Nero himself might have fared as well as Augustus, had he
possessed
as
much wit.
much wit.
Stories from the Italian Poets
He that was Orlando is dead and buried.
His ungrateful
mistress has slain him. I am but the soul divided from his body--doomed
to wander here in this misery, an example to those that put their trust
in love. "
For the wits of the County Orlando were going; and he wandered all night
round and round in the wood, till he came back to the grotto where Medoro
had written his triumphant verses. Madness then indeed fell upon him.
Every particle of his being seemed torn up with rage and fury; and he
drew his mighty sword, and hewed the grotto and the writing, till the
words flew in pieces to the heavens. Woe to every spot in the place in
which were written the names of "Angelica and Medoro. " Woe to the place
itself: never again did it afford refuge from the heat of day to sheep or
shepherd; for not a particle of it remained as it was. With arm and sword
Orlando defaced it all, the clear and gentle fountain included. He hacked
and hewed it inside and out, and cut down the branches of the trees that
hung over it, and tore away the ivy and the vine, and rooted up great
bits of earth and stone, and filled the sweet water with the rubbish, so
that it was never clear and sweet again; and at the end of his toil, not
having satisfied or being able to satisfy his soul with the excess of
his violence, he cast himself on the ground in rage and disdain, and lay
groaning towards the heavens.
On the ground Orlando threw himself, and on the ground he remained, his
eyes fixed on heaven, his lips closed in dumbness; and thus he continued
for the space of three days and three nights, till his frenzy had mounted
to such a pitch that it turned against himself. He then arose in fury,
and tore off mail and breastplate, and every particle of clothing from
his body, till humanity was degraded in his heroical person, and he
became naked as the beasts of the field. In this condition, and his wits
quite gone, sword was forgotten as well as shield and helm; and he tore
up fir-tree and ash, and began running through the woods. The shepherds
hearing the cries of the strong man, and the crashing of the boughs, came
hastening from all quarters to know what it was; but when he saw them he
gave them chase, and smote to death those whom he reached, till the whole
country was up in arms, though to no purpose; for they were seized with
such terror, that while they threatened and closed after him, they
avoided him. He entered cottages, and tore away the food from the tables;
and ran up the craggy hills and down into the valleys; and chased beasts
as well as men, tearing the fawn and the goat to pieces, and stuffing
their flesh into his stomach with fierce will.
Raging and scouring onwards in this manner, he arrived one day at a
bridge over a torrent, on which the fierce Rodomont had fixed himself for
the purpose of throwing any one that attempted to pass it into the water.
It was a very narrow bridge, with scarcely room for two horses. But
Orlando took no heed of its narrowness. He dashed right forwards against
man and steed, and forced the champion to wrestle with him on foot; and,
winding himself about him with hideous strength, he leaped backwards with
him into the torrent, where he left him, and so mounted the opposite
bank, and again rushed over the country. A more terrible bridge than
this was in his way--even a precipitous pass of frightful height over
a valley; but still he scoured onwards, throwing over it the agonised
passengers that dared, in their ignorance of his strength, to oppose
him; and so always rushing and raging, he came down the mountains by the
sea-side to Barcelona, where he cast his eyes on the sands, and thought,
in his idiot mind, to make himself a house in them for coolness and
repose; and so he grubbed up the sand, and laid himself down in it: and
this was the terrible madman whom Angelica and Medoro saw looking at them
as they were approaching the city.
Neither of them knew him, nor did he know Angelica; but, with an idiot
laugh, he looked at her beauty, and liked her, and came horribly towards
her to carry her away. Shrieking, she put spurs to her horse and fled;
and Medoro, in a fury, came after the pursuer and smote him, but to no
purpose. The great madman turned round and smote the other's horse to the
ground, and so renewed his chase after Angelica, who suddenly regained
enough of her wits to recollect the enchanted ring. Instantly she put
it into her lips and disappeared; but in her hurry she fell from her
palfrey, and Orlando forgot her in the instant, and, mounting the poor
beast, dashed off with it over the country till it died; and so at last,
after many dreadful adventures by flood and field, he came running into
a camp full of his brother Paladins, who recognised him with tears; and,
all joining their forces, succeeded in pulling him down and binding him,
though not without many wounds: and by the help of these friends, and the
special grace of the apostle St. John (as will be told in another place),
the wits of the champion of the church were restored, and he became
ashamed of that passion for an infidel beauty which the heavenly powers
had thus resolved to punish.
But Angelica and Medoro pursued the rest of their journey in peace, and
took ship on the coast of Spain for India; and there she crowned her
bridegroom King of Cathay. The description of Orlando's jealousy and
growing madness is reckoned one of the finest things in Italian poetry;
and very fine it surely is--as strong as the hero's strength, and
sensitive as the heart of man. The circumstances are heightened, one
after the other, with the utmost art as well as nature. There is a
scriptural awfulness in the account of the hero's becoming naked; and the
violent result is tremendous. I have not followed Orlando into his feats
of ultra-supernatural strength. The reader requires to be prepared
for them by the whole poem. Nor are they necessary, I think, to
the production of the best effect; perhaps would hurt it in an age
unaccustomed to the old romances.
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: See p. 58 of the present volume. ]
[Footnote 2:
"Fugge tra selve spaventose e scure,
Per lochi inabitati, ermi e selvaggi.
