Chapter X: Part 10

While he was here, M. Bonaventura Pistolfo, secretary to Alfonso, wrote to invite Ariosto to accept a third embassy to Rome; not on a perilous and temporary errand, but to reside there as the representative of his sovereign, "for a year or _two_," at the court of Clement VII. The poet, however, had sagacity enough to decline putting himself again in the way of Fortune, where, instead of taking him by the hand, on former occasions, she had only splashed him with the mud from her wheel as it rolled through the streets, encumbered with aspiring asses in every stage of transmigration.[106] His correspondent having intimated that, besides complying with the duke's pleasure at Rome, he might stand a chance of obtaining great and fat preferments by favour of a member of the house of Medici, with which he had been so long and courteously acquainted, then filling the papal chair; since it was more probable that he should catch, if he fished in a great river, than in an ordinary stream; he thus replies, in the seventh Satire:--"I thank you, that the desire is ever fresh with you to promote my interest, and to change me from a plough-ox into a Barbary steed. You might command me with fire and sword to serve the duke, not in Rome only, but in France, Spain, or India; but if you would fain persuade me that honour and riches may be got in the way you propose, you must find a different bait, to lure your bird into that net. As for honour, I have already as much as my heart could wish: it is enough for me that, at home, I can see more then half a dozen of my neighbours doff their caps when they meet me, because they know that I sometimes sit at table with the duke, and obtain a trifling favour which I seek for myself or a friend. Then, if I have honour enough to satisfy me, I should have abundance of wealth also; and my desires, which sometimes wander, would be at rest, if I had just so much that I could live, and be at liberty, without having to ask any thing of any one: more than this I never hope to attain. But, since so many of my friends have had the power to do thus much for me, and I still remain in poverty and dependence, I will not let her[107], who was so backward to fly out of the box of the imprudent Epimeteus, to lead me by the muzzle like a buffalo." Towards the close of this epistle, he intimates that it is some unconfessed affection which draws him so tenderly and irresistibly towards his native nest; and adds--"It is well for me that I can hide myself among these mountains, and that your eyes cannot run a hundred miles after me, to see whether my cheeks be pale or red at this acknowledgment. Certainly, if you saw my face at the moment I am writing, far away as I am, it would appear to you as deeply crimsoned as that of the father canon was, when he let fall, in the market-place, the wine-flask which he had stolen from a brother, besides the two that he had drunk. If I were at your elbow, perhaps you would snatch up a cudgel to bastinado me, for alleging such a crazy reason why I wish not to live at a distance from you."

The attachment insinuated in the enigmatical lines, of which the above is a prose version, is with equal ambiguity alluded to in the fourth Satire, addressed to Annibale Maleguccio, where, excusing himself from going abroad, on the ground that he preferred pursuing his studies at home, and confining his voyages and travels, though they extended all over the world, to the maps and charts of Ptolemy, he breaks off thus:--"Methinks you smile and say, 'Neither the love of country nor study, but of a lady, is the cause why you will not move.' I frankly confess it: now shut your mouth; for I will neither take up sword nor shield to defend a fib." This jest has been taken in earnest, though no man in his senses would swear on the word of a poet so uttered. Be that as it may, it is generally understood that his life was sufficiently dissolute to warrant his correspondent's suspicion; and to require him, when so charged, to escape with a pleasantry, though it were accompanied by a blush.

After three years, being released from the cares of his government, Ariosto returned, with entire devotion of his time and talents, to the "sacred college of the Muses;" perfecting his "Orlando" by almost daily touches, the fruits of habitual meditation upon its multifarious subjects, to the last year of his life. He likewise revised several comedies written in his youth, turning them from prose into metre; and composing others. These were so much admired, that they were often acted in the court of Alfonso; persons of the highest rank representing the characters. His earliest and his latest works, therefore, were dramatic, but certainly not his best: that, indeed, could not be expected; theatrical performances being comparatively new in Italy, and, in general, exceedingly crude or exceedingly pedantic. It is said that Ariosto's plays are yet read with delight by his countrymen: the titles of them are,--the "Menechini," borrowed from Plautus; "La Cassaria," "I Suppositi," "La Lena," "Il Negromante," and "La Scholastica;" of which latter, his brother Gabriele furnished the concluding act, Ludovico having left it incomplete. A curious anecdote is told of him when a youth, which is characteristic at once of his phlegm and his acuteness in the practice of his art.--His father, being displeased by some juvenile inadvertence, very severely reprimanded him in the presence of the rest of the family. Ludovico bore the infliction with perfect composure, neither expressing contrition, nor attempting to justify himself. When Nicolo had retired, his brother Gabriele remonstrated with him, both on the imputed fault, and his apparent insensibility of shame or rebuke. Thereupon the poet so promptly and effectually cleared his conduct, that his brother, in great astonishment, asked him why he had not given the same explanation of it to their father. "Because," said the young dramatist, "I was so busily thinking, all the while, how to make the best use of what my father said, in my new comedy, in which I have just such a scene of an old man scolding his boy, that in the ideal, I forgot the real incident."

