No More Learning

[1]

The congenial spirits of Pulci and Boiardo may be said to have attained
to their height in the person of Ariosto, upon the principle of a
transmigration of souls, or after the fashion of that hero in romance,
who was heir to the bodily strengths of all whom he conquered.

Lodovico Giovanni Ariosto was born on the 8th of September, 1474, in the
fortress at Reggio, in Lombardy, and was the son of Niccolò Ariosto,
captain of that citadel (as Boiardo had been), and Daria Maleguzzi,
whose family still exists. The race was transplanted from Bologna in the
century previous, when Obizzo the Third of Este, Marquess of Ferrara,
married a lady belonging to it, whose Christian name was Lippa. Niccolò
Ariosto, besides holding the same office as Boiardo had done, at Modena
as well as at Reggio, was master of the household to his two successive
patrons, the Dukes Borso and Ercole. He was also employed, like him,
in diplomacy; and was made a count by the Emperor Frederick the Third,
though not, it seems, with remainder to his heirs.

Lodovico was the eldest of ten children, five sons and five daughters.
During his boyhood, theatrical entertainments were in great vogue at
court, as we have seen in the life of Boiardo; and at the age of twelve,
a year after the decease of that poet (who must have been well known to
him, and probably encouraged his attempts), his successor is understood
to have dramatised, after his infant fashion, the story of Pyramus and
Thisbe, and to have got his brothers and sisters to perform it. Panizzi
doubts the possibility of these precocious private theatricals; but
considering what is called "writing" on the part of children, and that
only one other performer was required in the piece, or at best a third
for the lion (which some little brother might have "roared like any
sucking-dove"), I cannot see good reason for disbelieving the story. Pope
was not twelve years old when he turned the siege of Troy into a play,
and got his school-fellows to perform it, the part of Ajax being given to
the gardener. Man is a theatrical animal ([Greek: zoon mimaetikon]), and
the instinct is developed at a very early period, as almost every family
can witness that has taken its children to the "playhouse. "

At fifteen the young poet, like so many others of his class, was
consigned to the study of the law, and took a great dislike to it. The
extreme mobility of his nature, and the wish to please his father, appear
to have made him enter on it willingly enough in the first instance;[2]
but as soon as he betrayed symptoms of disgust, Niccolò, whose affairs
were in a bad way, drove him back to it with a vehemence which must have
made bad worse. [3] At the expiration of five years he was allowed to give
it up.

There is reason to believe that Ariosto was "theatricalising" during
no little portion of this time; for, in his nineteenth year, he is
understood to have been taken by Duke Ercole to Pavia and to Milan,
either as a writer or performer of comedies, probably both, since the
courtiers and ducal family themselves occasionally appeared on the stage;
and one of the poet's brothers mentions his having frequently seen him
dressed in character. [4]

On being delivered from the study of the law, the young poet appears
to have led a cheerful and unrestrained life for the next four or five
years.

He wrote, or began to write, the comedy of the _Cassaria_; probably
meditated some poem in the style of Boiardo, then in the height of his
fame; and he cultivated the Latin language, and intended to learn Greek,
but delayed, and unfortunately missed it in consequence of losing his
tutor. Some of his happiest days were passed at a villa, still possessed
by the Maleguzzi family, called La Mauriziana, two miles from Reggio.
Twenty-five years afterwards he called to mind, with sighs, the pleasant
spots there which used to invite him to write verses; the garden, the
little river, the mill, the trees by the water-side, and all the other
shady places in which he enjoyed himself during that sweet season of his
life "betwixt April and May. "[5] To complete his happiness, he had a
friend and cousin, Pandolfo Ariosto, who loved every thing that he loved,
and for whom he augured a brilliant reputation.

But a dismal cloud was approaching. In his twenty-first year he lost
his father, and found a large family left on his hands in narrow
circumstances. The charge was at first so heavy, especially when
aggravated by the death of Pandolfo, that he tells us he wished to die.
He took to it manfully, however, in spite of these fits of gloom; and he
lived to see his admirable efforts rewarded; his brothers enabled to seek
their fortunes, and his sisters properly taken care of. Two of them, it
seems, had become nuns. A third married; and a fourth remained long in
his house. It is not known what became of the fifth.

In these family-matters the anxious son and brother was occupied for
three or four years, not, however, without recreating himself with his
verses, Latin and Italian, and recording his admiration of a number of
goddesses of his youth. He mentions, in particular, one of the name of
Lydia, who kept him often from "his dear mother and household," and
who is probably represented by the princess of the same name in the
_Orlando_, punished in the smoke of Tartarus for being a jilt and
coquette. [6] His friend Bembo, afterwards the celebrated cardinal,
recommended him to be blind to such little immaterial points as ladies'
infidelities. But he is shocked at the advice. He was far more of
Othello's opinion than Congreve's in such matters; and declared, that he
would not have shared his mistress' good-will with Jupiter himself. [7]

Towards the year 1504, the poet entered the service of the unworthy
prince, Cardinal Ippolito of Este, brother of the new Duke of Ferrara,
Alfonso the First. His eminence, who had been made a prince of the church
at thirteen years of age by the infamous Alexander the Sixth (Borgia),
was at this period little more than one-and-twenty; but he took an active
part in the duke's affairs, both civil and military, and is said to
have made himself conspicuous in his father's lifetime for his vices and
brutality. He is charged with having ordered a papal messenger to be
severely beaten for bringing him some unpleasant despatches: which so
exasperated his unfortunate parent, that he was exiled to Mantua; and the
marquess of that city, his brother-in-law, was obliged to come to Ferrara
to obtain his pardon. But this was a trifle compared with what he
is accused of having done to one of his brothers. A female of their
acquaintance, in answer to a speech made her by the reverend gallant, had
been so unlucky as to say that she preferred his brother Giulio's eyes
to his eminence's whole body: upon which the monstrous villain hired two
ruffians to put out his brother's eyes; some say, was present at the
attempt. Attempt only it fortunately turned out to be, at least in part;
the opinion being, that the sight of one of the eyes was preserved. [8]

Party-spirit has so much to do with stories of princes, and princes are
so little in a condition to notice them, that, on the principle of
not condemning a man till he has been heard in his defence, an honest
biographer would be loath to credit these horrors of Cardinal Ippolito,
did not the violent nature of the times, and the general character of the
man, even with his defenders, incline him to do so. His being a soldier
rather than a churchman was a fault of the age, perhaps a credit to the
man, for he appears to have had abilities for war, and it was no crime of
his if he was put into the church when a boy. But his conduct to Ariosto
shewed him coarse and selfish; and those who say all they can for him
admit that he was proud and revengeful, and that nobody regretted him
when he died. He is said to have had a taste for mathematics, as his
brother had for mechanics. The truth seems to be, that he and the duke,
who lived in troubled times, and had to exert all their strength to
hinder Ferrara from becoming a prey to the court of Rome, were clever,
harsh men, of no grace or elevation of character, and with no taste but
for war; and if it had not been for their connexion with Ariosto, nobody
would have heard of them, except while perusing the annals of the time.
Ippolito might have been, and probably was, the ruffian which the
anecdote of his brother Giulio represents him; but the world would have
heard little of the villany, had he not treated a poet with contempt.

