Chapter IX: Part 9

Meanwhile the duke of Ferrara, wishing to pacify the wrath of Julius II., who threatened him not only with the thunders of the Vatican (which were no impotent artillery in those days), but with "force and arms," in the strongest sense of the legal verbiage, so terribly illustrated in appeals to the sword; it is no small proof of the ability and address in worldly affairs of one who lived amidst a creation of ideals of his own rearing, that Ariosto was despatched as ambassador to Rome on this occasion. Though in the sequel he did not effect his purpose of appeasing the ferocious pontiff; yet, by his eloquence; he persuaded him to feign a milder mood; and send an answer which meant less favour than the words seemed to imply. For soon afterwards, Julius, who had set his heart upon adding Ferrara to the ecclesiastical states, entered into a league with the Venetians, who coveted Padua as the quarter adjacent to their territories; and, while his holiness furnished an army, the doge sent a fleet up the Po, to attack the capital of Alfonso at once by land and by water. The papal forces, however, were defeated at the battle of Ravenna, and the republican squadron was beaten, dispersed, or captured on the river. On this occasion, Ariosto, unlike Horace (his master in verse, but not in arms), fought gallantly, and made prize of one of the enemy's richest vessels, laden with military stores. This appears to be authenticated, though he himself never alludes to the circumstance in his Satires (when he is boasting of his services, and murmuring at their ill requital), and notwithstanding his reputed timidity on the water. At the same time, the proof usually given of the latter, it must be allowed, is too equivocal to establish the fact; namely, that when he had occasion to disembark, he would pertinaciously wait till every body else had landed, before he would venture to descend from the deck, using the phrase, de "_puppe novissimus exi_:" but the coolest captain, when his ship is wrecked or foundering, makes it a point of honour and duty to be the last to abandon it. He is likewise said to have been as indifferent a horseman, as _good_ seamen often are (though he was none), riding slowly and cautiously, and alighting on the least appearance of peril or inconvenience in his way. Personally a coward he may have been, but mentally courageous he undoubtedly was: there is no deficiency of spirit traceable in his conduct on some trying occasions, any more than there is in his verses at any time. Indeed, one who had not the keenest intellectual delight in the boldest enterprises, the most appalling dangers, and difficulties insurmountable except by magic intervention, would hardly have written "Orlando Furioso;" for in no work of imagination does the author more effectually dispossess himself of himself, and become for the time being the knight or the giant whose exploits he is celebrating.

After his victories, Alfonso, still anxious to conciliate the pope, proposed a second embassy to Rome; but none of his other diplomatists being willing to hazard themselves in the presence of tire fiery Julius, Ariosto was again induced to accept the charge,--no mean proof of constitutional intrepidity, or else an ascendancy of mind over nerves which few philosophers have attained. Accordingly he set out; but (as he tells us himself in one of his Satires) after escaping all the hazards of the way, every where infested by brigands in those troublous times, he met with so uncourteous a reception from the chafed pontiff, that he was glad to escape as quietly and secretly as he could, having received information that, as Alfonso's proxy, he ran no small risk of being treated as the holy father would have been happy to have treated his master, had he presented himself at the Vatican. Indeed, Julius is said to have openly threatened to throw the poet into the sea, if he did not make his way back as speedily as he might; a hint of which Ariosto promptly availed himself, not presuming to entertain a hope, had he been cast upon the mercy of the waves, that he should have the good fortune of Arion, to charm the dolphins with his minstrelsy, after finding that the sacred laurel, which even the lightning spares[95], could not make his head inviolable at Rome. Alfonso himself, in one of his fruitless negotiations with the implacable Julius, being at Rome, and under safe conduct, was so alarmed by the perfidious treatment which he experienced from the pontiff (who in the mean time, during a truce, had seized Reggio, and demanded Ferrara in exchange for his unjust capture), that he deemed it prudent to make his retreat in the various disguises of a huntsman, a livery servant, and a friar, under the protection of the family of Colonna, who by force rescued him from state-confinement in the Vatican, under the abused name of hospitality.

But the duke retaliated in a singular manner for the indignity shown to himself and his representative. The French having taken Bologna, a superb bronze statue of the military pope, by Michel Angelo, was pulled down from its pedestal, and dragged by the populace through the mire about the city, after which it was sent as a present to Alfonso. The indignant duke (a reckless barbarian in this instance), showing as little respect for the exquisite workmanship of the sculptor as he felt for the piety of the pope, with a felicity of revenge almost to be forgiven for its appropriateness, ordered the rich metal to be sent to the furnace, and re-cast into a cannon, to which he gave the name of Julio. The head, however, was spared, and placed as a trophy in the state museum. Julius never forgave the duke, either for the fault of his ancestors in bequeathing to him a territory which the see of Rome coveted, or for his own sin in defending that territory so successfully against both spiritual and secular violence, that he himself (the greatest warrior who ever wore the triple crown) could not wrest it from him. The disappointed pope expired, exclaiming, in his delirium, "Out of Italy, ye French! Out, Alfonso of Este!"[96]