His seven Satires were also composed during the latter years of his life; but, on account of their irreverence towards high personages both in church and state, they were not published till a convenient time after his death. They are in the form of epistles; and, in fact, were written as such, on real occasions, to the several friends addressed in them. These pieces allude so much to personal and family circumstances, that Ariosto's biographers are more indebted to them than to any other equally authentic source for their materials; and it has been for the like reason, principally, that such copious extracts have been made from the same valuable documents in the foregoing pages. In these remarkable effusions of spleen and pleasantry, there is nothing gaudy or superficial, to attract ordinary readers; nothing forced or unnatural, to produce ostentatious effect. The thoughts are thick-sown; the diction seems to be without effort (the result, no doubt, of consummate art), being pungent and simple, like the best style of conversation, except when the subject, at rare intervals, becomes poetical--when at once the swan of Castaly launches upon the stream, swells into beauty, and rows in gallant state till the water runs shallow again. There is none of the stern indignation of Juvenal, nor the harshness and obscurity of Persius, in these productions; yet, lively, sarcastic, and urbane as they are, there is almost as little resemblance in them to those fine but high-toned compositions of Horace, which were, unquestionably, our author's models--though less for imitation than for rivalry. Like every other species of literature which Ariosto tried, how much soever he may have adorned all, these bosom-communications to his intimate friends are not exempt from occasional obscenities, so repulsive and abominable, that they cannot be commended and dismissed without this mark of infamy, which no merits can efface.

Whether Ariosto, who, according to all accounts, and the lewdness of his writings, led no very chaste life, were married or not; and, if married, to whom; are questions which have puzzled his biographers, and are now of little moment to be settled: no proof of marriage would redeem his character, or purify his most beautiful poems from the moral defilement that cleaves to them. His Muse had the plague, and all her offspring are diseased. An author is not answerable to posterity for the evil of his _mortal_ life, but for the profligacy of _that_ life which he lives through after ages, contaminating by irrepressible and incurable infection the minds of millions--it may be, till the day of judgment,--he is amenable even in his grave. It is not necessary to enter further into judgment with the offender before us in this place.

Married, or not married, Ariosto had two sons, whom he not only openly avowed as such, but faithfully and affectionately educated them, according to his knowledge and views of what is good and honourable in society, for scholars and gentlemen, as he intended them to be. His epistle to cardinal Bembo (the sixth Satire) is highly creditable to his parental solicitude for the welfare of his children in this respect: indeed, he seems to have been exemplary in every relationship of life, except that which requires personal purity,--a virtue little regarded either by laymen or ecclesiastics in his day; and, judging by the deeper taint of their writings, as well as the evidence of their lives, often held in less esteem by the latter than the former.

Towards the close of the year 1532, Ariosto was seized with illness, brought on, it was said, by agitation, when the sumptuous theatre erected by the duke of Ferrara, for the exhibition of his comedies, was consumed by fire; or, as his physicians, with more probability, conjectured, by indigestion, from the habit of eating fast, and bolting his food almost unmasticated. Whatever might have been the cause, the disorder terminated in his death about the midsummer following.

In the same year that he was thus mortally stricken, he had put his last hand to the "Orlando Furioso," and left the poem in that form in which it appears, in forty-six cantos; the five additional ones, which have always been deemed unworthy of such a connection, having been published for the first time in 1545, twelve years afterwards. Among what may be deemed the apocryphal traditions concerning Ariosto, it has been affirmed and contradicted, with very questionable evidence on either side, that he received the laurel from the hands of the emperor Charles V., in the city of Mantua, twelve months before his death. The very circumstance of a reasonable doubt being raised respecting a fact, which, if it had occurred, must have been known throughout all Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, seems almost sufficient to invalidate the story. One of his biographers (Minchino) says, that when Ariosto felt the crown upon his brows, placed there by so august a personage, he went beside himself for joy; and ran about the streets as much out of his wits, for the time, as his own hero. It may be remarked, that nothing could have been more out of character than such extravagance in a person of Ariosto's temperament, who (whatever licence he granted to his Muse in his writings, or to his passions in secret), in public, always maintained a dignity and manliness of demeanour, which commanded respect, and showed that he never forgot his honourable birth, or waved the consciousness of intellectual superiority; though he was careful that neither of these advantages should encroach upon the jealous or vindictive sensibility of others.

Ariosto in person was tall and strong-boned, but stooping a little, and slow in his gait as well as in all his motions. His countenance, judging from Titian's portrait,--the lofty forehead a little bald, the black curled locks behind, and corresponding beard upon a jutting chin, the elevated brows above the dark bright eyes, the Roman nose, lips eloquently moulded, teeth "passing even and white," thin cheeks, complexion slightly olive, long visage, well-proportioned neck, and shoulders square,--his countenance, with features such as these, might altogether have been deemed the _beau idéal_ which the first painter had conceived of the first poet of the age, had not contemporary testimonies assured us that the whole was not more happily than correctly copied from the living model.

There is little of tenderness, and less of stern sublimity, in any of his poems; and yet it is uniformly affirmed that his aspect and manner were grave, melancholic, and contemplative,--from habit, probably, more than from nature; for in company he was affable, and his conversation peculiarly captivating to women, whom, no doubt, he laid himself out to please, and with whom he was no small favourite. So far, also, as they could appreciate his merit, and endure that aristocracy of mind which pressed hard upon the heels of hereditary rank, or mushroom vanity raised from stercorarious heaps in ecclesiastical hotbeds, his society was courted by the greatest personages in church and state, including popes, cardinals, and sovereign princes. Unassuming, but not indifferent to slights or wrongs from the highest with whom he was associated, he led, on the whole, a feverish life between resolute poverty and precarious dependence, with the continual temptation to rise to wealth by means which he abhorred, and for which he must have abhorred himself had he stooped to employ them.

