CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 5)

This golden age of Ariosto's life was shortened by the death of his father; who left to his eldest son, with means exceedingly small, the responsibility of supporting his mother, and training up his nine brothers and sisters. In the sixth of his Satires,—satires which are almost wholly personal and autobiographic,—he says, that on this occasion he was obliged, at four and twenty years of age, to abandon Thalia, Euterpe, and all the nine Muses; to turn from quiet studies to active duties, and exchange Homer for waste-books and ledgers, (squarci e vacchette). These trusts, the young, ambitious, fiery-minded poet faithfully and self-denyingly fulfilled; and he who, under parental injunction, at the most docile period of life, would not submit to the profitable drudgery of the law, now, in the very flower and pride of his genius, with filial piety and fraternal affection, yielded to a domestic yoke, and became the father of his family. In this honourable character he so well husbanded his narrow patrimony, that he portioned off now one, then another sister, and provided education for his four brothers, who, as they grew up, entered into the service of sundry princes and nobles, as was the custom with the minor gentry in that half-feudal age. Gabriele cultivated literature, and excelled in the composition of Latin verse; but, making Statius his model, he was never worthy to compete, even in this respect, with his more illustrious brother. Galasso entered into the church, which was then the wealthy and lavish patroness of those, who, by their subserviency to her domination, or their able advocacy of it, sought the good things of the present life under the guise of having their affections fixed on higher, holier, and eternal things. Yet the latter could hardly be said to be used as a pretence for the purpose of deceiving; so lax, shameless, mercenary, and ambitious was the hierarchy of that age. Such profligacy, however, must not be laid to the charge of Galasso, of whom nothing bad is known. "Galasso, in the city of Evander, is seeking a surplice to put over his night-gown," says Ludovico in his second Satire; meaning, to obtain a bishop's robe and rochet—to become a prelate or a canon. Alexander was of a more enterprising disposition; and delighting in foreign travel, lie attached himself to the train of the cardinal Hippolito d'Este, brother to Alfonso duke of Ferrara, whom he accompanied into Hungary; and, according to his brother's description of that imperious patron's court, appears to have fretted away his hour upon a stage of artificial manners, dissipated pleasures, and emasculating duties. Carlo, of whom nothing particular is recorded, took up his abode in the kingdom of Naples, where he died. These particulars are gathered chiefly from the sixth Satire, with the additional intelligence, in the second, that, at the time of writing it, the author had to furnish a dowry to his fifth and last sister, then about to be married. Though this must have been twenty years after the death of their father, the mother was still living with him. The allusion to her in the context has often been quoted, but it is so simply and purely beautiful, that it cannot be quoted amiss here. Excusing himself by many reasons for not going abroad; and having mentioned, in the foregoing lines, the dispersion of all the other members of the family from their common home, except himself and her; he says,

But while Ariosto, from his twenty-fourth to his forty-fifth year, was thus humbly, yet honourably, nourishing his mother and training up his brothers and sisters—though his studies were much interrupted at first, and he was obliged to abandon the Greek language altogether (which he had recently been recovering)—he maintained his reputation among the first Latin scholars; and in the same busy interval achieved his greatest triumph in the literature of his own land. Under the voluntary burthen of domestic cares, the buoyancy of irrepressible genius bore him up from obscurity; and whatever might have been the secret misgivings, or the generous forecastings, of undeveloped but conscious powers, he found himself, at nine and twenty years of age, in the first circles of Italian society, courted, admired, applauded, and of course envied, both for his conversation, his learning, and his poetry. In the latter, indeed (judging by what remains), he seems to have produced nothing but two or three indifferent dramas, certain loose love elegies, with a few middling sonnets and madrigals,—all fantastic and pleasant enough in their way, but the best of them affording no great promise that their writer would ere long surpass all predecessors in one wide field of invention, and leave to successors nothing to do in it but—not to imitate him: so late and slowly, often, are the most extraordinary talents brought into exercise. It is difficult to imagine, in our cold clime, with our refractory tongue, and accustomed as we are to the phlegm of our countrymen, how such performances as the above could raise a man to celebrity: but verse was not then the pastime of every lover of verse; and reputations were not so numerous as they are in these days, when there are a thousand avenues to the temple of fame not then opened,—and quite as many out of it,—while candidates are seen crowding in such throngs as to tread on one another's heels, those behind forcing onward those in front; so that our literary ephemera resemble a procession of spectators through a palace, when a royal corpse lies in state; multitudes coming in, passing on, going out continually, a few pausing, none stopping. The Italian language, however, it must be observed, for all the minor and more exquisite forms of verse, is not less felicitously and inimitably adapted, than is the French to the badinage of prose. Ariosto gained credit for these bagatelles, in an age when Bembo, Molza, and many others were his contemporaries, who, to this hour, are chiefly known by such things, and nothing better. But, for some reason or other which is not apparent, Ariosto was certainly looked up to, and renowned by anticipation, for a long contemplated achievement of equal daring to any of the knights' adventures which in due course he celebrated, and which proved not less successful in the issue than his own "Astolpho's Journey to the Moon:" for in this (the "Orlando Furioso"), the madness of his hero covered him with more glory than the restoring of the Paladin's lost wits did the rider of the hippogriff. Ariosto, indeed, was the very Astolpho of song, and both his Paladins and their countries must be sought in the moon, or nowhere.