The admirers of our author may wonder how he could become the servant of
such a man, much more how he could praise him as he did in the great work
which he was soon to begin writing. But Ariosto was the son of a man who
had passed his life in the service of the family; he had probably been
taught a loyal blindness to its defects; gratuitous panegyrics of princes
had been the fashion of men of letters since the time of Augustus; and
the poet wanted help for his relatives, and was of a nature to take
the least show of favour for a virtue, till he had learnt, as he
unfortunately did, to be disappointed in the substance. It is not known
what his appointment was under the cardinal. Probably he was a kind of
gentleman of all work; an officer in his guards, a companion to amuse,
and a confidential agent for the transaction of business. The employment
in which he is chiefly seen is that of an envoy, but he is said also to
have been in the field of battle; and he intimates in his _Satires_,
that household attentions were expected of him which he was not quick
to offer, such as pulling off his eminence's boots, and putting on
his spurs. [9] It is certain that he was employed in very delicate
negotiations, sometimes to the risk of his life from the perils of roads
and torrents. Ippolito, who was a man of no delicacy, probably made use
of him on every occasion that required address, the smallest as well
as greatest,--an interview with a pope one day, and a despatch to a
dog-fancier the next.

His great poem, however, proceeded. It was probably begun before he
entered the cardinal's service; certainly was in progress during the
early part of his engagement. This appears from a letter written to
Ippolito by his sister the Marchioness of Mantua, to whom he had sent
Ariosto at the beginning of the year 1509 to congratulate her on the
birth of a child. She gives her brother special thanks for sending his
message to her by "Messer Ludovico Ariosto," who had made her, she says,
pass two delightful days, with giving her an account of the poem he was
writing. [10] Isabella was the name of this princess; and the grateful
poet did not forget to embalm it in his verse. [11]

Ariosto's latest biographer, Panizzi, thinks he never served under any
other leader than the cardinal; but I cannot help being of opinion with a
former one, whom he quotes, that he once took arms under a captain of the
name of Pio, probably a kinsman of his friend Alberto Pio, to whom he
addresses a Latin poem. It was probably on occasion of some early disgust
with the cardinal; but I am at a loss to discover at what period of time.
Perhaps, indeed, he had the cardinal's permission, both to quit his
service, and return to it. Possibly he was not to quit it at all, except
according to events; but merely had leave given him to join a party in
arms, who were furthering Ippolito's own objects. Italy was full of
captains in arms and conflicting interests. The poet might even, at some
period of his life, have headed a troop under another cardinal, his
friend Giovanni de' Medici, afterwards Leo the Tenth. He had certainly
been with him in various parts of Italy; and might have taken part in
some of his bloodless, if not his most military, equitations.

Be this as it may, it is understood that Ariosto was present at the
repulse given to the Venetians by Ippolito, when they came up the river
Po against Ferrara towards the close of the year 1509; though he was away
from the scene of action at his subsequent capture of their flotilla, the
poet having been despatched between the two events to Pope Julius the
Second on the delicate business of at once appeasing his anger with the
duke for resisting his allies, and requesting his help to a feudatary of
the church. Julius was in one of his towering passions at first, but
gave way before the address of the envoy, and did what he desired. But
Ariosto's success in this mission was nearly being the death of him in
another; for Alfonso having accompanied the French the year following
in their attack on Vicenza, where they committed cruelties of the same
horrible kind as have shocked Europe within a few months past,[12] the
poet's tongue, it was thought, might be equally efficacious a second
time; but Julius, worn out of patience with his too independent vassal,
who maintained an alliance with the French when the pope had ceased to
desire it, was to be appeased no longer. He excommunicated Alfonso, and
threatened to pitch his envoy into the Tiber; so that the poet was fain
to run for it, as the duke himself was afterwards, when he visited Rome
to be absolved. Would Julius have thus treated Ariosto, could he have
foreseen his renown? Probably he would. The greater the opposition to the
will, the greater the will itself. To chuck an accomplished envoy into
the river would have been much; but to chuck the immortal poet there,
laurels and all, in the teeth of the amazement of posterity, would have
been a temptation irresistible.

It was on this occasion that Ariosto, probably from inability to choose
his times or anodes of returning home, contracted a cough, which is
understood to have shortened his existence; so that Julius may have
killed him after all. But the pope had a worse enemy in his own
bosom--his violence--which killed himself in a much shorter period. He
died in little more than two years afterwards; and the poet's prospects
were all now of a very different sort--at least he thought so; for in
March 1513, his friend Giovanni de' Medici succeeded to the papacy, under
the title of Leo the Tenth.

Ariosto hastened to Rome, among a shoal of visitants, to congratulate the
new pope, perhaps not without a commission from Alfonso to see what he
could do for his native country, on which the rival Medici family never
ceased to have designs. The poet was full of hope, for he had known Leo
under various fortunes; had been styled by him not only a friend, but a
brother; and promised all sorts of participations of his prosperity. Not
one of them came. The visitor was cordially received. Leo stooped from
his throne, squeezed his hand, and kissed him on both his cheeks; but "at
night," says Ariosto, "I went all the way to the Sheep to get my supper,
wet through. " All that Leo gave him was a "bull," probably the one
securing to him the profits of his _Orlando;_ and the poet's friend
Bibbiena--wit, cardinal, and kinsman of Berni--facilitated the bull, but
the receiver discharged the fees. He did not get one penny by promise,
pope, or friend. [13] He complains a little, but all in good humour; and
good-naturedly asks what he was to expect, when so many hungry kinsmen
and partisans were to be served first. Well and wisely asked too, and
with a superiority to his fortunes which Leo and Bibbiena might have
envied.

It is thought probable, however, that if the poet had been less a friend
to the house of Este, Leo would have kept his word with him, for their
intimacy had undoubtedly been of the most cordial description. But it is
supposed that Leo was afraid he should have a Ferrarese envoy constantly
about him, had he detained Ariosto in Rome. The poet, however, it is
admitted, was not a good hunter of preferment. He could not play the
assenter, and bow and importune: and sovereigns, however friendly they
may have been before their elevation, go the way of most princely flesh
when they have attained it. They like to take out a man's gratitude
beforehand, perhaps because they feel little security in it afterwards.

