Chapter VII: Part THE THIRD: The Jealousy of Orlando (1)

During the course of his search for Angelica, the County Orlando had just restored two lovers to one another, and was pursuing a Pagan enemy to no purpose through a wild and tangled wood, when he came into a beautiful spot by a river's side, which tempted him to rest himself from the heat. It was a small meadow, full of daisies and butter-cups, and surrounded with trees. There was an air abroad, notwithstanding the heat, which made the shepherds glad to sit without their jerkins, and receive the coolness on their naked bodies: even the hard-skinned cattle were glad of it; and Orlando, who was armed _cap-a-pie_, was delighted to take off his helmet, and lay aside his buckler, and repose awhile in the midst of a scene so refreshing. Alas! it was the unhappiest moment of his life.

Casting his eyes around him, while about to get off his horse, he observed a handwriting on many of the trees which he thought he knew. Riding up to the trees, and looking more closely, he was sure he knew it; and in truth it was no other than that of his adored mistress Angelica, and the inscription one of those numerous inscriptions of which I have spoken. The spot was one of the haunts of the lovers while they abode in the shepherd's cottage. Wherever the County turned his eyes, he beheld, tied together in true-lovers' knots, nothing but the words

"ANGELICA AND MEDORO."

All the trees had them--his eyes could see nothing else; and every letter was a dagger that pierced his heart.

The unhappy lover tried in vain to disbelieve what he saw. He endeavoured to compel himself to think that it was some other Angelica who had written the words; but he knew the handwriting too well. Too often had he dwelt upon it, and made himself familiar with every turn of the letters. He then strove to fancy that "Medoro" was a feigned name, intended for himself; but he felt that he was trying to delude himself, and that the more he tried, the bitterer was his conviction of the truth. He was like a bird fixing itself only the more deeply in the lime in which it is caught, by struggling and beating its wings.

Orlando turned his horse away in his anguish, and paced it towards a grotto covered with vine and ivy, which he looked into. The grotto, both outside and in, was full of the like inscriptions. It was the retreat the lovers were so fond of at noon. Their names were written on all sides of it, some in chalk and coal,[17] others carved with a knife.

The wretched beholder got off his horse and entered the grotto. The first thing that met his eyes was a larger inscription in the Saracen lover's own handwriting and tongue--a language which the slayer of the infidels was too well acquainted with. The words were in verse, and expressed the gratitude of the "poor Medoro," the writer, for having had in his arms, in that grotto, the beautiful Angelica, daughter of King Galafron, whom so many had loved in vain. The writer invoked a blessing on every part of it, its shades, its waters, its flowers, its creeping plants; and entreated every person, high and low, who should chance to visit it, particularly lovers, that they would bless the place likewise, and take care that it was never polluted by foot of herd.

Thrice, and four times, did the unhappy Orlando read these words, trying always, but in vain, to disbelieve what he saw. Every time he read, they appeared plainer and plainer; and every time did a cold hand seem to be wringing the heart in his bosom. At length he remained with his eyes fixed on the stone, seeing nothing more, not even the stone itself. He felt as if his wits were leaving him, so abandoned did he seem of all comfort. Let those imagine what he felt who have experienced the same emotions--who know, by their own sufferings, that this is the grief which surpasses all other griefs. His head had fallen on his bosom; his look was deprived of all confidence; he could not even speak or shed a tear. His impetuous grief remained within him by reason of his impetuosity--like water which attempts to rush out of the narrow-necked bottle, but which is so compressed as it comes, that it scarcely issues drop by drop.

Again he endeavoured to disbelieve his eyes--to conclude that somebody had wished to calumniate his mistress, and drive her lover mad, and so had done his best to imitate her handwriting. With these sorry attempts at consolation, he again took horse, the sun having now given way to the moon, and so rode a little onward, till he beheld smoke rising out of the tops of the trees, and heard the barking of dogs and the lowing of cattle. By these signs he knew that he was approaching a village. He entered it, and going into the first house he came to, gave his horse to the care of a youth, and was disarmed, and had his spurs of gold taken off, and so went into a room that was shewn him without demanding either meat or drink, so entirely was he filled with his sorrow.

Now it happened that this was the very cottage into which Medoro had been carried out of the wood by the loving Angelica. There he had been cured of his wounds--there he had been loved and made happy--and there, wherever the County Orlando turned his eyes, he beheld the detested writing on the walls, the windows, the doors. He made no inquiries about it of the people of the house: he still dreaded to render the certainty clearer than he would fain suppose it.

But the cowardice availed him nothing; for the host seeing him unhappy, and thinking to cheer him, came in as he was getting into bed, and opened on the subject of his own accord. It was a story be told to every body who came, and he was accustomed to have it admired; so with little preface he related all the particulars to his new guest--how the youth had been left for dead on the field, and how the lady had found him, and had him brought to the cottage--and how she fell in love with him as he grew well--and how she could be content with nothing but marrying him, though she was daughter of the greatest king of the East, and a queen herself. At the conclusion of his narrative, the good man produced the bracelet which had been given him by Angelica, as evidence of the truth of all that he had been saying.

