on his noble purpose
of fighting in the lady's behalf. A guide from the abbey took him a short
cut through the forest towards the place where the matter was to be
decided; but, before they arrived, they heard cries of distress in a dark
quarter of the forest, and, turning their horses thither to see what it
was, they observed a damsel between two vagabonds, who were standing over
her with drawn swords. The moment the wretches saw the new comer, they
fled; and Rinaldo, after re-assuring the damsel, and requesting to know
what had brought her to a pass so dreadful, made his guide take her up
on his horse behind him, in order that they might lose no more time. The
damsel, who was very beautiful, could not speak at first, for the horror
of what she had expected to undergo; but, on Rinaldo's repeating his
request, she at length found words, and, in a voice of great humility,
began to relate her story.
But before she begins, the poet interferes with an impatient remark. --"Of
all the creatures in existence," cries he, "whether they be tame or wild,
whether they are in a state of peace or of war, man is the only one that
lays violent hands on the female of his species. The bear offers no
injury to his; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion; the heifer
has no fear of the horns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury
from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind?
Husband and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one
another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some times with
bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow himself to give a blow to a
woman, or to hurt even a hair of her head, is a violater of nature, and a
rebel against God; but to poison her, to strangle her, to take the soul
out of her body with a knife,--he that can do that, never will I believe
him to be a man at all, but a fiend out of hell with a man's face. "[3]
Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo,
and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony
for ever.
But to return to what she was going to say. --
"You are to know, sir," she began, "that I have been from my childhood in
the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with
her; I was held in bonour, and I led a happy life, till it pleased the
cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that
there was no being on earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He
pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my
heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the
palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the princess
regarded as most exclusively her own; for there she kept her jewels, and
there she was accustomed to sleep during inclement states of the weather.
It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which
looked out to some lonely ruins; and nobody ever passed that way, day or
night.
"Our intercourse continued for several months; and, finding that I placed
all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day
a design he had upon the princess's hand; nay, did not blush to ask my
assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own,
when I confess that I undertook to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer
to the princess's than to mine; and he pretended that he sought the
alliance merely on that account; protesting that he should love me more
than ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name.
But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please
him.
"Day and night I exerted all my endeavours to recommend him to the
princess. Heaven is my witness that I did it in real earnest, however
wrong it was. But my labour was to no purpose, for she was in love
herself. She returned in all its warmth the passion of a most
accomplished and valiant gentleman, who had come into Scotland with a
younger brother from Italy, and who had made himself such a favourite
with every body, my lover included, that the king himself had bestowed on
him titles and estates, and put him on a footing with the greatest lords
of the land.
"Unfortunately, the princess not only turned a deaf ear to all I said
in the duke's favour, but grew to dislike him in proportion to my
recommendation; so that, finding there was no likelihood of his success,
his own love was secretly turned into hate and rage. He studied, little
as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect
of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient,
which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He
pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in
his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in
reality; and, in order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress
myself in the identical clothes which the princess put off when she went
to bed that night, and then to appear in them at my usual post in the
balcony, and so let down the ladder as though I were her very self, and
receive him into my arms.
"I did all that he desired, mad fool that I was; and out of the part
which I played has come all this mischief. I have intimated to you that
the duke and Ariodante (for such was the other's name) had been good
friends before Ginevra preferred hint to my false lover. Pretending
therefore to be still his friend, and entering on the subject of a
passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his
wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially
as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if
he pleased, might have ocular testimony. "Greatly astonished at this news
was Ariodante. He had received all the proofs of his mistress's affection
which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest
scorn refused to believe it; but as the duke, with the air of a man who
could not help the melancholy communication, quietly persisted in his
story, the unhappy lover found himself compelled, at any rate, to let
him afford those proofs of her infidelity which he asserted to be in his
power. The consequence was, that Ariodante came with his brother to the
ruins I spoke of; and there the two were posted on the night when I
played my unhappy part in the balcony. He brought Lurcanio with him (that
was the brother's name), because he suspected that the duke had a design
on his life, not conceiving what he alleged against Ginevra to be
possible. Lurcanio, however, was not in the secret of his brother's
engagement with the princess. It had been disclosed hitherto neither to
him nor to any one, the lady not yet having chosen to divulge it to the
king himself. Ariodante, therefore, requested his brother to take his
station at a little distance, out of sight of the palace, and not to come
to him unless he should call: 'otherwise, my dear brother,' concluded he,
'stir not a step, if you love me. ' "'Doubt me not,' said Lurcanio; and,
with these words, the latter entrenched himself in his post.
"Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony,--the only person
visible at that moment in all the place. In a few minutes the Duke
of Albany appeared below it, making the signal to which I had been
accustomed; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes
of both, and let down the ladder.
"Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mysterious
situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears
for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little
distance; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely
houses, perceived all that was going on.
"I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which
the princess had put off that night; and as I was not unlike her in air
and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies
of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite
sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her
very self. The duke impatiently mounted the ladder; I received him as
impatiently in my arms; and circumstances, though from very different
feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour.
"You may imagine the grief of Ariodante. It rose at once to despair. He
did not call out; so that, had not his brother followed him, still worse
would have ensued than did; for he drew his sword, and was proceeding in
distraction to fall upon it, when Lurcanio rushed in and stopped him.
'Miserable brother! ' exclaimed he, 'are you mad? Would you die for a
woman like this? You see what a wretch she is. I discern all your case
at once, and, thank God, have preserved you to turn your sword where it
ought to be turned, against the defender of such a pattern of infamy. '
"Ariodante put up his sword, and suffered himself to be led away by his
brother. He even pretended, in a little while, to be able to review his
condition calmly, but not the less had he secretly resolved to perish.
Next day he disappeared, nobody knew whither; and about eight days
afterwards, news was secretly brought to Ginevra, by a pilgrim, that he
had thrown himself from a headland into the sea.
"'I met him by chance,' said the pilgrim, 'and we happened to be standing
on the top of the headland, conversing, when he cried out to me, 'Relate
to the princess what you beheld on parting from me; and add, that the
cause of it was my having seen too much. Happy had it been for me had I
been blind! ' And with these words,' concluded the pilgrim, 'he leaped
into the sea below, and was instantly buried beneath it. '
"The princess turned as pale as death at this story, and for a while
remained stupefied. But, alas! what a scene was it my fate to witness,
when she found herself in her chamber at night, able to give way to her
misery. She tore her clothes, and her very flesh, and her beautiful
hair, and kept repeating the last words of her lover with amazement and
despair.
The disappearance of Ariodante, and a rumour which transpired of his
having slain himself on account of some hidden anguish, surprised and
afflicted the whole court. But his brother Lurcanio evinced more and more
his impatience at it, and let fall the most terrible words. At length
he entered the court when the king was holding one of his fullest
assemblies, and laid open, as he thought, the whole matter; setting forth
how his unhappy brother had secretly, but honourably, loved the princess;
how she had professed to love him in return; and how she had grossly
deceived him, and played him impudently false before his own eyes. He
concluded with calling upon her unknown paramour to come forth, and shew
reasons against him with his sword why she ought not to die.
"I need not tell you what the king suffered at hearing this strange and
terrible recital. He lost no time in sharply investigating the truth of
the allegation; and for this purpose, among other proceedings, he sent
for the ladies of his daughter's chamber. You may judge, sir,--especially
as, I blush to say it, I still loved the Duke of Albany,--that I could
not await an examination like that. I hastened to meet the duke, who was
as anxious to get me out of the way as I was to go; and to this end,
professing the greatest zeal for my security, he commissioned two men to
convey me secretly to a fortress he possessed in this forest. 'Tis at no
great distance from the place where Heaven sent you to my deliverance.
You saw, sir, how little those wretches intended to take me anywhere
except to my grave; and by this you may judge of the agonies and shame I
have endured in knowing what a dupe I have been to one of the cruelest of
men. But thus it is that Love treats his most faithful servants. "
The damsel here concluded her story; and the Paladin, rejoicing at having
become possessed of all that was required to establish the falsehood of
the duke, proceeded with her on his road to St.
Andrews, where the lists
had been set up for the determination of the question. The king and his
court were anxiously praying at that instant for the arrival of some
champion to fight with the dreaded Lurcanio; for the month, as I have
stated, was nearly expired, and this terrible brother appeared to have
the business all his own way; so that the stake was soon to be looked for
at which the hapless Ginevra was to die.
Fast and eagerly the Paladin rode for St. Andrews, with his squire and
the trembling damsel, who was now agitated for new reasons, though the
knight gave her assurances of his protection. They were not far from
the city when they found people talking of a champion who had certainly
arrived, but whose name was unknown, and his face constantly concealed by
his visor. Even his own squire, it seems, did not know him; for the
man had but lately been taken into his service. Rinaldo, as soon as
he entered the city, left the damsel in a place of security, and then
spurred his horse to the scene of action, when he found the accuser and
the champion in the very midst of the fight. The Paladin, whose horse,
notwithstanding the noise of the combat, had been heard coming like a
tempest, and whose sudden and heroical appearance turned all eyes towards
him, rode straight to the royal canopy, and, begging the king to stop the
combat, disclosed the whole state of the matter, to the enchantment of
all present, except the Duke of Albany; for the villain himself was on
horseback there in state as grand constable, and had been feasting his
miserable soul with the hope of seeing Ginevra condemned. The combatants
were soon changed. Instead of Lurcanio and the unknown champion (whom the
new comer had taken care to extol for his generosity), it was the Paladin
and the Duke that were opposed; and horribly did the latter's heart fail
him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short
work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound
of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him
at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false
bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The
conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled
the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when
life forsook him. Rinaldo then took off his own helmet; and the king,
who had seen the great Paladin before, and who felt more rejoiced at his
daughter's deliverance than if he had lost and regained his crown, lifted
up his hands to heaven, and thanked God for having honoured her innocence
with so illustrious a defender.