The elevation to the papacy of the cheerful and indulgent son of Lorenzo
de' Medici, after the troublous reign of Julius, was hailed with delight
by all Christendom, and nowhere more so than in the pope's native place,
Florence. Ariosto went there to see the spectacles; and there, in the
midst of them, he found himself robbed of his heart by the lady whom he
afterwards married. Her name was Alessandra Benucci. She was the widow of
one of the Strozzi family, whom he had known in Ferrara, and he had long
admired her. The poet, who, like Petrarch and Boccaccio, has recorded the
day on which he fell in love, which was that of St. John the Baptist (the
showy saint-days of the south offer special temptations to that effect),
dwells with minute fondness on the particulars of the lady's appearance.
Her dress was black silk, embroidered with two grape-bearing vines
intertwisted; and "between her serene forehead and the path that went
dividing in two her rich and golden tresses," was a sprig of laurel in
bud. Her observer, probably her welcome if not yet accepted lover, beheld
something very significant in this attire; and a mysterious poem, in
which he records a device of a black pen feathered with gold, which he
wore embroidered on a gown of his own, has been supposed to allude to it.
As every body is tempted to make his guess on such occasions, I take the
pen to have been the black-haired poet himself, and the golden feather
the tresses of the lady. Beautiful as he describes her, with a face full
of sweetness, and manners noble and engaging, he speaks most of the
charms of her golden locks. The black gown could hardly have implied her
widowhood: the allusion would not have been delicate. The vine belongs to
dramatic poets, among whom the lover was at that time to be classed, the
_Orlando_ not having appeared. Its duplification intimated another self;
and the crowning laurel was the success that awaited the heroic poet and
the conqueror of the lady's heart. [14]

The marriage was never acknowledged. The husband was in the receipt of
profits arising from church-offices, which put him into the condition of
the fellow of a college with us, who cannot marry so long as he retains
his fellowship: but it is proved to have taken place, though the date of
it is uncertain. Ariosto, in a satire written three or four years after
his falling in love, says he never intends either to marry or to take
orders; because, if he takes orders, he cannot marry; and if he marries,
he cannot take orders--that is to say, must give up his semi-priestly
emoluments. This is one of the falsehoods which the Roman Catholic
religion thinks itself warranted in tempting honest men to fall into;
thus perplexing their faith as to the very roots of all faith, and
tending to maintain a sensual hypocrisy, which can do no good to the
strongest minds, and must terribly injure the weak.

Ariosto's love for this lady I take to have been one of the causes of
dissatisfaction between him and the cardinal. "Fortunately for the poet,"
as Panizzi observes, Ippolito was not always in Ferrara. He travelled
in Italy, and he had an archbishopric in Hungary, the tenure of which
compelled occasional residence. His company was not desired in Rome, so
that he was seldom there. Ariosto, however, was an amusing companion; and
the cardinal seems not to have liked to go anywhere without him. In the
year 1515 he was attended by the poet part of the way on a journey to
Rome and Urbino; but Ariosto fell ill, and had leave to return. He
confesses that his illness was owing to an anxiety of love; and he even
makes an appeal to the cardinal's experience of such feelings; so that it
might seem he was not afraid of Ippolito's displeasure in that direction.
But the weakness which selfish people excuse in themselves becomes a
"very different thing" (as they phrase it) in another. The appeal to the
cardinal's experience might only have exasperated him, in its assumption
of the identity of the case. However, the poet was, at all events, left
this time to the indulgence of his love and his poetry; and in the
course of the ensuing year, a copy of the first edition of the _Orlando
Furioso_, in forty cantos, was put into the hands of the illustrious
person to whom it was dedicated.

The words in which the cardinal was pleased to express himself on this
occasion have become memorable. "Where the devil, Master Lodovick," said
the reverend personage, "have you picked up such a parcel of trumpery? "
The original term is much stronger, aggravating the insult with
indecency. There is no equivalent for it in English; and I shall not
repeat it in Italian. "It is as low and indecent," says Panizzi, "as
any in the language. " Suffice it to say that, although the age was not
scrupulous in such matters, it was one of the last words befitting the
lips of the reverend Catholic; and that, when Ippolito of Este
(as Ginguéné observes) made that speech to the great poet, "he
uttered--prince, cardinal, and mathematician as he was--an
impertinence. "[15]

Was the cardinal put out of temper by a device which appeared in this
book? On the leaf succeeding the title-page was the privilege for its
publication, granted by Leo in terms of the most flattering personal
recognition. [16] So far so good; unless the unpoetical Este patron was
not pleased to see such interest taken in the book by the tasteful Medici
patron. But on the back of this leaf was a device of a hive, with the
bees burnt out of it for their honey, and the motto, "Evil for good"
(_Pro bono malum_). Most biographers are of opinion that this device was
aimed at the cardinal's ill return for all the sweet words lavished on
him and his house. If so, and supposing Ariosto to have presented the
dedication-copy in person, it would have been curious to see the faces of
the two men while his Eminence was looking at it. Some will think that
the good-natured poet could hardly have taken such an occasion of
displaying his resentment. But the device did not express at whom it was
aimed: the cardinal need not have applied it to himself if he did not
choose, especially as the book was full of his praises; and good-natured
people will not always miss an opportunity of covertly inflicting a
sting. The device, at all events, shewed that the honey-maker had got
worse than nothing by his honey; and the house of Este could not say they
had done any thing to contradict it.

I think it probable that neither the poet's device nor the cardinal's
speech were forgotten, when, in the course of the next year, the parties
came to a rupture in consequence of the servant's refusing to attend his
master into Hungary. Ariosto excused himself on account of the state of
his health and of his family. He said that a cold climate did not agree
with him; that his chest was affected, and could not bear even the stoves
of Hungary; and that he could not, in common decency and humanity, leave
his mother in her old age, especially as all the rest of the family were
away but his youngest sister, whose interests he had also to take care
of. But Ippolito was not to be appeased. The public have seen, in a late
female biography, a deplorable instance of the unfeelingness with which
even a princess with a reputation for religion could treat the declining
health and unwilling retirement of a poor slave in her service, fifty
times her superior in every thing but servility. Greater delicacy was
not to be expected of the military priest. The nobler the servant, the
greater the desire to trample upon him and keep him at a disadvantage. It
is a grudge which rank owes to genius, and which it can only wave when
its possessor is himself "one of God Almighty's gentlemen. " I do not mean
in point of genius, which is by no means the highest thing in the world,
whatever its owners may think of it; but in point of the highest of all
things, which is nobleness of heart. I confess I think Ariosto was wrong
in expecting what he did of a man he must have known so well, and in
complaining so much of courts, however good-humouredly. A prince occupies
the station he does, to avert the perils of disputed successions, and
not to be what his birth cannot make him--if nature has not supplied the
materials. Besides, the cardinal, in his quality of a mechanical-minded
man with no taste, might with reason have complained of his servant's
attending to poetry when it was "not in his bond;" when it diverted
him from the only attentions which his employer understood or desired.
Ippolito candidly confessed, as Ariosto himself tells us, that he not
only did not care for poetry, but never gave his attendant one stiver in
patronage of it, or for any thing whatsoever but going his journeys and
doing as he was bidden. [17] On the other hand, the cardinal's payments
were sorry ones; and the poet might with justice have thought, that he
was not bound to consider them an equivalent for the time be was expected
to give up. The only thing to have been desired in this case was, that he
should have said so; and, in truth, at the close of the explanation which
he gave on the subject to his friends at court, he did--boldly desiring
them, as became him, to tell the cardinal, that if his eminence expected
him to be a "serf" for what he received, he should decline the bargain;
and that he preferred the humblest freedom and his studies to a slavery
so preposterous. [18] The truth is, the poet should have attached himself
wholly to the Medici. Had he not adhered to the duller house, he might
have led as happy a life with the pope as Pulci did with the pope's
father; perhaps have been made a cardinal, like his friends Bembo and
Sadolet. But then we might have lost the _Orlando_.