Il mover de le frondi e di verzure
Che di cerri sentia, d' olmi e di faggi,
Fatto le avea con subite paure
Trovar di quà e di là strani viaggi;
Ch' ad ogni ombra veduta o in monte o in valle
Temea Rinaldo aver sempre alle spalle. "
Canto i. st. 33. ]
[Footnote 3:
"Ecco non lungi un bel cespuglio vede
Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rôse,
Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede,
Chiuso dal Sol fra l' alte quercie ombrose; ]
[Footnote 4: And how lovely is this!
"E fuor di quel cespuglio oscuro e cieco
Fa di se bella et improvvisa mostra,
Come di selva o fuor d'ombroso speco
Diana in scena, o Citerea si mostra," &c.
St. 52. ]
[Footnote 5: How admirable is the suddenness, brevity, and force of this
scene! And it is as artful and dramatic as off-hand; for this Amazon,
Bradamante, is the future heroine of the warlike part of the poem, and
the beauty from whose marriage with Ruggiero is to spring the house of
Este. Nor without her appearance at this moment, as Panizzi has shewn
(vol. i. p. cvi. ), could a variety of subsequent events have taken place
necessary to the greatest interests of the story. All the previous
passages in romance about Amazons are nothing compared with this flash of
a thunderbolt. ]
[Footnote 6: From _bayard_, old French; _bay-colour. _]
Footnote 7: His famous sword, vide p. 48. ]
[Footnote 8: To richness and rarity, how much is added by remoteness! It
adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it. ]
[Footnote 9:
"Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro
Mezo ascoso ne l'onda, e mezo sorto.
Come sospinto suol da Borca o d'Ostro
Venir lungo navilio a pigliar porto,"
Canto x. st. 100.
Improved from Ovid, _Metamorph_. lib. iv. 706
"Ecce velut navis præfixo concita rostro
Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis;
Sic fera," &c.
As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce,
Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar.
Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the
ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the
fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The
classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far
as the combat is concerned, is imitated from Ovid's story of Perseus and
Andromeda. ]
[Footnote 10:
"Sul lito un bosco era di querce ombrose,
Dove ogn' or par che Filomena piagna;
Ch'in mezo avea un pratel con una fonte,
E quinci e quindi un solitario monte.
Quivi il bramoso cavalier ritenne
L'audace corso, e nel pratel discese. "
St. 113.
What a landscape! and what a charm beyond painting he has put into it
with his nightingales! and then what figures besides! A knight on a
winged steed descending with a naked beauty into a meadow in the thick of
woods, with "here and there a solitary mountain. " The mountains make no
formal circle; they keep their separate distances, with their various
intervals of light and shade. And what a heart of solitude is given to
the meadow by the loneliness of these its waiters aloof! ]
[Footnote 11: Nothing can be more perfectly wrought up than this sudden
change of circumstances. ]
[Footnote 12: To feel the complete force of this picture, a reader should
have been in the South, and beheld the like sudden apparitions, at open
windows, of ladies looking forth in dresses of beautiful colours, and
with faces the most interesting. I remember a vision of this sort at
Carrara, on a bright but not too hot day (I fancied that the marble
mountains there cooled it). It resembled one of Titian's women, with its
broad shoulders, and boddice and sleeves differently coloured from the
petticoat; and seemed literally framed in the unsashed window. But I am
digressing. ]
[Footnote 13: Ariosto elsewhere represents him as the handsomest man in
the world; saying of him, in a line that has become famous,
"Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa. "
Canto x. st. 84.
--Nature made him, and then broke the mould.
(The word is generally printed _ruppe_; but I use the primitive text
of Mr. Pannizi's edition. ) Boiardo's handsomest man, Astolfo, was an
Englishman; Ariosto's is a Scotchman. See, in the present volume, the
note on the character of Astolfo, p. 41. ]
[Footnote 14:
"Come orsa, che l'alpestre cacciatore
Ne la pietrosa tana assalita abbia,
Sta sopra i figli con incerto core,
E freme in suono di pieta e di rabbia:
Ira la 'nvita e natural furore
A spiegar l'ugne, e a insanguinar le labbia;
Amor la 'ntenerisce, e la ritira
A riguardare a i figli in mezo l'ira. "
Like as a bear, whom men in mountains start
In her old stony den, and dare, and goad,
Stands o'er her children with uncertain heart,
And roars for rage and sorrow in one mood;
Anger impels her, and her natural part,
To use her nails, and bathe her lips in blood;
Love melts her, and, for all her angry roar,
Holds back her eyes to look on those she bore.
This stanza in Ariosto has become famous as a beautiful transcript of a
beautiful passage in Statius, which, indeed, it surpasses in style, but
not in feeling, especially when we consider with whom the comparison
originates:
"Ut lea, quam saevo foetam pressere cubili
Venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat
Mente sub incerta, torvum ac miserabile frendens
Illa quidem turbare globes, et frangere morsu
Tela queat; sed prolis amor crudelia vincit
Pectora, et in media catulos circumspicit ira. "
_Thebais_, x. 414. ]
[Footnote 15: This adventure of Cloridan and Medoro is imitated from the
Nisus and Euryalus of Virgil. An Italian critic, quoted by Panizzi, says,
that the way in which Cloridan exposes himself to the enemy is inferior
to the Latin poet's famous
"Me, me (adsum qui feci), in me convertite ferrum. "
Me, me ('tis I who did the deed), slay me.