The other champion, who, in the mean time, had been looking on through
the eyelets of his visor, was now entreated to disclose his own face. He
did so with peculiar emotion, and king and all recognised with transport
the face of the loved and, as it was supposed, lost Ariodante. The
pilgrim, however, had told no falsehood. The lover had indeed thrown
himself into the sea, and disappeared from the man's eyes; but (as
oftener happens than people suppose) the death which was desired when
not present became hated when it was so; and Ariodante, lover as he
was, rising at a little distance, struck out lustily for the shore, and
reached it. [4] He felt even a secret contempt for his attempt to kill
himself; yet putting up at an hermitage, became interested in the reports
concerning the princess, whose sorrow flattered, and whose danger,
though he could not cease to think her guilty, afflicted him. He grew
exasperated with the very brother he loved, when he found that Lurcanio
pursued her thus to the death; and on all these accounts he made his
appearance at the place of combat to fight him, though not to slay. His
purpose was to seek his own death. He concluded that Ginevra would then
see who it was that had really loved her, while his brother would mourn
the rashness which made him pursue the destruction of a woman. "Guilty
she is," thought he, "but no such guilt can deserve so cruel a
punishment. Besides, I could not bear that she should die before me. She
is still the woman I love, still the idol of my thoughts. Right or wrong,
I must die in her behalf. "
With this intention he purchased a suit of black armour, and obtained a
squire unknown in those parts, and so made his appearance in the lists.
What ensued there I need not repeat; but the king was so charmed with the
issue of the whole business, with the resuscitation of the favourite whom
he thought dead, and the restoration of the more than life of his beloved
daughter, that, to the joy of all Scotland, and at the special instance
of the great Paladin, he made the two lovers happy without delay; and the
bride brought her husband for dowry the title and estates of the man who
had wronged him.
[Footnote 1: The main point of this story, the personation of Ginevra by
one of her ladies, has been repeated by many writers--among others by
Shakspeare, in _Much Ado about Nothing_. The circumstance is said to have
actually occurred in Ferrara, and in Ariosto's own time. Was Ariosto
himself a party? "Ariodante" almost includes his name; and it is certain
that he was once in love with a lady of the name of Ginevra. ]
[Footnote 2: Rinaldo is an ambassador, and one upon very urgent business;
yet he halts by the way in search of adventures. This has been said to be
in the true taste of knight-errantry; and in one respect it is so. We
may imagine, however, that the ship is wind-bound, and that he meant to
return to it on change of weather. The Caledonian Forest, it is to be
observed, is close at hand. ]
[Footnote 3: All honour and glory to the manly and loving poet!
"Lavezzuola," says Panizzi, "doubts the conjugal concord of beasts, more
particularly of bears. 'Ho letto presso degno autore un orso aver cavato
un occhio ad un orsa con la zampa. ' (I have read in an author worthy of
credit, that a bear once deprived a she-bear of an eye with a blow of his
paw. ) The reader may choose between Ariosto and this nameless author,
which of them is to be believed. I, of course, am for my poet. "--Vol. i.
p. 84. I am afraid, however, that Lavezzuola is right. Even turtle-doves
are said not to be always the models of tenderness they are supposed
to be. Brutes have even devoured their offspring. The violence is most
probably owing (at least in excessive cases) to some unnatural condition
of circumstances. ]
[Footnote 4: This is quite in Ariosto's high and bold taste for truth
under all circumstances. A less great and unmisgiving poet would have had
the lover picked up by a fisherman. ]
SUSPICION [1]
It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the world than a just
prince--a thoroughly good man, who shuns no part of the burden of his
duty, though it bend him double; who loves and cares for his people as a
father does for his children, and who is almost incessantly occupied in
their welfare, very seldom for his own.
Such a man puts himself in front of dangers and difficulties in order
that he may be a shield to others; for he is not a mercenary, taking care
of none but himself when he sees the wolf coming; he is the right good
shepherd, staking his own life in that of his flock, and knowing the
faces of every one of them, just as they do his own.
Such princes, in times of old, were Saturn, Hercules, Jupiter, and
others--men who reigned gently, yet firmly, equal to all chances that
came, and worthy of the divine honours that awaited them. For mankind
could not believe that they quitted the world in the same way as other
men. They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of
demigods.
When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate
their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height
of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and,
at all events, public decency is observed. Oh, blessed kingdoms that are
governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the
mercy of a man without justice--a fellow-creature without feelings!
Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of
posterity. Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and
Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might.
I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the
dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse
under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of
the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains
by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were
sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.
But they are not without torments of their own. At the core of their own
hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies. There he stands
every day and every moment--one who was born of the same mother with
Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his
infant brethren before they saw the light. His name is Suspicion. [2]
Yes, Suspicion;--the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest
that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being.
This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and
lowly. He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune
has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures. Well may the man hug
himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants
are in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge
taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret. The fear
which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch
afraid of every soul among them.
Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of
it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon
the hearts of his race. He was one of the first who took to the custom
of wearing beards, for, great as he was, he had a fear of the race of
barbers! He built a tower in his palace, guarded by deep ditches and
thick walls. It had but one drawbridge and one bay-window. There was no
other opening; so that the very light of day had scarcely admittance, or
the inmates a place to breathe at. In this tower he slept; and it was his
wife's business to put a ladder down for him when he came in. A dog kept
watch at the drawbridge; and except the dog and the wife, not a soul was
to be discerned about the place. Yet he had such little trust in her,
that he always sent spies to look about the room before he withdrew for
the night.
Of what use was it all? The woman herself killed him with his own sword,
and his soul went straight to hell.
Rhadamanthus, the judge there, thrust him under the boiling lake, but was
astonished to find that he betrayed no symptoms of anguish. He did not
weep and howl as the rest did, or cry out, "I burn, I burn! " He evinced
so little suffering, that Rhadamanthus said, "I must put this fellow into
other quarters. " Accordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the
torments are beyond all others.
Nevertheless, even here he seemed to be under no distress. At length they
asked him the reason. The wretch then candidly acknowledged, that hell
itself had no torments for him, compared with those which suspicion had
given him on earth.
The sages of hell laid their heads together at this news. Amelioration of
his lot on the part of a sinner was not to be thought of in a place of
eternal punishment; so they called a parliament together, the result of
which was an unanimous conclusion, that the man should be sent back to
earth, and consigned to the torments of suspicion for ever.
He went; and the earthly fiend re-entered his being anew with a subtlety
so incorporate, that their two natures were identified, and he became
SUSPICION ITSELF. Fruits are thus engrafted on wild stocks. One colour
thus becomes the parent of many, when the painter takes a portion of this
and of that from his palette in order to imitate flesh.
The new being took up his abode on a rock by the sea-shore, a thousand
feet high, girt all about with mouldering crags, which threatened every
instant to fall. It had a fortress on the top, the approach to which was
by seven drawbridges, and seven gates, each locked up more strongly than
the other; and here, now this moment, constantly thinking Death is upon
him, Suspicion lives in everlasting terror. He is alone. He is ever
watching. He cries out from the battlements, to see that the guards are
awake below, and never does he sleep day or night. He wears mail upon
mail, and mail again, and feels the less safe the more he puts on; and is
always altering and strengthening everything on gate, and on barricado,
and on ditch, and on wall. And do whatever he will, he never seems to
have done enough.
* * * * *
Great poet, and good man, Ariosto! your terrors are better than Dante's;
for they warn, as far as warning can do good, and they neither afflict
humanity nor degrade God.
Spenser has imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry; for, by a curious
intermixture of all which the mind can experience from such a fiction,
pleasant it is in the midst of its sublimity,--laughable with satirical
archness, as well as grand and terrible in the climax. The transformation
in Spenser is from a jealous man into Jealousy. His wife has gone to live
with the Satyrs, and a villain has stolen his money. The husband, in
order to persuade his wife to return, steals into the horde of the
Satyrs, by mixing with their flock of goats,--as Norandino does in a
passage imitated from Homer by Ariosto. The wife flatly refuses to do any
such thing, and the poor wretch is obliged to steal out again.
"So soon as he the prison door did pass,
He ran as fast as both his feet could bear,
And never looked who behind him was,
Nor scarcely who before. Like as a bear
That creeping close among the hives, to rear
An honeycomb, the wakeful dogs espy,
And him assailing, sore his carcass tear,
That hardly he away with life does fly,
Nor stays till safe himself he see from jeopardy.
