It is not
addressed
to any special class.
Stories from the Italian Poets
Ariosto,
therefore, while the suit was going on, was obliged to content himself
with his fees from Milan and a monthly allowance which he received from
the duke of "about thirty-eight shillings," together with provisions
for three servants and two horses. He entered the duke's service in the
spring of 1518, and remained in it for the rest of his life. But it was
not so burden-some as that of the cardinal; and the consequence of the
poet's greater leisure was a second edition of the _Furioso_, in the year
1521, with additions and corrections; still, however, in forty cantos
only. It appears, by a deed of agreement,[19] that the work was printed
at the author's expense; that he was to sell the bookseller one hundred
copies for sixty livres (about 5_l_. 12_s_. ) on condition of the book's
not being sold at the rate of more than sixteen sous (1_s_. 8_d_. ); that
the author was not to give, sell, or allow to be sold, any copy of the
book at Ferrara, except by the bookseller; that the bookseller, after
disposing of the hundred copies, was to have as many more as he chose on
the same terms; and that, on his failing to require a further supply,
Ariosto was to be at liberty to sell his volumes to whom he pleased.
"With such profits," observes Panizzi, "it was not likely that the poet
would soon become independent;" and it may be added, that he certainly
got nothing by the first edition, whatever he may have done by the
second. He expressly tells us, in the satire which he wrote on declining
to go abroad with Ippolito, that all his poetry had not procured him
money enough to purchase a cloak. [20] Twenty years afterwards, when he
was dead, the poem was in such request, that, between 1542 and 1551,
Panizzi calculates there must have been a sale of it in Europe to the
amount of a hundred thousand copies. [21]
The second edition of the _Furioso_ did not extricate the author from
very serious difficulties; for the next year he was compelled to apply
to either to relieve him from his necessities, or permit him to look for
some employment more profitable than the ducal service. The answer of
this prince, who was now rich, but had always been penurious, and who
never laid out a farthing, if he could help it, except in defence of his
capital, was an appointment of Ariosto to the government of a district in
a state of anarchy, called Garfagnana, which had nominally returned to
his rule in consequence of the death of Leo, who had wrested it from him.
It was a wild spot in the Apennines, on the borders of the Ferrarese and
papal territories. Ariosto was there three years, and is said to have
reduced it to order; but, according to his own account, he had very
doubtful work of it. The place was overrun with banditti, including the
troops commissioned to suppress them. It required a severer governor than
he was inclined to be; and Alfonso did not attend to his requisitions for
supplies. The candid and good-natured poet intimates that the duke might
have given him the appointment rather for the governor's sake than the
people's; and the cold, the loneliness and barrenness of the place, and,
above all, his absence from the object of his affections, oppressed him.
He did not write a verse for twelve months: he says he felt like a bird
moulting[22]. The best thing got out of it was an anecdote for posterity.
The poet was riding out one day with a few attendants--some say walking
out in a fit of absence of mind--when he found himself in the midst of
a band of outlaws, who, in a suspicious manner, barely suffered him
to pass. A reader of Mrs. Radcliffe might suppose them a band of
_condottieri_, under the command of some profligate desperado; and such
perhaps they were. The governor had scarcely gone by, when the leader of
the band, discovering who he was, came riding back with much earnestness,
and making his obeisance to the poet, said, that he never should have
allowed him to pass in that manner had he known him to be the Signor
Ludovico Ariosto, author of the _Orlando Furioso_; that his own name was
Filippo Pacchione (a celebrated personage of his order); and that his men
and himself, so far from doing the Signor displeasure, would have the
honour of conducting him back to his castle. "And so they did," says
Baretti, "entertaining him all along the way with the various excellences
they had discerned in his poem, and bestowing upon it the most rapturous
praises[23]. "
On his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto is understood to have made several
journeys in Italy, either with or without the duke his master; some of
them to Mantua, where it has been said that he was crowned with laurel by
the Emperor Charles the Fifth. But the truth seems to be, that he only
received a laureate diploma: it does not appear that Charles made him any
other gift. His majesty, and the whole house of Este, and the pope, and
all the other Italian princes, left that to be done by the imperial
general, the celebrated Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto, to whom he
was sent on some mission by the Duke of Ferrara, and who settled on him
an annuity of a hundred golden ducats; "the only reward," says Panizzi,
"which we find to have been conferred on Ariosto expressly as a
poet. "[24] Davallos was one of the conquerors of Francis the First,
young and handsome, and himself a writer of verses. The grateful poet
accordingly availed himself of his benefactor's accomplishments to make
him, in turn, a present of every virtue under the sun. Cæsar was not so
liberal, Nestor so wise, Achilles so potent, Nireus so beautiful, nor
even Ladas, Alexander's messenger, so swift. [25] Ariosto was now verging
towards the grave; and he probably saw in the hundred ducats a golden
sunset of his cares.
Meantime, however, the poet had built a house, which, although small, was
raised with his own money; so that the second edition of the _Orlando_
may have realised some profits at last. He recorded the pleasant fact in
an inscription over the door, which has become celebrated:
"Parva, sed apta mihi; sed nulli obnoxia; sed non
Sordida; parta meo sed tamen acre domus. "
Small, yet it suits me; is of no offence;
Was built, not meanly, at my own expense.
What a pity (to compare great things with small) that he had not as long
a life before him to enjoy it, as Gil Blas had with his own comfortable
quotation over his retreat at Lirias! [26]
The house still remains; but the inscription unfortunately became
effaced; though the following one remains, which was added by his son
Virginio:
"Sic domus hæc Areostea
Propitios habeat deos, olim ut Pindarica. "
Dear to the gods, whatever come to pass,
Be Ariosto's house, as Pindar's was.
This was an anticipation--perhaps the origin--of Milton's sonnet about
his own house, addressed to "Captains and Collonels," during the civil
war. [27]
Davallos made the poet his generous present in the October of the year
1513; and in the same month of the year following the _Orlando_ was
published as it now stands, with various insertions throughout, chiefly
stories, and six additional cantos. Cardinal Ippolito had been dead some
time; and the device of the beehive was exchanged for one of two vipers,
with a hand and pair of shears cutting out their tongues, and the motto,
"Thou hast preferred ill-will to good" (_Dilexisti malitiam super
benignitatem_). The allusion is understood to have been to certain
critics whose names have all perished, unless Sperone (of whom we shall
hear more by and by) was one of them. The appearance of this edition was
eagerly looked for; but the trouble of correcting the press, and the
destruction of a theatre by fire which had been built under the poet's
direction, did his health no good in its rapidly declining condition; and
after suffering greatly from an obstruction, he died, much attenuated, on
the sixth day of June, 1533. His decease, his fond biographers have
told us, took place "about three in the afternoon;" and he was "aged
fifty-eight years, eight months, and twenty-eight days. " His body,
according to his direction, was taken to the church of the Benedictines
during the night by four men, with only two tapers, and in the most
private and simple manner. The monks followed it to the grave out of
respect, contrary to their usual custom.
So lived, and so died, and so desired humbly to be buried, one of the
delights of the world.
His son Virginio had erected a chapel in the garden of the house built by
his father, and he wished to have his body removed thither; but the
monks would not allow it. The tomb, at first a very humble one, was
subsequently altered and enriched several times; but remains, I
believe, as rebuilt at the beginning of the century before last by his
grand-nephew, Ludovico Ariosto, with a bust of the poet, and two statues
representing Poetry and Glory.
Ariosto was tall and stout, with a dark complexion, bright black eyes,
black and curling hair, aquiline nose, and shoulders broad but a little
stooping. His aspect was thoughtful, and his gestures deliberate. Titian,
besides painting his portrait, designed that which appeared in the
woodcut of the author's own third edition of his poem, which has been
copied into Mr. Panizzi's. It has all the look of truth of that great
artist's vital hand; but, though there is an expression of the, genial
character of the mouth, notwithstanding the exuberance of beard, it does
not suggest the sweetness observable in one of the medals of Ariosto,
a wax impression of which is now before me; nor has the nose so much
delicacy and grace. [28]
The poet's temperament inclined him to melancholy, but his intercourse
was always cheerful. One biographer says he was strong and
healthy--another, that he was neither. In all probability he was
naturally strong, but weakened by a life full of emotion. He talks of
growing old at forty four, and of leaving been bald for some time. [29] He
had a cough for many years before he died. His son says he cured it by
drinking good old wine. Ariosto says that "vin fumoso" did not agree with
him; but that might only mean wine of a heady sort. The chances, under
such circumstances, were probably against wine of any kind; and Panizzi
thinks the cough was never subdued. His physicians forbade him all sorts
of stimulants with his food. [30]
His temper and habits were those of a man wholly given up to love and
poetry. In his youth he was volatile, and at no time without what is
called some "affair of the heart. " Every woman attracted him who had
modesty and agreeableness; and as, at the same time, he was very jealous,
one might imagine that his wife, who had a right to be equally so, would
have led no easy life. But it is evident he could practise very generous
self-denial; and probably the married portion of his existence, supposing
Alessandra's sweet countenance not to have belied her, was happy on both
sides. He was beloved by his family, which is never the case with the
unamiable. Among his friends were most Of the great names of the age,
including a world of ladies, and the whole graceful court of Guidobaldo
da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, for which Catiglione wrote his book of
the _Gentleman (Il Cortegiano)_. Raphael addressed him a sonnet, and
Titian painted his likeness. He knew Vittoria Colonna, and Veronica da
Gambera, and Giulia Gonzaga (whom the Turks would have run away with),
and Ippolita Sforza, the beautiful blue-stocking, who set Bandello on
writing his novels, and Bembo, and Flaminio, and Berni, and Molza, and
Sannazzaro, and the Medici family, and Vida, and Macchiavelli; and nobody
doubts that he might have shone at the court of Leo the brightest of the
bright. But he thought it "better to enjoy a little in peace, than seek
after much with trouble. "[31] He cared for none of the pleasures of the
great, except building, and that he was content to satisfy in Cowley's
fashion, with "a small house in a large garden. " He was plain in his
diet, disliked ceremony, and was frequently absorbed in thought. His
indignation was roused by mean and brutal vices; but he took a large and
liberal view of human nature in general; and, if he was somewhat free in
his life, must be pardoned for the custom of the times, for his charity
to others, and for the genial disposition which made him an enchanting
poet. Above all, he was an affectionate son; lived like a friend with his
children; and, in spite of his tendency to pleasure, supplied the place
of an anxious and careful father to his brothers and sisters, who
idolized him.
"Ornabat pietas et grata modestia vatem,"
wrote his brother Gabriel,
"Sancta fides, dictique memor, munitaque recto
Justitia, et nullo patientia victa labore,
Et constans virtus animi, et elementia mitis,
Ambitione procul pulsa fastûsque tumore;
Credere uti posses natum felicibus horis,
Felici fulgente astro Jovis atque Diones. "[32]
Devoted tenderness adorn'd the bard,
And grateful modesty, and grave regard
To his least word, and justice arm'd with right,
And patience counting every labour light,
And constancy of soul, and meekness too,
That neither pride nor worldly wishes knew.
You might have thought him born when there concur
The sweet star and the strong, Venus and Jupiter.
His son Virginio, and others, have left a variety of anecdotes
corroborating points in his character. I shall give them all, for they
put us into his company. It is recorded, as an instance of his reputation
for honesty, that an old kinsman, a clergyman, who was afraid of being
poisoned for his possessions, would trust himself in no other hands; but
the clergyman was his own grand-uncle and namesake, probably godfather;
so that the compliment is not so very great.