The only sinecure which the poet is now supposed to have retained, was a
grant of twenty-five crowns every four months on the episcopal chancery
of Milan: so, to help out his petty income, he proceeded to enter into
the service of Alfonso, which shews that both the brothers were not angry
with him. He tells us, that he would gladly have had no new master, could
he have helped it; but that, if he must needs serve, he would rather
serve the master of every body else than a subordinate one. At this
juncture he had a brief prospect of being as free as he wished; for an
uncle died leaving a large landed property still known as the Ariosto
lands (_Le Arioste_); but a convent demanded it on the part of one of
their brotherhood, who was a natural son of this gentleman; and a more
formidable and ultimately successful claim was advanced in a court of
law by the Chamber of the Duchy of Ferrara, the first judge in the cause
being the duke's own steward and a personal enemy of the poet's. Ariosto,
therefore, while the suit was going on, was obliged to content himself
with his fees from Milan and a monthly allowance which he received from
the duke of "about thirty-eight shillings," together with provisions
for three servants and two horses. He entered the duke's service in the
spring of 1518, and remained in it for the rest of his life. But it was
not so burden-some as that of the cardinal; and the consequence of the
poet's greater leisure was a second edition of the _Furioso_, in the year
1521, with additions and corrections; still, however, in forty cantos
only. It appears, by a deed of agreement,[19] that the work was printed
at the author's expense; that he was to sell the bookseller one hundred
copies for sixty livres (about 5_l_. 12_s_. ) on condition of the book's
not being sold at the rate of more than sixteen sous (1_s_. 8_d_. ); that
the author was not to give, sell, or allow to be sold, any copy of the
book at Ferrara, except by the bookseller; that the bookseller, after
disposing of the hundred copies, was to have as many more as he chose on
the same terms; and that, on his failing to require a further supply,
Ariosto was to be at liberty to sell his volumes to whom he pleased.
"With such profits," observes Panizzi, "it was not likely that the poet
would soon become independent;" and it may be added, that he certainly
got nothing by the first edition, whatever he may have done by the
second. He expressly tells us, in the satire which he wrote on declining
to go abroad with Ippolito, that all his poetry had not procured him
money enough to purchase a cloak. [20] Twenty years afterwards, when he
was dead, the poem was in such request, that, between 1542 and 1551,
Panizzi calculates there must have been a sale of it in Europe to the
amount of a hundred thousand copies. [21]

The second edition of the _Furioso_ did not extricate the author from
very serious difficulties; for the next year he was compelled to apply
to either to relieve him from his necessities, or permit him to look for
some employment more profitable than the ducal service. The answer of
this prince, who was now rich, but had always been penurious, and who
never laid out a farthing, if he could help it, except in defence of his
capital, was an appointment of Ariosto to the government of a district in
a state of anarchy, called Garfagnana, which had nominally returned to
his rule in consequence of the death of Leo, who had wrested it from him.
It was a wild spot in the Apennines, on the borders of the Ferrarese and
papal territories. Ariosto was there three years, and is said to have
reduced it to order; but, according to his own account, he had very
doubtful work of it. The place was overrun with banditti, including the
troops commissioned to suppress them. It required a severer governor than
he was inclined to be; and Alfonso did not attend to his requisitions for
supplies. The candid and good-natured poet intimates that the duke might
have given him the appointment rather for the governor's sake than the
people's; and the cold, the loneliness and barrenness of the place, and,
above all, his absence from the object of his affections, oppressed him.
He did not write a verse for twelve months: he says he felt like a bird
moulting[22]. The best thing got out of it was an anecdote for posterity.
The poet was riding out one day with a few attendants--some say walking
out in a fit of absence of mind--when he found himself in the midst of
a band of outlaws, who, in a suspicious manner, barely suffered him
to pass. A reader of Mrs. Radcliffe might suppose them a band of
_condottieri_, under the command of some profligate desperado; and such
perhaps they were. The governor had scarcely gone by, when the leader of
the band, discovering who he was, came riding back with much earnestness,
and making his obeisance to the poet, said, that he never should have
allowed him to pass in that manner had he known him to be the Signor
Ludovico Ariosto, author of the _Orlando Furioso_; that his own name was
Filippo Pacchione (a celebrated personage of his order); and that his men
and himself, so far from doing the Signor displeasure, would have the
honour of conducting him back to his castle. "And so they did," says
Baretti, "entertaining him all along the way with the various excellences
they had discerned in his poem, and bestowing upon it the most rapturous
praises[23]. "

On his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto is understood to have made several
journeys in Italy, either with or without the duke his master; some of
them to Mantua, where it has been said that he was crowned with laurel by
the Emperor Charles the Fifth. But the truth seems to be, that he only
received a laureate diploma: it does not appear that Charles made him any
other gift. His majesty, and the whole house of Este, and the pope, and
all the other Italian princes, left that to be done by the imperial
general, the celebrated Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto, to whom he
was sent on some mission by the Duke of Ferrara, and who settled on him
an annuity of a hundred golden ducats; "the only reward," says Panizzi,
"which we find to have been conferred on Ariosto expressly as a
poet. "[24] Davallos was one of the conquerors of Francis the First,
young and handsome, and himself a writer of verses. The grateful poet
accordingly availed himself of his benefactor's accomplishments to make
him, in turn, a present of every virtue under the sun. Cæsar was not so
liberal, Nestor so wise, Achilles so potent, Nireus so beautiful, nor
even Ladas, Alexander's messenger, so swift. [25] Ariosto was now verging
towards the grave; and he probably saw in the hundred ducats a golden
sunset of his cares.

Meantime, however, the poet had built a house, which, although small, was
raised with his own money; so that the second edition of the _Orlando_
may have realised some profits at last. He recorded the pleasant fact in
an inscription over the door, which has become celebrated:

"Parva, sed apta mihi; sed nulli obnoxia; sed non
Sordida; parta meo sed tamen acre domus. "
Small, yet it suits me; is of no offence;
Was built, not meanly, at my own expense.

What a pity (to compare great things with small) that he had not as long
a life before him to enjoy it, as Gil Blas had with his own comfortable
quotation over his retreat at Lirias! [26]

The house still remains; but the inscription unfortunately became
effaced; though the following one remains, which was added by his son
Virginio:

"Sic domus hæc Areostea
Propitios habeat deos, olim ut Pindarica. "

Dear to the gods, whatever come to pass,
Be Ariosto's house, as Pindar's was.