The first edition of the "Orlando Furioso" appeared in 1515; eleven years after its commencement; a second and third; highly improved; followed in the course of six years; and the last from his hand; in 1532, the year of the poet's death. In each succeeding reprint; so many and such large amendments; exclusions; and variations of the original text were adopted; that the example has been very properly held up to young writers as worthy of their diligent imitation--never to think their best performances perfect while a touch is wanting which they can give to heighten their beauty, or a blemish remaining to lower it, which they can remove. In fact, Ariosto ceased not to elaborate his apparently completed work to the latest period of his life. Long after it had attained its full standard of bulk, this sole tree of his fancy continued to flourish, by the perpetuation of the same process which had reared it, putting forth fairer leaves and richer fruit, in perennial course, till the failure of further supply, from his own decay, left it to survive him in imperishable maturity. The principal interruptions of his literary labours seem to have been the necessary dissipation of mind during the aforementioned unfortunate embassies to Rome, his brief government of the disturbed province of Graffagnana, and occasional fits of silence which came upon him when his heart was wrung and his pride wounded by the inconsiderate neglect or the more flagrant ingratitude of mean-spirited patrons. Of the latter, cardinal Hippolito was the chief; and the cause of their mutual estrangement was the refusal of the poet to accompany the haughty priest as one of his retinue on a journey to Hungary to visit his archbishopric of Segovia, which had been bestowed upon him when he was not more than eighteen years old, by king Matteo Corvino, whose queen Beatrice was sister to Leonora of Aragon, Hippolito's mother. This spoiled child of fortune was not only cardinal, priest, statesman, and warrior (in each of which characters he greatly signalised himself, according to the lax notions of morality then prevalent); but in one instance, at least, he was a lover also, and a rejected one, who wreaked upon his favoured rival a revenge which has made his memory infamous. It appears that Hippolito, and his illegitimate brother don Giulio, both paid their addresses (dishonourable ones they must have been on the cardinal's part) to a lady of Ferrara, of singularly attractive accomplishments, who (if marriage were the question to be decided by the courtship of either), it may be presumed, very naturally preferred him with whom a virtuous alliance might be formed. Hippolito, pressing her one day to acknowledge the ground of her preference, she laid the blame of her love on Giulio's beautiful eyes. The cardinal secretly determined to dissolve that charm; and soon after, accompanying his brother on the chase, in a solitary situation, he led him into an ambush of assassins, who sprang upon the unsuspecting youth, dragged him from his horse, and tore out his eyes, while Hippolito stood by, directing the operation, and exulting in the extinction of those fatal luminaries that stood in his light. Guicciardini, indeed, says, that though Giulio's eyes were plucked out (_tratti_) by the cardinal, they were replaced, without the loss of sight (_riposti senza perdita del lume nel luogo loro_), by the prompt and careful skill of the chirurgeons. Be this as it might, the man concerning whom such a story could be told, and believed by contemporaries, must have had a character for cruelty and selfishness, which renders probable the arrogance, vindictiveness, and tyranny towards his dependents, of which Ariosto so bitterly, yet so humbly and playfully, complains in his Satires, whenever he alludes to his connection with Hippolito. The magnanimous conduct of Alfonso towards the same unfortunate youth was strikingly contrasted with the treachery and barbarity of Hippolito: for the duke not punishing the cardinal or his accomplices for this outrage, Giulio and his brother Ferdinand conspired against his life. The plot was discovered; and the brothers, having confessed their criminal purpose, were adjudged to lose their heads on the scaffold; but while the axe Avas suspended over them, their sentence was changed into one of perpetual imprisonment. Ferdinand, after suffering this for thirty years, died; but Giulio, at the expiration of fifty-two years, was set at liberty.[97]

The poet was, no doubt, proud of his own ancient blood, and jealous of his personal independence, while he coveted that leisure for the pursuits of literature, on which the felicity of his existence, and the glory of his name, in a great measure depended; feelings little understood or little regarded by superficial grandees, whether in church or state, in respect to those over whom they held authority or influence. A poet, more than any other man, lives within himself; and to do this he must have freedom, ease, and competence, however small: nor is it less for the benefit of others that he should enjoy these necessaries of literary life; since they are to reap the harvest of his hermit-thoughts, sown in secret and cherished in solitude, till they grow into beauty, like plants undistinguished till their blossoms appear, or till they shine through obscurity like stars that come out between light and darkness, because they can no longer be hidden. To writers of every other class, valuable as self-searching, self-knowledge, and self-gratification may be, for their various exercises and undertakings, they draw or collect the greater portion of their materials for study and composition from their converse with ordinary and public affairs, the records of the dead or the living, past or contemporary characters, manners, and events. The historian, the moralist, or the philosopher, may please and profit his own generation, and bequeath intellectual stores of wealth to posterity, by representing the images, tastes, and employments of his own times; but the poet, the perpetual poet, he who alone is a poet in the highest sense, whatever be his theme, and how similar soever his materials may be to those of others, must mould his subject according to the archetypes in his own mind, and yet cause such an universal and undying spirit to pervade it, as shall by sympathy make his thoughts understood and enjoyed in all ages and countries, among all people who can read his language.[98]