In his youth he underwent a long rebuke one day from his father without
saying a word, though a satisfactory answer was in his power; on which
his brother Gabriel expressing his surprise, he said that he was thinking
all the time of a scene in a comedy he was writing, for which the
paternal lecture afforded an excellent study.
He loved gardening better than he understood it; was always shifting
his plants, and destroying the seeds, out of impatience to see them
germinate. He was rejoicing once on the coming up of some "capers," which
he had been visiting every day to see how they got on, when it turned out
that his capers were elder-trees!
He was perpetually altering his verses. His manuscripts are full of
corrections. He wrote the exordium of the _Orlando_ over and over again;
and at last could only be satisfied with it in proportion as it was not
his own; that is to say, in proportion as it came nearer to the beautiful
passage in Dante from which his ear and his feelings had caught it. [33]
He, however, discovered that correction was not always improvement. He
used to say, it was with verses as with trees. A plant naturally well
growing might be made perfect by a little delicate treatment; but
over-cultivation destroyed its native grace. In like manner, you might
perfect a happily-inspired verse by taking away any little fault of
expression; but too great a polish deprived it of the charm of the first
conception. It was like over-training a naturally graceful child. If it
be wondered how he who corrected so much should succeed so well, even to
an appearance of happy negligence, it is to be considered that the most
impulsive writers often put down their thoughts too hastily, then correct
and re-correct them in the same impatient manner; and so have to bring
them round, by as many steps, to the feeling which they really had at
first, though they were too hasty to do it justice.
Ariosto would have altered his house as often as his verses, but did not
find it so convenient. Somebody wondering that he contented himself with
so small an abode, when he built such magnificent mansions in his poetry,
he said it was easier to put words together than blocks of stone. [34]
He liked Virgil; commended the style of Tibullus; did not care for
Propertius; but expressed high approbation of Catullus and Horace. I
suspect his favourite to have been Ovid. His son says he did not study
much, nor look after books; but this may have been in his decline, or
when Virginio first took to observing him. A different conclusion as to
study is to be drawn from the corrected state of his manuscripts, and the
variety of his knowledge; and with regard to books, he not only mentions
the library of the Vatican as one of his greatest temptations to visit
Rome, but describes himself, with all the gusto of a book-worm, as
enjoying them in his chimney-corner. [35]
To intimate his secrecy in love-matters, he had an inkstand with a
Cupid on it, holding a finger on his lips. I believe it is still in
existence. [36] He did not disclose his mistresses' names, as Dante did,
for the purpose of treating them with contempt; nor, on the other hand,
does he appear to have been so indiscriminately gallant as to be fond of
goitres. [37] The only mistress of whom he complained he concealed in a
Latin appellation; and of her he did not complain with scorn. He had
loved, besides Alessandra Benucci, a lady of the name of Ginevra; the
mother of one of his children is recorded as a certain Orsolina; and that
of the other was named Maria, and is understood to have been a governess
in his father's family. [38]
He ate fast, and of whatever was next him, often beginning with the bread
on the table before the dishes came; and he would finish his dinner with
another bit of bread. "Appetiva le rape," says his good son; videlicet,
he was fond of turnips. In his fourth Satire, he mentions as a favourite
dish, turnips seasoned with vinegar and boiled _must_ (sapa), which
seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi. [39] He cared so little
for good eating, that he said of himself, he should have done very well
in the days when people lived on acorns.
A stranger coming in one day at the dinner-hour, he ate up what was
provided for both; saying afterwards, when told of it, that the gentleman
should have taken care of himself. This does not look very polite; but of
course it was said in jest. His son attributed this carelessness at table
to absorption in his studies.
He carried this absence of mind so far, and was at the same time so good
a pedestrian, that Virginio tells us he once walked all the way from
Carpi to Ferrara in his slippers, owing to his having strolled out of
doors in that direction.
The same biographers who describe him as a brave soldier, add, that he
was a timid horseman and seaman; and indeed he appears to have eschewed
every kind of unnecessary danger. It was a maxim of his, to be the last
in going out of a boat. I know not what Orlando would have said to this;
but there is no doubt that the good son and brother avoided no pain in
pursuit of his duty. He more than once risked his life in the service of
government from the perils of travelling among war-makers and banditti.
Imagination finds something worthy of itself on great occasions, but is
apt to discover the absurdity of staking existence on small ones. Ariosto
did not care to travel out of Italy. He preferred, he says, going round
the earth in a map; visiting countries without having to pay innkeepers,
and ploughing harmless seas without thunder and lightning[40].
His outward religion, like the one he ascribed to his friend Cardinal
Bembo, was "that of other people. " He did not think it of use to disturb
their belief; yet excused rather than blamed Luther, attributing his
heresy to the necessary consequences of mooting points too subtle for
human apprehension[41]. He found it impossible, however, to restrain his
contempt of bigotry; and, like most great writers in Catholic countries,
was a derider of the pretensions of devotees, and the discords and
hypocrisies of the convent. He evidently laughed at Dante's figments
about the other world; not at the poetry of them, for that he admired,
and sometimes imitated, but at the superstition and presumption. He
turned the Florentine's moon into a depository of non-sense; and found no
hell so bad as the hearts of tyrants. The only other people he put into
the infernal regions are ladies who were cruel to their lovers! He had
a noble confidence in the intentions of his Creator; and died ill the
expectation of meeting his friends again in a higher state of existence.
Of Ariosto's four brothers, one became a courtier at Naples, another a
clergyman, another an envoy to the Emperor Charles the Fifth; and the
fourth, who was a cripple and a scholar, lived with Lodovico, and
celebrated his memory. His two sons, whose names were Virginio and
Gianbattista, and who were illegitimate (the reader is always to bear
in mind the more indulgent customs of Italy in matters of this nature,
especially in the poet's time), became, the first a canon in the
cathedral of Ferrara, and the other an officer in the army. It does not
appear that he had any other children.
Ariosto's renown is wholly founded on the _Orlando Furioso_, though he
wrote satires, comedies, and a good deal of miscellaneous poetry, all
occasionally exhibiting a master-hand. The comedies, however, were
unfortunately modelled on those of the ancients; and the constant
termination of the verse with trisyllables contributes to render them
tedious. What comedies might he not have written, had he given himself up
to existing times and manners[42]!
The satires are rather good-natured epistles to his friends, written with
a charming ease and straightforwardness, and containing much exquisite
sense and interesting autobiography.
On his lyrical poetry he set little value; and his Latin verse is not of
the best order. Critics have expressed their surprise at its inferiority
to that of contemporaries inferior to him in genius; but the reason lay
in the very circumstance. I mean, that his large and liberal inspiration
could only find its proper vent in his own language; he could not be
content with potting up little delicacies in old-fashioned vessels.
The _Orlando Furioso_ is, literally, a continuation of the _Orlando
Innamorato_; so much so, that the story is not thoroughly intelligible
without it. This was probably the reason of a circumstance that would be
otherwise unaccountable, and that was ridiculously charged against him as
a proof of despairing envy by the despairing envy of Sperone; namely, his
never having once mentioned the name of his predecessor. If Ariosto had
despaired of equalling Boiardo, he must have been hopeless of reaching
posterity, in which case his silence must have been useless; and, in
any case, it is clear that he looked on himself as the continuator of
another's narration. But Boiardo was so popular when he wrote, that
the very silence shews he must have thought the mention of his name
superfluous. Still it is curious that he never should have alluded to it
in the course of the poem. It could not have been from any dislike to the
name itself, or the family; for in his Latin poems he has eulogised the
hospitality of the house of Boiardo[43].
The _Furioso_ continued not only what Boiardo did, but what he intended
to do; for as its subject is Orlando's love, and knight-errantry in
general, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it from
its fabulous ancestor Ruggiero. Orlando is the open, Ruggiero the covert
hero; and almost all the incidents of this supposed irregular poem,
which, as Panizzi has shewn, is one of the most regular in the world, go
to crown with triumph and wedlock the originator of that unworthy race.
This is done on the old groundwork of Charlemagne and his Paladins, of
the treacheries of the house of Gan of Maganza, and of the wars of the
Saracens against Christendom. Bradamante, the Amazonian _intended_ of
Ruggiero, is of the same race as Orlando, and a great overthrower of
infidels. Ruggiero begins with being an infidel himself, and is kept from
the wars, like a second Achilles, by the devices of an anxious guardian,
but ultimately fights, is converted, and marries; and Orlando all the
while slays his thousands, as of old, loves, goes mad for jealousy, is
the foolishest and wisest of mankind (somewhat like the poet himself);
and crowns the glory of Ruggiero, not only by being present at his
marriage, but putting on his spurs with his own hand when he goes forth
to conclude the war by the death of the king of Algiers.
The great charm, however, of the _Orlando Furioso_ is not in its
knight-errantry, or its main plot, or the cunning interweavement of its
minor ones, but in its endless variety, truth, force, and animal spirits;
in its fidelity to actual nature while it keeps within the bounds of the
probable, and its no less enchanting verisimilitude during its wildest
sallies of imagination. At one moment we are in the midst of flesh and
blood like ourselves; at the next with fairies and goblins; at the next
in a tremendous battle or tempest; then in one of the loveliest of
solitudes; then hearing a tragedy, then a comedy; then mystified in some
enchanted palace; then riding, dancing, dining, looking at pictures; then
again descending to the depths of the earth, or soaring to the moon, or
seeing lovers in a glade, or witnessing the extravagances of the great
jealous hero Orlando; and the music of an enchanting style perpetually
attends us, and the sweet face of Angelica glances here and there like
a bud: and there are gallantries of all kinds, and stories endless, and
honest tears, and joyous bursts of laughter, and beardings for all base
opinions, and no bigotry, and reverence for whatsoever is venerable,
and candour exquisite, and the happy interwoven names of "Angelica and
Medoro," young for ever.
But so great a work is not to be dismissed with a mere rhapsody of
panegyric. Ariosto is inferior, in some remarkable respects, to his
predecessors Pulci and Boiardo. His characters, for the most part, do not
interest us as much as theirs by their variety and good fellowship; he
invented none as Boiardo did, with the exception, indeed, of Orlando's,
as modified by jealousy; and he has no passage, I thick, equal in pathos
to that of the struggle at Roncesvalles; for though Orlando's jealousy
is pathetic, as well as appalling, the effects of it are confined to one
person, and disputed by his excessive strength. Ariosto has taken all
tenderness out of Angelica, except that of a kind of boarding-school
first love (which, however, as here-after intimated, may have simplified
and improved her general effect), and he has omitted all that was amusing
in the character of Astolfo. Knight-errantry has fallen off a little
in his hands from its first youthful and trusting freshness; more
sophisticate times are opening upon us; and satire more frequently and
bitterly interferes. The licentious passages (though never gross in
words, like those of his contemporaries,) are not redeemed by sentiment
as in Boiardo; and it seems to me, that Ariosto hardly improved so much
as he might have done Upon his predecessor's imitations of the classics.
I cannot help thinking that, upon the whole, he had better have left them
alone, and depended entirely on himself. Shelley says, he has too much
fighting and "revenge,"[44]--which is true; but the revenge was only
among his knights. He was himself (like my admirable friend) one of the
most forgiving of men; and the fighting was the taste of the age, in
which chivalry was still flourishing in the shape of such men as Bayard,
and ferocity in men like Gaston de Foix. Ariosto certainly did not
anticipate, any more than Shakspeare did, that spirit of human
amelioration which has ennobled the present age. He thought only of
reflecting nature as he found it. He is sometimes even as uninteresting
as he found other people; but the tiresome passages, thank God, all
belong to the house of Este! His panegyrics of Ippolito and his ancestors
recoiled on the poet with a retributive dulness.