Nor stay'd he till be came unto the place
Where late his treasure he entombèd had;
Where, when he found it not (for Trompart base
Had it purloined for his master bad),
With extreme fury he became quite mad,
And ran away--ran with himself away;
That who so strangely had him seen bestad,
With upstart hair and staring eyes' dismay,
From Limbo-lake him late escapèd sure would say.
High over hills and over dales he fled,
As if the wind him on his wings had borne;
Nor bank nor bush could stay him, when he sped
His nimble feet, as treading still on thorn;
Grief, and Despite, and Jealousy, and Scorn,
Did all the way him follow hard behind;
And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn,
So shamefully forlorn of womankind,
That, as a snake, still lurkèd in his wounded mind.
Still fled he forward, looking backward still;
Nor stay'd his flight nor fearful agony
Till that he came unto a rocky hill
Over the sea suspended dreadfully,
That living creature it would terrify
To look a-down, or upward to the height
From thence he threw himself dispiteously,
All desperate of his fore-damnèd spright,
That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight.
But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought,
He was so wasted and forpinèd quite,
That all his substance was consumed to nought,
And nothing left but like an airy sprite;
That on the rocks he fell so flit and light,
That he thereby received no hurt at all;
But chancèd on a craggy cliff to light;
Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl,
That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.
Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there
Resolved to build his baleful mansion,
In dreary darkness, and continual fear
Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon
Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon,
That he dare never sleep, but that one eye
Still ope he keeps for that occasion;
Nor ever rests he in tranquillity,
The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.
Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed
But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous,
Which in his cold complexion do breed
A filthy blood, or humour rancorous,
Matter of doubt and dread suspicious,
That doth with cureless care consume the heart,
Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious,
Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart,
And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.
Yet can he never die, but dying lives,
And doth himself with sorrow new sustain,
That death and life at once unto him gives,
And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain;
There dwells he ever, miserable swain,
Hateful both to himself and every wight;
Where he, through privy grief and horror vain,
Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite
Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight. "
Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's;
but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special
circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of
hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But
nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us
as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts
on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to
the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.
[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the _Furioso_, but
in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name
of the _Five Cantos_. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of
correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious
one, especially as it seems to have been written after the _Furioso_;
for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and
politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,--a
whale _inhabited_ by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that
his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in
his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on
the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.
Did Ariosto, by the way, omit Macchiavelli in his list of the friends who
hailed the close of his great poem, from not knowing what to make of his
book entitled the _Prince? _ It has perplexed all the world to this day,
and is not unlikely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on
a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's. ]
[Footnote 2: A tremendous fancy this last!
"Sta for la pena, de la qual dicea
Che nacque quando la brutt'Ira nacque,
La Crudeltade, e la Rapina rea;
E quantunque in un ventre con for giacque,
Di tormentarle mai non rimanea. "]
ISABELLA. [1]
Rodomont, King of Algiers, was the fiercest of all the enemies of
Christendom, not out of love for his own faith (for he had no piety), but
out of hatred to those that opposed him. He had now quarrelled, however,
with his friends too. He had been rejected by a lady, in favour of the
Tartar king, Mandricardo, and mortified by the publicity of the rejection
before his own lord paramount, Agramante, the leader of the infidel
armies. He could not bear the rejection; he could not bear the sanction
of it by his liege lord; he resolved to quit the scene of warfare and
return to Africa; and, in the course of his journey thither, he had come
into the south of France, where, observing a sequestered spot that suited
his humour, be changed his mind as to going home, and persuaded himself
he could live in it for the rest of his life. He accordingly took up his
abode with his attendants in a chapel, which had been deserted by its
clergy during the rage of war.
This vehement personage was standing one morning at the door of the
chapel in a state of unusual thoughtfulness, when he beheld coming
towards him, through a path in the green meadow before it, a lady of
a lovely aspect, accompanied by a bearded monk. They were followed by
something covered with black, which they were bringing along on a great
horse.
Alas! the lady was the widow of Zerbino, the Scottish prince, who spared
the life of Medoro, and who now himself lay dead under that pall. He
had expired in her arms from wounds inflicted during a combat with
Mandricardo; and she had been thrown by the loss into such anguish of
mind that she would have died on his sword but for the intervention of
the hermit now with her, who persuaded her to devote the rest of her days
to God in a nunnery. She had now come into Provence with the good man for
that purpose, and to bury the corpse of her husband in the chapel which
they were approaching.
Though the lady seemed lost in grief, and was very pale, and had her hair
all about the ears, and though she did nothing but weep and lament, and
looked in all respects quite borne down with her misery, nevertheless she
was still so beautiful that love and grace appeared to be indestructible
in her aspect. The moment the Saracen beheld her, he dismissed from his
mind all the determinations he had made to hate and detest
The gentle bevy, that adorns the world.
He was bent solely on obtaining the new angel before him. She seemed
precisely the sort of person to make him forget the one that had rejected
him. Advancing, therefore, to meet her without delay, he begged, in as
gentle a manner as he could assume, to know the cause of her sorrow.
The lady, with all the candour of wretchedness, explained who she was,
and how precious a burden she was conveying to its last home, and the
resolution she had taken to withdraw from a vain world into the service
of God. The proud pagan, who had no belief in a God, much less any
respect for restraints or fidelities of what kind soever, forgot his
assumed gravity when he heard this determination, and laughed outright at
the simplicity of such a proceeding. He pronounced it, in his peremptory
way, to be foolish and frivolous; compared it with the miser who, in
burying a treasure, does good neither to himself nor any one else; and
said, that lions and serpents might indeed be shut up in cages, but not
things lovely and innocent.
The monk, overhearing these observations, thought it his duty to
interfere. He calmly opposed all which the other asserted, and then
proceeded to set forth a repast of spiritual consolation not at all to
the Saracen's taste. The fierce warrior interrupted the preacher several
times; told him that he had nothing to do with the lady, and that the
sooner he returned to his cell the better; but the hermit, nothing
daunted, went on with his advice till his antagonist lost all patience.
He laid hands on his sacred person; seized him by the beard; tore away
as much of it as he grasped; and at length worked himself up into such a
pitch of fury, that he griped the good man's throat with all the force of
a pair of pincers, and, swinging him twice or thrice round, as one might
a dog, flung him off the headland into the sea.
What became of the poor creature I cannot say. Reports are various. Some
tell us that he was found on the rocks, dashed all to pieces, so that you
could not distinguish foot from head; others, that he fell into the
sea at the distance of three miles, and perished in consequence of not
knowing how to swim, in spite of the prayers and tears that he addressed
to Heaven; others again affirm, that a saint came and assisted him, and
drew him to shore before people's eyes. I must leave the reader to adopt
which of these accounts he looks upon as the most probable.
The Pagan, as soon as he had thus disposed of the garrulous hermit,
turned towards Isabella (for that was the lady's name), and with a face
some what less disturbed, began to talk to her in the common language of
gallantry, protesting that she was his life and soul, and that he should
not know what to do without her; for the sweetness of her appearance
mollified even him; and indeed, with all his violence, he would rather
have possessed her by fair means than by foul. He therefore flattered
himself that, by a little hypocritical attention, he should dispose her
to return his inclinations.
On the other hand, the poor disconsolate creature, who, in a country
unknown to her, and a place so remote from help, felt like a mouse in the
cat's claws, began casting in her mind by what possible contrivance she
could escape from such a wretch with honour. She had made up her mind to
perish by her own hand, rather than be faithless, however unwillingly, to
the dear husband that had died in her arms: but the question was, how she
could protect herself from the pagan's violence, before she had secured
the means of so doing; for his manner was becoming very impatient, and
his speeches every moment less and less civil.
At length an expedient occurred to her. She told him, that if he would
promise to respect her virtue, she would put him in possession of a
secret that would redound far more to his honour and glory, than any
wrong which he could inflict on the innocent. She conjured him not to
throw away the satisfaction he would experience all the rest of his life
from the consciousness of having done right, for the sake of injuring one
unhappy creature. "There were thousands of her sex," she observed, "with
cheerful as well as beautiful faces, who might rejoice in his affection;
whereas the secret she spoke of was known to scarcely a soul on earth but
herself. "
She then told him the secret; which consisted in the preparation of a
certain herb boiled with ivy and rue over a fire of cypress-wood, and
squeezed into a cup by hands that had never done harm. The juice thus
obtained, if applied fresh every month, had the virtue of rendering
bodies invulnerable. Isabella said she had seen the herb in the
neighbourhood, as she came along, and that she would not only make the
preparation forth-with, but let its effects be proved on her own person.
She only stipulated, that the receiver of the gift should swear not to
offend her purity in deed or word.
The fierce infidel took the oath immediately. It delighted him to think
that he should be enabled to have his fill of war and slaughter for
nothing; and the oath was the more easy to him, inasmuch as he had no
intention of keeping it.
The poor Isabella went into the fields to look for her miraculous herb,
still, however, attended by the Saracen, who would not let her go out of
his sight. She soon found it; and then going with him into his house,
passed the rest of the day and the whole night in preparing the mixture
with busy solemnity,--Rodomont always remaining with her.
The room became so hot and close with the fire of cypress-wood, that the
Saracen, contrary to his law and indeed to his habits, indulged himself
in drinking; and the consequence was, that, as soon as it was morning,
Isabella lost no time in proving to him the success of her operations.