Hippolito, praised as he has been for his patronage of letters and arts, and poetically canonised by Ariosto himself, throughout the "Orlando Furioso," in strains as unworthy of his genius as they were unmerited by the hero of it, seems to have been a jackdaw patron, who loved to prank himself with the peacock-feathers of court-poets, and strut before them, well plucked, in his train. It is clear that he very indifferently appreciated those talents which were the admiration of all Italy, and as little understood the temper of their possessor. The proud cardinal scarcely rated them any higher than inasmuch as they afforded him the insolent gratification of saying (to exalt himself) that such rare endowments belonged to one of the creatures whom he affected to keep about him, who would fetch and carry for their patron, while they dare not call their souls their own--if souls they had, who could sell them for the luxury of eating toads, with pleasant countenances, in the great man's presence, and deserving the contempt with which they were treated by submitting to it. To the honour of Ariosto he was not one of this reptile species, though his narrow circumstances through life compelled him to eat hitter bread at tables where he would have loved to sit, if he could have found a place there otherwise than as a dependant. In his second satire he expatiates on the degradation of that bondage, from which his own high spirit, and the cardinal's mean one, had freed him. Writing to his brother Alessandro, who had followed his highness into Hungary, he inquires whether the latter ever names him, or alludes to his pertinacity in remaining behind: he then breaks into indignant complaints against the cardinal's courtiers, for misrepresenting the motives of his conduct:--"Oh! ye, profoundly learned in adulation! the art which you most cultivate and study still countenances him to blame me beyond measure. Mad is the man who dares to contradict his master, even though he say that he has seen the stars at noon, the sun at midnight. When he commends or censures, every voice, on either hand, is heard with one accord approving; and if there be a solitary one that has not hardihood, from downright baseness, to open a mouth, with his whole visage he applauds, and every feature says,--'I too agree with that.'" The writer proceeds to recapitulate the reasons, "many and true," which he had stated to the cardinal himself, face to face, without disguise, why he should stay at home. Several of these are whimsical enough, but they show the humour of the man; and may be comprised thus summarily:--

"I have no wish to make my life shorter than fortune and my stars shall please. Now every change, however slight, would aggravate my malady (an inveterate asthma), and I should either die of it, or my two physicians are mistaken. But over and above what they may say, I understand my own case best, and what is good and what is bad for me. My constitution ill endures hard winters, and theirs beneath the pole (Hungary beneath the pole! the poet was always a strange geographer, but here he is playing) are more intense than ours in Italy. And if the cold should not blast me, the heat would, from stoves which I abominate so much, that I shun them more than the plague. Besides all this, the folks so dress, and eat and drink, and play; in short, do every thing but sleep, in that strange land in winter, that, were I forced to gulp the air, so difficult to breathe, from the Riphean mountains, what with the vapours arising from my stomach, and the rheum falling on my lungs, I certainly should die some night of suffocation. Then heady wines, which are prohibited to me as mortal poison, are by the guests swilled down in monstrous draughts, for not to drink much and undiluted is sacrilege there. All their food too is high seasoned with pepper and spices, which my doctor condemns as pernicious for me. Here you may say, that I might sit down below stairs in a snug chimney corner, far from the ill savour of the company, where the cook would prepare my victuals to my own liking, and I might water my wine at my will, and drink little or none at all. What J while you are all well and feasting above, must I sit from morning till night alone in my cell, alone at my board, like a Carthusian? Then pots and pans for kitchen and chamber would be wanted, and I must have a dower of household furniture settled on me like a new married bride. Supposing, nevertheless, that master Pasquin, the cook, were pleased to dress dinner for me apart; once or twice he might do it, but assuredly the fourth or sixth time, he would set all his face in arms against me (_mi farà 'l viso dell' arme_). * * * * You will reply, 'begin housekeeping then in your own way, at your own expense; your footman may be your caterer, and you can cook and eat your pullets at your own fireside!'--Mighty well! but by my unlucky servitude under the cardinal, I have not got enough to set up an hotel for myself in his palace. And thanks to thee, Apollo! thanks to you, ye sacred college of the Muses! from your bounty I have not received so much as would buy me a cloak. 'Oh, but your patron has given you something!'[99]--I grant it; something more than would buy me a cloak; but that it was given me for your sake, I don't believe. He has said, and I am free to tell it to every body, that I may put my verses (there is an untranslatable quibble in the original) where I like. His praises composed by me are not the kind of services which he deems worthy of recompence; he doles out his rewards to those who ride post for him, follow him in the park and the city; who don and doff his clothes, and put his wine flasks in the well that they may be cool at the nones; he recompenses those who watch for him at nights, till the smiths rise in the morning to make nails, so that they often fall asleep with the torches burning in their hands. When I have made verses in honour of him, he says, I have done so for my own pleasure and idleness; whereas it would be far more agreeable to him to have me about his own person." After further complaints against his patron, scorn of that patron's flatterers, and vindication of himself for not being one of these, the angry poet exclaims, "What could I do in such a case? I have no skill to shoot partridges flying; nor to hold a hawk or a greyhound in leash. Let lads learn such arts, who wish to practise them. Nor can I conveniently stoop to draw on or pull off his boots and spurs, seeing I am somewhat tall. I have not much taste for victuals, and as for carvings I might very well have served that office in the age of the world when men fed on acorns. I would not choose to superintend Gismondi's[100] housekeeping accounts; nor does it fall to my lot to gallop again to Rome to appease the fury of the second Julius; but even if it did; at my time of life; with this cough, which I probably caught on such an occasion; it does not suit me any longer to run about the streets. If then to perform such drudgery, and seldom to go out of his presence, but stand there like Bootes by the Great Bear,--if this be required of the man who thirsts for gold, rather than enrich myself thus, I choose repose; repose, rather than to occupy myself with cares for which my studies must be abandoned and plunged into Lethe,--studies that do not, indeed, furnish pasture for the body, but feast the mind with food so noble that they deserve not to be neglected. And thus they do for me,--they make poverty less painful, and wealth to be so little desired, that for the love of it I will not part with my freedom: they cause me not to want that which I hope not to obtain; and that neither envy nor spleen consume me when my lord invites Celio and Marone, while I cannot expect to be seen at supper with his highness at Midsummer; amidst a blaze of torches, blinded with their smoke. Here I walk alone and on foot wherever I please, and when I choose to ride, I throw my saddle bags over my horse's back and mount: and this I hold to be a lesser sin than taking a bribe to recommend the cause of a vassal to the prince; or harassing a parish by iniquitous lawsuits, till the people offer pensions to stay proceedings. Wherefore I lift up both hands to heaven, and pray, that either among citizens or countrymen, I may live in peace under my own roof, and that by means of my small patrimony, I may be enabled to spend the remainder of my days without learning a new craft, or making my family blush for me." In the sequel of the epistle, the relenting poet (a freeman at heart, a slave by court habit) condescends to make an offer of certain honorary services which he could render to the cardinal at home (not having "felt himself so stout and nimble as to leap from the hanks of the Po to those of the Danube"), but before he has well concluded his humiliating overture, the exasperation, of which neither scorn, philosophy, nor poetic pride could rid his wounded spirit, returns like an access of disease upon him, and he breaks out into a rhodomontade of defiance. In this passage it is hard to know whether the unhappy writer be most entitled to pity, censure, or admiration: pity for unmerited harshness from his patron; censure for a manifest hankering towards sycophancy; and admiration for his magnanimous resolve, at any rate, to choose freedom and penury rather than abundance and bondage. "If," he says, "for a benefice bestowed on me of five and twenty crowns every four months (yet not so well secured but that they are often litigated), his highness has a right to make me wear a chain, hold me as a bondman, and oblige me to sweat and tremble before him, without any regard, till I break down and die,--let him not imagine such a thing, but tell him plainly that, rather than be a slave, I will bear poverty in patience." He goes on:--