Of persons of the other sex, who, from time to time, caught his wandering affections, the names of two (whether real or disguised) have been preserved--Alexandra and Guenevra. It is understood that the former (to whom he may have been privately married) was the mother of his two sons,--Giambattista, who devoted himself to a military life, and Virginio, who obtained distinction in literature. For the other lady, his passion might be no more than a poetical one--she being married, and a mother, in an honourable family of Florence akin to his own. Finding her one day adorning a silk coat for one of her children, so as to resemble armour by the devices--the ground silver, and the embroidery purple--against a festival spectacle, at which the lad was to figure in it on Midsummer Eve, he was so inspired by the hand and the needle, that he celebrated their performance in the twenty-fourth book of the "Orlando Furioso;" where, describing a wound, "not deep but long," received in combat with Mandricardo by Zerbino, from which the blood trickled over his splendid panoply, the poet introduces the following admired but frigid simile:--

"Le lucide arme il caldo sangue irriga Per sino al piè de rubiconda riga. "Cosi talora un bel purpureo nastro Ho veduto partir tela d' argento, Da quella bianca man più ch' alabastro, Da cui partire il cor spesso mi sento."

"The warm blood, with a crimson rivulet, Down to the foot his shining armour wet. "So have I seen a beauteous purple zone Divide a web of silver, by the art Of that white hand, outvying Parian stone, Which oft I feel dividing thus my heart."

This is much more in the strain of fanciful passionless ideality (like Petrarch's mistress, and his praises of her), than warm, ingenuous, honest love, "whose dwelling is the heart of man," and whose language is that of nature, which all may understand who ever knew affection. In the same vein of ingenious artificial compliment and conceit (often, indeed, elegant and captivating to the mind at ease, and amusing itself with love in idleness) are the Elegies, Sonnets, and Madrigals of Ariosto;--all calculated more to set off the beauties of his Muse than of his mistress; and rather to command admiration of himself, than to do honour to her, whom, though a divinity in song, and adored with magnificent rites, he worships with nearly as little devotion as an idol deserves. Of the following sonnet (the nineteenth in the series), Paolo Rolli says, "_non è stata mai scritta poesia più sublime_,"--"poetry more sublime was never written." It would be hard to persuade any Englishman of this.

"Chiuso era il Sol da un tenebroso velo, Che si stendea fino all' estreme sponde Dell' orizonte, e mormorar le fronde S' udiano, e tuoni andar scorrendo il cielo. Di pioggia, in dubbio, o tempestoso gelo, Stav' io per gire oltre le torbid' onde Del fiume altier che il gran sepolcro asconde, Del figlio audace del Signor di Delo:-- "Quando apparir sull' altra ripa il lume De bei vostr' occhij vidi, e udij parole Che Leandro potean farmi quel giorno. E tutto a un tempo i nuvoli d'intorno Si dileguaro, e si scoperse il Sole, Tacquero i venti, e tranquillossi 'l fiume."

"The sun was shrouded with a gloomy veil That reach'd the dim horizon's utmost bound, The forest leaves were heard to murmur round, And distant thunder peal'd along the gale. In doubt I stood, of rain or pelting hail, By the proud river, rapid and profound, Wherein Apollo's daring son was drown'd[108], Afraid to dip the oar or hoist the sail: "When, from the farther bank, the light I saw Of your fair eyes, and heard a voice, of power To make Leander of me in that hour. At once the clouds their dark array withdraw, The sun brake forth, the rainbow climb'd the hill, The winds were silent, and the waters still."

The foregoing version has been rendered as little paraphrastic as might be (though the eighth line is interpolated); but all rhymed translations from the Italian, in the same number of lines as the original, must be encumbered either with additional thought or verbiage--our language being altogether more brief in syllabic composition.

The society of Ariosto was courted by the learned and the polite; not for his wit and intelligence only, but for the privilege of hearing his latest compositions, as they came warm from his mind, or were gradually wrought to perfection by that patient labour for which he was distinguished, and to which he is indebted for as much of his glory as to the creative energy of his genius itself. For when he had originated, by force of invention, his most admired performances, he never ceased to improve them afterwards by touches innumerable, exquisite, and undiscerned by ordinary eyes, till the art which effected the changes at length disappeared in its own consummation, and those seemed to be the first thoughts in the first words, which were really the last transmigrations of the former through the latter. No poet of any age has more inseparably identified his conceptions with his language than Ariosto; in fact, his ideas themselves are so vernacular, that they can scarcely be made to speak any other than their native tongue; they defy translation. Nothing, indeed, can be easier than to render the literal meaning in dictionary terms; yet nothing less resembling the original in all that constitutes its prime excellence--grace, freedom, and simplicity--can be imagined than these. Of the "Orlando Furioso" there are three English versions: that by sir John Harrington, in the reign of queen Elizabeth, is coarse, careless, and unfaithful; that of Hoole, about fifty years ago, tame, diffuse, and prosaic; the recent one by W. S. Rose, esq., elegant, spirited, and probably as true to the text as any readable paraphrase can be under the difficulties aforementioned.