But in all the rest there is a wonderful invigoration and enlargement.
The genius of romance has increased to an extraordinary degree in power,
if not in simplicity. Its shoulders have grown broader, its voice louder
and more sustained; and if it has lost a little on the sentimental side,
it has gained prodigiously, not only in animal vigour, but, above all, in
knowledge of human nature, and a brave and joyous candour in shewing it.
The poet takes a universal, an acute, and, upon the whole, a cheerful
view, like the sun itself, of all which the sun looks on; and readers are
charmed to see a knowledge at once so keen and so happy. Herein lies the
secret of Ariosto's greatness; which is great, not because it has the
intensity of Dante, or the incessant thought and passion of Shakspeare,
or the dignified imagination of Milton, to all of whom he is far inferior
in sustained excellence,--but because he is like very Nature herself.
Whether great, small, serious, pleasureable, or even indifferent, he
still has the life, ease, and beauty of the operations of the daily
planet. Even where he seems dull and common-place, his brightness and
originality at other times make it look like a good-natured condescension
to our own common habits of thought and discourse; as though he did it
but on purpose to leave nothing unsaid that could bring him within the
category of ourselves. His charming manner intimates that, instead of
taking thought, he chooses to take pleasure with us, and compare old
notes; and we are delighted that he does us so much honour, and makes, as
it were, Ariostos of us all. He is Shakspearian in going all lengths with
Nature as he found her, not blinking the fact of evil, yet finding a
"soul of goodness" in it, and, at the same time, never compromising the
worth of noble and generous qualities. His young and handsome Medoro is a
pitiless slayer of his enemies; but they were his master's enemies, and
he would have lost his life, even to preserve his dead body. His Orlando,
for all his wisdom and greatness, runs mad for love of a coquette, who
triumphs over warriors and kings, only to fall in love herself with an
obscure lad. His kings laugh with all their hearts, like common people;
his mourners weep like such unaffected children of sorrow, that they must
needs "swallow some of their tears. "[45] His heroes, on the arrival of
intelligence that excites them, leap out of bed and write letters before
they dress, from natural impatience, thinking nothing of their "dignity. "
When Astolfo blows the magic horn which drives every body out of the
castle of Atlantes, "not a mouse" stays behind;--not, as Hoole and such
critics think, because the poet is here writing ludicrously, but because
he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as
Shakspeare in _Hamlet_ does to give that of silence, when "not a mouse is
stirring. " Instead of being mere comic writing, such incidents are in the
highest epic taste of the meeting of extremes,--of the impartial eye with
which Nature regards high and low. So, give Ariosto his hippogriff, and
other marvels with which he has enriched the stock of romance, and Nature
takes as much care of the verisimilitude of their actions, as if she had
made them herself. His hippogriff returns, like a common horse, to the
stable to which he has been accustomed. His enchanter, who is gifted with
the power of surviving decapitation and pursuing the decapitator so long
as a fated hair remains on his head, turns deadly pale in the face when
it is scalped, and falls lifeless from his horse. His truth, indeed, is
so genuine, and at the same time his style is so unaffected, sometimes so
familiar in its grace, and sets us so much at ease in his company, that
the familiarity is in danger of bringing him into contempt with the
inexperienced, and the truth of being considered old and obvious, because
the mode of its introduction makes it seem an old acquaintance. When
Voltaire was a young man, and (to Anglicise a favourite Gallic phrase)
fancied he had _profounded_ every thing deep and knowing, he thought
nothing of Ariosto. Some years afterwards he took him for the first of
grotesque writers, but nothing more. At last he pronounced him equally
"entertaining and sublime, and humbly apologised for his error. " Foscolo
quotes this passage from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; and adds
another from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which the painter speaks of a
similar inability on his own part, when young, to enjoy the perfect
nature of Raphael, and the admiration and astonishment which, in his
riper years, he grew to feel for it. [46]
The excessive "wildness" attributed to Ariosto is not wilder than
many things in Homer, or even than some things in Virgil (such as the
transformation of ships into sea-nymphs). The reason why it has been
thought so is, that he rendered them more popular by mixing them with
satire, and thus brought them more universally into notice. One main
secret of the delight they give us is their being poetical comments,
as it were, on fancies and metaphors of our own. Thus, we say of
a suspicious man, that he is suspicion itself; Ariosto turns him
accordingly into an actual being of that name. We speak of the flights of
the poets; Ariosto makes them literally flights--flights on a hippogriff,
and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he
accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty;
therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient
defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and
Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive
bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; so Angelica,
queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and
marries a common soldier.
And what a creature is this Angelica! what effect has she not had upon
the world in spite of all her faults, nay, probably by very reason of
them! I know not whether it has been remarked before, but it appears to
me, that the charm which every body has felt in the story of Angelica
consists mainly in that very fact of her being nothing but a beauty and
a woman, dashed even with coquetry, which renders her so inferior in
character to most heroines of romance. Her interest is founded on nothing
exclusive or prejudiced.
It is not addressed to any special class. She
might or might not have been liked by this person or that; but the world
in general will adore her, because nature has made them to adore beauty
and the sex, apart from prejudices right or wrong. Youth will attribute
virtues to her, whether she has them or not; middle-age be unable to help
gazing on her; old-age dote on her. She is womankind itself, in form and
substance; and that is a stronger thing, for the most part, than all our
figments about it. Two musical names, "Angelica and Medoro," have become
identified in the minds of poetical readers with the honeymoon of
youthful passion.
The only false acid insipid fiction I can call to mind in the _Orlando
Furioso_ is that of the "swans" who rescue "medals" from the river of
oblivion (canto xxxv. ). It betrays a singular forgetfulness of the poet's
wonted verisimilitude; for what metaphor can reconcile us to swans taking
an interest in medals? Popular belief had made them singers; but it was
not a wise step to convert them into antiquaries.
Ariosto's animal spirits, and the brilliant hurry and abundance of his
incidents, blind a careless reader to his endless particular beauties,
which, though he may too often "describe instead of paint" (on account,
as Foscolo says, of his writing to the many), spew that no man could
paint better when he chose. The bosoms of his females "come and go, like
the waves on the sea-coast in summer airs. "[47] His witches draw the fish
out of the water
"With simple words and a pure warbled spell. "[48]
He borrows the word "painting" itself,--like a true Italian and friend
of Raphael and Titian, to express the commiseration in the faces of the
blest for the sufferings of mortality
"Dipinte di pietade il viso pio. "[49]
Their pious looks painted with tenderness.
Jesus is very finely called, in the same passage, "il sempiterno Amante,"
the eternal Lover. The female sex are the
"Schiera gentil the pur adorna il mondo. "[50]
The gentle bevy that adorns the world.
He paints cabinet-pictures like Spenser, in isolated stanzas, with a
pencil at once solid and light; as in the instance of the charming one
that tells the story of Mercury and his net; how he watched the Goddess
of Flowers as she issued forth at dawn with her lap full of roses and
violets, and so threw the net over her "one day," and "took her;"
"un dì lo prese[51]. "
But he does not confine himself to these gentle pictures. He has many
as strong as Michael Angelo, some as intense as Dante. He paints the
conquest of America in five words
"Veggio da diece cacciar mille. "[52]
I see thousands
Hunted by tens.
He compares the noise of a tremendous battle heard in the neighbourhood
to the sound of the cataracts of the Nile:
"un alto suon ch' a quel s' accorda
Con che i vicin' cadendo il Nil assorda. "[53]
He "scourges" ships at sea with tempests--say rather the "miserable
seamen;" while night-time grows blacker and blacker on the "exasperated
waters. "[54]
When Rodomont has plunged into the thick of Paris, and is carrying every
thing before him ("like a serpent that has newly cast his skin, and
goes shaking his three tongues under his eyes of fire"), he makes this
tremendous hero break the middle of the palace-gate into a huge "window,"
and look through it with a countenance which is suddenly beheld by a
crowd of faces as pale as death:
"E dentro fatto l' ha tanta finestra,
Che ben vedere e veduto esser puote
Dai visi impressi di color di morte[55]. "
The whole description of Orlando's jealousy and growing madness is
Shakspearian for passion and circumstance, as the reader may see even
in the prose abstract of it in this volume; and his sublimation of a
suspicious king into suspicion itself (which it also contains) is as
grandly and felicitously audacious as any thing ever invented by poet.
Spenser thought so; and has imitated and emulated it in one of his own
finest passages. Ariosto has not the spleen and gall of Dante, and
therefore his satire is not so tremendous; yet it is very exquisite, as
all the world have acknowledged in the instances of the lost things found
in the moon, and the angel who finds Discord in a convent. He does not
take things so much to heart as Chaucer. He has nothing so profoundly
pathetic as our great poet's _Griselda_. Yet many a gentle eye has
moistened at the conclusion of the story of Isabella; and to recur once
more to Orlando's jealousy, all who have experienced that passion will
feel it shake them. I have read somewhere of a visit paid to Voltaire by
an Italian gentleman, who recited it to him, and who (being moved perhaps
by the recollection of some passage in his own history) had the tears all
the while pouring down his cheeks.
Such is the poem which the gracious and good Cardinal Ippolito designated
as a "parcel of trumpery. " It had, indeed, to contend with more slights
than his. Like all originals, it was obliged to wait for the death of
the envious and the self-loving, before it acquired a popularity which
surpassed all precedent. Foscolo says, that Macchiavelli and Ariosto,
"the two writers of that age who really possessed most excellence, were
the least praised during their lives. Bembo was approached in a posture
of adoration and fear; the infamous Aretino extorted a fulsome letter of
praises from the great and the learned[56]. " He might have added, that
the writer most in request "in the circles" was a gentleman of the name
of Bernardo Accolti, then called the _Unique_, now never heard of.
Ariosto himself eulogised him among a shoal of writers, half of whose
names have perished; and who most likely included in that half the men
who thought he did not praise them enough. For such was the fact! I
allude to the charming invention in his last canto, in which he supposes
himself welcomed home after a long voyage. Gay imitated it very
pleasantly in an address to Pope on the conclusion of his Homer. Some of
the persons thus honoured by Ariosto were vexed, it is said, at not being
praised highly enough; others at seeing so many praised in their company;
some at being left out of the list; and some others at being mentioned at
all! These silly people thought it taking too great a liberty! The poor
flies of a day did not know that a god had taken them in hand to give
them wings for eternity. Happily for them the names of most of these
mighty personages are not known. One or two, however, took care to make
posterity laugh. Trissino, a very great man in his day, and the would-be
restorer of the ancient epic, had the face, in return for the poet's
too honourable mention of him, to speak, in his own absurd verses, of
"Ariosto, with that _Furioso_ of his, which pleases the vulgar:"
"L' Ariosto
Con quel _Furioso_ suo the piace al volgo. "
"_His_ poem," adds Panizzi, "has the merit of not having pleased any
body[57]. " A sullen critic, Sperone (the same that afterwards plagued
Tasso), was so disappointed at being left out, that he became the poet's
bitter enemy. He talked of Ariosto taking himself for a swan and "dying
like a goose" (the allusion was to the fragment he left called the _Five
Cantos_). What has become of the swan Sperone? Bernardo Tasso, Torquato's
father, made a more reasonable (but which turned out to be an unfounded)
complaint, that Ariosto had established a precedent which poets would
find inconvenient. And Macchiavelli, like the true genius he was,
expressed a good-natured and flattering regret that his friend Ariosto
had left him out of his list of congratulators, in a work which was "fine
throughout," and in some places "wonderful[58]. "
The great Galileo knew Ariosto nearly by heart[59].