This was an anticipation--perhaps the origin--of Milton's sonnet about
his own house, addressed to "Captains and Collonels," during the civil
war. [27]

Davallos made the poet his generous present in the October of the year
1513; and in the same month of the year following the _Orlando_ was
published as it now stands, with various insertions throughout, chiefly
stories, and six additional cantos. Cardinal Ippolito had been dead some
time; and the device of the beehive was exchanged for one of two vipers,
with a hand and pair of shears cutting out their tongues, and the motto,
"Thou hast preferred ill-will to good" (_Dilexisti malitiam super
benignitatem_). The allusion is understood to have been to certain
critics whose names have all perished, unless Sperone (of whom we shall
hear more by and by) was one of them. The appearance of this edition was
eagerly looked for; but the trouble of correcting the press, and the
destruction of a theatre by fire which had been built under the poet's
direction, did his health no good in its rapidly declining condition; and
after suffering greatly from an obstruction, he died, much attenuated, on
the sixth day of June, 1533. His decease, his fond biographers have
told us, took place "about three in the afternoon;" and he was "aged
fifty-eight years, eight months, and twenty-eight days. " His body,
according to his direction, was taken to the church of the Benedictines
during the night by four men, with only two tapers, and in the most
private and simple manner. The monks followed it to the grave out of
respect, contrary to their usual custom.

So lived, and so died, and so desired humbly to be buried, one of the
delights of the world.

His son Virginio had erected a chapel in the garden of the house built by
his father, and he wished to have his body removed thither; but the
monks would not allow it. The tomb, at first a very humble one, was
subsequently altered and enriched several times; but remains, I
believe, as rebuilt at the beginning of the century before last by his
grand-nephew, Ludovico Ariosto, with a bust of the poet, and two statues
representing Poetry and Glory.

Ariosto was tall and stout, with a dark complexion, bright black eyes,
black and curling hair, aquiline nose, and shoulders broad but a little
stooping.
His aspect was thoughtful, and his gestures deliberate. Titian,
besides painting his portrait, designed that which appeared in the
woodcut of the author's own third edition of his poem, which has been
copied into Mr. Panizzi's. It has all the look of truth of that great
artist's vital hand; but, though there is an expression of the, genial
character of the mouth, notwithstanding the exuberance of beard, it does
not suggest the sweetness observable in one of the medals of Ariosto,
a wax impression of which is now before me; nor has the nose so much
delicacy and grace. [28]

The poet's temperament inclined him to melancholy, but his intercourse
was always cheerful. One biographer says he was strong and
healthy--another, that he was neither. In all probability he was
naturally strong, but weakened by a life full of emotion. He talks of
growing old at forty four, and of leaving been bald for some time. [29] He
had a cough for many years before he died. His son says he cured it by
drinking good old wine. Ariosto says that "vin fumoso" did not agree with
him; but that might only mean wine of a heady sort. The chances, under
such circumstances, were probably against wine of any kind; and Panizzi
thinks the cough was never subdued. His physicians forbade him all sorts
of stimulants with his food. [30]

His temper and habits were those of a man wholly given up to love and
poetry. In his youth he was volatile, and at no time without what is
called some "affair of the heart. " Every woman attracted him who had
modesty and agreeableness; and as, at the same time, he was very jealous,
one might imagine that his wife, who had a right to be equally so, would
have led no easy life. But it is evident he could practise very generous
self-denial; and probably the married portion of his existence, supposing
Alessandra's sweet countenance not to have belied her, was happy on both
sides. He was beloved by his family, which is never the case with the
unamiable. Among his friends were most Of the great names of the age,
including a world of ladies, and the whole graceful court of Guidobaldo
da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, for which Catiglione wrote his book of
the _Gentleman (Il Cortegiano)_. Raphael addressed him a sonnet, and
Titian painted his likeness. He knew Vittoria Colonna, and Veronica da
Gambera, and Giulia Gonzaga (whom the Turks would have run away with),
and Ippolita Sforza, the beautiful blue-stocking, who set Bandello on
writing his novels, and Bembo, and Flaminio, and Berni, and Molza, and
Sannazzaro, and the Medici family, and Vida, and Macchiavelli; and nobody
doubts that he might have shone at the court of Leo the brightest of the
bright. But he thought it "better to enjoy a little in peace, than seek
after much with trouble. "[31] He cared for none of the pleasures of the
great, except building, and that he was content to satisfy in Cowley's
fashion, with "a small house in a large garden. " He was plain in his
diet, disliked ceremony, and was frequently absorbed in thought. His
indignation was roused by mean and brutal vices; but he took a large and
liberal view of human nature in general; and, if he was somewhat free in
his life, must be pardoned for the custom of the times, for his charity
to others, and for the genial disposition which made him an enchanting
poet. Above all, he was an affectionate son; lived like a friend with his
children; and, in spite of his tendency to pleasure, supplied the place
of an anxious and careful father to his brothers and sisters, who
idolized him.

"Ornabat pietas et grata modestia vatem,"

wrote his brother Gabriel,

"Sancta fides, dictique memor, munitaque recto
Justitia, et nullo patientia victa labore,
Et constans virtus animi, et elementia mitis,
Ambitione procul pulsa fastûsque tumore;
Credere uti posses natum felicibus horis,
Felici fulgente astro Jovis atque Diones. "[32]

Devoted tenderness adorn'd the bard,
And grateful modesty, and grave regard
To his least word, and justice arm'd with right,
And patience counting every labour light,
And constancy of soul, and meekness too,
That neither pride nor worldly wishes knew.
You might have thought him born when there concur
The sweet star and the strong, Venus and Jupiter.

His son Virginio, and others, have left a variety of anecdotes
corroborating points in his character. I shall give them all, for they
put us into his company. It is recorded, as an instance of his reputation
for honesty, that an old kinsman, a clergyman, who was afraid of being
poisoned for his possessions, would trust himself in no other hands; but
the clergyman was his own grand-uncle and namesake, probably godfather;
so that the compliment is not so very great.

In his youth he underwent a long rebuke one day from his father without
saying a word, though a satisfactory answer was in his power; on which
his brother Gabriel expressing his surprise, he said that he was thinking
all the time of a scene in a comedy he was writing, for which the
paternal lecture afforded an excellent study.

He loved gardening better than he understood it; was always shifting
his plants, and destroying the seeds, out of impatience to see them
germinate. He was rejoicing once on the coming up of some "capers," which
he had been visiting every day to see how they got on, when it turned out
that his capers were elder-trees!

He was perpetually altering his verses. His manuscripts are full of
corrections. He wrote the exordium of the _Orlando_ over and over again;
and at last could only be satisfied with it in proportion as it was not
his own; that is to say, in proportion as it came nearer to the beautiful
passage in Dante from which his ear and his feelings had caught it. [33]

He, however, discovered that correction was not always improvement. He
used to say, it was with verses as with trees. A plant naturally well
growing might be made perfect by a little delicate treatment; but
over-cultivation destroyed its native grace. In like manner, you might
perfect a happily-inspired verse by taking away any little fault of
expression; but too great a polish deprived it of the charm of the first
conception. It was like over-training a naturally graceful child. If it
be wondered how he who corrected so much should succeed so well, even to
an appearance of happy negligence, it is to be considered that the most
impulsive writers often put down their thoughts too hastily, then correct
and re-correct them in the same impatient manner; and so have to bring
them round, by as many steps, to the feeling which they really had at
first, though they were too hasty to do it justice.