"Now," she said, "you shall be convinced how much in earnest I have been.
You shall see all the virtue of this blessed preparation. I have only to
bathe myself thus, over the head and neck, and if you then strike me with
all your force, as though you intended to cut off my head,--which you
must do in good earnest,--you will see the wonderful result. "
With a glad and rejoicing countenance the paragon of virtue held forth
her neck to the sword; and the bestial pagan, giving way to his natural
violence, and heated perhaps beyond all thought of a suspicion with his
wine, dealt it so fierce a blow, that the head leaped from the shoulders.
Thrice it bounded on the ground where it fell, and a clear voice was
heard to come out of it, calling the name of "Zerbino," doubtless in joy
of the rare way which its owner had found of escaping from the Saracen.
O blessed soul, that heldest thy virtue and thy fidelity dearer to thee
than life and youth! go in peace, then soul blessed and beautiful. If any
words of mine could have force in them sufficient to endure so long, hard
would I labour to give them all the worthiness that art can bestow, so
that the world might rejoice in thy name for thousands and thousands of
years. Go in peace, and take thy seat in the skies, and be an example to
womankind of faith beyond all weakness.
[Footnote 1: The ingenious martyrdom in this story, which has been told
by other writers of fiction, is taken from an alleged fact related in
Barbaro's treatise _De Re Uxoria_. It is said, indeed, to have been
actually resorted to more than once; and possibly may have been so, even
from a knowledge of it; for what is more natural with heroical minds than
that the like outrages should produce the like virtues? But the colouring
of Ariosto's narration is peculiarly his own; and his apostrophe at the
close beautiful. ]
TASSO:
Critical Notice of his Life and Genius.
Critical Notice
OF
TASSO'S LIFE AND GENIUS. [1]
The romantic poetry of Italy having risen to its highest and apparently
its most lawless pitch in the _Orlando Furioso_, a reaction took place in
the next age in the _Jerusalem Delivered_. It did not hurt, however, the
popularity of Ariosto. It only increased the number of poetic readers;
and under the auspices, or rather the control, of a Luther-fearing
Church, produced, if not as classical a work as it claimed to be, or
one, in the true sense of the word, as catholic as its predecessor, yet
certainly a far more Roman Catholic, and at the same time very delightful
fiction. The circle of fabulous narrative was thus completed, and a link
formed, though in a very gentle and qualified manner, both with Dante's
theocracy and the obvious regularity of the _Aeneid_, the oldest romance
of Italy.
The author of this epic of the Crusades was of a family so noble and
so widely diffused, that, under the patronage of the emperors and the
Italian princes, it flourished in a very remarkable manner, not only in
its own country, but in Flanders, Germany, and Spain. There was a
Tasso once in England, ambassador of Philip the Second; another, like
Cervantes, distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto; and a third
gave rise to the sovereign German house of Tour and Taxis. _Taxus_ is the
Latin of Tasso. The Latin word, like the Italian, means both a badger
and a yew-tree; and the family in general appear to have taken it in the
former sense.
nose, and the wit shot up to its place at once. Turpin acknowledges that
the Paladin, for a long time afterwards, led the life of a sage man,
till, unfortunately, a mistake which he made lost him his brains a second
time. [15]
The Evangelist now presented him with the vial containing the wits of
Orlando, and the travellers quitted the vale of Lost Treasure. Before
they returned to earth, however, the good saint chewed his guest other
curiosities, and favoured him with many a sage remark, particularly on
the subject of poets, and the neglect of them by courts. He shewed him
how foolish it was in princes and other great men not to make friends of
those who can immortalise them; and observed, with singular indulgence,
that crimes themselves might be no hindrance to a good name with
posterity, if the poet were but feed well enough for spices to embalm the
criminal. He instanced the cases of Homer and Virgil.
"You are not to take for granted," said he, "that Æneas was so pious
as fame reports him, or Achilles and Hector so brave. Thousands and
thousands of warriors have excelled them; but their descendents bestowed
fine houses and estates on great writers, and it is from their honoured
pages that all the glory has proceeded. Augustus was no such religious or
clement prince as the trumpet of Virgil has proclaimed him. It was his
good taste in poetry that got him pardoned his iniquitous proscription.
Nero himself might have fared as well as Augustus, had he possessed as
much wit. Heaven and earth might have been his enemies to no purpose, had
he known how to keep friends with good authors. Homer makes the Greeks
victorious, the Trojans a poor set, and Penelope undergo a thousand
wrongs rather than be unfaithful to her husband; and yet, if you would
have the real truth of the matter, the Greeks were beaten, and the
Trojans the conquerors, and Penelope was a --. [16] See, on the other
hand, what infamy has become the portion of Dido. She was honest to her
heart's core; and yet, because Virgil was no friend of hers, she is
looked upon as a baggage.
"Be not surprised," concluded the good saint, "if I have expressed myself
with warmth on this subject. I love writers, and look upon their cause as
my own, for I was a writer myself when I lived among you; and I succeeded
so well in the vocation, that time and death will never prevail against
me. Just therefore is it, that I should be thankful to my beloved Master,
who procured me so great a lot. I grieve for writers who have fallen
on evil times--men that, with pale and hungry faces, find the doors of
courtesy closed against all their hardships. This is the reason there are
so few poets now, and why nobody cares to study. Why should he study? The
very beasts abandon places where there is nothing to feed them. "
At these words the eyes of the blessed old man grew so inflamed with
anger, that they sparkled like two fires. But he presently suppressed
what he felt; and, turning with a sage and gracious smile to the Paladin,
prepared to accompany him back to earth with his wonted serenity.
He accordingly did so in the sacred car: and Astolfo, after receiving his
gentle benediction, descended on his hippogriff from the mountain, and,
joining the delighted Paladins with the vial, his wits were restored, as
you have heard, to the noble Orlando.
The figure which is here cut by St. John gives this remarkable satire a
most remarkable close. His association of himself with the fraternity of
authors was thought a little "strong" by Ariosto's contemporaries. The
lesson read to the house of Este is obvious, and could hardly have been
pleasant to men reputed to be such "criminals" themselves. Nor can
Ariosto, in this passage, be reckoned a very flattering or conscientious
pleader for his brother-poets. Resentment, and a good jest, seem to have
conspired to make him forget what was due to himself.
The original of St. John's remarks about Augustus and the ancient poets
must not be omitted. It is exquisite of its kind, both in matter and
style. Voltaire has quoted it somewhere with rapture.
"Non fu sì santo nè benigno Augusto
Come la tuba di Virgilio suona:
L'aver avuto in poesia buon gusto
La proscrizion iniqua gli perdona.
Nessun sapria se Neron fosse ingiusto,
Nè sua fama saria forse men buona,
Avesse avuto e terra e ciel nimici,
Se gli scrittor sapea tenersi amici.
Omero Agamennon vittorioso,
E fe' i Trojan parer vili et inerti;
E che Penelopea fida al suo sposo
Da i prochi mille oltraggi avea sofferti:
E, se tu vuoi che 'l ver non ti sia ascoso,
Tutta al contrario l'istoria converti:
Che i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice,
E che Penelopea fu meretrice.
Da l'altra parte odi che fama lascia
Elissa, ch'ebbe il cor tanto pudico;
Che riputata viene una bagascia,
Solo perchè Maron non le fu amico. "
Canto xxxv. st. 26. ]
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: See p. 192. ]
[Footnote 2: Ariosto is here imitating Pulci, and bearding Dante. See
vol. i. p. 336. ]
[Footnote 3: I know of no story of a cruel Lydia but the poet's own
mistress of that name, whom I take to be the lady here "shadowed forth. "
See Life, p. 114. ]
[Footnote 4: The story of Anaxarete is in Ovid, lib. xiv. Every body
knows that of Daphne, who made Apollo, as Ariosto says, "run so much"
(correr tanto). Theseus and Jason are in hell, as deserters of Ariadne
and Medea; Amnon, for the atrocity recorded in the Bible (2 Samuel, chap.
xiii. ); and Æneas for interfering with Turnus and Lavinia, and taking
possession of places he had no right to. It is delightful to see the
great, generous poet going upon grounds of reason and justice in the
teeth of the trumped-up rights of the "pious Æneas," that shabby deserter
of Dido, and canting prototype of Augustus. He turns the tables, also,
with brave candour, upon the tyrannical claims of the stronger sex to
privileges which they deny the other; and says, that there are more
faithless men in Hell than faithless women; which, if personal infidelity
sends people there, most undoubtedly is the case beyond all comparison. ]
[Footnote 5: "Che di soävità l'alma notriva" is beautiful; but the
passage, as a whole, is not well imitated from the Terrestrial Paradise
of Dante. It is not bad in itself, but it is very inferior to the one
that suggested it. See vol. i. p. 210, &c. Ariosto's Terrestrial Paradise
was at home, among the friends who loved him, and whom he made happy. ]
[Footnote 6: This is better; and the house made of one jewel thirty miles
in circuit is an extravagance that becomes reasonable on reflection,
affording a just idea of what might be looked for among the endless
planetary wonders of Nature, which confound all our relative ideas of
size and splendour. The "lucid vermilion" of a structure so enormous, and
under a sun so pure, presents a gorgeous spectacle to the imagination.