And the reader will agree with Panizzi, that he is right. The
circumstance, also, of Euryalus's bequeathing his aged mother to the care
of his prince, in case he fails in his enterprise, is very touching;
and the main honour, both of the invention of the whole episode and its
particulars, remains with Virgil. On the other hand, the enterprise of
the friends in the Italian poet, which is that of burying their dead
master, and not merely of communicating with an absent general, is more
affecting, though it may be less patriotic; the inability of Zerbino to
kill him, when he looked on his face, is extremely so; and, as Panizzi
has shewn, the adventure is made of importance to the whole story of the
poem, and is not simply an episode, like that in the Æneid. It serves,
too, in a very particular manner to introduce Medoro worthily to the
affection of Angelica; for, mere female though she be, we should hardly
have gone along with her passion as we do, in a poem of any seriousness,
had it been founded merely on his beauty. ]
[Footnote 16: Canto xix. st. 34, &c. All the world have felt this to be
a true picture of first love. The inscription may be said to be that of
every other pair of lovers that ever existed, who knew how to write their
names. How musical, too, are the words "Angelica and Medoro! " Boiardo
invented the one; Ariosto found the match for it. One has no end to the
pleasure of repeating them. All hail to the moment when I first became
aware of their existence, more than fifty years ago, in the house of
the gentle artist Benjamin West! (Let the reader indulge me with this
recollection. ) I sighed with pleasure to look on them at that time; I
sigh now, with far more pleasure than pain, to look back on them, for
they never come across me but with delight; and poetry is a world in
which nothing beautiful ever thoroughly forsakes us. ]
[Footnote 17:
"Scritti, qual con carbone e qual con gesso. "
Canto xxiii. st. 106.
Ariosto did not mind soiling the beautiful fingers of Angelica with coal
and chalk. He knew that Love did not mind it.
* * * * *
ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON.
Argument.
The Paladin Astolfo ascends on the hippogriff to the top of one of the
mountains at the source of the Nile, called the Mountains of the Moon,
where he discovers the Terrestrial Paradise, and is welcomed by St. John
the Evangelist. The Evangelist then conveys him to the Moon itself, where
he is shewn all the things that have been lost on earth, among which is
the Reason of Orlando, who had been deprived of it for loving a Pagan
beauty. Astolfo is favoured with a singular discourse by the Apostle, and
is then presented with a vial containing the Reason of his great brother
Paladin, which he conveys to earth.
ASTOLFO'S
JOURNEY TO THE MOON
When the hippogriff loosened itself from the tree to which Ruggiero had
tied it in the beautiful spot to which he descended with Angelica,[1] it
soared away, like the faithful creature it was, to the house of its own
master, Atlantes the magician. But not long did it remain there--no, nor
the house itself, nor the magician; for the Paladin Astolfo came with a
mighty horn given him by a greater magician, the sound of which overthrew
all such abodes, and put to flight whoever heard it; and so the house
of Atlantes vanished, and the enchanter fled; and the Paladin took
possession of the griffin-horse, and rode away with it on farther
adventures.
One of these was the deliverance of Senapus, king of Ethiopia, from the
visitation of the dreadful harpies of old, who came infesting his table
as they did those of Æneas and Phineus. Astolfo drove them with his horse
towards the sources of the river Nile, in the Mountains of the Moon, and
pursued them with the hippogriff till they entered a great cavern, which,
by the dreadful cries and lamentings that issued from the depths within
it, the Paladin discovered to be the entrance from earth to Hell.
The daring Englishman, whose curiosity was excited, resolved to penetrate
to the regions of darkness. "What have I to fear? " thought he; "the horn
will assist me, if I want it. I'll drive the triple-mouthed dog out of
the way, and put Pluto and Satan to flight. "[2]
Astolfo tied the hippogriff to a tree, and pushed forward in spite of a
smoke that grew thicker and thicker, offending his eyes and nostrils. It
became, however, so exceedingly heavy and noisome, that he found it would
be impossible to complete his enterprise. Still he pushed forward as far
as he could, especially as he began to discern in the darkness something
that appeared to stir with an involuntary motion. It looked like a dead
body which has hung up many days in the rain and sun, and is waved
unsteadily by the wind. It turned out to be a condemned spirit in this
first threshold of Hell, sentenced there, with thousands of others, for
having been cruel and false in love. Her name was Lydia, and she had been
princess of the country so called. [3] Anaxarete was among them, who, for
her hard-heartedness, became a stone; and Daphne, who now discovered how
she had erred in making Apollo "run so much;" and multitudes of other
women; but a far greater number of men--men being worthier of punishment
in offences of love, because women are proner to believe. Theseus and
Jason were among them; and Amnon, the abuser of Tamar; and he that
disturbed the old kingdom of Latinus. [4]
Astolfo would fain have gone deeper into the jaws of Hell, but the smoke
grew so thick and palpable, it was impossible to move a step farther.