This was the final stroke, the last fatal blow, given to the poor hopes of Orlando by the executioner, Love. He tried to conceal his misery, but it was no longer to be repressed; so finding the tears rush into his eyes, he desired to be alone. As soon as the man had retired, he let them flow in passion and agony. In vain he attempted to rest, much less to sleep. Every part of the bed appeared to be made of stones and thorns.

At length it occurred to him, that most likely they had slept in that very bed. He rose instantly, as if he had been lying on a serpent. The bed, the house, the herdsman, every thing about the place, gave him such horror and detestation, that, without waiting for dawn, or the light of moon, he dressed himself, and went forth and took his horse from the stable, and galloped onwards into the middle of the woods. There, as soon as he found himself in the solitude, he opened all the flood-gates of his grief, and gave way to cries and outcries.

But he still rode on. Day and night did Orlando ride on, weeping and lamenting. He avoided towns and cities, and made his bed on the hard earth, and wondered at himself that he could weep so long.

"These," thought he, "are no tears that are thus poured forth. They are life itself, the fountains of vitality; and I am weeping and dying both. These are no sighs that I thus eternally exhale. Nature could not supply them. They are Love himself storming in my heart, and at once consuming me and keeping me alive with his miraculous fires. No more--no more am I the man I seem. He that was Orlando is dead and buried. His ungrateful mistress has slain him. I am but the soul divided from his body--doomed to wander here in this misery, an example to those that put their trust in love."

For the wits of the County Orlando were going; and he wandered all night round and round in the wood, till he came back to the grotto where Medoro had written his triumphant verses. Madness then indeed fell upon him. Every particle of his being seemed torn up with rage and fury; and he drew his mighty sword, and hewed the grotto and the writing, till the words flew in pieces to the heavens. Woe to every spot in the place in which were written the names of "Angelica and Medoro." Woe to the place itself: never again did it afford refuge from the heat of day to sheep or shepherd; for not a particle of it remained as it was. With arm and sword Orlando defaced it all, the clear and gentle fountain included. He hacked and hewed it inside and out, and cut down the branches of the trees that hung over it, and tore away the ivy and the vine, and rooted up great bits of earth and stone, and filled the sweet water with the rubbish, so that it was never clear and sweet again; and at the end of his toil, not having satisfied or being able to satisfy his soul with the excess of his violence, he cast himself on the ground in rage and disdain, and lay groaning towards the heavens.

On the ground Orlando threw himself, and on the ground he remained, his eyes fixed on heaven, his lips closed in dumbness; and thus he continued for the space of three days and three nights, till his frenzy had mounted to such a pitch that it turned against himself. He then arose in fury, and tore off mail and breastplate, and every particle of clothing from his body, till humanity was degraded in his heroical person, and he became naked as the beasts of the field. In this condition, and his wits quite gone, sword was forgotten as well as shield and helm; and he tore up fir-tree and ash, and began running through the woods. The shepherds hearing the cries of the strong man, and the crashing of the boughs, came hastening from all quarters to know what it was; but when he saw them he gave them chase, and smote to death those whom he reached, till the whole country was up in arms, though to no purpose; for they were seized with such terror, that while they threatened and closed after him, they avoided him. He entered cottages, and tore away the food from the tables; and ran up the craggy hills and down into the valleys; and chased beasts as well as men, tearing the fawn and the goat to pieces, and stuffing their flesh into his stomach with fierce will.

Raging and scouring onwards in this manner, he arrived one day at a bridge over a torrent, on which the fierce Rodomont had fixed himself for the purpose of throwing any one that attempted to pass it into the water. It was a very narrow bridge, with scarcely room for two horses. But Orlando took no heed of its narrowness. He dashed right forwards against man and steed, and forced the champion to wrestle with him on foot; and, winding himself about him with hideous strength, he leaped backwards with him into the torrent, where he left him, and so mounted the opposite bank, and again rushed over the country. A more terrible bridge than this was in his way--even a precipitous pass of frightful height over a valley; but still he scoured onwards, throwing over it the agonised passengers that dared, in their ignorance of his strength, to oppose him; and so always rushing and raging, he came down the mountains by the sea-side to Barcelona, where he cast his eyes on the sands, and thought, in his idiot mind, to make himself a house in them for coolness and repose; and so he grubbed up the sand, and laid himself down in it: and this was the terrible madman whom Angelica and Medoro saw looking at them as they were approaching the city.

Neither of them knew him, nor did he know Angelica; but, with an idiot laugh, he looked at her beauty, and liked her, and came horribly towards her to carry her away. Shrieking, she put spurs to her horse and fled; and Medoro, in a fury, came after the pursuer and smote him, but to no purpose. The great madman turned round and smote the other's horse to the ground, and so renewed his chase after Angelica, who suddenly regained enough of her wits to recollect the enchanted ring. Instantly she put it into her lips and disappeared; but in her hurry she fell from her palfrey, and Orlando forgot her in the instant, and, mounting the poor beast, dashed off with it over the country till it died; and so at last, after many dreadful adventures by flood and field, he came running into a camp full of his brother Paladins, who recognised him with tears; and, all joining their forces, succeeded in pulling him down and binding him, though not without many wounds: and by the help of these friends, and the special grace of the apostle St. John (as will be told in another place), the wits of the champion of the church were restored, and he became ashamed of that passion for an infidel beauty which the heavenly powers had thus resolved to punish.