He is a poet whom it may require a certain amount of animal spirits to
relish thoroughly. The _air_ of his verse must agree with you before you
can perceive all its freshness and vitality. But if read with any thing
like Italian sympathy, with allowance for times and manners, and with a
_sense_ as well as _admittance_ of the different kinds of the beautiful
in poetry (two very different things), you will be almost as much charmed
with the "divine Ariosto" as his countrymen have been for ages.
[Footnote 1: The materials for this notice have been chiefly collected
from the poet's own writings (rich in autobiographical intimation)
and from his latest editor Panizzi. I was unable to see this writer's
principal authority, Baruffaldi, till I corrected the proofs and the
press was waiting; otherwise I might have added two or three more
particulars, not, however, of any great consequence. Panizzi is, as
usual, copious and to the purpose; and has, for the first time I believe,
critically proved the regularity and connectedness of Ariosto's plots,
as well as the hollowness of the pretensions of the house of Este to be
considered patrons of literature. It is only a pity that his _Life
of Ariosto is_ not better arranged. I have, of course, drawn my own
conclusions respecting particulars, and sometimes have thought I had
reason to differ with those who have preceded me; but not, I hope, with a
presumption unbecoming a foreigner. ]
[Footnote 2: See in his Latin poems the lines beginning, "Hæc me
verbosas suasit perdiscere leges. "
_De Diversis Amoribus. _]
[Footnote 3:
"Mio padre mi cacciò con spiedi e lancie," &c.
_Satira_ vi.
There is some appearance of contradiction in this passage and the one
referred to in the preceding note; but I think the conclusion in the test
the probable one, and that he was not compelled to study the law in the
first instance. He speaks more than once of his father's memory with
great tenderness, particularly in the lines on his death, entitled _De
Nicolao Areosto_. ]
[Footnote 4: His brother Gabriel expressly mentions it in his prologue to
the _Scholastica_. ]
[Footnote 5:
"Già mi fur dolci inviti," &c.
_Satira_ v. ]
[Footnote 6: See, in the present volume, the beginning of _Astolfo's
Journey to the Moon_. ]
[Footnote 7:
"Me potius fugiat, nullis mollita querelis,
Dum simulet reliquos Lydia dura procos.
Parte carere omni malo, quam admittere quemquam
In partem. Cupiat Juppiter ipse, negem. "
_Ad Petrum Bembum. _]
[Footnote 8: Panizzi, on the authority of Guicciardini and others. Giulio
and another brother (Ferrante) afterwards conspired against Alfonso and
Ippolito, and, on the failure of their enterprise, were sentenced to be
imprisoned for life. Ferrante died in confinement at the expiration of
thirty-four years; Giulio, at the end of fifty-three, was pardoned. He
came out of prison on horseback, dressed according to the fashion of the
time when he was arrested, and "greatly excited the curiosity of the
people. "--_Idem_, vol. i. p xii. ]
[Footnote 9:
"Che debbo fare io qui?
Agli usatti, agli spron (perch'io son grande)
Non mi posso adattar, per porne o trarne. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 10: "Per la lettera de la S. V. Reverendiss. et a bocha da Ms.
Ludovico Ariosto ho inteso quanta leticia ha conceputa del felice parto
mio: il che mi è stato summamente grato, cussi lo ringrazio de la
visitazione, et particolarmente di havermi mandato il dicto Ms. Ludovico,
per che ultra che mi sia stato acetto, representando la persona de
la S. V. Reverendiss. lui anche per conto suo mi ha addutta gran
satisfazione, havendomi cum la narratione de l'opera the compone facto
passar questi due giorni non solum senza fastidio, ma cum piacer
grandissimo. "--Tiraboschi, _Storia della Poesia Italiana_, Matthias'
edition, vol. iii. p. 197. ]
[Footnote 11: _Orlando Furioso_, canto xxix, st. 29. ]
[Footnote 12: See the horrible account of the suffocated Vicentine
Grottoes, in Sismondi, _Histoire des Republiques Italiennes_, &c vol. iv.
p. 48. ]
[Footnote 13:
"Piegossi a me dalla beata sede;
La mano e poi le gote ambe mi prese,
E il santo bacio in amendue mi diede.
Di mezza quella bolla anco cortese
Mi fu, della quale ora il mio Bibbiena
Espedito m'ha il resto alle mie spese.
Indi col seno e con la falda piena
Di speme, ma di pioggia molle e brutto,
La notte andai sin al Montone a cena. " _Sat_. iv. ]
[Footnote 14: See _canzone_ the first, "Non so s'io potrò," &c. and the
_copitolo_ beginning "Della mia negra penna in fregio d'oro. "]
[Footnote 15: _Histoire Litteraire_, &c. vol. iv. p. 335. ]
[Footnote 16:
"Singularis tua et pervetus erga nos familiamque nostrum observantia,
egregiaque bonarum artium et litterarum doctrina, atque in studiis
mitioribus, praesertimque poetices elegans et præclarum ingenium, jure
prope suo a nobis exposcere videntur, ut quae tibi usui futurae sint,
justa praesertim et honesta petenti, ea tibi liberaliter et gratiose
concedamus. Quamobrem," &c. . "On the same page," says Panizzi, "are
mentioned the privileges granted by the king of France, by the republic
of Venice, and other potentates;" so that authors, in those days, appear
to have been thought worthy of profiting by their labours, wherever they
contributed to the enjoyment of mankind.
Leo's privilege is the one that so long underwent the singular obloquy of
being a bull of excommunication against all who objected to the poem! a
misconception on the part of some ignorant man, or misrepresentation by
some malignant one, which affords a remarkable warning against taking
things on trust from one writer after another. Even Bayle (see the
article "Leo X. " in his Dictionary) suffered his inclinations to blind
his vigilance. ]
[Footnote 17:
"Apollo, tua mercè, tua mercè, santo
Collegio delle Muse, io non mi trovo
Tanto per voi, ch'io possa farmi un manto
E se 'l signor m'ha dato onde far novo
Ogni anno mi potrei piu d'un mantello,
Che mi abbia per voi dato, non approve.
Egli l' ha detto. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 18:
"Se avermi dato onde ogni quattro mesi
Ho venticinque scudi, nè sì fermi,
Che molte volte non mi sien contesi,
Mi debbe incatenar, schiavo tenermi,
Obbligarmi ch'io sudi e tremi senza
Rispetto alcun, ch'io muoja o ch'io m'infermi,
Non gli lasciate aver questa credenza
Ditegli, che più tosto ch'esser servo,
Torrò la povertade in pazienza"
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 19: Panizzi, vol. i. p. 29. The agreement itself is in
Baruffaldi. ]
[Footnote 20: See the lines before quoted, beginning" Apollo, tua
mercè. "]
[Footnote 21: _Bibliographical Notices of Editions of
Ariosto_, prefixed to his first vol. p. 51. ]
[Footnote 22:
"La novità del loco è stata tanta,
C' ho fatto come augel che muta gabbia,
Che molti giorni resta the non canta. "
For the rest of the above particulars see the fifth satire, beginning
"Il vigesimo giorno di Febbraio. " I quote the exordium, because these
compositions are differently numbered in different editions. The one I
generally use is that of Molini--_Poesie Varie di Lodovico Ariosto, con
Annotazioni_. Firenze, 12mo, 1824. ]
[Footnote 23: _Italian Library_, p. 52. I quote Baretti, because he
speaks with a corresponding enthusiasm. He calls the incident "a very
rare proof of the irresistible powers of poetry, and a noble comment on
the fables of Orpheus and Amphion," &c. The words "noble comment" might
lead us to fancy that Johnson had made some such remark to him while
relating the story in Bolt Court. Nor is the former part of the sentence
unlike him: "A very rare proof, _sir_, of the irresistible powers of
poetry, and a noble comment," &c. Johnson, notwithstanding his classical
predilections, was likely to take much interest in Ariosto on account
of his universality and the heartiness of his passions. He had a secret
regard for "wildness" of all sorts, provided it came within any pale
of the sympathetic. He was also fond of romances of chivalry. On one
occasion he selected the history of Felixmarte of Hyrcania as his course
of reading during a visit. ]
[Footnote 24: The deed of gift sets forth the interest which it becomes
princes and commanders to take in men of letters, particularly poets,
as heralds of their fame, and consequently the special fitness of the
illustrious and superexcellent poet Lodovico Ariosto for receiving from
Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto, the irrevocable sum of, &c. &c.
Panizzi has copied the substance of it from Baruffaldi, vol. i. p. 67. ]
[Footnote 25: _Orlando Furioso_ canto xxxiii. st. 28. ]
[Footnote 26:
"Inveni portum: spes et fortuna valete;
Sat me lusistis; Indite nune alios. "
My port is found: adieu, ye freaks of chance;
The dance ye led me, now let others dance. ]
[Footnote 27:
"The great Emathian conqueror bade spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
went to the ground," &c. ]
[Footnote 28: This medal is inscribed "Ludovicus Ariost. Poet. " and has
the bee-hive on the reverse, with the motto "Pro bono malum. " Ariosto was
so fond of this device, that in his fragment called the _Five Cantos_ (c.
v. st. 26), the Paladin Rinaldo wears it embroidered on his mantle. ]
[Footnote 29:
"Io son de' dieci il primo, e vecchio fatto
Di quaranta quattro anni, e il capo calvo
Da un tempo in qua sotto il cuffiotto appiatto. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 30:
"Il vin fumoso, a me vie più interdetto
Che 'l tosco, costì a inviti si tracanna,
E sacrilegio è non ber molto, e schietto.
(He is speaking of the wines of Hungary, and of the hard drinking
expected of strangers in that country. )
Tutti li cibi son con pope e canna,
Di amomo e d' altri aromati, che tutti
Come nocivi il medico mi danna. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 31: Pigna, _I Romanzi_, p. 119. ]
[Footnote 32: _Epicedium_ on his brother's death. It is reprinted
(perhaps for the first time since 1582) in Mr. Panizzi's Appendix to the
Life, in his first volume, p. clxi. ]
[Footnote 33:
"Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, le audaci imprese, io canto,"
is Ariosto's commencement;
Ladies, and cavaliers, and loves, and arms,
And courtesies, and daring deeds, I sing.