Turning about, therefore, he regained the entrance; and having refreshed
himself in a fountain hard by, and re-mounted the hippogriff, felt an
inclination to ascend as high as he possibly could in the air. The
excessive loftiness of the mountain above the cavern made him think that
its top could be at no great distance from the region of the Moon; and
accordingly he pushed his horse upwards, and rose and rose, till at
length he found himself on its table-land. It exhibited a region of
celestial beauty. The flowers were like beds of precious stones for
colour and brightness; the grass, if you could have brought any to earth,
would have been found to surpass emeralds; and the trees, whose leaves
were no less beautiful, were in fruit and flower at once. Birds of as
many colours were singing in the branches; the murmuring rivulets and
dumb lakes were more limpid than crystal: a sweet air was for ever
stirring, which reduced the warmth to a gentle temperature; and every
breath of it brought an odour from flowers, fruit-trees, and herbage all
at once, which nourished the soul with sweetness. [5]
In the middle of this lonely plain was a palace radiant as fire. Astolfo
rode his horse round about it, constantly admiring all he saw, and filled
with increasing astonishment; for he found that the dwelling was thirty
miles in circuit, and composed of one entire carbuncle, lucid and
vermilion. What became of the boasted wonders of the world before this?
The world itself, in the comparison, appeared but a lump of brute and
fetid matter. [6]
As the Paladin approached the vestibule, he was met by a venerable old
man, clad in a white gown and red mantle, whose beard descended on his
bosom, and whose aspect announced him as one of the elect of Paradise.
It was St. John the Evangelist, who lived in that mansion with Enoch and
Elijah, the only three mortals who never tasted death; for the place, as
the saint informed him, was the Terrestrial Paradise; and the inhabitants
were to live there till the angelical trumpet announced the coming of
Christ "on the white cloud. " The Paladin, he said, had been allowed to
visit it, by the favour of God, for the purpose of fetching away to earth
the lost wits of Orlando, which the champion of the Church had been
deprived of for loving a Pagan, and which had been attracted out of his
brains to the neighbouring sphere, the Moon.
Accordingly, after the new friends had spent two days in discourse, and
meals had been served up, consisting of fruit so exquisite that the
Paladin could not help thinking our first parents had some excuse for
eating it,[7] the Evangelist, when the Moon arose, took him into the car
which had borne Elijah to heaven; and four horses, redder than fire,
conveyed them to the lunar world.
The mortal visitant was amazed to see in the Moon a world resembling his
own, full of wood and water, and containing even cities and castles,
though of a different sort from ours. It was strange to find a sphere so
large which had seemed so petty afar off; and no less strange was it to
look down on the world he had left, and be compelled to knit his brows
and look sharply before he could well discern it, for it happened at the
time to want light. [8]
But his guide did not leave him much time to look about him. He conducted
him with due speed into a valley that contained, in one miraculous
collection, whatsoever had been lost or wasted on earth. I do not speak
only (says the poet) of riches and dominions, and such like gratuities of
Fortune, but of things also which Fortune can neither grant nor resume.
Much fame is there which Time has withdrawn--infinite prayers and vows
which are made to God Almighty by us poor sinners. There lie the tears
and the sighs of lovers, the hours lost in pastimes, the leisures of the
dull, and the intentions of the lazy. As to desires, they are so numerous
that they shadow the whole place. Astolfo went round among the different
heaps, asking what they were. His eyes were first struck with a huge
one of bladders which seemed to contain mighty sounds and the voices of
multitudes. These he found were the Assyrian and Persian monarchies,
together with those of Greece and Lydia. [9] One heap was nothing but
hooks of silver and gold, which were the presents, it seems, made to
patrons and great men in hopes of a return. Another consisted of snares
in the shape of garlands, the manufacture of parasites. Others were
verses in praise of great lords, all made of crickets which had burst
themselves with singing. Chains of gold he saw there, which were
pretended and unhappy love-matches; and eagles' claws, which were deputed
authorities; and pairs of bellows, which were princes' favours; and
overturned cities and treasuries, being treasons and conspiracies; and
serpents with female faces, that were coiners and thieves; and all sorts
of broken bottles, which were services rendered in miserable courts. A
great heap of overturned soup[10] he found to be alms to the poor, which
had been delayed till the giver's death. He then came to a great mount
of flowers, which once had a sweet smell, but now a most rank one. This
(_with submission_) was the present which the Emperor Constantine made to
good Pope Sylvester. [11] Heaps of twigs he saw next, set with bird-lime,
which, dear ladies, are your charms. In short there was no end to what he
saw. Thousands and thousands would not complete the list. Every thing
was there which was to be met with on earth, except folly in the raw
material, for that is never exported. [12]
There he beheld some of his own lost time and deeds; and yet, if nobody
had been with him to make him aware of them, never would he have
recognised them as his. [13]
They then arrived at something, which none of us ever prayed God to
bestow, for we fancy we possess it in superabundance; yet here it was in
greater quantities than any thing else in the place--I mean, sense.
It was a subtle fluid, apt to evaporate if not kept closely; and here
accordingly it was kept in vials of greater or less size. The greatest of
them all was inscribed with the following words: "The sense of Orlando. "
Others, in like manner, exhibited the names of the proper possessors; and
among them the frank-hearted Paladin beheld the greater portion of his
own. But what more astonished him, was to see multitudes of the vials
almost full to the stopper, which bore the names of men whom he had
supposed to enjoy their senses in perfection. Some had lost them for
love, others for glory, others for riches, others for hopes from great
men, others for stupid conjurers, for jewels, for paintings, for all
sorts of whims. There was a heap belonging to sophists and astrologers,
and a still greater to poets. [14]
Astolfo, with leave of the "writer of the dark Apocalypse," took
possession of his own. 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.
mistress has slain him. I am but the soul divided from his body--doomed
to wander here in this misery, an example to those that put their trust
in love. "
For the wits of the County Orlando were going; and he wandered all night
round and round in the wood, till he came back to the grotto where Medoro
had written his triumphant verses. Madness then indeed fell upon him.