But Angelica and Medoro pursued the rest of their journey in peace, and took ship on the coast of Spain for India; and there she crowned her bridegroom King of Cathay. The description of Orlando's jealousy and growing madness is reckoned one of the finest things in Italian poetry; and very fine it surely is--as strong as the hero's strength, and sensitive as the heart of man. The circumstances are heightened, one after the other, with the utmost art as well as nature. There is a scriptural awfulness in the account of the hero's becoming naked; and the violent result is tremendous. I have not followed Orlando into his feats of ultra-supernatural strength. The reader requires to be prepared for them by the whole poem. Nor are they necessary, I think, to the production of the best effect; perhaps would hurt it in an age unaccustomed to the old romances.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: See p. 58 of the present volume.]

[Footnote 2:

"Fugge tra selve spaventose e scure,
Per lochi inabitati, ermi e selvaggi.
Il mover de le frondi e di verzure
Che di cerri sentia, d' olmi e di faggi,
Fatto le avea con subite paure
Trovar di quà e di là strani viaggi;
Ch' ad ogni ombra veduta o in monte o in valle
Temea Rinaldo aver sempre alle spalle."

Canto i. st. 33.]

[Footnote 3:

"Ecco non lungi un bel cespuglio vede
Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rôse,
Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede,
Chiuso dal Sol fra l' alte quercie ombrose; ]

[Footnote 4: And how lovely is this!

"E fuor di quel cespuglio oscuro e cieco
Fa di se bella et improvvisa mostra,
Come di selva o fuor d'ombroso speco
Diana in scena, o Citerea si mostra," &c.

St. 52.]

[Footnote 5: How admirable is the suddenness, brevity, and force of this scene! And it is as artful and dramatic as off-hand; for this Amazon, Bradamante, is the future heroine of the warlike part of the poem, and the beauty from whose marriage with Ruggiero is to spring the house of Este. Nor without her appearance at this moment, as Panizzi has shewn (vol. i. p. cvi.), could a variety of subsequent events have taken place necessary to the greatest interests of the story. All the previous passages in romance about Amazons are nothing compared with this flash of a thunderbolt.]

[Footnote 6: From _bayard_, old French; _bay-colour._]

Footnote 7: His famous sword, vide p. 48.]

[Footnote 8: To richness and rarity, how much is added by remoteness! It adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it.]

[Footnote 9:

"Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro
Mezo ascoso ne l'onda, e mezo sorto.
Come sospinto suol da Borca o d'Ostro
Venir lungo navilio a pigliar porto,"
Canto x. st. 100.

Improved from Ovid, _Metamorph_. lib. iv. 706

"Ecce velut navis præfixo concita rostro
Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis;
Sic fera," &c.

As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce,
Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar.

Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far as the combat is concerned, is imitated from Ovid's story of Perseus and Andromeda.]

[Footnote 10:

"Sul lito un bosco era di querce ombrose,
Dove ogn' or par che Filomena piagna;
Ch'in mezo avea un pratel con una fonte,

E quinci e quindi un solitario monte.
Quivi il bramoso cavalier ritenne
L'audace corso, e nel pratel discese."
St. 113.

What a landscape! and what a charm beyond painting he has put into it with his nightingales! and then what figures besides! A knight on a winged steed descending with a naked beauty into a meadow in the thick of woods, with "here and there a solitary mountain." The mountains make no formal circle; they keep their separate distances, with their various intervals of light and shade. And what a heart of solitude is given to the meadow by the loneliness of these its waiters aloof!]

[Footnote 11: Nothing can be more perfectly wrought up than this sudden change of circumstances.]

[Footnote 12: To feel the complete force of this picture, a reader should have been in the South, and beheld the like sudden apparitions, at open windows, of ladies looking forth in dresses of beautiful colours, and with faces the most interesting. I remember a vision of this sort at Carrara, on a bright but not too hot day (I fancied that the marble mountains there cooled it). It resembled one of Titian's women, with its broad shoulders, and boddice and sleeves differently coloured from the petticoat; and seemed literally framed in the unsashed window. But I am digressing.]

[Footnote 13: Ariosto elsewhere represents him as the handsomest man in the world; saying of him, in a line that has become famous,

"Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa."

Canto x. st. 84.

--Nature made him, and then broke the mould.

(The word is generally printed _ruppe_; but I use the primitive text of Mr. Pannizi's edition.) Boiardo's handsomest man, Astolfo, was an Englishman; Ariosto's is a Scotchman. See, in the present volume, the note on the character of Astolfo, p. 41.]

[Footnote 14:

"Come orsa, che l'alpestre cacciatore
Ne la pietrosa tana assalita abbia,
Sta sopra i figli con incerto core,
E freme in suono di pieta e di rabbia:
Ira la 'nvita e natural furore
A spiegar l'ugne, e a insanguinar le labbia;
Amor la 'ntenerisce, e la ritira
A riguardare a i figli in mezo l'ira."