In Dante's _Purgatory_ (canto xiv. ), a noble Romagnese, lamenting the
degeneracy of his country, calls to mind with graceful and touching
regret,
"Le donne, i cavalier, gli affanni e gli agi,
Che inspiravano amore e cortesia. "
The ladies and the knights, the cares and leisures,
Breathing around them love and courtesy. ]
[Footnote 34: The original is much pithier, but I cannot find equivalents
for the alliteration. He said, "Porvi le pietre e porvi le parole non è
il medesimo. "--_Pigna_, p. 119. According to his son, however, his remark
was, that "palaces could be made in poems without money. " He probably
expressed the same thing in different ways to different people. ]
[Footnote 35: Vide Sat. iii. "Mi sia un tempo," &c. and the passage in
Sat. vii. beginning "Di libri antiqui.
therefore, while the suit was going on, was obliged to content himself
with his fees from Milan and a monthly allowance which he received from
the duke of "about thirty-eight shillings," together with provisions
for three servants and two horses. He entered the duke's service in the
spring of 1518, and remained in it for the rest of his life. But it was
not so burden-some as that of the cardinal; and the consequence of the
poet's greater leisure was a second edition of the _Furioso_, in the year
1521, with additions and corrections; still, however, in forty cantos
only. It appears, by a deed of agreement,[19] that the work was printed
at the author's expense; that he was to sell the bookseller one hundred
copies for sixty livres (about 5_l_. 12_s_. ) on condition of the book's
not being sold at the rate of more than sixteen sous (1_s_. 8_d_. ); that
the author was not to give, sell, or allow to be sold, any copy of the
book at Ferrara, except by the bookseller; that the bookseller, after
disposing of the hundred copies, was to have as many more as he chose on
the same terms; and that, on his failing to require a further supply,
Ariosto was to be at liberty to sell his volumes to whom he pleased.
"With such profits," observes Panizzi, "it was not likely that the poet
would soon become independent;" and it may be added, that he certainly
got nothing by the first edition, whatever he may have done by the
second. He expressly tells us, in the satire which he wrote on declining
to go abroad with Ippolito, that all his poetry had not procured him
money enough to purchase a cloak. [20] Twenty years afterwards, when he
was dead, the poem was in such request, that, between 1542 and 1551,
Panizzi calculates there must have been a sale of it in Europe to the
amount of a hundred thousand copies. [21]
The second edition of the _Furioso_ did not extricate the author from
very serious difficulties; for the next year he was compelled to apply
to either to relieve him from his necessities, or permit him to look for
some employment more profitable than the ducal service. The answer of
this prince, who was now rich, but had always been penurious, and who
never laid out a farthing, if he could help it, except in defence of his
capital, was an appointment of Ariosto to the government of a district in
a state of anarchy, called Garfagnana, which had nominally returned to
his rule in consequence of the death of Leo, who had wrested it from him.
It was a wild spot in the Apennines, on the borders of the Ferrarese and
papal territories. Ariosto was there three years, and is said to have
reduced it to order; but, according to his own account, he had very
doubtful work of it. The place was overrun with banditti, including the
troops commissioned to suppress them. It required a severer governor than
he was inclined to be; and Alfonso did not attend to his requisitions for
supplies. The candid and good-natured poet intimates that the duke might
have given him the appointment rather for the governor's sake than the
people's; and the cold, the loneliness and barrenness of the place, and,
above all, his absence from the object of his affections, oppressed him.
He did not write a verse for twelve months: he says he felt like a bird
moulting[22]. The best thing got out of it was an anecdote for posterity.
The poet was riding out one day with a few attendants--some say walking
out in a fit of absence of mind--when he found himself in the midst of
a band of outlaws, who, in a suspicious manner, barely suffered him
to pass. A reader of Mrs. Radcliffe might suppose them a band of
_condottieri_, under the command of some profligate desperado; and such
perhaps they were. The governor had scarcely gone by, when the leader of
the band, discovering who he was, came riding back with much earnestness,
and making his obeisance to the poet, said, that he never should have
allowed him to pass in that manner had he known him to be the Signor
Ludovico Ariosto, author of the _Orlando Furioso_; that his own name was
Filippo Pacchione (a celebrated personage of his order); and that his men
and himself, so far from doing the Signor displeasure, would have the
honour of conducting him back to his castle. "And so they did," says
Baretti, "entertaining him all along the way with the various excellences
they had discerned in his poem, and bestowing upon it the most rapturous
praises[23]. "
On his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto is understood to have made several
journeys in Italy, either with or without the duke his master; some of
them to Mantua, where it has been said that he was crowned with laurel by
the Emperor Charles the Fifth. But the truth seems to be, that he only
received a laureate diploma: it does not appear that Charles made him any
other gift. His majesty, and the whole house of Este, and the pope, and
all the other Italian princes, left that to be done by the imperial
general, the celebrated Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto, to whom he
was sent on some mission by the Duke of Ferrara, and who settled on him
an annuity of a hundred golden ducats; "the only reward," says Panizzi,
"which we find to have been conferred on Ariosto expressly as a
poet. "[24] Davallos was one of the conquerors of Francis the First,
young and handsome, and himself a writer of verses. The grateful poet
accordingly availed himself of his benefactor's accomplishments to make
him, in turn, a present of every virtue under the sun. Cæsar was not so
liberal, Nestor so wise, Achilles so potent, Nireus so beautiful, nor
even Ladas, Alexander's messenger, so swift. [25] Ariosto was now verging
towards the grave; and he probably saw in the hundred ducats a golden
sunset of his cares.
Meantime, however, the poet had built a house, which, although small, was
raised with his own money; so that the second edition of the _Orlando_
may have realised some profits at last. He recorded the pleasant fact in
an inscription over the door, which has become celebrated:
"Parva, sed apta mihi; sed nulli obnoxia; sed non
Sordida; parta meo sed tamen acre domus. "
Small, yet it suits me; is of no offence;
Was built, not meanly, at my own expense.
What a pity (to compare great things with small) that he had not as long
a life before him to enjoy it, as Gil Blas had with his own comfortable
quotation over his retreat at Lirias! [26]
The house still remains; but the inscription unfortunately became
effaced; though the following one remains, which was added by his son
Virginio:
"Sic domus hæc Areostea
Propitios habeat deos, olim ut Pindarica. "
Dear to the gods, whatever come to pass,
Be Ariosto's house, as Pindar's was.
This was an anticipation--perhaps the origin--of Milton's sonnet about
his own house, addressed to "Captains and Collonels," during the civil
war. [27]
Davallos made the poet his generous present in the October of the year
1513; and in the same month of the year following the _Orlando_ was
published as it now stands, with various insertions throughout, chiefly
stories, and six additional cantos. Cardinal Ippolito had been dead some
time; and the device of the beehive was exchanged for one of two vipers,
with a hand and pair of shears cutting out their tongues, and the motto,
"Thou hast preferred ill-will to good" (_Dilexisti malitiam super
benignitatem_). The allusion is understood to have been to certain
critics whose names have all perished, unless Sperone (of whom we shall
hear more by and by) was one of them. The appearance of this edition was
eagerly looked for; but the trouble of correcting the press, and the
destruction of a theatre by fire which had been built under the poet's
direction, did his health no good in its rapidly declining condition; and
after suffering greatly from an obstruction, he died, much attenuated, on
the sixth day of June, 1533. His decease, his fond biographers have
told us, took place "about three in the afternoon;" and he was "aged
fifty-eight years, eight months, and twenty-eight days. " His body,
according to his direction, was taken to the church of the Benedictines
during the night by four men, with only two tapers, and in the most
private and simple manner. The monks followed it to the grave out of
respect, contrary to their usual custom.
So lived, and so died, and so desired humbly to be buried, one of the
delights of the world.
His son Virginio had erected a chapel in the garden of the house built by
his father, and he wished to have his body removed thither; but the
monks would not allow it. The tomb, at first a very humble one, was
subsequently altered and enriched several times; but remains, I
believe, as rebuilt at the beginning of the century before last by his
grand-nephew, Ludovico Ariosto, with a bust of the poet, and two statues
representing Poetry and Glory.
Ariosto was tall and stout, with a dark complexion, bright black eyes,
black and curling hair, aquiline nose, and shoulders broad but a little
stooping. His aspect was thoughtful, and his gestures deliberate. Titian,
besides painting his portrait, designed that which appeared in the
woodcut of the author's own third edition of his poem, which has been
copied into Mr. Panizzi's. It has all the look of truth of that great
artist's vital hand; but, though there is an expression of the, genial
character of the mouth, notwithstanding the exuberance of beard, it does
not suggest the sweetness observable in one of the medals of Ariosto,
a wax impression of which is now before me; nor has the nose so much
delicacy and grace. [28]
The poet's temperament inclined him to melancholy, but his intercourse
was always cheerful. One biographer says he was strong and
healthy--another, that he was neither. In all probability he was
naturally strong, but weakened by a life full of emotion. He talks of
growing old at forty four, and of leaving been bald for some time. [29] He
had a cough for many years before he died. His son says he cured it by
drinking good old wine. Ariosto says that "vin fumoso" did not agree with
him; but that might only mean wine of a heady sort. The chances, under
such circumstances, were probably against wine of any kind; and Panizzi
thinks the cough was never subdued. His physicians forbade him all sorts
of stimulants with his food. [30]
His temper and habits were those of a man wholly given up to love and
poetry. In his youth he was volatile, and at no time without what is
called some "affair of the heart. " Every woman attracted him who had
modesty and agreeableness; and as, at the same time, he was very jealous,
one might imagine that his wife, who had a right to be equally so, would
have led no easy life. But it is evident he could practise very generous
self-denial; and probably the married portion of his existence, supposing
Alessandra's sweet countenance not to have belied her, was happy on both
sides. He was beloved by his family, which is never the case with the
unamiable. Among his friends were most Of the great names of the age,
including a world of ladies, and the whole graceful court of Guidobaldo
da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, for which Catiglione wrote his book of
the _Gentleman (Il Cortegiano)_. Raphael addressed him a sonnet, and
Titian painted his likeness. He knew Vittoria Colonna, and Veronica da
Gambera, and Giulia Gonzaga (whom the Turks would have run away with),
and Ippolita Sforza, the beautiful blue-stocking, who set Bandello on
writing his novels, and Bembo, and Flaminio, and Berni, and Molza, and
Sannazzaro, and the Medici family, and Vida, and Macchiavelli; and nobody
doubts that he might have shone at the court of Leo the brightest of the
bright. But he thought it "better to enjoy a little in peace, than seek
after much with trouble. "[31] He cared for none of the pleasures of the
great, except building, and that he was content to satisfy in Cowley's
fashion, with "a small house in a large garden. " He was plain in his
diet, disliked ceremony, and was frequently absorbed in thought. His
indignation was roused by mean and brutal vices; but he took a large and
liberal view of human nature in general; and, if he was somewhat free in
his life, must be pardoned for the custom of the times, for his charity
to others, and for the genial disposition which made him an enchanting
poet. Above all, he was an affectionate son; lived like a friend with his
children; and, in spite of his tendency to pleasure, supplied the place
of an anxious and careful father to his brothers and sisters, who
idolized him.
"Ornabat pietas et grata modestia vatem,"
wrote his brother Gabriel,
"Sancta fides, dictique memor, munitaque recto
Justitia, et nullo patientia victa labore,
Et constans virtus animi, et elementia mitis,
Ambitione procul pulsa fastûsque tumore;
Credere uti posses natum felicibus horis,
Felici fulgente astro Jovis atque Diones. "[32]
Devoted tenderness adorn'd the bard,
And grateful modesty, and grave regard
To his least word, and justice arm'd with right,
And patience counting every labour light,
And constancy of soul, and meekness too,
That neither pride nor worldly wishes knew.
You might have thought him born when there concur
The sweet star and the strong, Venus and Jupiter.
His son Virginio, and others, have left a variety of anecdotes
corroborating points in his character. I shall give them all, for they
put us into his company. It is recorded, as an instance of his reputation
for honesty, that an old kinsman, a clergyman, who was afraid of being
poisoned for his possessions, would trust himself in no other hands; but
the clergyman was his own grand-uncle and namesake, probably godfather;
so that the compliment is not so very great.