Every particle of his being seemed torn up with rage and fury; and he
drew his mighty sword, and hewed the grotto and the writing, till the
words flew in pieces to the heavens. Woe to every spot in the place in
which were written the names of "Angelica and Medoro. " Woe to the place
itself: never again did it afford refuge from the heat of day to sheep or
shepherd; for not a particle of it remained as it was. With arm and sword
Orlando defaced it all, the clear and gentle fountain included. He hacked
and hewed it inside and out, and cut down the branches of the trees that
hung over it, and tore away the ivy and the vine, and rooted up great
bits of earth and stone, and filled the sweet water with the rubbish, so
that it was never clear and sweet again; and at the end of his toil, not
having satisfied or being able to satisfy his soul with the excess of
his violence, he cast himself on the ground in rage and disdain, and lay
groaning towards the heavens.
On the ground Orlando threw himself, and on the ground he remained, his
eyes fixed on heaven, his lips closed in dumbness; and thus he continued
for the space of three days and three nights, till his frenzy had mounted
to such a pitch that it turned against himself. He then arose in fury,
and tore off mail and breastplate, and every particle of clothing from
his body, till humanity was degraded in his heroical person, and he
became naked as the beasts of the field. In this condition, and his wits
quite gone, sword was forgotten as well as shield and helm; and he tore
up fir-tree and ash, and began running through the woods. The shepherds
hearing the cries of the strong man, and the crashing of the boughs, came
hastening from all quarters to know what it was; but when he saw them he
gave them chase, and smote to death those whom he reached, till the whole
country was up in arms, though to no purpose; for they were seized with
such terror, that while they threatened and closed after him, they
avoided him. He entered cottages, and tore away the food from the tables;
and ran up the craggy hills and down into the valleys; and chased beasts
as well as men, tearing the fawn and the goat to pieces, and stuffing
their flesh into his stomach with fierce will.
Raging and scouring onwards in this manner, he arrived one day at a
bridge over a torrent, on which the fierce Rodomont had fixed himself for
the purpose of throwing any one that attempted to pass it into the water.
It was a very narrow bridge, with scarcely room for two horses. But
Orlando took no heed of its narrowness. He dashed right forwards against
man and steed, and forced the champion to wrestle with him on foot; and,
winding himself about him with hideous strength, he leaped backwards with
him into the torrent, where he left him, and so mounted the opposite
bank, and again rushed over the country. A more terrible bridge than
this was in his way--even a precipitous pass of frightful height over
a valley; but still he scoured onwards, throwing over it the agonised
passengers that dared, in their ignorance of his strength, to oppose
him; and so always rushing and raging, he came down the mountains by the
sea-side to Barcelona, where he cast his eyes on the sands, and thought,
in his idiot mind, to make himself a house in them for coolness and
repose; and so he grubbed up the sand, and laid himself down in it: and
this was the terrible madman whom Angelica and Medoro saw looking at them
as they were approaching the city.
Neither of them knew him, nor did he know Angelica; but, with an idiot
laugh, he looked at her beauty, and liked her, and came horribly towards
her to carry her away. Shrieking, she put spurs to her horse and fled;
and Medoro, in a fury, came after the pursuer and smote him, but to no
purpose. The great madman turned round and smote the other's horse to the
ground, and so renewed his chase after Angelica, who suddenly regained
enough of her wits to recollect the enchanted ring. Instantly she put
it into her lips and disappeared; but in her hurry she fell from her
palfrey, and Orlando forgot her in the instant, and, mounting the poor
beast, dashed off with it over the country till it died; and so at last,
after many dreadful adventures by flood and field, he came running into
a camp full of his brother Paladins, who recognised him with tears; and,
all joining their forces, succeeded in pulling him down and binding him,
though not without many wounds: and by the help of these friends, and the
special grace of the apostle St. John (as will be told in another place),
the wits of the champion of the church were restored, and he became
ashamed of that passion for an infidel beauty which the heavenly powers
had thus resolved to punish.
But Angelica and Medoro pursued the rest of their journey in peace, and
took ship on the coast of Spain for India; and there she crowned her
bridegroom King of Cathay. The description of Orlando's jealousy and
growing madness is reckoned one of the finest things in Italian poetry;
and very fine it surely is--as strong as the hero's strength, and
sensitive as the heart of man. The circumstances are heightened, one
after the other, with the utmost art as well as nature. There is a
scriptural awfulness in the account of the hero's becoming naked; and the
violent result is tremendous. I have not followed Orlando into his feats
of ultra-supernatural strength. The reader requires to be prepared
for them by the whole poem. Nor are they necessary, I think, to
the production of the best effect; perhaps would hurt it in an age
unaccustomed to the old romances.
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: See p. 58 of the present volume. ]
[Footnote 2:
"Fugge tra selve spaventose e scure,
Per lochi inabitati, ermi e selvaggi.