While this magnificently wild and sportive work was in progress, and after its first publication, during the refining process through which it was continually passing till the last year of his own life, the poet was accustomed to read, at the courts of Hippolito and Alfonso, and in other favoured circles, the cantos as they were produced, revised, or had received their final polish. This accounts partly for the manner in which the hundredfold story is told,--not as recorded in a book, but as delivered spontaneously before princes and prelates, scholars and gentry, assembled to listen to the marvellous adventures of knights and ladies, giants and enchanters, from the lips of the gifted narrator. Ariosto excelled in the practice of reading aloud, whether the subjects were his own, or those of his illustrious predecessors or contemporaries; to which his melodious voice, distinct utterance, and versatile spirit gave peculiar emphasis and animation. This accomplishment was of great value after the revival of letters, when books were scarce, and authors depended, for pecuniary recompence, more upon the gratuities of patrons, than upon honourable profits from extensive sales of their writings. But though he was thus master of the rarest art of speech,--good reading, especially of verse, being seldomer attained (perhaps because it is less duly appreciated) than eloquent declamation,--he was never forward either to begin, by obtruding it upon his friends for his own gratification, nor slow to leave off when he had wearied himself for others. As his ear was nice, and his taste pure in this respect, he was proportionately offended by indifferent, vulgar, or boisterous recitation. The story is told of him, that one day, passing a potter's shop, he heard the unlettered artisan singing, in harsh and ill-accented numbers, a stave of the "Orlando." According to sir John Harrington, it was the thirty-second in the first canto[109],--and this will do as well as any other in a questionable tale,--in which Rinaldo tries to catch his horse, with as little success as many a groom and gentleman has done before and since. The poet, as little able to keep his temper as his hero on the occasion, rushed among the crockery, smashing now one piece, then another, on the right hand and on the left, with his walking-stick. The potter, half paralised and half frantic, hastily, yet hesitatingly, enquired why the gentleman should thus injure a poor fellow who had done him no harm? No harm, man?" replied the enraged author, "I am scarcely even with thee yet: I have cracked three or four wretched jugs of thine, not worth a groat, and thou hast been mangling and murdering a stanza of mine worth a mark of gold!" Unluckily for the credit of this sally of professional petulance, the same anecdote has been told of Camoens, the Portuguese, who lived half a century later; and something like it of Philoxenus, who lived nearly 2000 years earlier. Yet the tradition concerning Ariosto may be true; who, remembering the classic precedent, might choose to follow it in a case where no redress could be looked for, except from taking the law into his own hands. At the worst, such an outrage must have been a piece of caustic pleasantry; and it may be taken for granted, that the sufferer was well compensated for having afforded the poet no very disagreeable opportunity of indulging his humour; since, however the learned may pretend to despise the opinions of the multitude, there is scarcely any proof of fame more flattering to the proudest aspirant, than a cross-wind of popular applause. Cervantes, who well understood the secrets of a poet's breast, goes farther, and, with consummate propriety, makes the student, whose verses had been commended to the skies by Don Quixote, say within himself,--"How sweet is praise, even from the lips of a madman!"

Of Ariosto's personal habits, some whimsical peculiarities have been mentioned, not worth repeating, except to gratify the very natural curiosity--call it impertinent who will--which most readers feel to learn all that they can about a favourite author. He himself confesses that he could scarcely distinguish the different kinds of food; and it has been already seen that he was in the practice of eating voraciously.--A friend, who had invited him to an entertainment for the diversion of the company, ordered a roasted _kite_ to be palmed upon him for a _partridge_. By the blunder of a servant, the carrion was set before a nicer guest, who smelled the joke, if he did not relish it, and the poet escaped the savoury snare.--A stranger, calling upon him once when he had just sat down to dinner, Ariosto eagerly ate up all the "short commons" which had been provided, while the other was entertaining him with most excellent discourse. Being afterwards reproved by his brother for lack of hospitality, he coolly replied,--"The loss was the gentleman's own; he should have taken care of himself." His rudeness and hurry at table were attributed principally to fits of rumination or absence of mind; and if he sometimes over-satisfied his appetite, he did not usually indulge it with more than one meal a day.

Quite in consonance with the poet's reveries were his raptures of execution. After wandering in a day-dream of thought, he would suddenly sit down and disburthen his overcharged brain with effusions of song, that seemed as spontaneous as spring showers that fall in gusts through broad sunshine, though they have been long collecting in the zenith; or, he would start from "a brown study" at midnight, and call upon his servant Gianni to bring pen, ink, and paper immediately, that he might fix, before they vanished for ever, the imaginations which had charmed him in his trance. The "Orlando" thus appeared to come to him, canto by canto, as the Koran to Mahomet; and no doubt the one was as truly inspired as the other. His early reading had so filled and fertilised his mind, that he subsisted in thought almost exclusively on the inexhaustible harvests perpetually produced from the remembrances of that; and in his latter years was so indolent, or so indifferent a searcher of the writings of others, that he frequently passed weeks without turning over the pages of any except his own,--in which, like the spider, he seemed to have a personal existence; so diffusing himself through them, that it might be said of him, that, not with a touch only, "exquisitely fine," he could "feel the whole thread," but also "live along the line."

In his last hours, he is represented as maintaining his philosophical tranquillity,--neither affecting stoical sternness, nor the hideous jocularity of some, who, to hide their misgivings, die "as a fool dieth." He professed to leave the world without much regret--having never, indeed, been very well satisfied with his portion in it; and, believing that in a future state men would know each other, he observed, that he should be happy to meet many whom he loved, and who had gone before him. How content to die in the dark are men of the highest faculties, and otherwise of the most inquisitive minds, who have never known, or who have rejected, the truth of that Gospel by which life and immortality were brought to light!