Dante himself, if he could have forgiven the poet his animal spirits
and views of the Moon so different from his own, might have stood in
admiration before an abode at once so lustrous and so vast. ]
[Footnote 7:
"De' frutti a lui del Paradiso diero,
Di tal sapor, ch'a suo giudizio, sanza
Scusa non sono i due primi parenti,
Se pur quei fur si poco ubbidienti. "
Canto xxxiv. st. 60. ]
[Footnote 8: Modern astronomers differ very much both with Dante's and
Ariosto's Moon; nor do the "argent fields" of Milton appear better placed
in our mysterious satellite, with its no-atmosphere and no-water, and its
tremendous precipices. It is to be hoped (and believed) that knowledge
will be best for us all in the end; for it is not always so by the way.
It displaces beautiful ignorances. ]
[Footnote 9: Very fine and scornful, I think, this. Mighty monarchies
reduced to actual bladders, which, little too as they were, contained big
sounds. ]
[Footnote 10: Such, I suppose, as was given at convent-gates. ]
[Footnote 11: The pretended gift of the palace of St. John Lateran, the
foundation of the pope's temporal sovereignty. This famous passage was
quoted and translated by Milton.
"Di varii fiori ad on gran monte passa
Ch'ebbe già buon odore, or putia forte.
Questo era il dono (se però dir lece)
Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece. "
Canto xxxiv. st. 80.
The lines were not so bold in the first edition. They stood thus
"Ad un monte di rose e gigli passa,
Ch'ebbe già buon odore, or putia forte,
Ch'era corrotto; e da Giovanni intese,
Che fu un gran don ch'un gran signor mal spese. "
"He came to a mount of lilies and roses, that once had a sweet smell,
but now stank with corruption; and be understood from John that it was a
great gift which a great lord ill expended. "
The change of these lines to the stronger ones in the third edition, as
they now stand, served to occasion a charge against Ariosto of having got
his privilege of publication from the court of Rome for passages which
never existed, and which he afterwards basely introduced; but, as Panizzi
observes, the third edition had a privilege also; so that the papacy
put its hand, as it were, to these very lines. This is remarkable; and
doubtless it would not have occurred in some other ages. The Spanish
Inquisition, for instance, erased it, though the holy brotherhood found
no fault with the story of Giocondo. ]
[Footnote 12: "Sol la pazzia non v'è, poca nè assai;
Che sta quà giù, nè se ne parte mai"
St. 78. ]
[Footnote 13: Part of this very striking passage is well translated by
Harrington
"He saw some of his own lost time and deeds,
And yet he knew them not to be his own. "
I have heard these lines more than once repeated with touching
earnestness by Charles Lamb. ]
[Footnote 14: Readers need not have the points of this exquisite satire
pointed out to them. In noticing it, I only mean to enjoy it in their
company--particularly the passage about the men accounted wisest, and the
emphatic "I mean, sense" (Io dico, il senno). ]
[Footnote 15: Admirable lesson to frailty! ]
[Footnote 16: I do not feel warranted in injuring the strength of the
term here made use of by the indignant apostle, and yet am withheld from
giving it in all its force by the delicacy, real or false, of the times.
I must therefore leave it to be supplied by the reader according to the
requirements of his own feelings. ]
ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.
Argument.
The Duke of Albany, pretending to be in love with a damsel in the service
of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess
herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being
in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the
damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night,
and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived,
disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother
Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, who, according to the laws of
Scotland, is sentenced to death for her supposed lawless passion.
Lurcanio then challenges the unknown paramour (for the duke's face had
not been discerned in the balcony); and Ariodante, who is not dead, is
fighting him in disguise, when the Paladin Rinaldo comes up, discloses
the whole affair, and slays the deceiver.
ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. [1]
Charlemagne had suffered a great defeat at Paris, and the Paladin Rinaldo
was sent across the Channel to ask succours of the King of England; but a
tempest arose ere he could reach the coast, and drove him northwards upon
that of Scotland, where he found himself in the Caledonian Forest, a
place famous of old for knightly adventure. Many a clash of arms had been
heard in its shady recesses--many great things had been done there by
knights from all quarters, particularly the Tristans and the Launcelots,
and the Gawains, and others of the Round Table of King Arthur.
Rinaldo, bidding the ship await him at the town of Berwick, plunged into
the forest with no other companion than his horse Bayardo, seeking the
wildest paths he could find, in the hope of some strange adventure. [2] He
put up, for the first day, at an abbey which was accustomed to entertain
the knights and ladies that journeyed that way; and after availing
himself of its hospitality, he inquired of the abbot and his monks if
they could direct him where to find what he looked for. They said that
plenty of adventures were to be met with in the forest; but that, for the
most part, they remained in as much obscurity as the spots in which they
occurred. It would be more becoming his valour, they thought, to exert
itself where it would not be hidden; and they concluded with telling him
of one of the noblest chances for renown that ever awaited a sword. The
daughter of their king was in need of a defender against a certain baron
of the name of Lurcanio, who sought to deprive her both of life and
reputation. He accused her of having been found in the arms of a lover
without the license of the priest; which, by the laws of Scotland, was a
crime only to be expiated at the stake, unless a champion could be found
to disprove the charge before the end of a month. Unfortunately the month
had nearly expired, and no champion yet made his appearance, though the
king had promised his daughter's hand to anybody of noble blood who
should establish her innocence; and the saddest part of the thing was,
that she was accounted innocent by all the world, and a very pattern of
modesty.
While this horrible story was being told him, the Paladin fell into a
profound state of thought. After remaining silent for a little while,
at the close of it he looked up, and said, "A lady then, it seems, is
condemned to death for having been too kind to one lover, while thousands
of our sex are playing the gallant with whomsoever they please, and
not only go unpunished for it, but are admired! Perish such infamous
injustice! The man was a madman who made such a law, and they are little
better who maintain it. I hope in God to be able to shew them their
error. "
The good monks agreed, that their ancestors were very unwise to make such
a law, and kings very wrong who could, but would not, put an end to it.
So, when the morning came, they speeded their guest on his noble purpose
of fighting in the lady's behalf. A guide from the abbey took him a short
cut through the forest towards the place where the matter was to be
decided; but, before they arrived, they heard cries of distress in a dark
quarter of the forest, and, turning their horses thither to see what it
was, they observed a damsel between two vagabonds, who were standing over
her with drawn swords. The moment the wretches saw the new comer, they
fled; and Rinaldo, after re-assuring the damsel, and requesting to know
what had brought her to a pass so dreadful, made his guide take her up
on his horse behind him, in order that they might lose no more time. The
damsel, who was very beautiful, could not speak at first, for the horror
of what she had expected to undergo; but, on Rinaldo's repeating his
request, she at length found words, and, in a voice of great humility,
began to relate her story.
But before she begins, the poet interferes with an impatient remark. --"Of
all the creatures in existence," cries he, "whether they be tame or wild,
whether they are in a state of peace or of war, man is the only one that
lays violent hands on the female of his species. The bear offers no
injury to his; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion; the heifer
has no fear of the horns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury
from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind?
Husband and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one
another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some times with
bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow himself to give a blow to a
woman, or to hurt even a hair of her head, is a violater of nature, and a
rebel against God; but to poison her, to strangle her, to take the soul
out of her body with a knife,--he that can do that, never will I believe
him to be a man at all, but a fiend out of hell with a man's face. "[3]
Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo,
and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony
for ever.
But to return to what she was going to say. --
"You are to know, sir," she began, "that I have been from my childhood in
the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with
her; I was held in bonour, and I led a happy life, till it pleased the
cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that
there was no being on earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He
pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my
heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the
palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the princess
regarded as most exclusively her own; for there she kept her jewels, and
there she was accustomed to sleep during inclement states of the weather.
It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which
looked out to some lonely ruins; and nobody ever passed that way, day or
night.
"Our intercourse continued for several months; and, finding that I placed
all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day
a design he had upon the princess's hand; nay, did not blush to ask my
assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own,
when I confess that I undertook to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer
to the princess's than to mine; and he pretended that he sought the
alliance merely on that account; protesting that he should love me more
than ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name.
But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please
him.
"Day and night I exerted all my endeavours to recommend him to the
princess. Heaven is my witness that I did it in real earnest, however
wrong it was. But my labour was to no purpose, for she was in love
herself. She returned in all its warmth the passion of a most
accomplished and valiant gentleman, who had come into Scotland with a
younger brother from Italy, and who had made himself such a favourite
with every body, my lover included, that the king himself had bestowed on
him titles and estates, and put him on a footing with the greatest lords
of the land.
"Unfortunately, the princess not only turned a deaf ear to all I said
in the duke's favour, but grew to dislike him in proportion to my
recommendation; so that, finding there was no likelihood of his success,
his own love was secretly turned into hate and rage. He studied, little
as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect
of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient,
which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He
pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in
his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in
reality; and, in order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress
myself in the identical clothes which the princess put off when she went
to bed that night, and then to appear in them at my usual post in the
balcony, and so let down the ladder as though I were her very self, and
receive him into my arms.