"An ass, all bones and gristle with hard fare, Entering a granary through a broken wall, Made such enormous havoc with the corn, That his thin flanks were rounded like a tun, And he had had enough,--which was not soon. Then, fearing lest his hide must pay the cost, He struggled to get back the way he came, But found the chink too narrow now to let him. Thus, while he fretted, pushed, and squeez'd in vain, A rat addressed him: 'Sir, if you would pass, You must make friends with that great paunch of yours; Behoves you to disgorge what you have swallow'd, And e'en grow lean again, or never hope To thread the needle's eye of that small hole.' --So, in conclusion, if his Eminence Imagines he has bought me with his gifts, 'T will be no hard or bitter thing to me Straight to return them, and reclaim my freedom."

To aggravate the poet's misfortune, about this time, or, in the words of his first English translator, sir John Harrington, "to mend the matter, one taking occasion of this eclipse of the cardinal's favour put him in suit for a piece of land of his ancient inheritance, which was not only a great vexation to his mind, but a charge to his purse and travail to his body; for undoubtedly the clattering of armour, the noise of great ordnance, the sound of the trumpet and drum, and the neighing of horses, do not so much trouble the sweet Muses, as the brabbling of lawyers, the pattering of attorneys, and the civil war, or rather most uncivil disagreeing, of foresworn jurors."

After the death of Hippolito, who was never reconciled to him, Ariosto was persuaded to enter into the service of the cardinal's brother, Alfonso the duke, who, if he neither exalted nor enriched the poet greatly, honoured him for his genius, delighted in his society, and enabled him to build a house to his own fancy in the midst of an ample garden. This gave him an opportunity of indulging in one of his peculiar tastes, in which, however, it was not easy to please himself, for the pleasure rather consisted in trying to do so by modelling and remodelling, and making experiment after experiment on whatever he had in hand. Thus his mansion was constructed by piecemeal, pulled down in like manner, enlarged, reduced, amended over and over again before he permitted it to stand, or deemed it worthy of the following quaint inscription, which he placed over the entrance:--

"Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non Sordida, parta meo sed tamen fere domus."

"'T is small but fit for me, gives none offence, Not mean, yet builded at my own expense."