As might be expected on the demise of one so celebrated for genius, sonnets, elegies, and epitaphs in abundance were composed and published to his honour. His body was buried in the church of the Benedictines at Ferrara, when the monks of that order, contrary to their usual reserve, accompanied the funeral procession: a plain slab of marble being laid over the grave, was presently over-run with Greek, Latin, and Italian verses, as the natural products of so poetical a spot. His son Virginio afterwards prepared a chapel and sepulchre for his parent, in the garden of the house which he had himself built, and where he had spent many of his last and happiest days. But the good fathers had such reverence for the relics of a poet, who certainly was any thing rather than a saint, and whom no pope would canonise, that they would not allow their removal. In process of time. Agostino Mosti, a man of letters, who in early life was a disciple of the deceased, seeing no memorial worthy of his master's fame erected, at his own expense caused a tablet (worthy at least of himself) to be placed in the aforesaid church of the Benedictines, with a bust upon the tomb beneath, and a Latin inscription by Lorenzo Fiesoli. A monument more superb was erected, nearly a century later, by Ludovico his grand-nephew, bearing also a Latin inscription. Neither of these, nor even that which the poet composed in the same language for himself, need be inserted here; the two former being in the common-place style of posthumous panegyric, and the latter quaint and puerile, though of sufficient significance to have been imitated by Pope, with reckless profaneness, in the ribald lines which he wrote for himself.

"Under this stone, or under this sill," &c.

The house which he built (as formerly mentioned), with its humble inscription, is yet shown as a monument more interesting to the eye of the enthusiastic admirer of the poet, than any marble effigies, however gorgeously or exquisitely wrought, could be: it brings the spectator into personal contact with himself, by local and domestic association. But in this respect, the chair in which he was wont to meditate; and the inkstand from which he filled his pen to disburthen his thoughts, when they flowed, as they did at times, like the juice of full ripe grapes from their own pressure,--if these relics are genuine,--must be incomparably the most touching and inspiring memorials of his life and his labours.

Of Ariosto's grand performance, it would be vain to sketch the outline, or enter into formal criticism here: sufficient indications of the present biographer's estimate of the author's powers and style of composition have been already given. It would be idle and hopeless to censure or carp at particulars, where little can be commended beyond the talent with which a web of wonders and horrors (the easiest and cheapest products of invention) has been so skilfully woven into poetical tapestry, as not only to invest the most preposterous fictions with the vividness of reality, but to charm or conciliate readers of all classes, from those of the severest taste to those most akin to mere animal appetite; disarming the indignation of the former by exquisite playfulness, and transporting the latter by that marvellous intrepidity of fibbing to which many a minstrel and romancer was formerly indebted for his popularity. The fact is, that though, with inimitable gravity, Ariosto tells story after story (or rather story within story), deserving no better appellation than that which his patron Hippolito bestowed upon his fictions when he asked, "_Messer Ludovico, dove avete cogliate tante coglionere?_" "Where, master Ludovico, have you picked up so many fooleries?" yet Cervantes himself had not a keener sense of ridicule, nor in his happiest sallies was he more expert in humour or irony, than this "prince of liars," as the curate in "Don Quixote" designates a certain traveller. He describes, indeed, every scene, event, and character throughout his world of nonentities, as they might have been described, had they been actual and not imaginary: yet it is frequently manifest, that, while he appears to be writing romance, he is composing satire; and though he delights in prodigies for their own sake, yet, wherever they exceed the _probable of the marvellous_, he is not only alive to their absurdity, but rejoices to expose it, and turn extravagance itself into pleasantry.

In canto XXVI., Rinaldo, Ricciardetto, and Ruggiero, assisted by Marphisa (whom, in her martial accoutrements, they do not perceive to be a woman of war), massacre, without let or hindrance, two bodies of Moors and Magauzes, whom they surprise at market together. This, in plain prose, is the style in which the butchery is described:--"Marphisa, as she fought by their side, often turned her eyes towards her companions in arms; and witnessing with wonder their rival achievements, she extolled them all in turn: but the stupendous prowess of Ruggiero, especially, appeared to her without example in the world; so that she was ready to imagine him Mars, who had descended from the fifth heaven to that quarter. She beheld his terrible strokes; she beheld them falling never in vain: it seemed as though, against Balisarda (his sword), iron was paper, and not hard metal; for it split helmets and strong cuirasses; it cleft riders down to their saddles, throwing one half of the man on the right hand, the other on the left; and not stopping there, the same blow slew the horse with his lord. Heads from their shoulders it hurled into the air, and often cut sheer the trunk from the loins; five, and even more, with one motion it sometimes despatched; and if I did not fear that truth would not find credit, but be taken for a lie, I could tell greater things: it is, therefore, expedient rather to tell less than I might. The good archbishop Turpin, who knows very well that he speaks the truth, and leaves every one to believe it or not as he pleases, relates such marvellous feats of Ruggiero, that, hearing them repeated, you would say they were falsehoods. Before Marphisa, every warrior seemed to be ice, and she consuming flame: nor did she less attract the eyes of Ruggiero towards herself, than he had won hers to him; and if she deemed him to be Mars, he might have thought her to be Bellona, had he as well known her to be a lady as her appearance indicated the contrary. Perhaps the emulation then begotten between them, was no good thing for those miserable people, on whose flesh, blood, bones, and sinews, proof was made how much each could do."