"I did all that he desired, mad fool that I was; and out of the part
which I played has come all this mischief. I have intimated to you that
the duke and Ariodante (for such was the other's name) had been good
friends before Ginevra preferred hint to my false lover. Pretending
therefore to be still his friend, and entering on the subject of a
passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his
wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially
as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if
he pleased, might have ocular testimony. "Greatly astonished at this news
was Ariodante. He had received all the proofs of his mistress's affection
which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest
scorn refused to believe it; but as the duke, with the air of a man who
could not help the melancholy communication, quietly persisted in his
story, the unhappy lover found himself compelled, at any rate, to let
him afford those proofs of her infidelity which he asserted to be in his
power. The consequence was, that Ariodante came with his brother to the
ruins I spoke of; and there the two were posted on the night when I
played my unhappy part in the balcony. He brought Lurcanio with him (that
was the brother's name), because he suspected that the duke had a design
on his life, not conceiving what he alleged against Ginevra to be
possible. Lurcanio, however, was not in the secret of his brother's
engagement with the princess. It had been disclosed hitherto neither to
him nor to any one, the lady not yet having chosen to divulge it to the
king himself. Ariodante, therefore, requested his brother to take his
station at a little distance, out of sight of the palace, and not to come
to him unless he should call: 'otherwise, my dear brother,' concluded he,
'stir not a step, if you love me. ' "'Doubt me not,' said Lurcanio; and,
with these words, the latter entrenched himself in his post.
"Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony,--the only person
visible at that moment in all the place. In a few minutes the Duke
of Albany appeared below it, making the signal to which I had been
accustomed; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes
of both, and let down the ladder.
"Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mysterious
situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears
for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little
distance; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely
houses, perceived all that was going on.
"I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which
the princess had put off that night; and as I was not unlike her in air
and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies
of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite
sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her
very self. The duke impatiently mounted the ladder; I received him as
impatiently in my arms; and circumstances, though from very different
feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour.
"You may imagine the grief of Ariodante. It rose at once to despair. He
did not call out; so that, had not his brother followed him, still worse
would have ensued than did; for he drew his sword, and was proceeding in
distraction to fall upon it, when Lurcanio rushed in and stopped him.
'Miserable brother! ' exclaimed he, 'are you mad? Would you die for a
woman like this? You see what a wretch she is. I discern all your case
at once, and, thank God, have preserved you to turn your sword where it
ought to be turned, against the defender of such a pattern of infamy. '
"Ariodante put up his sword, and suffered himself to be led away by his
brother. He even pretended, in a little while, to be able to review his
condition calmly, but not the less had he secretly resolved to perish.
Next day he disappeared, nobody knew whither; and about eight days
afterwards, news was secretly brought to Ginevra, by a pilgrim, that he
had thrown himself from a headland into the sea.
"'I met him by chance,' said the pilgrim, 'and we happened to be standing
on the top of the headland, conversing, when he cried out to me, 'Relate
to the princess what you beheld on parting from me; and add, that the
cause of it was my having seen too much. Happy had it been for me had I
been blind! ' And with these words,' concluded the pilgrim, 'he leaped
into the sea below, and was instantly buried beneath it. '
"The princess turned as pale as death at this story, and for a while
remained stupefied. But, alas! what a scene was it my fate to witness,
when she found herself in her chamber at night, able to give way to her
misery. She tore her clothes, and her very flesh, and her beautiful
hair, and kept repeating the last words of her lover with amazement and
despair.
The disappearance of Ariodante, and a rumour which transpired of his
having slain himself on account of some hidden anguish, surprised and
afflicted the whole court. But his brother Lurcanio evinced more and more
his impatience at it, and let fall the most terrible words. At length
he entered the court when the king was holding one of his fullest
assemblies, and laid open, as he thought, the whole matter; setting forth
how his unhappy brother had secretly, but honourably, loved the princess;
how she had professed to love him in return; and how she had grossly
deceived him, and played him impudently false before his own eyes. He
concluded with calling upon her unknown paramour to come forth, and shew
reasons against him with his sword why she ought not to die.
"I need not tell you what the king suffered at hearing this strange and
terrible recital. He lost no time in sharply investigating the truth of
the allegation; and for this purpose, among other proceedings, he sent
for the ladies of his daughter's chamber. You may judge, sir,--especially
as, I blush to say it, I still loved the Duke of Albany,--that I could
not await an examination like that. I hastened to meet the duke, who was
as anxious to get me out of the way as I was to go; and to this end,
professing the greatest zeal for my security, he commissioned two men to
convey me secretly to a fortress he possessed in this forest. 'Tis at no
great distance from the place where Heaven sent you to my deliverance.
You saw, sir, how little those wretches intended to take me anywhere
except to my grave; and by this you may judge of the agonies and shame I
have endured in knowing what a dupe I have been to one of the cruelest of
men. But thus it is that Love treats his most faithful servants. "
The damsel here concluded her story; and the Paladin, rejoicing at having
become possessed of all that was required to establish the falsehood of
the duke, proceeded with her on his road to St.
Andrews, where the lists
had been set up for the determination of the question. The king and his
court were anxiously praying at that instant for the arrival of some
champion to fight with the dreaded Lurcanio; for the month, as I have
stated, was nearly expired, and this terrible brother appeared to have
the business all his own way; so that the stake was soon to be looked for
at which the hapless Ginevra was to die.
Fast and eagerly the Paladin rode for St. Andrews, with his squire and
the trembling damsel, who was now agitated for new reasons, though the
knight gave her assurances of his protection. They were not far from
the city when they found people talking of a champion who had certainly
arrived, but whose name was unknown, and his face constantly concealed by
his visor. Even his own squire, it seems, did not know him; for the
man had but lately been taken into his service. Rinaldo, as soon as
he entered the city, left the damsel in a place of security, and then
spurred his horse to the scene of action, when he found the accuser and
the champion in the very midst of the fight. The Paladin, whose horse,
notwithstanding the noise of the combat, had been heard coming like a
tempest, and whose sudden and heroical appearance turned all eyes towards
him, rode straight to the royal canopy, and, begging the king to stop the
combat, disclosed the whole state of the matter, to the enchantment of
all present, except the Duke of Albany; for the villain himself was on
horseback there in state as grand constable, and had been feasting his
miserable soul with the hope of seeing Ginevra condemned. The combatants
were soon changed. Instead of Lurcanio and the unknown champion (whom the
new comer had taken care to extol for his generosity), it was the Paladin
and the Duke that were opposed; and horribly did the latter's heart fail
him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short
work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound
of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him
at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false
bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The
conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled
the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when
life forsook him. Rinaldo then took off his own helmet; and the king,
who had seen the great Paladin before, and who felt more rejoiced at his
daughter's deliverance than if he had lost and regained his crown, lifted
up his hands to heaven, and thanked God for having honoured her innocence
with so illustrious a defender.
The other champion, who, in the mean time, had been looking on through
the eyelets of his visor, was now entreated to disclose his own face. He
did so with peculiar emotion, and king and all recognised with transport
the face of the loved and, as it was supposed, lost Ariodante. The
pilgrim, however, had told no falsehood. The lover had indeed thrown
himself into the sea, and disappeared from the man's eyes; but (as
oftener happens than people suppose) the death which was desired when
not present became hated when it was so; and Ariodante, lover as he
was, rising at a little distance, struck out lustily for the shore, and
reached it. [4] He felt even a secret contempt for his attempt to kill
himself; yet putting up at an hermitage, became interested in the reports
concerning the princess, whose sorrow flattered, and whose danger,
though he could not cease to think her guilty, afflicted him. He grew
exasperated with the very brother he loved, when he found that Lurcanio
pursued her thus to the death; and on all these accounts he made his
appearance at the place of combat to fight him, though not to slay. His
purpose was to seek his own death. He concluded that Ginevra would then
see who it was that had really loved her, while his brother would mourn
the rashness which made him pursue the destruction of a woman. "Guilty
she is," thought he, "but no such guilt can deserve so cruel a
punishment. Besides, I could not bear that she should die before me. She
is still the woman I love, still the idol of my thoughts. Right or wrong,
I must die in her behalf. "
With this intention he purchased a suit of black armour, and obtained a
squire unknown in those parts, and so made his appearance in the lists.
What ensued there I need not repeat; but the king was so charmed with the
issue of the whole business, with the resuscitation of the favourite whom
he thought dead, and the restoration of the more than life of his beloved
daughter, that, to the joy of all Scotland, and at the special instance
of the great Paladin, he made the two lovers happy without delay; and the
bride brought her husband for dowry the title and estates of the man who
had wronged him.
[Footnote 1: The main point of this story, the personation of Ginevra by
one of her ladies, has been repeated by many writers--among others by
Shakspeare, in _Much Ado about Nothing_. The circumstance is said to have
actually occurred in Ferrara, and in Ariosto's own time. Was Ariosto
himself a party? "Ariodante" almost includes his name; and it is certain
that he was once in love with a lady of the name of Ginevra. ]
[Footnote 2: Rinaldo is an ambassador, and one upon very urgent business;
yet he halts by the way in search of adventures. This has been said to be
in the true taste of knight-errantry; and in one respect it is so. We
may imagine, however, that the ship is wind-bound, and that he meant to
return to it on change of weather. The Caledonian Forest, it is to be
observed, is close at hand. ]
[Footnote 3: All honour and glory to the manly and loving poet!