Ariosto would have altered his house as often as his verses, but did not
find it so convenient. Somebody wondering that he contented himself with
so small an abode, when he built such magnificent mansions in his poetry,
he said it was easier to put words together than blocks of stone. [34]

He liked Virgil; commended the style of Tibullus; did not care for
Propertius; but expressed high approbation of Catullus and Horace. I
suspect his favourite to have been Ovid. His son says he did not study
much, nor look after books; but this may have been in his decline, or
when Virginio first took to observing him. A different conclusion as to
study is to be drawn from the corrected state of his manuscripts, and the
variety of his knowledge; and with regard to books, he not only mentions
the library of the Vatican as one of his greatest temptations to visit
Rome, but describes himself, with all the gusto of a book-worm, as
enjoying them in his chimney-corner. [35]

To intimate his secrecy in love-matters, he had an inkstand with a
Cupid on it, holding a finger on his lips. I believe it is still in
existence. [36] He did not disclose his mistresses' names, as Dante did,
for the purpose of treating them with contempt; nor, on the other hand,
does he appear to have been so indiscriminately gallant as to be fond of
goitres. [37] The only mistress of whom he complained he concealed in a
Latin appellation; and of her he did not complain with scorn. He had
loved, besides Alessandra Benucci, a lady of the name of Ginevra; the
mother of one of his children is recorded as a certain Orsolina; and that
of the other was named Maria, and is understood to have been a governess
in his father's family. [38]

He ate fast, and of whatever was next him, often beginning with the bread
on the table before the dishes came; and he would finish his dinner with
another bit of bread. "Appetiva le rape," says his good son; videlicet,
he was fond of turnips. In his fourth Satire, he mentions as a favourite
dish, turnips seasoned with vinegar and boiled _must_ (sapa), which
seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi. [39] He cared so little
for good eating, that he said of himself, he should have done very well
in the days when people lived on acorns.

A stranger coming in one day at the dinner-hour, he ate up what was
provided for both; saying afterwards, when told of it, that the gentleman
should have taken care of himself. This does not look very polite; but of
course it was said in jest. His son attributed this carelessness at table
to absorption in his studies.

He carried this absence of mind so far, and was at the same time so good
a pedestrian, that Virginio tells us he once walked all the way from
Carpi to Ferrara in his slippers, owing to his having strolled out of
doors in that direction.

The same biographers who describe him as a brave soldier, add, that he
was a timid horseman and seaman; and indeed he appears to have eschewed
every kind of unnecessary danger. It was a maxim of his, to be the last
in going out of a boat. I know not what Orlando would have said to this;
but there is no doubt that the good son and brother avoided no pain in
pursuit of his duty. He more than once risked his life in the service of
government from the perils of travelling among war-makers and banditti.
Imagination finds something worthy of itself on great occasions, but is
apt to discover the absurdity of staking existence on small ones. Ariosto
did not care to travel out of Italy. He preferred, he says, going round
the earth in a map; visiting countries without having to pay innkeepers,
and ploughing harmless seas without thunder and lightning[40].

His outward religion, like the one he ascribed to his friend Cardinal
Bembo, was "that of other people. " He did not think it of use to disturb
their belief; yet excused rather than blamed Luther, attributing his
heresy to the necessary consequences of mooting points too subtle for
human apprehension[41]. He found it impossible, however, to restrain his
contempt of bigotry; and, like most great writers in Catholic countries,
was a derider of the pretensions of devotees, and the discords and
hypocrisies of the convent. He evidently laughed at Dante's figments
about the other world; not at the poetry of them, for that he admired,
and sometimes imitated, but at the superstition and presumption. He
turned the Florentine's moon into a depository of non-sense; and found no
hell so bad as the hearts of tyrants. The only other people he put into
the infernal regions are ladies who were cruel to their lovers! He had
a noble confidence in the intentions of his Creator; and died ill the
expectation of meeting his friends again in a higher state of existence.

Of Ariosto's four brothers, one became a courtier at Naples, another a
clergyman, another an envoy to the Emperor Charles the Fifth; and the
fourth, who was a cripple and a scholar, lived with Lodovico, and
celebrated his memory. His two sons, whose names were Virginio and
Gianbattista, and who were illegitimate (the reader is always to bear
in mind the more indulgent customs of Italy in matters of this nature,
especially in the poet's time), became, the first a canon in the
cathedral of Ferrara, and the other an officer in the army. It does not
appear that he had any other children.

Ariosto's renown is wholly founded on the _Orlando Furioso_, though he
wrote satires, comedies, and a good deal of miscellaneous poetry, all
occasionally exhibiting a master-hand. The comedies, however, were
unfortunately modelled on those of the ancients; and the constant
termination of the verse with trisyllables contributes to render them
tedious. What comedies might he not have written, had he given himself up
to existing times and manners[42]!

The satires are rather good-natured epistles to his friends, written with
a charming ease and straightforwardness, and containing much exquisite
sense and interesting autobiography.

On his lyrical poetry he set little value; and his Latin verse is not of
the best order. Critics have expressed their surprise at its inferiority
to that of contemporaries inferior to him in genius; but the reason lay
in the very circumstance. I mean, that his large and liberal inspiration
could only find its proper vent in his own language; he could not be
content with potting up little delicacies in old-fashioned vessels.

The _Orlando Furioso_ is, literally, a continuation of the _Orlando
Innamorato_; so much so, that the story is not thoroughly intelligible
without it. This was probably the reason of a circumstance that would be
otherwise unaccountable, and that was ridiculously charged against him as
a proof of despairing envy by the despairing envy of Sperone; namely, his
never having once mentioned the name of his predecessor. If Ariosto had
despaired of equalling Boiardo, he must have been hopeless of reaching
posterity, in which case his silence must have been useless; and, in
any case, it is clear that he looked on himself as the continuator of
another's narration. But Boiardo was so popular when he wrote, that
the very silence shews he must have thought the mention of his name
superfluous. Still it is curious that he never should have alluded to it
in the course of the poem. It could not have been from any dislike to the
name itself, or the family; for in his Latin poems he has eulogised the
hospitality of the house of Boiardo[43].

The _Furioso_ continued not only what Boiardo did, but what he intended
to do; for as its subject is Orlando's love, and knight-errantry in
general, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it from
its fabulous ancestor Ruggiero. Orlando is the open, Ruggiero the covert
hero; and almost all the incidents of this supposed irregular poem,
which, as Panizzi has shewn, is one of the most regular in the world, go
to crown with triumph and wedlock the originator of that unworthy race.
This is done on the old groundwork of Charlemagne and his Paladins, of
the treacheries of the house of Gan of Maganza, and of the wars of the
Saracens against Christendom. Bradamante, the Amazonian _intended_ of
Ruggiero, is of the same race as Orlando, and a great overthrower of
infidels. Ruggiero begins with being an infidel himself, and is kept from
the wars, like a second Achilles, by the devices of an anxious guardian,
but ultimately fights, is converted, and marries; and Orlando all the
while slays his thousands, as of old, loves, goes mad for jealousy, is
the foolishest and wisest of mankind (somewhat like the poet himself);
and crowns the glory of Ruggiero, not only by being present at his
marriage, but putting on his spurs with his own hand when he goes forth
to conclude the war by the death of the king of Algiers.