Now, what sympathy can be felt in such unequal conflicts? No more, verily, than with the fate and fortunes of the elephants and castles, the kings, queens, bishops, knights, and commonalty on a chess-board, in a game between an adept and a novice, which is up in a few moments, neither exalting the winner nor disparaging the loser, nor affecting life, limb, character, or feeling in regard to one of the puppets employed in the play. Of the same class are all the combats between invulnerable heroes, and those who wield weapons of enchantment: the irresistible spear of Bradamante, that unhorsed every antagonist whom it touched; the magic horn of Astolpho, that routed armies with a blast; Ruggiero's veiled shield, the dazzling splendour of which, when suddenly disclosed, struck with blindness and astonishment all eyes that beheld it. Of the latter, the author himself grows weary or ashamed, and makes his hero so too; though, with remarkable dexterity, he turns into a glorious act of heroic virtue, the voluntary riddance of it by the indignant Ruggiero, who throws it into a hidden well, in a nameless forest in an undiscovered land, after having won too cheap a victory by its accidental exposure. In these two instances (and many others might be quoted), Ariosto laughs at his own extravagances, with as much pleasantry as Cervantes himself at those of others: and it may, perhaps, be affirmed that he does it with more tact and good sense, for it must be acknowledged that few outrages upon nature in the tales of chivalry, which the Spaniard justly ridicules, are felt by the reader to be more improbable than the crazy imitations of them by the knight of La Mancha, whose pranks could only be attempted by one absolutely insane, and therefore were as little a fair mark for satire as for censure. Ariosto has this advantage over Cervantes,--that whatever is great, glorious, or admirable in romance, he can seriously set forth in all the pomp and eloquence of verse of the highest species; while whatever is mean, farcical, or monstrous, he can exhibit in strains of facetiousness, at once as grave and as poignant as those in which the celebrated assault on the windmills, the rout of the sheep, or the gross sensuality of Sancho Panza, are given, without descending into caricature; though no small portion of his whole poem belongs to the grotesque, and happily the plan admits of every variety of style from Homer to Lucian.

Neither the dulness nor the licence of allegory can be pleaded in extenuation of those unnatural circumstances, in which absurdity is at once exemplified and ridiculed, as though the caprice of genius delighted as much in the offence against taste as in the castigation of it. Allegorical, indeed, some of his fancies notoriously are; but those who have attempted to "moralise" the "fierce wars and faithful loves" of his song, as many have done (and few more egregiously than sir John Harrington, in the quaint essay annexed to his barbarous translation), might have employed their time as profitably in raking moonshine out of water, which flies off into millions of sparkles the moment it is disturbed, but is no sooner let alone than it subsides into the quiet and beautiful image of the orb above, which it showed before. It cannot be said of Ariosto, as Addison, in a miserable couplet, says of Spenser--

"His long-spun allegories tiresome grow, While the dull moral lies too plain below."

The moral may be there, but it would require a diviner's rod to detect its presence, and the skill of him who set himself to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, to draw it thence.

The "Orlando Furioso" of Ariosto is a continuation of the "Orlando Innamorato" of Boiardo, lord of Scandiano, his contemporary, but elder, the latter having died in the year 1494. The relative circumstances of the two poems form one of the most curious chapters in the history of literature. Boiardo's work, in the original, is comparatively little known, and less read, even in Italy; but it has been made famous throughout the world, by having given birth to its more illustrious successor. Whatever were the defects of the one author, or the excellences of the other, Ariosto was undoubtedly indebted to his forerunner, not only for many of the most powerful and captivating fictions of his poem, but for its intelligibility and popularity from the beginning. The latter was an immense advantage: half of the success in a race depends upon a good start; the eagle himself cannot rise from flat ground as from the rock, whence he launches at once into mid-air. By the "Morgante Maggiore" of Pulci, the legends and songs of the Provençals, and the pretended chronicle of archbishop Turpin, the public mind had been familiarised with the traditions concerning Arthur and his knights of the round table; of Merlin the British enchanter, and the Lady of the Lake; and of Charlemagne and his peers. Yet it was the intense interest and curiosity excited by Boiardo's magnificent but uncompleted plot, which (so far as the principal personages are concerned), like

"The story of a bear and fiddle, Begins, but breaks off in the middle"--

it was these which had prepared the eager and delighted multitude of readers, or rather listeners, for any sequel to his "tales of wonder," which should keep up the spirit of the original, and bring it to a crowning conclusion. These, therefore, with transport proportioned to their surprise, hailed the appearance of Ariosto's production, when, after having been long promised, they found that it not only exceeded their expectations, but eclipsed in splendour, beauty, and variety, the prototype itself. This was so remarkably the case, that one of the wittiest and most ingenious of his contemporaries recomposed the whole of Boiardo's poem; imitating, with farcical extravagance, the fine raillery and unapproachable humour of Ariosto; and falling in the same ratio beneath him in elegance, majesty, and grace, when the themes admitted or required adornment. Thus, by an unexampled fatality, the "Orlando Innamorato" was outshone by a sequel, and superseded by a _rifacimento_ (we have no English word to express the renovating process). Authors themselves have almost universally failed in _second parts_ to their most successful performances; and as rarely have they re-written such works, so as to take place of the first form in which they obtained public favour[110]; yet here, on the one hand, is a second part, by an imitator, that leaves the original in obscurity, yet covers it with glory--like Butler's description of die moon's veil--

"Mysterious veil! of brightness made, At once her lustre and her shade;"

while, on the other hand, we have the example of a new gloss of that original, by a meddler becoming the substitute for it, like the new skin of a serpent when the old slough is cast aside.