In his youth he underwent a long rebuke one day from his father without
saying a word, though a satisfactory answer was in his power; on which
his brother Gabriel expressing his surprise, he said that he was thinking
all the time of a scene in a comedy he was writing, for which the
paternal lecture afforded an excellent study.
He loved gardening better than he understood it; was always shifting
his plants, and destroying the seeds, out of impatience to see them
germinate. He was rejoicing once on the coming up of some "capers," which
he had been visiting every day to see how they got on, when it turned out
that his capers were elder-trees!
He was perpetually altering his verses. His manuscripts are full of
corrections. He wrote the exordium of the _Orlando_ over and over again;
and at last could only be satisfied with it in proportion as it was not
his own; that is to say, in proportion as it came nearer to the beautiful
passage in Dante from which his ear and his feelings had caught it. [33]
He, however, discovered that correction was not always improvement. He
used to say, it was with verses as with trees. A plant naturally well
growing might be made perfect by a little delicate treatment; but
over-cultivation destroyed its native grace. In like manner, you might
perfect a happily-inspired verse by taking away any little fault of
expression; but too great a polish deprived it of the charm of the first
conception. It was like over-training a naturally graceful child. If it
be wondered how he who corrected so much should succeed so well, even to
an appearance of happy negligence, it is to be considered that the most
impulsive writers often put down their thoughts too hastily, then correct
and re-correct them in the same impatient manner; and so have to bring
them round, by as many steps, to the feeling which they really had at
first, though they were too hasty to do it justice.
Ariosto would have altered his house as often as his verses, but did not
find it so convenient. Somebody wondering that he contented himself with
so small an abode, when he built such magnificent mansions in his poetry,
he said it was easier to put words together than blocks of stone. [34]
He liked Virgil; commended the style of Tibullus; did not care for
Propertius; but expressed high approbation of Catullus and Horace. I
suspect his favourite to have been Ovid. His son says he did not study
much, nor look after books; but this may have been in his decline, or
when Virginio first took to observing him. A different conclusion as to
study is to be drawn from the corrected state of his manuscripts, and the
variety of his knowledge; and with regard to books, he not only mentions
the library of the Vatican as one of his greatest temptations to visit
Rome, but describes himself, with all the gusto of a book-worm, as
enjoying them in his chimney-corner. [35]
To intimate his secrecy in love-matters, he had an inkstand with a
Cupid on it, holding a finger on his lips. I believe it is still in
existence. [36] He did not disclose his mistresses' names, as Dante did,
for the purpose of treating them with contempt; nor, on the other hand,
does he appear to have been so indiscriminately gallant as to be fond of
goitres. [37] The only mistress of whom he complained he concealed in a
Latin appellation; and of her he did not complain with scorn. He had
loved, besides Alessandra Benucci, a lady of the name of Ginevra; the
mother of one of his children is recorded as a certain Orsolina; and that
of the other was named Maria, and is understood to have been a governess
in his father's family. [38]
He ate fast, and of whatever was next him, often beginning with the bread
on the table before the dishes came; and he would finish his dinner with
another bit of bread. "Appetiva le rape," says his good son; videlicet,
he was fond of turnips. In his fourth Satire, he mentions as a favourite
dish, turnips seasoned with vinegar and boiled _must_ (sapa), which
seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi. [39] He cared so little
for good eating, that he said of himself, he should have done very well
in the days when people lived on acorns.
A stranger coming in one day at the dinner-hour, he ate up what was
provided for both; saying afterwards, when told of it, that the gentleman
should have taken care of himself. This does not look very polite; but of
course it was said in jest. His son attributed this carelessness at table
to absorption in his studies.
He carried this absence of mind so far, and was at the same time so good
a pedestrian, that Virginio tells us he once walked all the way from
Carpi to Ferrara in his slippers, owing to his having strolled out of
doors in that direction.
The same biographers who describe him as a brave soldier, add, that he
was a timid horseman and seaman; and indeed he appears to have eschewed
every kind of unnecessary danger. It was a maxim of his, to be the last
in going out of a boat. I know not what Orlando would have said to this;
but there is no doubt that the good son and brother avoided no pain in
pursuit of his duty. He more than once risked his life in the service of
government from the perils of travelling among war-makers and banditti.
Imagination finds something worthy of itself on great occasions, but is
apt to discover the absurdity of staking existence on small ones. Ariosto
did not care to travel out of Italy. He preferred, he says, going round
the earth in a map; visiting countries without having to pay innkeepers,
and ploughing harmless seas without thunder and lightning[40].
His outward religion, like the one he ascribed to his friend Cardinal
Bembo, was "that of other people. " He did not think it of use to disturb
their belief; yet excused rather than blamed Luther, attributing his
heresy to the necessary consequences of mooting points too subtle for
human apprehension[41]. He found it impossible, however, to restrain his
contempt of bigotry; and, like most great writers in Catholic countries,
was a derider of the pretensions of devotees, and the discords and
hypocrisies of the convent. He evidently laughed at Dante's figments
about the other world; not at the poetry of them, for that he admired,
and sometimes imitated, but at the superstition and presumption. He
turned the Florentine's moon into a depository of non-sense; and found no
hell so bad as the hearts of tyrants. The only other people he put into
the infernal regions are ladies who were cruel to their lovers! He had
a noble confidence in the intentions of his Creator; and died ill the
expectation of meeting his friends again in a higher state of existence.
Of Ariosto's four brothers, one became a courtier at Naples, another a
clergyman, another an envoy to the Emperor Charles the Fifth; and the
fourth, who was a cripple and a scholar, lived with Lodovico, and
celebrated his memory. His two sons, whose names were Virginio and
Gianbattista, and who were illegitimate (the reader is always to bear
in mind the more indulgent customs of Italy in matters of this nature,
especially in the poet's time), became, the first a canon in the
cathedral of Ferrara, and the other an officer in the army. It does not
appear that he had any other children.
Ariosto's renown is wholly founded on the _Orlando Furioso_, though he
wrote satires, comedies, and a good deal of miscellaneous poetry, all
occasionally exhibiting a master-hand. The comedies, however, were
unfortunately modelled on those of the ancients; and the constant
termination of the verse with trisyllables contributes to render them
tedious. What comedies might he not have written, had he given himself up
to existing times and manners[42]!
The satires are rather good-natured epistles to his friends, written with
a charming ease and straightforwardness, and containing much exquisite
sense and interesting autobiography.
On his lyrical poetry he set little value; and his Latin verse is not of
the best order. Critics have expressed their surprise at its inferiority
to that of contemporaries inferior to him in genius; but the reason lay
in the very circumstance. I mean, that his large and liberal inspiration
could only find its proper vent in his own language; he could not be
content with potting up little delicacies in old-fashioned vessels.
The _Orlando Furioso_ is, literally, a continuation of the _Orlando
Innamorato_; so much so, that the story is not thoroughly intelligible
without it. This was probably the reason of a circumstance that would be
otherwise unaccountable, and that was ridiculously charged against him as
a proof of despairing envy by the despairing envy of Sperone; namely, his
never having once mentioned the name of his predecessor. If Ariosto had
despaired of equalling Boiardo, he must have been hopeless of reaching
posterity, in which case his silence must have been useless; and, in
any case, it is clear that he looked on himself as the continuator of
another's narration. But Boiardo was so popular when he wrote, that
the very silence shews he must have thought the mention of his name
superfluous. Still it is curious that he never should have alluded to it
in the course of the poem. It could not have been from any dislike to the
name itself, or the family; for in his Latin poems he has eulogised the
hospitality of the house of Boiardo[43].
The _Furioso_ continued not only what Boiardo did, but what he intended
to do; for as its subject is Orlando's love, and knight-errantry in
general, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it from
its fabulous ancestor Ruggiero. Orlando is the open, Ruggiero the covert
hero; and almost all the incidents of this supposed irregular poem,
which, as Panizzi has shewn, is one of the most regular in the world, go
to crown with triumph and wedlock the originator of that unworthy race.
This is done on the old groundwork of Charlemagne and his Paladins, of
the treacheries of the house of Gan of Maganza, and of the wars of the
Saracens against Christendom. Bradamante, the Amazonian _intended_ of
Ruggiero, is of the same race as Orlando, and a great overthrower of
infidels. Ruggiero begins with being an infidel himself, and is kept from
the wars, like a second Achilles, by the devices of an anxious guardian,
but ultimately fights, is converted, and marries; and Orlando all the
while slays his thousands, as of old, loves, goes mad for jealousy, is
the foolishest and wisest of mankind (somewhat like the poet himself);
and crowns the glory of Ruggiero, not only by being present at his
marriage, but putting on his spurs with his own hand when he goes forth
to conclude the war by the death of the king of Algiers.
The great charm, however, of the _Orlando Furioso_ is not in its
knight-errantry, or its main plot, or the cunning interweavement of its
minor ones, but in its endless variety, truth, force, and animal spirits;
in its fidelity to actual nature while it keeps within the bounds of the
probable, and its no less enchanting verisimilitude during its wildest
sallies of imagination. At one moment we are in the midst of flesh and
blood like ourselves; at the next with fairies and goblins; at the next
in a tremendous battle or tempest; then in one of the loveliest of
solitudes; then hearing a tragedy, then a comedy; then mystified in some
enchanted palace; then riding, dancing, dining, looking at pictures; then
again descending to the depths of the earth, or soaring to the moon, or
seeing lovers in a glade, or witnessing the extravagances of the great
jealous hero Orlando; and the music of an enchanting style perpetually
attends us, and the sweet face of Angelica glances here and there like
a bud: and there are gallantries of all kinds, and stories endless, and
honest tears, and joyous bursts of laughter, and beardings for all base
opinions, and no bigotry, and reverence for whatsoever is venerable,
and candour exquisite, and the happy interwoven names of "Angelica and
Medoro," young for ever.
But so great a work is not to be dismissed with a mere rhapsody of
panegyric. Ariosto is inferior, in some remarkable respects, to his
predecessors Pulci and Boiardo. His characters, for the most part, do not
interest us as much as theirs by their variety and good fellowship; he
invented none as Boiardo did, with the exception, indeed, of Orlando's,
as modified by jealousy; and he has no passage, I thick, equal in pathos
to that of the struggle at Roncesvalles; for though Orlando's jealousy
is pathetic, as well as appalling, the effects of it are confined to one
person, and disputed by his excessive strength. Ariosto has taken all
tenderness out of Angelica, except that of a kind of boarding-school
first love (which, however, as here-after intimated, may have simplified
and improved her general effect), and he has omitted all that was amusing
in the character of Astolfo. Knight-errantry has fallen off a little
in his hands from its first youthful and trusting freshness; more
sophisticate times are opening upon us; and satire more frequently and
bitterly interferes. The licentious passages (though never gross in
words, like those of his contemporaries,) are not redeemed by sentiment
as in Boiardo; and it seems to me, that Ariosto hardly improved so much
as he might have done Upon his predecessor's imitations of the classics.
I cannot help thinking that, upon the whole, he had better have left them
alone, and depended entirely on himself. Shelley says, he has too much
fighting and "revenge,"[44]--which is true; but the revenge was only
among his knights. He was himself (like my admirable friend) one of the
most forgiving of men; and the fighting was the taste of the age, in
which chivalry was still flourishing in the shape of such men as Bayard,
and ferocity in men like Gaston de Foix. Ariosto certainly did not
anticipate, any more than Shakspeare did, that spirit of human
amelioration which has ennobled the present age. He thought only of
reflecting nature as he found it. He is sometimes even as uninteresting
as he found other people; but the tiresome passages, thank God, all
belong to the house of Este! His panegyrics of Ippolito and his ancestors
recoiled on the poet with a retributive dulness.