Il mover de le frondi e di verzure
Che di cerri sentia, d' olmi e di faggi,
Fatto le avea con subite paure
Trovar di quà e di là strani viaggi;
Ch' ad ogni ombra veduta o in monte o in valle
Temea Rinaldo aver sempre alle spalle. "
Canto i. st. 33. ]
[Footnote 3:
"Ecco non lungi un bel cespuglio vede
Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rôse,
Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede,
Chiuso dal Sol fra l' alte quercie ombrose; ]
[Footnote 4: And how lovely is this!
"E fuor di quel cespuglio oscuro e cieco
Fa di se bella et improvvisa mostra,
Come di selva o fuor d'ombroso speco
Diana in scena, o Citerea si mostra," &c.
St. 52. ]
[Footnote 5: How admirable is the suddenness, brevity, and force of this
scene! And it is as artful and dramatic as off-hand; for this Amazon,
Bradamante, is the future heroine of the warlike part of the poem, and
the beauty from whose marriage with Ruggiero is to spring the house of
Este. Nor without her appearance at this moment, as Panizzi has shewn
(vol. i. p. cvi. ), could a variety of subsequent events have taken place
necessary to the greatest interests of the story. All the previous
passages in romance about Amazons are nothing compared with this flash of
a thunderbolt. ]
[Footnote 6: From _bayard_, old French; _bay-colour. _]
Footnote 7: His famous sword, vide p. 48. ]
[Footnote 8: To richness and rarity, how much is added by remoteness! It
adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it. ]
[Footnote 9:
"Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro
Mezo ascoso ne l'onda, e mezo sorto.
Come sospinto suol da Borca o d'Ostro
Venir lungo navilio a pigliar porto,"
Canto x. st. 100.
Improved from Ovid, _Metamorph_. lib. iv. 706
"Ecce velut navis præfixo concita rostro
Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis;
Sic fera," &c.
As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce,
Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar.
Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the
ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the
fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The
classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far
as the combat is concerned, is imitated from Ovid's story of Perseus and
Andromeda. ]
[Footnote 10:
"Sul lito un bosco era di querce ombrose,
Dove ogn' or par che Filomena piagna;
Ch'in mezo avea un pratel con una fonte,
E quinci e quindi un solitario monte.
Quivi il bramoso cavalier ritenne
L'audace corso, e nel pratel discese. "
St. 113.
What a landscape! and what a charm beyond painting he has put into it
with his nightingales! and then what figures besides! A knight on a
winged steed descending with a naked beauty into a meadow in the thick of
woods, with "here and there a solitary mountain. " The mountains make no
formal circle; they keep their separate distances, with their various
intervals of light and shade. And what a heart of solitude is given to
the meadow by the loneliness of these its waiters aloof! ]
[Footnote 11: Nothing can be more perfectly wrought up than this sudden
change of circumstances. ]
[Footnote 12: To feel the complete force of this picture, a reader should
have been in the South, and beheld the like sudden apparitions, at open
windows, of ladies looking forth in dresses of beautiful colours, and
with faces the most interesting. I remember a vision of this sort at
Carrara, on a bright but not too hot day (I fancied that the marble
mountains there cooled it). It resembled one of Titian's women, with its
broad shoulders, and boddice and sleeves differently coloured from the
petticoat; and seemed literally framed in the unsashed window. But I am
digressing. ]
[Footnote 13: Ariosto elsewhere represents him as the handsomest man in
the world; saying of him, in a line that has become famous,
"Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa. "
Canto x. st. 84.
--Nature made him, and then broke the mould.
(The word is generally printed _ruppe_; but I use the primitive text
of Mr. Pannizi's edition. ) Boiardo's handsomest man, Astolfo, was an
Englishman; Ariosto's is a Scotchman. See, in the present volume, the
note on the character of Astolfo, p. 41. ]
[Footnote 14:
"Come orsa, che l'alpestre cacciatore
Ne la pietrosa tana assalita abbia,
Sta sopra i figli con incerto core,
E freme in suono di pieta e di rabbia:
Ira la 'nvita e natural furore
A spiegar l'ugne, e a insanguinar le labbia;
Amor la 'ntenerisce, e la ritira
A riguardare a i figli in mezo l'ira. "
Like as a bear, whom men in mountains start
In her old stony den, and dare, and goad,
Stands o'er her children with uncertain heart,
And roars for rage and sorrow in one mood;
Anger impels her, and her natural part,
To use her nails, and bathe her lips in blood;
Love melts her, and, for all her angry roar,
Holds back her eyes to look on those she bore.
This stanza in Ariosto has become famous as a beautiful transcript of a
beautiful passage in Statius, which, indeed, it surpasses in style, but
not in feeling, especially when we consider with whom the comparison
originates:
"Ut lea, quam saevo foetam pressere cubili
Venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat
Mente sub incerta, torvum ac miserabile frendens
Illa quidem turbare globes, et frangere morsu
Tela queat; sed prolis amor crudelia vincit
Pectora, et in media catulos circumspicit ira. "
_Thebais_, x. 414. ]
[Footnote 15: This adventure of Cloridan and Medoro is imitated from the
Nisus and Euryalus of Virgil. An Italian critic, quoted by Panizzi, says,
that the way in which Cloridan exposes himself to the enemy is inferior
to the Latin poet's famous
"Me, me (adsum qui feci), in me convertite ferrum. "
Me, me ('tis I who did the deed), slay me.