"Lavezzuola," says Panizzi, "doubts the conjugal concord of beasts, more
particularly of bears. 'Ho letto presso degno autore un orso aver cavato
un occhio ad un orsa con la zampa. ' (I have read in an author worthy of
credit, that a bear once deprived a she-bear of an eye with a blow of his
paw. ) The reader may choose between Ariosto and this nameless author,
which of them is to be believed. I, of course, am for my poet. "--Vol. i.
p. 84. I am afraid, however, that Lavezzuola is right. Even turtle-doves
are said not to be always the models of tenderness they are supposed
to be. Brutes have even devoured their offspring. The violence is most
probably owing (at least in excessive cases) to some unnatural condition
of circumstances. ]
[Footnote 4: This is quite in Ariosto's high and bold taste for truth
under all circumstances. A less great and unmisgiving poet would have had
the lover picked up by a fisherman. ]
SUSPICION [1]
It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the world than a just
prince--a thoroughly good man, who shuns no part of the burden of his
duty, though it bend him double; who loves and cares for his people as a
father does for his children, and who is almost incessantly occupied in
their welfare, very seldom for his own.
Such a man puts himself in front of dangers and difficulties in order
that he may be a shield to others; for he is not a mercenary, taking care
of none but himself when he sees the wolf coming; he is the right good
shepherd, staking his own life in that of his flock, and knowing the
faces of every one of them, just as they do his own.
Such princes, in times of old, were Saturn, Hercules, Jupiter, and
others--men who reigned gently, yet firmly, equal to all chances that
came, and worthy of the divine honours that awaited them. For mankind
could not believe that they quitted the world in the same way as other
men. They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of
demigods.
When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate
their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height
of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and,
at all events, public decency is observed. Oh, blessed kingdoms that are
governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the
mercy of a man without justice--a fellow-creature without feelings!
Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of
posterity. Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and
Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might.
I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the
dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse
under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of
the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains
by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were
sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.
But they are not without torments of their own. At the core of their own
hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies. There he stands
every day and every moment--one who was born of the same mother with
Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his
infant brethren before they saw the light. His name is Suspicion. [2]
Yes, Suspicion;--the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest
that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being.
This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and
lowly. He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune
has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures. Well may the man hug
himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants
are in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge
taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret. The fear
which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch
afraid of every soul among them.
Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of
it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon
the hearts of his race. He was one of the first who took to the custom
of wearing beards, for, great as he was, he had a fear of the race of
barbers! He built a tower in his palace, guarded by deep ditches and
thick walls. It had but one drawbridge and one bay-window. There was no
other opening; so that the very light of day had scarcely admittance, or
the inmates a place to breathe at. In this tower he slept; and it was his
wife's business to put a ladder down for him when he came in. A dog kept
watch at the drawbridge; and except the dog and the wife, not a soul was
to be discerned about the place. Yet he had such little trust in her,
that he always sent spies to look about the room before he withdrew for
the night.
Of what use was it all? The woman herself killed him with his own sword,
and his soul went straight to hell.
Rhadamanthus, the judge there, thrust him under the boiling lake, but was
astonished to find that he betrayed no symptoms of anguish. He did not
weep and howl as the rest did, or cry out, "I burn, I burn! " He evinced
so little suffering, that Rhadamanthus said, "I must put this fellow into
other quarters. " Accordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the
torments are beyond all others.
Nevertheless, even here he seemed to be under no distress. At length they
asked him the reason. The wretch then candidly acknowledged, that hell
itself had no torments for him, compared with those which suspicion had
given him on earth.
The sages of hell laid their heads together at this news. Amelioration of
his lot on the part of a sinner was not to be thought of in a place of
eternal punishment; so they called a parliament together, the result of
which was an unanimous conclusion, that the man should be sent back to
earth, and consigned to the torments of suspicion for ever.
He went; and the earthly fiend re-entered his being anew with a subtlety
so incorporate, that their two natures were identified, and he became
SUSPICION ITSELF. Fruits are thus engrafted on wild stocks. One colour
thus becomes the parent of many, when the painter takes a portion of this
and of that from his palette in order to imitate flesh.
The new being took up his abode on a rock by the sea-shore, a thousand
feet high, girt all about with mouldering crags, which threatened every
instant to fall. It had a fortress on the top, the approach to which was
by seven drawbridges, and seven gates, each locked up more strongly than
the other; and here, now this moment, constantly thinking Death is upon
him, Suspicion lives in everlasting terror. He is alone. He is ever
watching. He cries out from the battlements, to see that the guards are
awake below, and never does he sleep day or night. He wears mail upon
mail, and mail again, and feels the less safe the more he puts on; and is
always altering and strengthening everything on gate, and on barricado,
and on ditch, and on wall. And do whatever he will, he never seems to
have done enough.
* * * * *
Great poet, and good man, Ariosto! your terrors are better than Dante's;
for they warn, as far as warning can do good, and they neither afflict
humanity nor degrade God.
Spenser has imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry; for, by a curious
intermixture of all which the mind can experience from such a fiction,
pleasant it is in the midst of its sublimity,--laughable with satirical
archness, as well as grand and terrible in the climax. The transformation
in Spenser is from a jealous man into Jealousy. His wife has gone to live
with the Satyrs, and a villain has stolen his money. The husband, in
order to persuade his wife to return, steals into the horde of the
Satyrs, by mixing with their flock of goats,--as Norandino does in a
passage imitated from Homer by Ariosto. The wife flatly refuses to do any
such thing, and the poor wretch is obliged to steal out again.
"So soon as he the prison door did pass,
He ran as fast as both his feet could bear,
And never looked who behind him was,
Nor scarcely who before. Like as a bear
That creeping close among the hives, to rear
An honeycomb, the wakeful dogs espy,
And him assailing, sore his carcass tear,
That hardly he away with life does fly,
Nor stays till safe himself he see from jeopardy.
Nor stay'd he till be came unto the place
Where late his treasure he entombèd had;
Where, when he found it not (for Trompart base
Had it purloined for his master bad),
With extreme fury he became quite mad,
And ran away--ran with himself away;
That who so strangely had him seen bestad,
With upstart hair and staring eyes' dismay,
From Limbo-lake him late escapèd sure would say.
High over hills and over dales he fled,
As if the wind him on his wings had borne;
Nor bank nor bush could stay him, when he sped
His nimble feet, as treading still on thorn;
Grief, and Despite, and Jealousy, and Scorn,
Did all the way him follow hard behind;
And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn,
So shamefully forlorn of womankind,
That, as a snake, still lurkèd in his wounded mind.
Still fled he forward, looking backward still;
Nor stay'd his flight nor fearful agony
Till that he came unto a rocky hill
Over the sea suspended dreadfully,
That living creature it would terrify
To look a-down, or upward to the height
From thence he threw himself dispiteously,
All desperate of his fore-damnèd spright,
That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight.
But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought,
He was so wasted and forpinèd quite,
That all his substance was consumed to nought,
And nothing left but like an airy sprite;
That on the rocks he fell so flit and light,
That he thereby received no hurt at all;
But chancèd on a craggy cliff to light;
Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl,
That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.
Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there
Resolved to build his baleful mansion,
In dreary darkness, and continual fear
Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon
Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon,
That he dare never sleep, but that one eye
Still ope he keeps for that occasion;
Nor ever rests he in tranquillity,
The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.
Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed
But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous,
Which in his cold complexion do breed
A filthy blood, or humour rancorous,
Matter of doubt and dread suspicious,
That doth with cureless care consume the heart,
Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious,
Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart,
And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.
Yet can he never die, but dying lives,
And doth himself with sorrow new sustain,
That death and life at once unto him gives,
And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain;
There dwells he ever, miserable swain,
Hateful both to himself and every wight;
Where he, through privy grief and horror vain,
Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite
Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight. "
Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's;
but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special
circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of
hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But
nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us
as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts
on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to
the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.
[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the _Furioso_, but
in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name
of the _Five Cantos_. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of
correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious
one, especially as it seems to have been written after the _Furioso_;
for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and
politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,--a
whale _inhabited_ by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that
his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in
his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on
the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.
Did Ariosto, by the way, omit Macchiavelli in his list of the friends who
hailed the close of his great poem, from not knowing what to make of his
book entitled the _Prince? _ It has perplexed all the world to this day,
and is not unlikely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on
a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's. ]
[Footnote 2: A tremendous fancy this last!
"Sta for la pena, de la qual dicea
Che nacque quando la brutt'Ira nacque,
La Crudeltade, e la Rapina rea;
E quantunque in un ventre con for giacque,
Di tormentarle mai non rimanea. "]
ISABELLA. [1]
Rodomont, King of Algiers, was the fiercest of all the enemies of
Christendom, not out of love for his own faith (for he had no piety), but
out of hatred to those that opposed him. He had now quarrelled, however,
with his friends too. He had been rejected by a lady, in favour of the
Tartar king, Mandricardo, and mortified by the publicity of the rejection
before his own lord paramount, Agramante, the leader of the infidel
armies. He could not bear the rejection; he could not bear the sanction
of it by his liege lord; he resolved to quit the scene of warfare and
return to Africa; and, in the course of his journey thither, he had come
into the south of France, where, observing a sequestered spot that suited
his humour, be changed his mind as to going home, and persuaded himself
he could live in it for the rest of his life. He accordingly took up his
abode with his attendants in a chapel, which had been deserted by its
clergy during the rage of war.