"A verse," says sir John Harrington, with an emphasis as though he spoke from experience, "which few of the builders of this latter day could truly write, or, at least, if they could, I would lay that their houses were strongly built, indeed, for more than the third heir." When asked by a friend how it happened that he who, in "building the lofty rhyme," had reared so many superb palaces, could submit to dwell under so humble a roof, he very ingenuously replied, "Words are sooner put together than bricks and mortar." Yet in constructing his verse he was equally fastidious; no poet probably ever bestowed more patience and pains in weighing syllables, collocating sounds, balancing periods, and adjusting the nicest points that bore upon the harmony, splendour, or fluency of his compositions; yet it is the charm of his style that the whole seems as natural as if the thoughts had told themselves in their own words. In stocking his garden, and, training his flowers, Ariosto is said to have been not less fickle and capricious than in framing his habitation and adapting his poetical numbers; but with far less felicity; for, like a child impatient to witness the growth of his plants, he would pull them up from time to time to see how the roots were thriving below ground, as well as how they shot upwards. This plan, however it might suit masonry to practise on dead materials, or poetry to weave and disentangle rhythmical cadences, was ill adapted to gardening.

It was still, however, and to his life's end, the misfortune of Ariosto to struggle against the solicitudes, discomforts, and mortifications of narrow and precarious circumstances. His own family were long dependent upon him for entire subsistence, or occasional aid; yet he seems to have kept his inheritance, small as it was, unimpaired, otherwise he could not have looked to it as a last resource, when courtly favour, whether of prelate or prince, should be withdrawn. What regular stipends he might receive for his services from Hippolito and Alfonso, is nowhere recorded, beyond the five and twenty crowns every four months, bestowed by the former, when he could get them, by fair means or foul, from those who were to pay them; and according to some of his biographers, withdrawn from him by his patron, after their quarrel. But it appears that he enjoyed the revenues of some ecclesiastical benefices, though not in priest's orders, and that, though not married, he had two sons, whom he educated liberally. In his third satire, he assigns a very equivocal reason for this not very equivocal conduct; for who will pretend that both circumstances were not greatly to his discredit, though countenanced in simony and licentiousness by the shameless practices of many of his most honourable contemporaries:--"I will not take orders, because then I can never take a wife; I will not take a wife because then I can never take orders, and I am shy of tying a knot, which, if I repent, I cannot loose." From popes, cardinals, and princes, both native and foreign, he is said to have received large gifts, in return for copies of his poems, and in compliment to those rare talents, by which he furnished the most popular, as well as the most fashionable reading of all who spoke the Italian tongue, or understood it: yet few of these are so authenticated as to confer unquestionable credit on the presumed donors.

Among Ariosto's patrons, next to Hippolito, Pope Leo X. seems to have most excited and most disappointed his reasonable expectations, not to call them his positive claims; for in some instances at least, where promises have been made to the hope, the iniquity of breaking them to the heart is only not felony, because the law cannot punish it. It is said by one (Gabriele Simeoni in his Satire on Avarice), that "to Leo, the light and mirror of courtesy, we are primarily indebted for the pleasure of hearkening to the lays of Ariosto, that pontiff having given him several hundred crowns to perfect his work." Another apocryphal authority affirms, that pope Leo X. issued a bull in favour of the "Orlando Furioso," denouncing excommunication against any one who should presume to censure its poetry or its morals. This has been explained into a mere matter of form, namely, a licence to print and publish the work, with a denunciation against those who should defraud the author of the lawful profits arising from the sale;--a licence, by the way, of little value; since we have learned already from himself long after the publication of the poem, that from "Apollo and the sacred college of the Muses,"--a palpable hit at the pope and the sacred college of cardinals, against whom he seldom spares a stroke of raillery,--he never received so much as would buy him a cloak. A bull of some kind or other was granted to him by Leo, according to his own confession in Satire VII.; but if that which is once well done is twice done, that which is only half done must be next to nothing: he received only a moiety of the sum raised by it, which seems to have been as little productive as some of our church briefs, or those letters of royal licence to beg, which have been granted in this country to recompense learned men for their labours, as in the case of Stow the antiquary. Paulo Rolli, himself a poet of no mean rank (who translated "Paradise Lost" into Italian), in his note on a passage in the sixth Satire, says that Leo, "otherwise the great friend of the learned, did not promote Ariosto, because his holiness inherited from Julius II. implacable hatred against Alfonso duke of Ferrara, and a greedy desire to possess that city. It did not, therefore, agree with his policy to give Ariosto a cardinal's hat, because, being a subject of Alfonso's, the poet would not only do no wrong to the duke; but, on the contrary, honoured as he was by his sovereign, he would employ all his influence to thwart the injurious designs of the pontiff against the latter. What marvel, then, that Leo, like mighty men in every age, should prefer his own ambition to the great friendship and esteem in which he held Ariosto; since ambition, when united with personal interest, swallows up all other passions!"