And the reader will agree with Panizzi, that he is right. The
circumstance, also, of Euryalus's bequeathing his aged mother to the care
of his prince, in case he fails in his enterprise, is very touching;
and the main honour, both of the invention of the whole episode and its
particulars, remains with Virgil. On the other hand, the enterprise of
the friends in the Italian poet, which is that of burying their dead
master, and not merely of communicating with an absent general, is more
affecting, though it may be less patriotic; the inability of Zerbino to
kill him, when he looked on his face, is extremely so; and, as Panizzi
has shewn, the adventure is made of importance to the whole story of the
poem, and is not simply an episode, like that in the Æneid. It serves,
too, in a very particular manner to introduce Medoro worthily to the
affection of Angelica; for, mere female though she be, we should hardly
have gone along with her passion as we do, in a poem of any seriousness,
had it been founded merely on his beauty. ]
[Footnote 16: Canto xix. st. 34, &c. All the world have felt this to be
a true picture of first love. The inscription may be said to be that of
every other pair of lovers that ever existed, who knew how to write their
names. How musical, too, are the words "Angelica and Medoro! " Boiardo
invented the one; Ariosto found the match for it. One has no end to the
pleasure of repeating them. All hail to the moment when I first became
aware of their existence, more than fifty years ago, in the house of
the gentle artist Benjamin West! (Let the reader indulge me with this
recollection. ) I sighed with pleasure to look on them at that time; I
sigh now, with far more pleasure than pain, to look back on them, for
they never come across me but with delight; and poetry is a world in
which nothing beautiful ever thoroughly forsakes us. ]
[Footnote 17:
"Scritti, qual con carbone e qual con gesso. "
Canto xxiii. st. 106.
Ariosto did not mind soiling the beautiful fingers of Angelica with coal
and chalk. He knew that Love did not mind it.
* * * * *
ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON.
Argument.
The Paladin Astolfo ascends on the hippogriff to the top of one of the
mountains at the source of the Nile, called the Mountains of the Moon,
where he discovers the Terrestrial Paradise, and is welcomed by St. John
the Evangelist. The Evangelist then conveys him to the Moon itself, where
he is shewn all the things that have been lost on earth, among which is
the Reason of Orlando, who had been deprived of it for loving a Pagan
beauty. Astolfo is favoured with a singular discourse by the Apostle, and
is then presented with a vial containing the Reason of his great brother
Paladin, which he conveys to earth.
ASTOLFO'S
JOURNEY TO THE MOON
When the hippogriff loosened itself from the tree to which Ruggiero had
tied it in the beautiful spot to which he descended with Angelica,[1] it
soared away, like the faithful creature it was, to the house of its own
master, Atlantes the magician. But not long did it remain there--no, nor
the house itself, nor the magician; for the Paladin Astolfo came with a
mighty horn given him by a greater magician, the sound of which overthrew
all such abodes, and put to flight whoever heard it; and so the house
of Atlantes vanished, and the enchanter fled; and the Paladin took
possession of the griffin-horse, and rode away with it on farther
adventures.
One of these was the deliverance of Senapus, king of Ethiopia, from the
visitation of the dreadful harpies of old, who came infesting his table
as they did those of Æneas and Phineus. Astolfo drove them with his horse
towards the sources of the river Nile, in the Mountains of the Moon, and
pursued them with the hippogriff till they entered a great cavern, which,
by the dreadful cries and lamentings that issued from the depths within
it, the Paladin discovered to be the entrance from earth to Hell.
The daring Englishman, whose curiosity was excited, resolved to penetrate
to the regions of darkness. "What have I to fear? " thought he; "the horn
will assist me, if I want it. I'll drive the triple-mouthed dog out of
the way, and put Pluto and Satan to flight. "[2]
Astolfo tied the hippogriff to a tree, and pushed forward in spite of a
smoke that grew thicker and thicker, offending his eyes and nostrils. It
became, however, so exceedingly heavy and noisome, that he found it would
be impossible to complete his enterprise. Still he pushed forward as far
as he could, especially as he began to discern in the darkness something
that appeared to stir with an involuntary motion. It looked like a dead
body which has hung up many days in the rain and sun, and is waved
unsteadily by the wind. It turned out to be a condemned spirit in this
first threshold of Hell, sentenced there, with thousands of others, for
having been cruel and false in love. Her name was Lydia, and she had been
princess of the country so called. [3] Anaxarete was among them, who, for
her hard-heartedness, became a stone; and Daphne, who now discovered how
she had erred in making Apollo "run so much;" and multitudes of other
women; but a far greater number of men--men being worthier of punishment
in offences of love, because women are proner to believe. Theseus and
Jason were among them; and Amnon, the abuser of Tamar; and he that
disturbed the old kingdom of Latinus. [4]
Astolfo would fain have gone deeper into the jaws of Hell, but the smoke
grew so thick and palpable, it was impossible to move a step farther.