Like as a bear, whom men in mountains start
In her old stony den, and dare, and goad,
Stands o'er her children with uncertain heart,
And roars for rage and sorrow in one mood;
Anger impels her, and her natural part,
To use her nails, and bathe her lips in blood;
Love melts her, and, for all her angry roar,
Holds back her eyes to look on those she bore.

This stanza in Ariosto has become famous as a beautiful transcript of a beautiful passage in Statius, which, indeed, it surpasses in style, but not in feeling, especially when we consider with whom the comparison originates:

"Ut lea, quam saevo foetam pressere cubili
Venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat
Mente sub incerta, torvum ac miserabile frendens
Illa quidem turbare globes, et frangere morsu
Tela queat; sed prolis amor crudelia vincit
Pectora, et in media catulos circumspicit ira."

_Thebais_, x. 414.]

[Footnote 15: This adventure of Cloridan and Medoro is imitated from the Nisus and Euryalus of Virgil. An Italian critic, quoted by Panizzi, says, that the way in which Cloridan exposes himself to the enemy is inferior to the Latin poet's famous

"Me, me (adsum qui feci), in me convertite ferrum."

Me, me ('tis I who did the deed), slay me.

And the reader will agree with Panizzi, that he is right. The circumstance, also, of Euryalus's bequeathing his aged mother to the care of his prince, in case he fails in his enterprise, is very touching; and the main honour, both of the invention of the whole episode and its particulars, remains with Virgil. On the other hand, the enterprise of the friends in the Italian poet, which is that of burying their dead master, and not merely of communicating with an absent general, is more affecting, though it may be less patriotic; the inability of Zerbino to kill him, when he looked on his face, is extremely so; and, as Panizzi has shewn, the adventure is made of importance to the whole story of the poem, and is not simply an episode, like that in the Æneid. It serves, too, in a very particular manner to introduce Medoro worthily to the affection of Angelica; for, mere female though she be, we should hardly have gone along with her passion as we do, in a poem of any seriousness, had it been founded merely on his beauty.]

[Footnote 16: Canto xix. st. 34, &c. All the world have felt this to be a true picture of first love. The inscription may be said to be that of every other pair of lovers that ever existed, who knew how to write their names. How musical, too, are the words "Angelica and Medoro!" Boiardo invented the one; Ariosto found the match for it. One has no end to the pleasure of repeating them. All hail to the moment when I first became aware of their existence, more than fifty years ago, in the house of the gentle artist Benjamin West! (Let the reader indulge me with this recollection.) I sighed with pleasure to look on them at that time; I sigh now, with far more pleasure than pain, to look back on them, for they never come across me but with delight; and poetry is a world in which nothing beautiful ever thoroughly forsakes us.]

[Footnote 17:

"Scritti, qual con carbone e qual con gesso."

Canto xxiii. st. 106.

Ariosto did not mind soiling the beautiful fingers of Angelica with coal and chalk. He knew that Love did not mind it.

* * * * *

ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON.

Argument.

The Paladin Astolfo ascends on the hippogriff to the top of one of the mountains at the source of the Nile, called the Mountains of the Moon, where he discovers the Terrestrial Paradise, and is welcomed by St. John the Evangelist. The Evangelist then conveys him to the Moon itself, where he is shewn all the things that have been lost on earth, among which is the Reason of Orlando, who had been deprived of it for loving a Pagan beauty. Astolfo is favoured with a singular discourse by the Apostle, and is then presented with a vial containing the Reason of his great brother Paladin, which he conveys to earth.

ASTOLFO'S

JOURNEY TO THE MOON

When the hippogriff loosened itself from the tree to which Ruggiero had tied it in the beautiful spot to which he descended with Angelica,[1] it soared away, like the faithful creature it was, to the house of its own master, Atlantes the magician. But not long did it remain there--no, nor the house itself, nor the magician; for the Paladin Astolfo came with a mighty horn given him by a greater magician, the sound of which overthrew all such abodes, and put to flight whoever heard it; and so the house of Atlantes vanished, and the enchanter fled; and the Paladin took possession of the griffin-horse, and rode away with it on farther adventures.

One of these was the deliverance of Senapus, king of Ethiopia, from the visitation of the dreadful harpies of old, who came infesting his table as they did those of Æneas and Phineus. Astolfo drove them with his horse towards the sources of the river Nile, in the Mountains of the Moon, and pursued them with the hippogriff till they entered a great cavern, which, by the dreadful cries and lamentings that issued from the depths within it, the Paladin discovered to be the entrance from earth to Hell.

