Note 1 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Students who care to trace the thoughts and characters of this great poem to their sources, should read Pio Rajna's exhaustive essay, Le Fonti dell'Orlando Furioso, Firenze, Sansoni, 1876. The details of the Orlando are here investigated and referred with scientific patience to Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and other originals. If anything, Signor Rajna may seem to have overstrained the point of critical sagacity. It is hardly probable that Ariosto, reader of few books as Virginio says he was, should have drawn on stores so multifarious of erudition.