The great charm, however, of the _Orlando Furioso_ is not in its
knight-errantry, or its main plot, or the cunning interweavement of its
minor ones, but in its endless variety, truth, force, and animal spirits;
in its fidelity to actual nature while it keeps within the bounds of the
probable, and its no less enchanting verisimilitude during its wildest
sallies of imagination. At one moment we are in the midst of flesh and
blood like ourselves; at the next with fairies and goblins; at the next
in a tremendous battle or tempest; then in one of the loveliest of
solitudes; then hearing a tragedy, then a comedy; then mystified in some
enchanted palace; then riding, dancing, dining, looking at pictures; then
again descending to the depths of the earth, or soaring to the moon, or
seeing lovers in a glade, or witnessing the extravagances of the great
jealous hero Orlando; and the music of an enchanting style perpetually
attends us, and the sweet face of Angelica glances here and there like
a bud: and there are gallantries of all kinds, and stories endless, and
honest tears, and joyous bursts of laughter, and beardings for all base
opinions, and no bigotry, and reverence for whatsoever is venerable,
and candour exquisite, and the happy interwoven names of "Angelica and
Medoro," young for ever.

But so great a work is not to be dismissed with a mere rhapsody of
panegyric. Ariosto is inferior, in some remarkable respects, to his
predecessors Pulci and Boiardo. His characters, for the most part, do not
interest us as much as theirs by their variety and good fellowship; he
invented none as Boiardo did, with the exception, indeed, of Orlando's,
as modified by jealousy; and he has no passage, I thick, equal in pathos
to that of the struggle at Roncesvalles; for though Orlando's jealousy
is pathetic, as well as appalling, the effects of it are confined to one
person, and disputed by his excessive strength. Ariosto has taken all
tenderness out of Angelica, except that of a kind of boarding-school
first love (which, however, as here-after intimated, may have simplified
and improved her general effect), and he has omitted all that was amusing
in the character of Astolfo. Knight-errantry has fallen off a little
in his hands from its first youthful and trusting freshness; more
sophisticate times are opening upon us; and satire more frequently and
bitterly interferes. The licentious passages (though never gross in
words, like those of his contemporaries,) are not redeemed by sentiment
as in Boiardo; and it seems to me, that Ariosto hardly improved so much
as he might have done Upon his predecessor's imitations of the classics.
I cannot help thinking that, upon the whole, he had better have left them
alone, and depended entirely on himself. Shelley says, he has too much
fighting and "revenge,"[44]--which is true; but the revenge was only
among his knights. He was himself (like my admirable friend) one of the
most forgiving of men; and the fighting was the taste of the age, in
which chivalry was still flourishing in the shape of such men as Bayard,
and ferocity in men like Gaston de Foix. Ariosto certainly did not
anticipate, any more than Shakspeare did, that spirit of human
amelioration which has ennobled the present age. He thought only of
reflecting nature as he found it. He is sometimes even as uninteresting
as he found other people; but the tiresome passages, thank God, all
belong to the house of Este! His panegyrics of Ippolito and his ancestors
recoiled on the poet with a retributive dulness.

But in all the rest there is a wonderful invigoration and enlargement.
The genius of romance has increased to an extraordinary degree in power,
if not in simplicity. Its shoulders have grown broader, its voice louder
and more sustained; and if it has lost a little on the sentimental side,
it has gained prodigiously, not only in animal vigour, but, above all, in
knowledge of human nature, and a brave and joyous candour in shewing it.
The poet takes a universal, an acute, and, upon the whole, a cheerful
view, like the sun itself, of all which the sun looks on; and readers are
charmed to see a knowledge at once so keen and so happy. Herein lies the
secret of Ariosto's greatness; which is great, not because it has the
intensity of Dante, or the incessant thought and passion of Shakspeare,
or the dignified imagination of Milton, to all of whom he is far inferior
in sustained excellence,--but because he is like very Nature herself.
Whether great, small, serious, pleasureable, or even indifferent, he
still has the life, ease, and beauty of the operations of the daily
planet. Even where he seems dull and common-place, his brightness and
originality at other times make it look like a good-natured condescension
to our own common habits of thought and discourse; as though he did it
but on purpose to leave nothing unsaid that could bring him within the
category of ourselves. His charming manner intimates that, instead of
taking thought, he chooses to take pleasure with us, and compare old
notes; and we are delighted that he does us so much honour, and makes, as
it were, Ariostos of us all. He is Shakspearian in going all lengths with
Nature as he found her, not blinking the fact of evil, yet finding a
"soul of goodness" in it, and, at the same time, never compromising the
worth of noble and generous qualities. His young and handsome Medoro is a
pitiless slayer of his enemies; but they were his master's enemies, and
he would have lost his life, even to preserve his dead body. His Orlando,
for all his wisdom and greatness, runs mad for love of a coquette, who
triumphs over warriors and kings, only to fall in love herself with an
obscure lad. His kings laugh with all their hearts, like common people;
his mourners weep like such unaffected children of sorrow, that they must
needs "swallow some of their tears. "[45] His heroes, on the arrival of
intelligence that excites them, leap out of bed and write letters before
they dress, from natural impatience, thinking nothing of their "dignity. "
When Astolfo blows the magic horn which drives every body out of the
castle of Atlantes, "not a mouse" stays behind;--not, as Hoole and such
critics think, because the poet is here writing ludicrously, but because
he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as
Shakspeare in _Hamlet_ does to give that of silence, when "not a mouse is
stirring. " Instead of being mere comic writing, such incidents are in the
highest epic taste of the meeting of extremes,--of the impartial eye with
which Nature regards high and low. So, give Ariosto his hippogriff, and
other marvels with which he has enriched the stock of romance, and Nature
takes as much care of the verisimilitude of their actions, as if she had
made them herself. His hippogriff returns, like a common horse, to the
stable to which he has been accustomed. His enchanter, who is gifted with
the power of surviving decapitation and pursuing the decapitator so long
as a fated hair remains on his head, turns deadly pale in the face when
it is scalped, and falls lifeless from his horse. His truth, indeed, is
so genuine, and at the same time his style is so unaffected, sometimes so
familiar in its grace, and sets us so much at ease in his company, that
the familiarity is in danger of bringing him into contempt with the
inexperienced, and the truth of being considered old and obvious, because
the mode of its introduction makes it seem an old acquaintance. When
Voltaire was a young man, and (to Anglicise a favourite Gallic phrase)
fancied he had _profounded_ every thing deep and knowing, he thought
nothing of Ariosto. Some years afterwards he took him for the first of
grotesque writers, but nothing more. At last he pronounced him equally
"entertaining and sublime, and humbly apologised for his error. " Foscolo
quotes this passage from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; and adds
another from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which the painter speaks of a
similar inability on his own part, when young, to enjoy the perfect
nature of Raphael, and the admiration and astonishment which, in his
riper years, he grew to feel for it. [46]

The excessive "wildness" attributed to Ariosto is not wilder than
many things in Homer, or even than some things in Virgil (such as the
transformation of ships into sea-nymphs). The reason why it has been
thought so is, that he rendered them more popular by mixing them with
satire, and thus brought them more universally into notice. One main
secret of the delight they give us is their being poetical comments,
as it were, on fancies and metaphors of our own. Thus, we say of
a suspicious man, that he is suspicion itself; Ariosto turns him
accordingly into an actual being of that name. We speak of the flights of
the poets; Ariosto makes them literally flights--flights on a hippogriff,
and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he
accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty;
therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient
defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and
Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive
bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; so Angelica,
queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and
marries a common soldier.