The daring Englishman, whose curiosity was excited, resolved to penetrate to the regions of darkness. "What have I to fear?" thought he; "the horn will assist me, if I want it. I'll drive the triple-mouthed dog out of the way, and put Pluto and Satan to flight."[2]

Astolfo tied the hippogriff to a tree, and pushed forward in spite of a smoke that grew thicker and thicker, offending his eyes and nostrils. It became, however, so exceedingly heavy and noisome, that he found it would be impossible to complete his enterprise. Still he pushed forward as far as he could, especially as he began to discern in the darkness something that appeared to stir with an involuntary motion. It looked like a dead body which has hung up many days in the rain and sun, and is waved unsteadily by the wind. It turned out to be a condemned spirit in this first threshold of Hell, sentenced there, with thousands of others, for having been cruel and false in love. Her name was Lydia, and she had been princess of the country so called.[3] Anaxarete was among them, who, for her hard-heartedness, became a stone; and Daphne, who now discovered how she had erred in making Apollo "run so much;" and multitudes of other women; but a far greater number of men--men being worthier of punishment in offences of love, because women are proner to believe. Theseus and Jason were among them; and Amnon, the abuser of Tamar; and he that disturbed the old kingdom of Latinus.[4]

Astolfo would fain have gone deeper into the jaws of Hell, but the smoke grew so thick and palpable, it was impossible to move a step farther. Turning about, therefore, he regained the entrance; and having refreshed himself in a fountain hard by, and re-mounted the hippogriff, felt an inclination to ascend as high as he possibly could in the air. The excessive loftiness of the mountain above the cavern made him think that its top could be at no great distance from the region of the Moon; and accordingly he pushed his horse upwards, and rose and rose, till at length he found himself on its table-land. It exhibited a region of celestial beauty. The flowers were like beds of precious stones for colour and brightness; the grass, if you could have brought any to earth, would have been found to surpass emeralds; and the trees, whose leaves were no less beautiful, were in fruit and flower at once. Birds of as many colours were singing in the branches; the murmuring rivulets and dumb lakes were more limpid than crystal: a sweet air was for ever stirring, which reduced the warmth to a gentle temperature; and every breath of it brought an odour from flowers, fruit-trees, and herbage all at once, which nourished the soul with sweetness.[5]

In the middle of this lonely plain was a palace radiant as fire. Astolfo rode his horse round about it, constantly admiring all he saw, and filled with increasing astonishment; for he found that the dwelling was thirty miles in circuit, and composed of one entire carbuncle, lucid and vermilion. What became of the boasted wonders of the world before this? The world itself, in the comparison, appeared but a lump of brute and fetid matter.[6]

As the Paladin approached the vestibule, he was met by a venerable old man, clad in a white gown and red mantle, whose beard descended on his bosom, and whose aspect announced him as one of the elect of Paradise. It was St. John the Evangelist, who lived in that mansion with Enoch and Elijah, the only three mortals who never tasted death; for the place, as the saint informed him, was the Terrestrial Paradise; and the inhabitants were to live there till the angelical trumpet announced the coming of Christ "on the white cloud." The Paladin, he said, had been allowed to visit it, by the favour of God, for the purpose of fetching away to earth the lost wits of Orlando, which the champion of the Church had been deprived of for loving a Pagan, and which had been attracted out of his brains to the neighbouring sphere, the Moon.

Accordingly, after the new friends had spent two days in discourse, and meals had been served up, consisting of fruit so exquisite that the Paladin could not help thinking our first parents had some excuse for eating it,[7] the Evangelist, when the Moon arose, took him into the car which had borne Elijah to heaven; and four horses, redder than fire, conveyed them to the lunar world.

The mortal visitant was amazed to see in the Moon a world resembling his own, full of wood and water, and containing even cities and castles, though of a different sort from ours. It was strange to find a sphere so large which had seemed so petty afar off; and no less strange was it to look down on the world he had left, and be compelled to knit his brows and look sharply before he could well discern it, for it happened at the time to want light.[8]

But his guide did not leave him much time to look about him. He conducted him with due speed into a valley that contained, in one miraculous collection, whatsoever had been lost or wasted on earth. I do not speak only (says the poet) of riches and dominions, and such like gratuities of Fortune, but of things also which Fortune can neither grant nor resume. Much fame is there which Time has withdrawn--infinite prayers and vows which are made to God Almighty by us poor sinners. There lie the tears and the sighs of lovers, the hours lost in pastimes, the leisures of the dull, and the intentions of the lazy. As to desires, they are so numerous that they shadow the whole place. Astolfo went round among the different heaps, asking what they were. His eyes were first struck with a huge one of bladders which seemed to contain mighty sounds and the voices of multitudes. These he found were the Assyrian and Persian monarchies, together with those of Greece and Lydia.[9] One heap was nothing but hooks of silver and gold, which were the presents, it seems, made to patrons and great men in hopes of a return. Another consisted of snares in the shape of garlands, the manufacture of parasites. Others were verses in praise of great lords, all made of crickets which had burst themselves with singing. Chains of gold he saw there, which were pretended and unhappy love-matches; and eagles' claws, which were deputed authorities; and pairs of bellows, which were princes' favours; and overturned cities and treasuries, being treasons and conspiracies; and serpents with female faces, that were coiners and thieves; and all sorts of broken bottles, which were services rendered in miserable courts. A great heap of overturned soup[10] he found to be alms to the poor, which had been delayed till the giver's death. He then came to a great mount of flowers, which once had a sweet smell, but now a most rank one. This (_with submission_) was the present which the Emperor Constantine made to good Pope Sylvester.[11] Heaps of twigs he saw next, set with bird-lime, which, dear ladies, are your charms. In short there was no end to what he saw. Thousands and thousands would not complete the list. Every thing was there which was to be met with on earth, except folly in the raw material, for that is never exported.[12]