The mischances of Boiardo's poem ended not here. It was not published during the author's life, except by oral communication among his friends; what he had composed, had not received the corrections due to its worth and his own talents; and the work itself being left imperfect at the ninth canto, one Nicolo degli Agostini took up the strain there, and added so much matter as brought the various subjects involved in it to a consistent termination. A fourth experiment was made upon this polypus production, which multiplied its vitality the more, the more it was mangled. Ludovico Dominici recomposed the whole, and printed the metamorphosis at Venice in 1545: of this, several editions appeared; but it neither supplanted Berni's, nor even rivalled the original in popularity. Thus the love and madness of Orlando was conceived, and partly executed, by one mind; continued to a certain point by another; new-modelled and incorporated with his own inventions by a third; re-written by a fourth; but, above all, imitated, completed, and excelled by a fifth.

The felicity of fortune which distinguished Ariosto's poem, was not less rare than the eccentric transmigrations to which Boiardo's was condemned. The "Orlando Furioso" was both an imitation and a sequel of the "Orlando Innamorato;" yet, contrary to all precedent, and without example in subsequent literature, the imitation surpassed the original, and the sequel the first draught. It was the offspring of one mind; it was produced entire by the inventor, and never altered by any hand but his own. Yet, after its first completion, it underwent a process of revisal nearly as long and laborious as that of composition; like a bird, it arrived not at the perfection of its song, or the full glory of its plumage, in the breeding season, nor till after its first moulting. It is strange, that, with all these advantages, there should still remain several glaring inconsistencies, which one hour's pains would have removed, had the author been aware of what any ordinary reader might detect.

The poem consists of the contemporaneous adventures of many knights, ladies, and other personages, travelling in all lands, known and unknown, of the old continent, the moon, hell, and purgatory; those of each individual, in fact, forming a distinct story, begun, dropped, renewed, or concluded according to the pleasure of the narrator, who excites and keeps up, by every species of provoking artifice, the tortured yet unwearying curiosity of his hearers. And these materials, anomalous as they may seem, and as they are, he moulds and mixes with inimitable skill, and bodies them forth, as by magic, into such captivating forms, by varying, interweaving, disentangling, and cutting short the numberless threads of his many-coloured web, that he fails not to produce a present effect in every passage, with little recollection on the reader's part of its agreement with the past, as little regard to its connection with any thing but itself, and no care whatever about its future influence on the issue of the whole. The fable is a hydra, of which the Orlando, whose name it bears, is only one of the heads; and no otherwise entitled to pre-eminence, than as the hero of some of the most stupendous, amusing, and puerile events in a series not less heterogeneous or tragi-comic than the changes and chances of a holiday pantomime. It cannot be denied that the poem has a beginning and an end, with a prodigious quantity of action between, as the succession of pages, and the number of cantos, evince; but to prove that it has a necessary beginning, a decided progress, and a satisfactory end, would be a task which the author himself would have laughed to see a critic employed upon.

A hundred rivers springing from one well-head upon a mountain-top above the clouds; descending, as the slope broadens, in as many directions; and varying towards the lowlands with such sinuosities, that whoever traces one stream, will find it suddenly disappearing under ground; another emerging at that very point, traversing the surface in a contrary direction for a while, then dipping in like manner; while a third, a fourth, a fifth, and onward to the hundredth, in succession, do the same; each, in the track of the untiring explorer, showing itself and vanishing again and again, till utterly lost;--such are the vagaries of this romance of imagination, yet conducted in such organised confusion, that the mind is bewildered but for a moment, when a fresh "change comes o'er the spirit of the (poet's) dream," and the reader is absorbed, borne away, and contented to float along the tide of the tale, unfinished before, then newly taken up, and never flagging in interest, nor eventually impaired by all its abrupt discontinuances.

Incoherent, however, as the whole tissue of this and every other romance of chivalry must be, there is a moral interest in such fables, that lies deeper than any affected allegory, or the innocent gratification which marvellous stories will ever supply to human minds, loving and grasping at whatever is beyond their reach; an appetite for the great, the glorious, and the unknown, which intimates their spiritual nature, and their immortal destiny, by desires towards things out of the body, independent of the material universe, and contrary to the results of ordinary experience. These fictions, notwithstanding their unnatural and impossible details, picture real manners, characters, and events, such as were peculiar to the transition-age of modern society, in the most civilised regions of the Old World, when the blood of Goths and Vandals from the north, Greeks and Romans from the south of Europe, Moors from the west of Africa, and Arabs from the east of Asia, mingled in confluent streams round the shores of the Mediterranean; when, often engaging in war, commerce, or political alliances, they gradually associated their races, and originated new nations according to their respective localities. Hence the superstitions, customs, languages, and habits of life among the most heterogeneous tribes, bordering on the fallen empire of the Cæsars (their common prey), were engrafted upon those of the refined and intellectual people whom luxury had effeminated and prepared for subjugation by more enterprising and energetic, though at best but semi-barbarian, conquerors. Hence we frequently find, in chivalrous records, the most gross and incongruous stories of Oriental, African, or Scandinavian growth, allied to archetypes in classical mythology, or derived from ancient history; and only modified, enriched, distorted, or aggravated in grandeur, complexity, or terrible beauty, by those who adopted them,--the rhymers and romancers, even in the rudest periods, blending all together, or borrowing from each, according to their fancy. There is scarcely an image, a monster, or an incident in all their raving chronicles--wild as the dreams of lunatics, or beautiful as those of infants are supposed to be--which cannot be traced to Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, or Statius; so narrow is the range of human invention; and so inextricably connected with what we have heard, and read, and seen, are all the imaginations or the thoughts of the heart of the most original genius.