And what a creature is this Angelica! what effect has she not had upon
the world in spite of all her faults, nay, probably by very reason of
them! I know not whether it has been remarked before, but it appears to
me, that the charm which every body has felt in the story of Angelica
consists mainly in that very fact of her being nothing but a beauty and
a woman, dashed even with coquetry, which renders her so inferior in
character to most heroines of romance. Her interest is founded on nothing
exclusive or prejudiced. It is not addressed to any special class. She
might or might not have been liked by this person or that; but the world
in general will adore her, because nature has made them to adore beauty
and the sex, apart from prejudices right or wrong. Youth will attribute
virtues to her, whether she has them or not; middle-age be unable to help
gazing on her; old-age dote on her. She is womankind itself, in form and
substance; and that is a stronger thing, for the most part, than all our
figments about it. Two musical names, "Angelica and Medoro," have become
identified in the minds of poetical readers with the honeymoon of
youthful passion.

The only false acid insipid fiction I can call to mind in the _Orlando
Furioso_ is that of the "swans" who rescue "medals" from the river of
oblivion (canto xxxv. ). It betrays a singular forgetfulness of the poet's
wonted verisimilitude; for what metaphor can reconcile us to swans taking
an interest in medals? Popular belief had made them singers; but it was
not a wise step to convert them into antiquaries.

Ariosto's animal spirits, and the brilliant hurry and abundance of his
incidents, blind a careless reader to his endless particular beauties,
which, though he may too often "describe instead of paint" (on account,
as Foscolo says, of his writing to the many), spew that no man could
paint better when he chose. The bosoms of his females "come and go, like
the waves on the sea-coast in summer airs. "[47] His witches draw the fish
out of the water

"With simple words and a pure warbled spell. "[48]

He borrows the word "painting" itself,--like a true Italian and friend
of Raphael and Titian, to express the commiseration in the faces of the
blest for the sufferings of mortality

"Dipinte di pietade il viso pio. "[49]

Their pious looks painted with tenderness.

Jesus is very finely called, in the same passage, "il sempiterno Amante,"
the eternal Lover. The female sex are the

"Schiera gentil the pur adorna il mondo. "[50]

The gentle bevy that adorns the world.

He paints cabinet-pictures like Spenser, in isolated stanzas, with a
pencil at once solid and light; as in the instance of the charming one
that tells the story of Mercury and his net; how he watched the Goddess
of Flowers as she issued forth at dawn with her lap full of roses and
violets, and so threw the net over her "one day," and "took her;"

"un dì lo prese[51]. "

But he does not confine himself to these gentle pictures. He has many
as strong as Michael Angelo, some as intense as Dante. He paints the
conquest of America in five words

"Veggio da diece cacciar mille. "[52]
I see thousands
Hunted by tens.

He compares the noise of a tremendous battle heard in the neighbourhood
to the sound of the cataracts of the Nile:

"un alto suon ch' a quel s' accorda
Con che i vicin' cadendo il Nil assorda. "[53]

He "scourges" ships at sea with tempests--say rather the "miserable
seamen;" while night-time grows blacker and blacker on the "exasperated
waters. "[54]


When Rodomont has plunged into the thick of Paris, and is carrying every
thing before him ("like a serpent that has newly cast his skin, and
goes shaking his three tongues under his eyes of fire"), he makes this
tremendous hero break the middle of the palace-gate into a huge "window,"
and look through it with a countenance which is suddenly beheld by a
crowd of faces as pale as death:

"E dentro fatto l' ha tanta finestra,
Che ben vedere e veduto esser puote
Dai visi impressi di color di morte[55]. "

The whole description of Orlando's jealousy and growing madness is
Shakspearian for passion and circumstance, as the reader may see even
in the prose abstract of it in this volume; and his sublimation of a
suspicious king into suspicion itself (which it also contains) is as
grandly and felicitously audacious as any thing ever invented by poet.
Spenser thought so; and has imitated and emulated it in one of his own
finest passages. Ariosto has not the spleen and gall of Dante, and
therefore his satire is not so tremendous; yet it is very exquisite, as
all the world have acknowledged in the instances of the lost things found
in the moon, and the angel who finds Discord in a convent. He does not
take things so much to heart as Chaucer. He has nothing so profoundly
pathetic as our great poet's _Griselda_. Yet many a gentle eye has
moistened at the conclusion of the story of Isabella; and to recur once
more to Orlando's jealousy, all who have experienced that passion will
feel it shake them. I have read somewhere of a visit paid to Voltaire by
an Italian gentleman, who recited it to him, and who (being moved perhaps
by the recollection of some passage in his own history) had the tears all
the while pouring down his cheeks.

Such is the poem which the gracious and good Cardinal Ippolito designated
as a "parcel of trumpery. " It had, indeed, to contend with more slights
than his. Like all originals, it was obliged to wait for the death of
the envious and the self-loving, before it acquired a popularity which
surpassed all precedent. Foscolo says, that Macchiavelli and Ariosto,
"the two writers of that age who really possessed most excellence, were
the least praised during their lives. Bembo was approached in a posture
of adoration and fear; the infamous Aretino extorted a fulsome letter of
praises from the great and the learned[56]. " He might have added, that
the writer most in request "in the circles" was a gentleman of the name
of Bernardo Accolti, then called the _Unique_, now never heard of.
Ariosto himself eulogised him among a shoal of writers, half of whose
names have perished; and who most likely included in that half the men
who thought he did not praise them enough. For such was the fact! I
allude to the charming invention in his last canto, in which he supposes
himself welcomed home after a long voyage. Gay imitated it very
pleasantly in an address to Pope on the conclusion of his Homer. Some of
the persons thus honoured by Ariosto were vexed, it is said, at not being
praised highly enough; others at seeing so many praised in their company;
some at being left out of the list; and some others at being mentioned at
all! These silly people thought it taking too great a liberty! The poor
flies of a day did not know that a god had taken them in hand to give
them wings for eternity. Happily for them the names of most of these
mighty personages are not known. One or two, however, took care to make
posterity laugh. Trissino, a very great man in his day, and the would-be
restorer of the ancient epic, had the face, in return for the poet's
too honourable mention of him, to speak, in his own absurd verses, of
"Ariosto, with that _Furioso_ of his, which pleases the vulgar:"

"L' Ariosto
Con quel _Furioso_ suo the piace al volgo. "

"_His_ poem," adds Panizzi, "has the merit of not having pleased any
body[57]. " A sullen critic, Sperone (the same that afterwards plagued
Tasso), was so disappointed at being left out, that he became the poet's
bitter enemy. He talked of Ariosto taking himself for a swan and "dying
like a goose" (the allusion was to the fragment he left called the _Five
Cantos_).