There he beheld some of his own lost time and deeds; and yet, if nobody had been with him to make him aware of them, never would he have recognised them as his.[13]

They then arrived at something, which none of us ever prayed God to bestow, for we fancy we possess it in superabundance; yet here it was in greater quantities than any thing else in the place--I mean, sense. It was a subtle fluid, apt to evaporate if not kept closely; and here accordingly it was kept in vials of greater or less size. The greatest of them all was inscribed with the following words: "The sense of Orlando." Others, in like manner, exhibited the names of the proper possessors; and among them the frank-hearted Paladin beheld the greater portion of his own. But what more astonished him, was to see multitudes of the vials almost full to the stopper, which bore the names of men whom he had supposed to enjoy their senses in perfection. Some had lost them for love, others for glory, others for riches, others for hopes from great men, others for stupid conjurers, for jewels, for paintings, for all sorts of whims. There was a heap belonging to sophists and astrologers, and a still greater to poets.[14]

Astolfo, with leave of the "writer of the dark Apocalypse," took possession of his own. He had but to uncork it, and set it under his nose, and the wit shot up to its place at once. Turpin acknowledges that the Paladin, for a long time afterwards, led the life of a sage man, till, unfortunately, a mistake which he made lost him his brains a second time.[15]

The Evangelist now presented him with the vial containing the wits of Orlando, and the travellers quitted the vale of Lost Treasure. Before they returned to earth, however, the good saint chewed his guest other curiosities, and favoured him with many a sage remark, particularly on the subject of poets, and the neglect of them by courts. He shewed him how foolish it was in princes and other great men not to make friends of those who can immortalise them; and observed, with singular indulgence, that crimes themselves might be no hindrance to a good name with posterity, if the poet were but feed well enough for spices to embalm the criminal. He instanced the cases of Homer and Virgil.

"You are not to take for granted," said he, "that Æneas was so pious as fame reports him, or Achilles and Hector so brave. Thousands and thousands of warriors have excelled them; but their descendents bestowed fine houses and estates on great writers, and it is from their honoured pages that all the glory has proceeded. Augustus was no such religious or clement prince as the trumpet of Virgil has proclaimed him. It was his good taste in poetry that got him pardoned his iniquitous proscription. Nero himself might have fared as well as Augustus, had he possessed as much wit. Heaven and earth might have been his enemies to no purpose, had he known how to keep friends with good authors. Homer makes the Greeks victorious, the Trojans a poor set, and Penelope undergo a thousand wrongs rather than be unfaithful to her husband; and yet, if you would have the real truth of the matter, the Greeks were beaten, and the Trojans the conquerors, and Penelope was a --. [16] See, on the other hand, what infamy has become the portion of Dido. She was honest to her heart's core; and yet, because Virgil was no friend of hers, she is looked upon as a baggage.

"Be not surprised," concluded the good saint, "if I have expressed myself with warmth on this subject. I love writers, and look upon their cause as my own, for I was a writer myself when I lived among you; and I succeeded so well in the vocation, that time and death will never prevail against me. Just therefore is it, that I should be thankful to my beloved Master, who procured me so great a lot. I grieve for writers who have fallen on evil times--men that, with pale and hungry faces, find the doors of courtesy closed against all their hardships. This is the reason there are so few poets now, and why nobody cares to study. Why should he study? The very beasts abandon places where there is nothing to feed them."

At these words the eyes of the blessed old man grew so inflamed with anger, that they sparkled like two fires. But he presently suppressed what he felt; and, turning with a sage and gracious smile to the Paladin, prepared to accompany him back to earth with his wonted serenity.

He accordingly did so in the sacred car: and Astolfo, after receiving his gentle benediction, descended on his hippogriff from the mountain, and, joining the delighted Paladins with the vial, his wits were restored, as you have heard, to the noble Orlando.

The figure which is here cut by St. John gives this remarkable satire a most remarkable close. His association of himself with the fraternity of authors was thought a little "strong" by Ariosto's contemporaries. The lesson read to the house of Este is obvious, and could hardly have been pleasant to men reputed to be such "criminals" themselves. Nor can Ariosto, in this passage, be reckoned a very flattering or conscientious pleader for his brother-poets. Resentment, and a good jest, seem to have conspired to make him forget what was due to himself.

The original of St. John's remarks about Augustus and the ancient poets must not be omitted. It is exquisite of its kind, both in matter and style. Voltaire has quoted it somewhere with rapture.

"Non fu sì santo nè benigno Augusto
Come la tuba di Virgilio suona:
L'aver avuto in poesia buon gusto
La proscrizion iniqua gli perdona.
Nessun sapria se Neron fosse ingiusto,
Nè sua fama saria forse men buona,
Avesse avuto e terra e ciel nimici,
Se gli scrittor sapea tenersi amici.