But what claims had Ariosto on the bounty of Leo X.? The fact is certain, that, previous to the elevation of Giovanni de' Medici, under that name, to the papal chair (not in prosperity only, but in exile and captivity after the battle of Ravenna), Ariosto had been on terms of the most cordial intimacy that can be supposed to have subsisted between persons so unequally circumstanced with regard to birth, but having in common one passionate attachment to elegant literature. In Ariosto this was supreme, in Leo it was only secondary; hence the heartless ingratitude of the priest on the one hand, and the wormwood and gall of chagrin, that exasperated the poet on the other. But his own authority on the subject is the best; and if not the most correct, it has the merit of being the most amusing representation of the game of self-delusion at which both played and both lost (the one his honour, and the other his reward); for there is no reason to doubt of Giovanni de' Medici's affection towards his friend, and his purpose to serve him being as sincere--till he had the means of doing so--as the poets hopes were natural and ingenuous. Time has avenged the injured party, and Ariosto's fourth Satire adds little to the glory of the golden days of Leo. While the latter was a whelp, he fondled his playmate the spaniel; when he came to lion's estate, he had too many foxes and wolves about his den to care for his former companion. "Until the time" when he went to Rome to be made lion[101] (Leo), "I was always agreeable to him, and apparently he loved few persons more than me. Often hath he said, when he was legate and in Florence, that if need were, he would make no difference between me and his own brother. Hence some might imagine, that being at Rome, it would have been easy for me to have slipt my head out of a black hood into a green one. I answer those who may think so with an example; read it, for it will cost you less to read than me to write."

This, as well as some former and following extracts from the Satires, are given, for variety's sake, in slipshod verse:--

"The ground, one summer, was so parch'd with drought, It seem'd as though Apollo had resign'd His horses' reins to Phaëton again: Dry every well, and every fountain dry; Lakes, streams, and rivers most renown'd, might then Be forded without bridges.

"In that time, There lived a pastor, rich I do not say, Nor overstock'd with herds and woolly flocks, Who, among others, press'd by want of water, And having search'd in vain through every cave, Turn'd to that Lord who never disappoints The man that trusts in him;--and light was given, And inspiration to his heart, that he, Far thence, should in a valley's bottom find The long-desired supply.

"Off, with his wife, Children, and all that in the world he had, He hasten'd thither, and with spade and mattock Delved to the spring,--nor had he deep to dig. But having nothing wherewithal to draw, Save one scant narrow pitcher, thus he spake: 'Let none take dudgeon, if the earliest draught Be for myself; the second for my dame; And't is but right my children have the third, The fourth, and on, till all have slaked their thirst; Then, one by one, I will the rest should drink, According to their work and labour done, Who sunk the well; to flocks and cattle next Refreshment must be forth distributed, First to the feeblest and the nearest death.'

"According to this equitable rule, All came to drink; while each, that he might not Be last, made most of his small services. This, a poor magpie, once his master's pet, Seeing and hearing, cried, "Ah! well-a-day! I'm no relation, I've not help'd to sink The well, nor am of any further use To be to him what I have been; 't is plain That if I wait my turn, I'm in the lurch, And must drop dead with thirst unless I seek Relief elsewhere.'

"Cousin[102], with this example I furnish you, to stop the mouths of those Who think his holiness might have preferr'd Me to the _Neri, Vanni, Lotti, Bacci_, Nephews and kin so numerous, claiming right To drink in the first year; then those that help'd To robe him with the best of mantles, &c. &c. &c. * * * * If till all these have drunk their fill I wait, I know not which will be the first dried up, The well of water, or myself by thirst."

The poet, alluding in direct terms to his visit to Rome, and his specious reception by Leo, says, "I had better remain in my accustomed quiet, than try whether it be true, that whomsoever fortune exalts, she first dips in Lethe." The subtle irony that follows cannot be mistaken in the original, while the indignant satirist, with the most unaffected gravity, and in right good faith, seems to acquit his patron of forgetfulness and ingratitude,--the very things with which it is certain that he means to charge him. Ariosto can keep his countenance like the Spartan boy, who, having stolen a fox, and hidden it under his cloak, suffered the animal to worry its way into his heart, without betraying, by any contortion, the secret of his theft. "Nevertheless, if it be the fact that she (Fortune) does plunge others there (in Lethe), so that all remembrances of the past are washed out, I can testify that he (Leo) had not lost his memory when I first kissed his foot; he bowed himself towards me from the blessed seat, took me by the hand, and gave me a holy kiss on either cheek; he likewise granted me most graciously one half of that same bull of which my friend Bebiena lately remitted me the balance, at my own expense; wherefore, with skirts and bosom full of hopes, but splashed from head to foot with rain and mud, I returned to supper at my inn the same night. But even if it be true that the pope means to make good all his former promises, and now intends me to reap fruit of the seed which I have sown through so many years; if it be true that he will bestow upon me as many mitres and coronets as the master of his chapel ever saw assembled when his holiness says mass; if it be true that he will fill my sleeves, my pockets, and my lap with gold, and, lest that should not be enough, cram me bodily with it up to the chin (_la gola, il ventre e le budella_); would all this glut my enormous voracity for wealth? or would the fierce thirst of my cerastes[103] be appeased with this? From Morocco to China, from the Nile to the Danube, and not merely to Home, I must travel, if I would find means to satiate the unnatural cravings of avarice. Were I a cardinal, or even the great servant of servants, and yet could not find bounds to my inordinate desires, what good should I get by wearying myself with such huge leaps? I had better lie still, and tire myself less."