This vehement personage was standing one morning at the door of the
chapel in a state of unusual thoughtfulness, when he beheld coming
towards him, through a path in the green meadow before it, a lady of
a lovely aspect, accompanied by a bearded monk. They were followed by
something covered with black, which they were bringing along on a great
horse.
Alas! the lady was the widow of Zerbino, the Scottish prince, who spared
the life of Medoro, and who now himself lay dead under that pall. He
had expired in her arms from wounds inflicted during a combat with
Mandricardo; and she had been thrown by the loss into such anguish of
mind that she would have died on his sword but for the intervention of
the hermit now with her, who persuaded her to devote the rest of her days
to God in a nunnery. She had now come into Provence with the good man for
that purpose, and to bury the corpse of her husband in the chapel which
they were approaching.
Though the lady seemed lost in grief, and was very pale, and had her hair
all about the ears, and though she did nothing but weep and lament, and
looked in all respects quite borne down with her misery, nevertheless she
was still so beautiful that love and grace appeared to be indestructible
in her aspect. The moment the Saracen beheld her, he dismissed from his
mind all the determinations he had made to hate and detest
The gentle bevy, that adorns the world.
He was bent solely on obtaining the new angel before him. She seemed
precisely the sort of person to make him forget the one that had rejected
him. Advancing, therefore, to meet her without delay, he begged, in as
gentle a manner as he could assume, to know the cause of her sorrow.
The lady, with all the candour of wretchedness, explained who she was,
and how precious a burden she was conveying to its last home, and the
resolution she had taken to withdraw from a vain world into the service
of God. The proud pagan, who had no belief in a God, much less any
respect for restraints or fidelities of what kind soever, forgot his
assumed gravity when he heard this determination, and laughed outright at
the simplicity of such a proceeding. He pronounced it, in his peremptory
way, to be foolish and frivolous; compared it with the miser who, in
burying a treasure, does good neither to himself nor any one else; and
said, that lions and serpents might indeed be shut up in cages, but not
things lovely and innocent.
The monk, overhearing these observations, thought it his duty to
interfere. He calmly opposed all which the other asserted, and then
proceeded to set forth a repast of spiritual consolation not at all to
the Saracen's taste. The fierce warrior interrupted the preacher several
times; told him that he had nothing to do with the lady, and that the
sooner he returned to his cell the better; but the hermit, nothing
daunted, went on with his advice till his antagonist lost all patience.
He laid hands on his sacred person; seized him by the beard; tore away
as much of it as he grasped; and at length worked himself up into such a
pitch of fury, that he griped the good man's throat with all the force of
a pair of pincers, and, swinging him twice or thrice round, as one might
a dog, flung him off the headland into the sea.
What became of the poor creature I cannot say. Reports are various. Some
tell us that he was found on the rocks, dashed all to pieces, so that you
could not distinguish foot from head; others, that he fell into the
sea at the distance of three miles, and perished in consequence of not
knowing how to swim, in spite of the prayers and tears that he addressed
to Heaven; others again affirm, that a saint came and assisted him, and
drew him to shore before people's eyes. I must leave the reader to adopt
which of these accounts he looks upon as the most probable.
The Pagan, as soon as he had thus disposed of the garrulous hermit,
turned towards Isabella (for that was the lady's name), and with a face
some what less disturbed, began to talk to her in the common language of
gallantry, protesting that she was his life and soul, and that he should
not know what to do without her; for the sweetness of her appearance
mollified even him; and indeed, with all his violence, he would rather
have possessed her by fair means than by foul. He therefore flattered
himself that, by a little hypocritical attention, he should dispose her
to return his inclinations.
On the other hand, the poor disconsolate creature, who, in a country
unknown to her, and a place so remote from help, felt like a mouse in the
cat's claws, began casting in her mind by what possible contrivance she
could escape from such a wretch with honour. She had made up her mind to
perish by her own hand, rather than be faithless, however unwillingly, to
the dear husband that had died in her arms: but the question was, how she
could protect herself from the pagan's violence, before she had secured
the means of so doing; for his manner was becoming very impatient, and
his speeches every moment less and less civil.
At length an expedient occurred to her. She told him, that if he would
promise to respect her virtue, she would put him in possession of a
secret that would redound far more to his honour and glory, than any
wrong which he could inflict on the innocent. She conjured him not to
throw away the satisfaction he would experience all the rest of his life
from the consciousness of having done right, for the sake of injuring one
unhappy creature. "There were thousands of her sex," she observed, "with
cheerful as well as beautiful faces, who might rejoice in his affection;
whereas the secret she spoke of was known to scarcely a soul on earth but
herself. "
She then told him the secret; which consisted in the preparation of a
certain herb boiled with ivy and rue over a fire of cypress-wood, and
squeezed into a cup by hands that had never done harm. The juice thus
obtained, if applied fresh every month, had the virtue of rendering
bodies invulnerable. Isabella said she had seen the herb in the
neighbourhood, as she came along, and that she would not only make the
preparation forth-with, but let its effects be proved on her own person.
She only stipulated, that the receiver of the gift should swear not to
offend her purity in deed or word.
The fierce infidel took the oath immediately. It delighted him to think
that he should be enabled to have his fill of war and slaughter for
nothing; and the oath was the more easy to him, inasmuch as he had no
intention of keeping it.
The poor Isabella went into the fields to look for her miraculous herb,
still, however, attended by the Saracen, who would not let her go out of
his sight. She soon found it; and then going with him into his house,
passed the rest of the day and the whole night in preparing the mixture
with busy solemnity,--Rodomont always remaining with her.
The room became so hot and close with the fire of cypress-wood, that the
Saracen, contrary to his law and indeed to his habits, indulged himself
in drinking; and the consequence was, that, as soon as it was morning,
Isabella lost no time in proving to him the success of her operations.
"Now," she said, "you shall be convinced how much in earnest I have been.
You shall see all the virtue of this blessed preparation. I have only to
bathe myself thus, over the head and neck, and if you then strike me with
all your force, as though you intended to cut off my head,--which you
must do in good earnest,--you will see the wonderful result. "
With a glad and rejoicing countenance the paragon of virtue held forth
her neck to the sword; and the bestial pagan, giving way to his natural
violence, and heated perhaps beyond all thought of a suspicion with his
wine, dealt it so fierce a blow, that the head leaped from the shoulders.
Thrice it bounded on the ground where it fell, and a clear voice was
heard to come out of it, calling the name of "Zerbino," doubtless in joy
of the rare way which its owner had found of escaping from the Saracen.
O blessed soul, that heldest thy virtue and thy fidelity dearer to thee
than life and youth! go in peace, then soul blessed and beautiful. If any
words of mine could have force in them sufficient to endure so long, hard
would I labour to give them all the worthiness that art can bestow, so
that the world might rejoice in thy name for thousands and thousands of
years. Go in peace, and take thy seat in the skies, and be an example to
womankind of faith beyond all weakness.
[Footnote 1: The ingenious martyrdom in this story, which has been told
by other writers of fiction, is taken from an alleged fact related in
Barbaro's treatise _De Re Uxoria_. It is said, indeed, to have been
actually resorted to more than once; and possibly may have been so, even
from a knowledge of it; for what is more natural with heroical minds than
that the like outrages should produce the like virtues? But the colouring
of Ariosto's narration is peculiarly his own; and his apostrophe at the
close beautiful. ]
TASSO:
Critical Notice of his Life and Genius.
Critical Notice
OF
TASSO'S LIFE AND GENIUS. [1]
The romantic poetry of Italy having risen to its highest and apparently
its most lawless pitch in the _Orlando Furioso_, a reaction took place in
the next age in the _Jerusalem Delivered_. It did not hurt, however, the
popularity of Ariosto. It only increased the number of poetic readers;
and under the auspices, or rather the control, of a Luther-fearing
Church, produced, if not as classical a work as it claimed to be, or
one, in the true sense of the word, as catholic as its predecessor, yet
certainly a far more Roman Catholic, and at the same time very delightful
fiction. The circle of fabulous narrative was thus completed, and a link
formed, though in a very gentle and qualified manner, both with Dante's
theocracy and the obvious regularity of the _Aeneid_, the oldest romance
of Italy.
The author of this epic of the Crusades was of a family so noble and
so widely diffused, that, under the patronage of the emperors and the
Italian princes, it flourished in a very remarkable manner, not only in
its own country, but in Flanders, Germany, and Spain. There was a
Tasso once in England, ambassador of Philip the Second; another, like
Cervantes, distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto; and a third
gave rise to the sovereign German house of Tour and Taxis. _Taxus_ is the
Latin of Tasso. The Latin word, like the Italian, means both a badger
and a yew-tree; and the family in general appear to have taken it in the
former sense.