Omero Agamennon vittorioso,
E fe' i Trojan parer vili et inerti;
E che Penelopea fida al suo sposo
Da i prochi mille oltraggi avea sofferti:
E, se tu vuoi che 'l ver non ti sia ascoso,
Tutta al contrario l'istoria converti:
Che i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice,
E che Penelopea fu meretrice.

Da l'altra parte odi che fama lascia
Elissa, ch'ebbe il cor tanto pudico;
Che riputata viene una bagascia,
Solo perchè Maron non le fu amico."

Canto xxxv. st. 26. ]

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: See p. 192.]

[Footnote 2: Ariosto is here imitating Pulci, and bearding Dante. See vol. i. p. 336.]

[Footnote 3: I know of no story of a cruel Lydia but the poet's own mistress of that name, whom I take to be the lady here "shadowed forth." See Life, p. 114.]

[Footnote 4: The story of Anaxarete is in Ovid, lib. xiv. Every body knows that of Daphne, who made Apollo, as Ariosto says, "run so much" (correr tanto). Theseus and Jason are in hell, as deserters of Ariadne and Medea; Amnon, for the atrocity recorded in the Bible (2 Samuel, chap. xiii.); and Æneas for interfering with Turnus and Lavinia, and taking possession of places he had no right to. It is delightful to see the great, generous poet going upon grounds of reason and justice in the teeth of the trumped-up rights of the "pious Æneas," that shabby deserter of Dido, and canting prototype of Augustus. He turns the tables, also, with brave candour, upon the tyrannical claims of the stronger sex to privileges which they deny the other; and says, that there are more faithless men in Hell than faithless women; which, if personal infidelity sends people there, most undoubtedly is the case beyond all comparison.]

[Footnote 5: "Che di soävità l'alma notriva" is beautiful; but the passage, as a whole, is not well imitated from the Terrestrial Paradise of Dante. It is not bad in itself, but it is very inferior to the one that suggested it. See vol. i. p. 210, &c. Ariosto's Terrestrial Paradise was at home, among the friends who loved him, and whom he made happy.]

[Footnote 6: This is better; and the house made of one jewel thirty miles in circuit is an extravagance that becomes reasonable on reflection, affording a just idea of what might be looked for among the endless planetary wonders of Nature, which confound all our relative ideas of size and splendour. The "lucid vermilion" of a structure so enormous, and under a sun so pure, presents a gorgeous spectacle to the imagination. Dante himself, if he could have forgiven the poet his animal spirits and views of the Moon so different from his own, might have stood in admiration before an abode at once so lustrous and so vast.]

[Footnote 7:

"De' frutti a lui del Paradiso diero,
Di tal sapor, ch'a suo giudizio, sanza
Scusa non sono i due primi parenti,
Se pur quei fur si poco ubbidienti."

Canto xxxiv. st. 60.]

[Footnote 8: Modern astronomers differ very much both with Dante's and Ariosto's Moon; nor do the "argent fields" of Milton appear better placed in our mysterious satellite, with its no-atmosphere and no-water, and its tremendous precipices. It is to be hoped (and believed) that knowledge will be best for us all in the end; for it is not always so by the way. It displaces beautiful ignorances.]

[Footnote 9: Very fine and scornful, I think, this. Mighty monarchies reduced to actual bladders, which, little too as they were, contained big sounds.]

[Footnote 10: Such, I suppose, as was given at convent-gates.]

[Footnote 11: The pretended gift of the palace of St. John Lateran, the foundation of the pope's temporal sovereignty. This famous passage was quoted and translated by Milton.

"Di varii fiori ad on gran monte passa
Ch'ebbe già buon odore, or putia forte.
Questo era il dono (se però dir lece)
Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece."

Canto xxxiv. st. 80.

The lines were not so bold in the first edition. They stood thus

"Ad un monte di rose e gigli passa,
Ch'ebbe già buon odore, or putia forte,
Ch'era corrotto; e da Giovanni intese,
Che fu un gran don ch'un gran signor mal spese."

"He came to a mount of lilies and roses, that once had a sweet smell, but now stank with corruption; and be understood from John that it was a great gift which a great lord ill expended."

The change of these lines to the stronger ones in the third edition, as they now stand, served to occasion a charge against Ariosto of having got his privilege of publication from the court of Rome for passages which never existed, and which he afterwards basely introduced; but, as Panizzi observes, the third edition had a privilege also; so that the papacy put its hand, as it were, to these very lines. This is remarkable; and doubtless it would not have occurred in some other ages. The Spanish Inquisition, for instance, erased it, though the holy brotherhood found no fault with the story of Giocondo.]

[Footnote 12: "Sol la pazzia non v'è, poca nè assai;
Che sta quà giù, nè se ne parte mai"
St. 78.]

[Footnote 13: Part of this very striking passage is well translated by Harrington

"He saw some of his own lost time and deeds,
And yet he knew them not to be his own."

I have heard these lines more than once repeated with touching earnestness by Charles Lamb.]

[Footnote 14: Readers need not have the points of this exquisite satire pointed out to them. In noticing it, I only mean to enjoy it in their company--particularly the passage about the men accounted wisest, and the emphatic "I mean, sense" (Io dico, il senno).]