The fable which follows, typifies the mournful but ludicrous fact, that, while all who reach the heights they aim at are disappointed,--that _for_ which they aim at these being as unapproachable at the top of the hill as from the bottom,--others are continually aspiring, through all the stages of the wearisome ascent, towards the very prize which the successful have _not_ gained, though to those beneath it appears to be actually in their possession:--

"Once on a time,--'t was when the world was young, And the first race of men were inexperienced, For there were no such knaveries then as now,-- A certain people, whom I need not name, Dwelt at the foot of an enormous hill, Whose summit from the valley seem'd to touch The sky itself.

"These simple folks, observing How oft the inconstant moon, now with a horn, And now without, now waxing, and now waning, Held through the firmament her natural course, Supposed that on the top they might find out How she enlarged, then shrunk into herself. One with a bag, another with a basket, Began to scale the precipice amain, Each eager in the strife to outclimb the rest; But finding at the peak they were no nearer, All fell down weary on the earth, and wish'd Most heartily that they had stay'd below. Their neighbours from the bottom seeing them Aloof, believed that they had reach'd the moon, And hurried breathless up to share the spoil. --This mountain is the mighty wheel of Fortune, Upon whose rim the stupid vulgar think All is tranquillity, though ne'er a bit."[104]

With equal spleen and pleasantry, in the seventh Satire, the author, as an experienced hand, ridicules the favourite game of mankind,--climbing the wheel of Fortune, and never finding themselves complete fools till they are quite at the top. The allusion (scarcely intelligible in this country, where it is played in earnest only, and not for pastime) is to a game of cards, of which a pack is called _tarrochi_ (trumps): these are painted expressly in the manner described below, namely, the transmigration, by instalments, of climbing men into asses; and they are used for the purpose of playing at _minchiate_ (blockhead),--a common recreation at Florence, and--wherever else the reader pleases:--

"That pictured wheel, I own, annoys me sorely, Which every master paints in the same way, And such agreement cannot be a lie, --When that which sits aloft they make an ass. Now every one may understand this riddle, Without the sphinx to interpret;--for, mark well, Each, as he climbs, begins to _assify_ From top to toe; head, shoulders, arms, thence downward; The limbs below remaining human still:"[105]

that is, till having reached the summit, the man has the felicity to find himself an accomplished ass. The poet, immediately afterwards, applies this unlucky hieroglyphic to himself and his journey to Rome, to congratulate Leo X. on his accession to the triple crown. His services, expectations, and disappointments, while a worshipper of that golden calf of literary idolatry (whose rites have not yet ceased), are humorously but vindictively recapitulated. Illustrative of these, he introduces another fable in his own free and easy manner. La Fontaine himself might have borrowed from Ariosto the idea of that simple yet facetious style which distinguishes his fables. To the disgrace of both, the Frenchman seems likewise to have borrowed from the Italian the model, as well as some of the materials, for his profligate tales. "My hope," says the forlorn satirist, "came with the first leaves and blossoms of spring, but withered without waiting for September. It came on the day when the church was given for a spouse to Leo, when I saw so many of my friends clad in scarlet at the nuptials. It came with the calends, and fled with the ides: remembering this, I can never again put confidence in man. My silly hope shot up to heaven, and spread over unknown lands, when the holy father took me by the hand and kissed me on the cheeks; but high as it rose, so low it fell, and oh! in how short space of time!"

"There was a gourd which grew so lustily, That in few days its foliage over-ran The loftiest branches of a neighbouring pear-tree. One morn, the latter, opening wide its eyes After a long sound nap, beheld new fruits Clustering luxuriantly around its head. 'Holla!' it cried; 'who _are_ you? and how _came_ you? Where _were_ you when these wretched eyes of mine To slumber I resign'd?' The gourd replied Frankly; declared its name and kindred; show'd How it was planted at his honour's foot, And in three months had thriven to that height. 'And I,' the pear-tree answer'd, 'hardly climb'd To this pre-eminence, through heat and cold, And wars with all the winds, in thirty years! But you, who in the twinkling of an eye Have sprung to heaven, shall, with the self-same speed As you have risen, down dwindle to the root.'"