Turning about, therefore, he regained the entrance; and having refreshed
himself in a fountain hard by, and re-mounted the hippogriff, felt an
inclination to ascend as high as he possibly could in the air. The
excessive loftiness of the mountain above the cavern made him think that
its top could be at no great distance from the region of the Moon; and
accordingly he pushed his horse upwards, and rose and rose, till at
length he found himself on its table-land. It exhibited a region of
celestial beauty. The flowers were like beds of precious stones for
colour and brightness; the grass, if you could have brought any to earth,
would have been found to surpass emeralds; and the trees, whose leaves
were no less beautiful, were in fruit and flower at once. Birds of as
many colours were singing in the branches; the murmuring rivulets and
dumb lakes were more limpid than crystal: a sweet air was for ever
stirring, which reduced the warmth to a gentle temperature; and every
breath of it brought an odour from flowers, fruit-trees, and herbage all
at once, which nourished the soul with sweetness. [5]
In the middle of this lonely plain was a palace radiant as fire. Astolfo
rode his horse round about it, constantly admiring all he saw, and filled
with increasing astonishment; for he found that the dwelling was thirty
miles in circuit, and composed of one entire carbuncle, lucid and
vermilion. What became of the boasted wonders of the world before this?
The world itself, in the comparison, appeared but a lump of brute and
fetid matter. [6]
As the Paladin approached the vestibule, he was met by a venerable old
man, clad in a white gown and red mantle, whose beard descended on his
bosom, and whose aspect announced him as one of the elect of Paradise.
It was St. John the Evangelist, who lived in that mansion with Enoch and
Elijah, the only three mortals who never tasted death; for the place, as
the saint informed him, was the Terrestrial Paradise; and the inhabitants
were to live there till the angelical trumpet announced the coming of
Christ "on the white cloud. " The Paladin, he said, had been allowed to
visit it, by the favour of God, for the purpose of fetching away to earth
the lost wits of Orlando, which the champion of the Church had been
deprived of for loving a Pagan, and which had been attracted out of his
brains to the neighbouring sphere, the Moon.
Accordingly, after the new friends had spent two days in discourse, and
meals had been served up, consisting of fruit so exquisite that the
Paladin could not help thinking our first parents had some excuse for
eating it,[7] the Evangelist, when the Moon arose, took him into the car
which had borne Elijah to heaven; and four horses, redder than fire,
conveyed them to the lunar world.
The mortal visitant was amazed to see in the Moon a world resembling his
own, full of wood and water, and containing even cities and castles,
though of a different sort from ours. It was strange to find a sphere so
large which had seemed so petty afar off; and no less strange was it to
look down on the world he had left, and be compelled to knit his brows
and look sharply before he could well discern it, for it happened at the
time to want light. [8]
But his guide did not leave him much time to look about him. He conducted
him with due speed into a valley that contained, in one miraculous
collection, whatsoever had been lost or wasted on earth. I do not speak
only (says the poet) of riches and dominions, and such like gratuities of
Fortune, but of things also which Fortune can neither grant nor resume.
Much fame is there which Time has withdrawn--infinite prayers and vows
which are made to God Almighty by us poor sinners. There lie the tears
and the sighs of lovers, the hours lost in pastimes, the leisures of the
dull, and the intentions of the lazy. As to desires, they are so numerous
that they shadow the whole place. Astolfo went round among the different
heaps, asking what they were. His eyes were first struck with a huge
one of bladders which seemed to contain mighty sounds and the voices of
multitudes. These he found were the Assyrian and Persian monarchies,
together with those of Greece and Lydia. [9] One heap was nothing but
hooks of silver and gold, which were the presents, it seems, made to
patrons and great men in hopes of a return. Another consisted of snares
in the shape of garlands, the manufacture of parasites. Others were
verses in praise of great lords, all made of crickets which had burst
themselves with singing. Chains of gold he saw there, which were
pretended and unhappy love-matches; and eagles' claws, which were deputed
authorities; and pairs of bellows, which were princes' favours; and
overturned cities and treasuries, being treasons and conspiracies; and
serpents with female faces, that were coiners and thieves; and all sorts
of broken bottles, which were services rendered in miserable courts. A
great heap of overturned soup[10] he found to be alms to the poor, which
had been delayed till the giver's death. He then came to a great mount
of flowers, which once had a sweet smell, but now a most rank one. This
(_with submission_) was the present which the Emperor Constantine made to
good Pope Sylvester. [11] Heaps of twigs he saw next, set with bird-lime,
which, dear ladies, are your charms. In short there was no end to what he
saw. Thousands and thousands would not complete the list. Every thing
was there which was to be met with on earth, except folly in the raw
material, for that is never exported. [12]
There he beheld some of his own lost time and deeds; and yet, if nobody
had been with him to make him aware of them, never would he have
recognised them as his. [13]
They then arrived at something, which none of us ever prayed God to
bestow, for we fancy we possess it in superabundance; yet here it was in
greater quantities than any thing else in the place--I mean, sense.
It was a subtle fluid, apt to evaporate if not kept closely; and here
accordingly it was kept in vials of greater or less size. The greatest of
them all was inscribed with the following words: "The sense of Orlando. "
Others, in like manner, exhibited the names of the proper possessors; and
among them the frank-hearted Paladin beheld the greater portion of his
own. But what more astonished him, was to see multitudes of the vials
almost full to the stopper, which bore the names of men whom he had
supposed to enjoy their senses in perfection. Some had lost them for
love, others for glory, others for riches, others for hopes from great
men, others for stupid conjurers, for jewels, for paintings, for all
sorts of whims. There was a heap belonging to sophists and astrologers,
and a still greater to poets. [14]
Astolfo, with leave of the "writer of the dark Apocalypse," took
possession of his own. 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.