[Footnote 15: Admirable lesson to frailty!]

[Footnote 16: I do not feel warranted in injuring the strength of the term here made use of by the indignant apostle, and yet am withheld from giving it in all its force by the delicacy, real or false, of the times. I must therefore leave it to be supplied by the reader according to the requirements of his own feelings.]

ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.

Argument.

The Duke of Albany, pretending to be in love with a damsel in the service of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night, and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived, disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, who, according to the laws of Scotland, is sentenced to death for her supposed lawless passion. Lurcanio then challenges the unknown paramour (for the duke's face had not been discerned in the balcony); and Ariodante, who is not dead, is fighting him in disguise, when the Paladin Rinaldo comes up, discloses the whole affair, and slays the deceiver.

ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.[1]

Charlemagne had suffered a great defeat at Paris, and the Paladin Rinaldo was sent across the Channel to ask succours of the King of England; but a tempest arose ere he could reach the coast, and drove him northwards upon that of Scotland, where he found himself in the Caledonian Forest, a place famous of old for knightly adventure. Many a clash of arms had been heard in its shady recesses--many great things had been done there by knights from all quarters, particularly the Tristans and the Launcelots, and the Gawains, and others of the Round Table of King Arthur.

Rinaldo, bidding the ship await him at the town of Berwick, plunged into the forest with no other companion than his horse Bayardo, seeking the wildest paths he could find, in the hope of some strange adventure.[2] He put up, for the first day, at an abbey which was accustomed to entertain the knights and ladies that journeyed that way; and after availing himself of its hospitality, he inquired of the abbot and his monks if they could direct him where to find what he looked for. They said that plenty of adventures were to be met with in the forest; but that, for the most part, they remained in as much obscurity as the spots in which they occurred. It would be more becoming his valour, they thought, to exert itself where it would not be hidden; and they concluded with telling him of one of the noblest chances for renown that ever awaited a sword. The daughter of their king was in need of a defender against a certain baron of the name of Lurcanio, who sought to deprive her both of life and reputation. He accused her of having been found in the arms of a lover without the license of the priest; which, by the laws of Scotland, was a crime only to be expiated at the stake, unless a champion could be found to disprove the charge before the end of a month. Unfortunately the month had nearly expired, and no champion yet made his appearance, though the king had promised his daughter's hand to anybody of noble blood who should establish her innocence; and the saddest part of the thing was, that she was accounted innocent by all the world, and a very pattern of modesty.

While this horrible story was being told him, the Paladin fell into a profound state of thought. After remaining silent for a little while, at the close of it he looked up, and said, "A lady then, it seems, is condemned to death for having been too kind to one lover, while thousands of our sex are playing the gallant with whomsoever they please, and not only go unpunished for it, but are admired! Perish such infamous injustice! The man was a madman who made such a law, and they are little better who maintain it. I hope in God to be able to shew them their error."

The good monks agreed, that their ancestors were very unwise to make such a law, and kings very wrong who could, but would not, put an end to it. So, when the morning came, they speeded their guest on his noble purpose of fighting in the lady's behalf. A guide from the abbey took him a short cut through the forest towards the place where the matter was to be decided; but, before they arrived, they heard cries of distress in a dark quarter of the forest, and, turning their horses thither to see what it was, they observed a damsel between two vagabonds, who were standing over her with drawn swords. The moment the wretches saw the new comer, they fled; and Rinaldo, after re-assuring the damsel, and requesting to know what had brought her to a pass so dreadful, made his guide take her up on his horse behind him, in order that they might lose no more time. The damsel, who was very beautiful, could not speak at first, for the horror of what she had expected to undergo; but, on Rinaldo's repeating his request, she at length found words, and, in a voice of great humility, began to relate her story.

But before she begins, the poet interferes with an impatient remark.--"Of all the creatures in existence," cries he, "whether they be tame or wild, whether they are in a state of peace or of war, man is the only one that lays violent hands on the female of his species. The bear offers no injury to his; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion; the heifer has no fear of the horns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind? Husband and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some times with bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow himself to give a blow to a woman, or to hurt even a hair of her head, is a violater of nature, and a rebel against God; but to poison her, to strangle her, to take the soul out of her body with a knife,--he that can do that, never will I believe him to be a man at all, but a fiend out of hell with a man's face."[3]

Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo, and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony for ever.

But to return to what she was going to say.--

"You are to know, sir," she began, "that I have been from my childhood in the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with her; I was held in bonour, and I led a happy life, till it pleased the cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that there was no being on earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the princess regarded as most exclusively her own; for there she kept her jewels, and there she was accustomed to sleep during inclement states of the weather. It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which looked out to some lonely ruins; and nobody ever passed that way, day or night.

"Our intercourse continued for several months; and, finding that I placed all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day a design he had upon the princess's hand; nay, did not blush to ask my assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own, when I confess that I undertook to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer to the princess's than to mine; and he pretended that he sought the alliance merely on that account; protesting that he should love me more than ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name. But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please him.