But in all the rest there is a wonderful invigoration and enlargement.
The genius of romance has increased to an extraordinary degree in power,
if not in simplicity. Its shoulders have grown broader, its voice louder
and more sustained; and if it has lost a little on the sentimental side,
it has gained prodigiously, not only in animal vigour, but, above all, in
knowledge of human nature, and a brave and joyous candour in shewing it.
The poet takes a universal, an acute, and, upon the whole, a cheerful
view, like the sun itself, of all which the sun looks on; and readers are
charmed to see a knowledge at once so keen and so happy. Herein lies the
secret of Ariosto's greatness; which is great, not because it has the
intensity of Dante, or the incessant thought and passion of Shakspeare,
or the dignified imagination of Milton, to all of whom he is far inferior
in sustained excellence,--but because he is like very Nature herself.
Whether great, small, serious, pleasureable, or even indifferent, he
still has the life, ease, and beauty of the operations of the daily
planet. Even where he seems dull and common-place, his brightness and
originality at other times make it look like a good-natured condescension
to our own common habits of thought and discourse; as though he did it
but on purpose to leave nothing unsaid that could bring him within the
category of ourselves. His charming manner intimates that, instead of
taking thought, he chooses to take pleasure with us, and compare old
notes; and we are delighted that he does us so much honour, and makes, as
it were, Ariostos of us all. He is Shakspearian in going all lengths with
Nature as he found her, not blinking the fact of evil, yet finding a
"soul of goodness" in it, and, at the same time, never compromising the
worth of noble and generous qualities. His young and handsome Medoro is a
pitiless slayer of his enemies; but they were his master's enemies, and
he would have lost his life, even to preserve his dead body. His Orlando,
for all his wisdom and greatness, runs mad for love of a coquette, who
triumphs over warriors and kings, only to fall in love herself with an
obscure lad. His kings laugh with all their hearts, like common people;
his mourners weep like such unaffected children of sorrow, that they must
needs "swallow some of their tears. "[45] His heroes, on the arrival of
intelligence that excites them, leap out of bed and write letters before
they dress, from natural impatience, thinking nothing of their "dignity. "
When Astolfo blows the magic horn which drives every body out of the
castle of Atlantes, "not a mouse" stays behind;--not, as Hoole and such
critics think, because the poet is here writing ludicrously, but because
he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as
Shakspeare in _Hamlet_ does to give that of silence, when "not a mouse is
stirring. " Instead of being mere comic writing, such incidents are in the
highest epic taste of the meeting of extremes,--of the impartial eye with
which Nature regards high and low. So, give Ariosto his hippogriff, and
other marvels with which he has enriched the stock of romance, and Nature
takes as much care of the verisimilitude of their actions, as if she had
made them herself. His hippogriff returns, like a common horse, to the
stable to which he has been accustomed. His enchanter, who is gifted with
the power of surviving decapitation and pursuing the decapitator so long
as a fated hair remains on his head, turns deadly pale in the face when
it is scalped, and falls lifeless from his horse. His truth, indeed, is
so genuine, and at the same time his style is so unaffected, sometimes so
familiar in its grace, and sets us so much at ease in his company, that
the familiarity is in danger of bringing him into contempt with the
inexperienced, and the truth of being considered old and obvious, because
the mode of its introduction makes it seem an old acquaintance. When
Voltaire was a young man, and (to Anglicise a favourite Gallic phrase)
fancied he had _profounded_ every thing deep and knowing, he thought
nothing of Ariosto. Some years afterwards he took him for the first of
grotesque writers, but nothing more. At last he pronounced him equally
"entertaining and sublime, and humbly apologised for his error. " Foscolo
quotes this passage from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; and adds
another from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which the painter speaks of a
similar inability on his own part, when young, to enjoy the perfect
nature of Raphael, and the admiration and astonishment which, in his
riper years, he grew to feel for it. [46]
The excessive "wildness" attributed to Ariosto is not wilder than
many things in Homer, or even than some things in Virgil (such as the
transformation of ships into sea-nymphs). The reason why it has been
thought so is, that he rendered them more popular by mixing them with
satire, and thus brought them more universally into notice. One main
secret of the delight they give us is their being poetical comments,
as it were, on fancies and metaphors of our own. Thus, we say of
a suspicious man, that he is suspicion itself; Ariosto turns him
accordingly into an actual being of that name. We speak of the flights of
the poets; Ariosto makes them literally flights--flights on a hippogriff,
and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he
accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty;
therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient
defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and
Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive
bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; so Angelica,
queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and
marries a common soldier.
And what a creature is this Angelica! what effect has she not had upon
the world in spite of all her faults, nay, probably by very reason of
them! I know not whether it has been remarked before, but it appears to
me, that the charm which every body has felt in the story of Angelica
consists mainly in that very fact of her being nothing but a beauty and
a woman, dashed even with coquetry, which renders her so inferior in
character to most heroines of romance. Her interest is founded on nothing
exclusive or prejudiced.
It is not addressed to any special class. She
might or might not have been liked by this person or that; but the world
in general will adore her, because nature has made them to adore beauty
and the sex, apart from prejudices right or wrong. Youth will attribute
virtues to her, whether she has them or not; middle-age be unable to help
gazing on her; old-age dote on her. She is womankind itself, in form and
substance; and that is a stronger thing, for the most part, than all our
figments about it. Two musical names, "Angelica and Medoro," have become
identified in the minds of poetical readers with the honeymoon of
youthful passion.
The only false acid insipid fiction I can call to mind in the _Orlando
Furioso_ is that of the "swans" who rescue "medals" from the river of
oblivion (canto xxxv. ). It betrays a singular forgetfulness of the poet's
wonted verisimilitude; for what metaphor can reconcile us to swans taking
an interest in medals? Popular belief had made them singers; but it was
not a wise step to convert them into antiquaries.
Ariosto's animal spirits, and the brilliant hurry and abundance of his
incidents, blind a careless reader to his endless particular beauties,
which, though he may too often "describe instead of paint" (on account,
as Foscolo says, of his writing to the many), spew that no man could
paint better when he chose. The bosoms of his females "come and go, like
the waves on the sea-coast in summer airs. "[47] His witches draw the fish
out of the water
"With simple words and a pure warbled spell. "[48]
He borrows the word "painting" itself,--like a true Italian and friend
of Raphael and Titian, to express the commiseration in the faces of the
blest for the sufferings of mortality
"Dipinte di pietade il viso pio. "[49]
Their pious looks painted with tenderness.
Jesus is very finely called, in the same passage, "il sempiterno Amante,"
the eternal Lover. The female sex are the
"Schiera gentil the pur adorna il mondo. "[50]
The gentle bevy that adorns the world.
He paints cabinet-pictures like Spenser, in isolated stanzas, with a
pencil at once solid and light; as in the instance of the charming one
that tells the story of Mercury and his net; how he watched the Goddess
of Flowers as she issued forth at dawn with her lap full of roses and
violets, and so threw the net over her "one day," and "took her;"
"un dì lo prese[51]. "
But he does not confine himself to these gentle pictures. He has many
as strong as Michael Angelo, some as intense as Dante. He paints the
conquest of America in five words
"Veggio da diece cacciar mille. "[52]
I see thousands
Hunted by tens.
He compares the noise of a tremendous battle heard in the neighbourhood
to the sound of the cataracts of the Nile:
"un alto suon ch' a quel s' accorda
Con che i vicin' cadendo il Nil assorda. "[53]
He "scourges" ships at sea with tempests--say rather the "miserable
seamen;" while night-time grows blacker and blacker on the "exasperated
waters. "[54]
When Rodomont has plunged into the thick of Paris, and is carrying every
thing before him ("like a serpent that has newly cast his skin, and
goes shaking his three tongues under his eyes of fire"), he makes this
tremendous hero break the middle of the palace-gate into a huge "window,"
and look through it with a countenance which is suddenly beheld by a
crowd of faces as pale as death:
"E dentro fatto l' ha tanta finestra,
Che ben vedere e veduto esser puote
Dai visi impressi di color di morte[55]. "
The whole description of Orlando's jealousy and growing madness is
Shakspearian for passion and circumstance, as the reader may see even
in the prose abstract of it in this volume; and his sublimation of a
suspicious king into suspicion itself (which it also contains) is as
grandly and felicitously audacious as any thing ever invented by poet.
Spenser thought so; and has imitated and emulated it in one of his own
finest passages. Ariosto has not the spleen and gall of Dante, and
therefore his satire is not so tremendous; yet it is very exquisite, as
all the world have acknowledged in the instances of the lost things found
in the moon, and the angel who finds Discord in a convent. He does not
take things so much to heart as Chaucer. He has nothing so profoundly
pathetic as our great poet's _Griselda_. Yet many a gentle eye has
moistened at the conclusion of the story of Isabella; and to recur once
more to Orlando's jealousy, all who have experienced that passion will
feel it shake them. I have read somewhere of a visit paid to Voltaire by
an Italian gentleman, who recited it to him, and who (being moved perhaps
by the recollection of some passage in his own history) had the tears all
the while pouring down his cheeks.
Such is the poem which the gracious and good Cardinal Ippolito designated
as a "parcel of trumpery. " It had, indeed, to contend with more slights
than his. Like all originals, it was obliged to wait for the death of
the envious and the self-loving, before it acquired a popularity which
surpassed all precedent. Foscolo says, that Macchiavelli and Ariosto,
"the two writers of that age who really possessed most excellence, were
the least praised during their lives. Bembo was approached in a posture
of adoration and fear; the infamous Aretino extorted a fulsome letter of
praises from the great and the learned[56]. " He might have added, that
the writer most in request "in the circles" was a gentleman of the name
of Bernardo Accolti, then called the _Unique_, now never heard of.
Ariosto himself eulogised him among a shoal of writers, half of whose
names have perished; and who most likely included in that half the men
who thought he did not praise them enough. For such was the fact! I
allude to the charming invention in his last canto, in which he supposes
himself welcomed home after a long voyage. Gay imitated it very
pleasantly in an address to Pope on the conclusion of his Homer. Some of
the persons thus honoured by Ariosto were vexed, it is said, at not being
praised highly enough; others at seeing so many praised in their company;
some at being left out of the list; and some others at being mentioned at
all! These silly people thought it taking too great a liberty! The poor
flies of a day did not know that a god had taken them in hand to give
them wings for eternity. Happily for them the names of most of these
mighty personages are not known. One or two, however, took care to make
posterity laugh. Trissino, a very great man in his day, and the would-be
restorer of the ancient epic, had the face, in return for the poet's
too honourable mention of him, to speak, in his own absurd verses, of
"Ariosto, with that _Furioso_ of his, which pleases the vulgar:"
"L' Ariosto
Con quel _Furioso_ suo the piace al volgo. "
"_His_ poem," adds Panizzi, "has the merit of not having pleased any
body[57]. " A sullen critic, Sperone (the same that afterwards plagued
Tasso), was so disappointed at being left out, that he became the poet's
bitter enemy. He talked of Ariosto taking himself for a swan and "dying
like a goose" (the allusion was to the fragment he left called the _Five
Cantos_). What has become of the swan Sperone? Bernardo Tasso, Torquato's
father, made a more reasonable (but which turned out to be an unfounded)
complaint, that Ariosto had established a precedent which poets would
find inconvenient. And Macchiavelli, like the true genius he was,
expressed a good-natured and flattering regret that his friend Ariosto
had left him out of his list of congratulators, in a work which was "fine
throughout," and in some places "wonderful[58]. "
The great Galileo knew Ariosto nearly by heart[59].