He was, during the greater portion of this eventful period of his life, in the service of cardinal Hippolito d'Este, who affected to be a Mæcenas, and who, at least as much from vanity and ostentation as from genuine taste or delight in their compositions, assembled round him the prime scholars and wits of the age. By some of his biographers, the poet is said to have received munificent proofs that the princely ecclesiastic knew how to value the endowments of the Muses more than personages of his rank are wont to do. But this seems very questionable, from the poet's own account of his patron's bounty in his second Satire, which may be noticed hereafter. Leisure and competence, however, he must have enjoyed during this irksome and almost menial servitude, under which, with all its debasements, he produced his "Orlando Furioso." Having commenced the poem, he communicated the specimen and plan to his friend cardinal Bembo, who, influenced by the pedantic prejudice formerly alluded to, seriously advised him to compose it in Latin; a language in which, with all the mastery that a modern could attain over it, the licentious fables of chivalry—licentious in every sense, in diction, sentiment, plot, narrative, and morals,—would have appeared as heterogeneous and outlandish as the wrath of Achilles in Chinese, or the piety of Æneas in Sanscrit. Mr. Roscoe says of Sanazzaro and Bembo, who were brother rivals for the honours of Parnassus, that while the former "turned all his talents for the improvement of Latin poesy, the latter persevered in cultivating his native tongue."[94] Most people can give better advice than they take: Bembo, it seems, took better than he gave; and Ariosto had sagacity enough to follow his counsellor's example rather than his precept, nobly answering, "I would rather stand among the first of writers in my own tongue, than below Ovid or Virgil himself in theirs."

This task, therefore, for fifteen years, he pursued, with occasional external interruptions, but none probably from within; for, his mind being impregnated with the great conception, he could not help brooding over it by day and by night, amidst business and pleasure, in crowds and in solitude, at Rome as ambassador from the duke to the pope, and at Ferrara as a courtier in the palace of cardinal Hippolito; but especially at his birth-place, Reggio, in the retirement of a villa belonging to one of his maternal relatives, Sigismondo Malegucci. Here, in one of the chambers of an ancient tower within the domain, he elaborated canto after canto of that most anomalous yet impressive poem, which, while it appears as unconnected as a tissue of dreams in its details, (as it resembles the stuff which dreams are made of in its materials,) is nevertheless one of the most perfect webs of narrative that fancy ever spun, or genius wove, from the silkworm produce of a poet's brain. No rival composition of the same or any other class of heroic verse has yet proved equally attractive to Italian readers in every rank of life; though, in the "Gerusalemme Liberata" of Tasso, consummate skill and genius of the highest order have constructed an epic according to the strictest rules of art, to conciliate the learned, and at the same time embellished it with all the graces of romance, to charm the multitude, who love to be pleased, because they cannot help it, and care not by what means, so that these be but "rich and strange."

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:—

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:—

"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 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:—

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 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!"

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.

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,—

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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