But the champions and the damsels, the giants and enchanters, nay, the dragons, the hippogriffs, and the demons themselves, in these legends, are but poetical representations of real classes and characters in society, such as existed, or were formed by the circumstances of the times, when war was the business, and gallantry the pastime of life, among the hybrid populations both of Christian and Mohammedan countries. The actors in the dramas of romance were, indeed, masked and buskined to raise them to heroic stature; yet the most disguised of these personages, in principle, passion, taste, and pursuit, were real men and women, magnified into monsters, like flies and spiders when looked upon through the eye-glass of a microscope. Orlando was but an exaggeration of the chevalier Bayard, as was the British Arthur of the English Richard, and Charlemagne himself of Francis I.

Ariosto, in following the fashion of contemporaries, lighted upon a theme to which his wayward and versatile genius was peculiarly adapted, and which gave it an opportunity of displaying all its peculiarities to the utmost advantage. Of these, the most enviable and least imitable is that perfection of art, which he perhaps possessed beyond every other writer, to say things naturally. All his wonders and prodigies are made so easy and probable, that to the most fastidious reader, who does not resolutely resist the spell of the poet, and deprive himself of the pleasure of being beguiled by it, they appear as they would do if they were actual events, from the daylight effect of his truth-telling style; for whenever his delight in the extravagant carries him beyond the legitimately marvellous, he disarms resentment, and prevents the laugh against himself by a quiet pleasantry,--becoming himself the Cervantes of his own Quixotes. Satirists, however, have done little to improve mankind: they have condemned and promoted vice; they have ridiculed and recommended folly. Instead of being the most chaste, severe, and instructive, it is notorious that (with few exceptions) they have been the most profligate, pernicious, and corrupting of all writers. Many of the most illustrious deserve to be crowned and decapitated, and their laurelled heads fixed on poles round the heights of Parnassus, as warnings to others, while they affect to expose sin, not to betray virtue; and while they declaim against lewdness, not to become panders to debauch the young, the innocent, and the unsuspecting. To go no farther than the example before us. If ever man deserved poetical honours, Ariosto did; and if ever poet deserved the curse of posterity for the prostitution of high talents, Ariosto does. Without presuming to judge him, even for his worst offences, beyond the present world, it had been better for many of his readers,--why should we not say, at once, for all of them?--that he had never been born. Whatever be her beauty, his Muse has a cancerous sore upon her face, which cannot be looked upon without loathing by any eye, not wilfully blind, where it ought to be eagle-sighted.

[Footnote 94: History of Leo X. vol. I. p. 91. 4to.]

[Footnote 95: The lightning did not spare the laurelled bust of Ariosto, on his monument at Ferrara, some years ago; for the wreath (being of _iron_) was struck off from the marble temples by a flash, which entered the church during a thunderstorm.]

[Footnote 96: "At Bologna, Michel Angelo erected, in front of the church of St Petronio, a statue of Julius II. in bronze, which he is said to have executed so as to express, in the most energetic manner, those qualities for which he was distinguished; giving grandeur and majesty to his person, and courage, promptitude, and ferociousness to his countenance, while even the drapery was remarkable for the boldness and magnificence of its folds. When Julius saw the model, and observed the vigour of the attitude, and the energy with which the right arm was extended, he enquired from the artist, whether he meant to represent him as dispensing his benediction or his curse. Michel Angelo prudently replied, that he meant to represent him in the act of admonishing the citizens of Bologna. In return, the artist requested to know from his holiness, whether he would have a book in his hand. 'No,' replied Julius; 'give me a sword, I am no scholar.'"--_Roscoe's Leo X._ vol. IV. p. 306. 4to edition.]

[Footnote 97: Leo X. vol. II. p. 52.]

[Footnote 98: Ariosto seems to have had a horror of travelling under any circumstances:--

"Men's tastes are various: one prefers the church, The camp another; this his native soil, That foreign countries; as for me, who will May travel to and fro, to visit France, Spain, England, Hungary; but I love home. Lombardy, Rome, and Florence I have seen; The mountains that divide, and those that gird, Fair Italy, and either sea that bathes her; This is enough for me. Without expense Of innkeepers, I roam with Ptolemy O'er all the world beside, in peace or war; I sail on every sea, nor make vain vows When lightnings flash, for, safe, along the chart, I see more lands than from the reeling deck."

_Satire IV._]

[Footnote 99: Apollo and the Muses are supposed to speak here, and Ariosto replies to them.]

[Footnote 100: The cardinal's steward.]

[Footnote 101: "E fin ch'a Roma s'andò a far leone."

_Satire IV._

"a crearlo Leon d' umile agnel."

_Satire VII._]

[Footnote 102: Annibale Maleguccio, to whom the Satire is addressed.]

[Footnote 103: A serpent, supposed to have horns; probably the hooded snake of the East Indies,--one of the most venomous and deadly of the kind: here it is the emblem of avarice.]

[Footnote 104: "Ch' ogni quiete sia, nè ve n' è alcuna."]

[Footnote 105: "Vi si vide anco che ciascun che ascende Commincia a _inasinir_ le prime membre, E resta umano quel che a dietro paude."]

[Footnote 106: See the emblem already quoted from Satire VII.]

[Footnote 107: Hope, that remained at the bottom of Pandora's fatal gift to the brother of Prometheus.]

[Footnote 108: The Po, into which Phaëton was struck from the chariot of the Sun.]