He is a poet whom it may require a certain amount of animal spirits to
relish thoroughly. The _air_ of his verse must agree with you before you
can perceive all its freshness and vitality. But if read with any thing
like Italian sympathy, with allowance for times and manners, and with a
_sense_ as well as _admittance_ of the different kinds of the beautiful
in poetry (two very different things), you will be almost as much charmed
with the "divine Ariosto" as his countrymen have been for ages.
[Footnote 1: The materials for this notice have been chiefly collected
from the poet's own writings (rich in autobiographical intimation)
and from his latest editor Panizzi. I was unable to see this writer's
principal authority, Baruffaldi, till I corrected the proofs and the
press was waiting; otherwise I might have added two or three more
particulars, not, however, of any great consequence. Panizzi is, as
usual, copious and to the purpose; and has, for the first time I believe,
critically proved the regularity and connectedness of Ariosto's plots,
as well as the hollowness of the pretensions of the house of Este to be
considered patrons of literature. It is only a pity that his _Life
of Ariosto is_ not better arranged. I have, of course, drawn my own
conclusions respecting particulars, and sometimes have thought I had
reason to differ with those who have preceded me; but not, I hope, with a
presumption unbecoming a foreigner. ]
[Footnote 2: See in his Latin poems the lines beginning, "Hæc me
verbosas suasit perdiscere leges. "
_De Diversis Amoribus. _]
[Footnote 3:
"Mio padre mi cacciò con spiedi e lancie," &c.
_Satira_ vi.
There is some appearance of contradiction in this passage and the one
referred to in the preceding note; but I think the conclusion in the test
the probable one, and that he was not compelled to study the law in the
first instance. He speaks more than once of his father's memory with
great tenderness, particularly in the lines on his death, entitled _De
Nicolao Areosto_. ]
[Footnote 4: His brother Gabriel expressly mentions it in his prologue to
the _Scholastica_. ]
[Footnote 5:
"Già mi fur dolci inviti," &c.
_Satira_ v. ]
[Footnote 6: See, in the present volume, the beginning of _Astolfo's
Journey to the Moon_. ]
[Footnote 7:
"Me potius fugiat, nullis mollita querelis,
Dum simulet reliquos Lydia dura procos.
Parte carere omni malo, quam admittere quemquam
In partem. Cupiat Juppiter ipse, negem. "
_Ad Petrum Bembum. _]
[Footnote 8: Panizzi, on the authority of Guicciardini and others. Giulio
and another brother (Ferrante) afterwards conspired against Alfonso and
Ippolito, and, on the failure of their enterprise, were sentenced to be
imprisoned for life. Ferrante died in confinement at the expiration of
thirty-four years; Giulio, at the end of fifty-three, was pardoned. He
came out of prison on horseback, dressed according to the fashion of the
time when he was arrested, and "greatly excited the curiosity of the
people. "--_Idem_, vol. i. p xii. ]
[Footnote 9:
"Che debbo fare io qui?
Agli usatti, agli spron (perch'io son grande)
Non mi posso adattar, per porne o trarne. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 10: "Per la lettera de la S. V. Reverendiss. et a bocha da Ms.
Ludovico Ariosto ho inteso quanta leticia ha conceputa del felice parto
mio: il che mi è stato summamente grato, cussi lo ringrazio de la
visitazione, et particolarmente di havermi mandato il dicto Ms. Ludovico,
per che ultra che mi sia stato acetto, representando la persona de
la S. V. Reverendiss. lui anche per conto suo mi ha addutta gran
satisfazione, havendomi cum la narratione de l'opera the compone facto
passar questi due giorni non solum senza fastidio, ma cum piacer
grandissimo. "--Tiraboschi, _Storia della Poesia Italiana_, Matthias'
edition, vol. iii. p. 197. ]
[Footnote 11: _Orlando Furioso_, canto xxix, st. 29. ]
[Footnote 12: See the horrible account of the suffocated Vicentine
Grottoes, in Sismondi, _Histoire des Republiques Italiennes_, &c vol. iv.
p. 48. ]
[Footnote 13:
"Piegossi a me dalla beata sede;
La mano e poi le gote ambe mi prese,
E il santo bacio in amendue mi diede.
Di mezza quella bolla anco cortese
Mi fu, della quale ora il mio Bibbiena
Espedito m'ha il resto alle mie spese.
Indi col seno e con la falda piena
Di speme, ma di pioggia molle e brutto,
La notte andai sin al Montone a cena. " _Sat_. iv. ]
[Footnote 14: See _canzone_ the first, "Non so s'io potrò," &c. and the
_copitolo_ beginning "Della mia negra penna in fregio d'oro. "]
[Footnote 15: _Histoire Litteraire_, &c. vol. iv. p. 335. ]
[Footnote 16:
"Singularis tua et pervetus erga nos familiamque nostrum observantia,
egregiaque bonarum artium et litterarum doctrina, atque in studiis
mitioribus, praesertimque poetices elegans et præclarum ingenium, jure
prope suo a nobis exposcere videntur, ut quae tibi usui futurae sint,
justa praesertim et honesta petenti, ea tibi liberaliter et gratiose
concedamus. Quamobrem," &c. . "On the same page," says Panizzi, "are
mentioned the privileges granted by the king of France, by the republic
of Venice, and other potentates;" so that authors, in those days, appear
to have been thought worthy of profiting by their labours, wherever they
contributed to the enjoyment of mankind.
Leo's privilege is the one that so long underwent the singular obloquy of
being a bull of excommunication against all who objected to the poem! a
misconception on the part of some ignorant man, or misrepresentation by
some malignant one, which affords a remarkable warning against taking
things on trust from one writer after another. Even Bayle (see the
article "Leo X. " in his Dictionary) suffered his inclinations to blind
his vigilance. ]
[Footnote 17:
"Apollo, tua mercè, tua mercè, santo
Collegio delle Muse, io non mi trovo
Tanto per voi, ch'io possa farmi un manto
E se 'l signor m'ha dato onde far novo
Ogni anno mi potrei piu d'un mantello,
Che mi abbia per voi dato, non approve.
Egli l' ha detto. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 18:
"Se avermi dato onde ogni quattro mesi
Ho venticinque scudi, nè sì fermi,
Che molte volte non mi sien contesi,
Mi debbe incatenar, schiavo tenermi,
Obbligarmi ch'io sudi e tremi senza
Rispetto alcun, ch'io muoja o ch'io m'infermi,
Non gli lasciate aver questa credenza
Ditegli, che più tosto ch'esser servo,
Torrò la povertade in pazienza"
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 19: Panizzi, vol. i. p. 29. The agreement itself is in
Baruffaldi. ]
[Footnote 20: See the lines before quoted, beginning" Apollo, tua
mercè. "]
[Footnote 21: _Bibliographical Notices of Editions of
Ariosto_, prefixed to his first vol. p. 51. ]
[Footnote 22:
"La novità del loco è stata tanta,
C' ho fatto come augel che muta gabbia,
Che molti giorni resta the non canta. "
For the rest of the above particulars see the fifth satire, beginning
"Il vigesimo giorno di Febbraio. " I quote the exordium, because these
compositions are differently numbered in different editions. The one I
generally use is that of Molini--_Poesie Varie di Lodovico Ariosto, con
Annotazioni_. Firenze, 12mo, 1824. ]
[Footnote 23: _Italian Library_, p. 52. I quote Baretti, because he
speaks with a corresponding enthusiasm. He calls the incident "a very
rare proof of the irresistible powers of poetry, and a noble comment on
the fables of Orpheus and Amphion," &c. The words "noble comment" might
lead us to fancy that Johnson had made some such remark to him while
relating the story in Bolt Court. Nor is the former part of the sentence
unlike him: "A very rare proof, _sir_, of the irresistible powers of
poetry, and a noble comment," &c. Johnson, notwithstanding his classical
predilections, was likely to take much interest in Ariosto on account
of his universality and the heartiness of his passions. He had a secret
regard for "wildness" of all sorts, provided it came within any pale
of the sympathetic. He was also fond of romances of chivalry. On one
occasion he selected the history of Felixmarte of Hyrcania as his course
of reading during a visit. ]
[Footnote 24: The deed of gift sets forth the interest which it becomes
princes and commanders to take in men of letters, particularly poets,
as heralds of their fame, and consequently the special fitness of the
illustrious and superexcellent poet Lodovico Ariosto for receiving from
Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto, the irrevocable sum of, &c. &c.
Panizzi has copied the substance of it from Baruffaldi, vol. i. p. 67. ]
[Footnote 25: _Orlando Furioso_ canto xxxiii. st. 28. ]
[Footnote 26:
"Inveni portum: spes et fortuna valete;
Sat me lusistis; Indite nune alios. "
My port is found: adieu, ye freaks of chance;
The dance ye led me, now let others dance. ]
[Footnote 27:
"The great Emathian conqueror bade spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
went to the ground," &c. ]
[Footnote 28: This medal is inscribed "Ludovicus Ariost. Poet. " and has
the bee-hive on the reverse, with the motto "Pro bono malum. " Ariosto was
so fond of this device, that in his fragment called the _Five Cantos_ (c.
v. st. 26), the Paladin Rinaldo wears it embroidered on his mantle. ]
[Footnote 29:
"Io son de' dieci il primo, e vecchio fatto
Di quaranta quattro anni, e il capo calvo
Da un tempo in qua sotto il cuffiotto appiatto. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 30:
"Il vin fumoso, a me vie più interdetto
Che 'l tosco, costì a inviti si tracanna,
E sacrilegio è non ber molto, e schietto.
(He is speaking of the wines of Hungary, and of the hard drinking
expected of strangers in that country. )
Tutti li cibi son con pope e canna,
Di amomo e d' altri aromati, che tutti
Come nocivi il medico mi danna. "
_Satira_ ii. ]
[Footnote 31: Pigna, _I Romanzi_, p. 119. ]
[Footnote 32: _Epicedium_ on his brother's death. It is reprinted
(perhaps for the first time since 1582) in Mr. Panizzi's Appendix to the
Life, in his first volume, p. clxi. ]
[Footnote 33:
"Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, le audaci imprese, io canto,"
is Ariosto's commencement;
Ladies, and cavaliers, and loves, and arms,
And courtesies, and daring deeds, I sing.
In Dante's _Purgatory_ (canto xiv. ), a noble Romagnese, lamenting the
degeneracy of his country, calls to mind with graceful and touching
regret,
"Le donne, i cavalier, gli affanni e gli agi,
Che inspiravano amore e cortesia. "
The ladies and the knights, the cares and leisures,
Breathing around them love and courtesy. ]
[Footnote 34: The original is much pithier, but I cannot find equivalents
for the alliteration. He said, "Porvi le pietre e porvi le parole non è
il medesimo. "--_Pigna_, p. 119. According to his son, however, his remark
was, that "palaces could be made in poems without money. " He probably
expressed the same thing in different ways to different people. ]
[Footnote 35: Vide Sat. iii. "Mi sia un tempo," &c. and the passage in
Sat. vii. beginning "Di libri antiqui.