Notwithstanding the neglect which he experienced at Rome, Ariosto was now enjoying ease and dignity at the court of Alfonso, compared with the servitude, or rather the servility, which Hippolito formerly exacted of his retainers. During this prosperous period of his life, he was appointed by his patron to a post of honour and difficulty, if not of emolument, which required the exercise of certain politic talents rarely possessed by poets, but which he must have possessed in no inconsiderable measure, judging by the trusts so repeatedly reposed in him. Graffagnana, a mountainous district lying between Modena and Lucca, and which had been wrested some years before by the pope from the duke of Ferrara, threw off the yoke, and returned to its former lord, upon the demise of Leo X. This tract of debateable land was occupied by a people proverbially rude, factious, and turbulent among themselves, as well as refractory towards the ill-established authorities set over them from time to time by their temporary sovereigns. Hence the woodlands and glens on the Apennine slopes, where their country was situated, were infested with banditti; and the inhabitants were embroiled in perpetual lawsuits before tribunals where little justice was to be obtained, or else at open variance with their own bands, determining right by might. To that dreary province, in such a hideous state of affairs, Ariosto was sent to redress grievances, restore quiet, and advance the semi-barbarians a step or two in civilisation. This task,--on the face of it more fitted to the talents of an Orpheus or Amphion, than those of a modern minstrel; unless, like the one, he was master of the lost art of teaching stones to build themselves into temples and palaces, or, like the other, could draw rocks and forests, with their population of lions and tigers, after him, by the enchantment of his lyre,--he seems to have accomplished with moderate success among a tribe already acquainted with his romantic poetry, and prepared to honour the author. Sir John Harrington says, that "he so orderly governed, and so well quieted," these riotous hordes by his wisdom and equity, that "he left them all in good peace and concord; winning not only the love of the better sort, but also a wonderful reverence of the wilder people, and a great awe even in robbers and thieves." The latter phrase alludes to a story which has been differently told, but may be received as substantially true, of a rencontre which he had with some of his more uncouth neighbours. One day traversing a forest, accompanied by five or six horsemen, the little party was startled by the appearance of a body of armed men breaking cover, and coming suddenly upon them; these belonged to one of the gangs of brigands, which, under two audacious leaders--Domenico Marotto and Philippo Pachione--divided the peace of the country between them, allowing none to each other, and depriving every one else of it. The expected assailants, however, after curiously eying the governor and his train, permitted them to pass; which his excellency was very willing to do, though, as chief magistrate, he had found a whole nest of outlaws. Having formerly signalised himself in the river fight with the Venetians, and there being no occasion to exercise any other than "the better part of valour--discretion"--in this affair, Ariosto felt his honour as safe as his life, in riding on without offering molestation where he experienced none. But the captain of the band, being struck with his superior presence, demanded of the hindmost of his attendants what was his master's name. "Ludovico Ariosto," replied the other: whereupon, galloping up to him, the freebooter hailed the poet (who expected a very different salutation) with the most profound respect and courtesy, introducing himself as Philippo Pachione, and regretting that, from not having previously known his person, he and his troop had not done due honour to him in passing. He then launched out into vehement praises of the "Orlando Furioso" (a poem likely enough to be the delight of such adventurers), and with all humility and frankness offered his most devoted services to its author. Baretti's version of the anecdote is to the following effect:--Ariosto one morning happened to take a walk in his night-gown and slippers beyond the castle where he resided, fell into a fit of thought, and forgot himself so much, that step after step he found himself, when he recovered, already far from home, and surrounded on a sudden by a troop of desperadoes; who certainly would have ill used, and perhaps murdered him, had not his face been known by one of the gang, who, informing his comrades that it was signor Ariosto, the chief of the banditti addressed him with intrepid gallantry, and told him, that since his excellency was the author of "Orlando Furioso," he might be sure that none of his company would injure him, but would see him, on the contrary, safe to the castle. This they did, entertaining him all the way with the passages which they most admired in his poem." Ariosto himself seems to allude to some such circumstance in the Epistle to S. Maleguccio (Satire V.), written during his residence in Graffagnana.

"Saggio chi dal castel poco si scosta."

"He's wise who strays but little from the castle."

Two of his epistolary Satires are dated from that province; where he seems to have been as little at home as Ovid in Pontus. In that first quoted, to Sigismondo Maleguccio, at the end of the first year of his honourable exile, he says,--

"This is the earliest note, in all the time, Which I have warbled to the nymphs that guard The tree, whose leaves I once so long'd to wear: Such is the strangeness of the place to me, That I am like a bird, whose cage is changed, And many a day refrains his wonted song: My cousin, wonder not that I am mute; The wonder's greater that I'm not dead with spleen-- Shut as I am, a hundred miles and more, By Alps and snow, and streams and woods, from her Who holds alone the reins of my affection."

_Satire V._

Sancho Panza, in his island of Barataria, neither administered justice more wisely, nor was interrupted more provokingly in his personal indulgences, than Ariosto in his government of Graffagnana; and, unfortunately for his comfort, the stronghold of Castelnuovo was not stormed at midnight by some friendly enemy, nor himself ejected by violence, to his heart's content. The poet's miserable reign lasted three long years; while the squire of Don Quixote had the happiness to be relieved from the cares of state in less than as many days. How unfit for the management of a brute people he deemed himself, may be judged from the story with which he closes this epistle.

"Methinks that I resemble the Venetian To whom the king of Portugal presented A noble steed of Mauritanian blood; Who, to do justice to the royal gift, Nor once considering, that to turn a helm, And draw a bridle, are two different things, Mounted aloft, and with both hands held fast As at a rudder; then in either flank Cast anchor with his spurs, and bravely mutter'd, 'I'll warrant ye don't fling me overboard.' The horse, thus handled, bolted off full speed; Whereat the gallant seaman pull'd the harder, And deeper struck the rowels sharp as spears, Till mouth and reins were tinged with blood and foam. The beast, not knowing which to obey--the points That urged him on, or curb that held him back-- With a few desperate plunges rid himself Of his strange rider; who, with shatter'd ribs, Crack'd collar-bone, head broken, all begrimed With mud and dirt, and pale with fright, crawl'd off In no good humour with his majesty, And, far away, bewail'd his horsemanship. Well had it been for him, and well for me, If for his charger he, I for my province, Had said,--'O king! O duke! I am not worthy Of such high honour; graciously bestow Your bounty on some other.'"