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FABLE AND SONG 
 IN ITALY 
 
FABLE AND SONG 
 IN ITALY 
 
 BY 
 
 
 E. M. C L E R K E 
 ii 
 
 I 
 
 LONDON 
 GRANT RICHARDS 
 
 1899 
 
Css- 
 
 To 
 
 Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B, 
 
 In grateful recognition of 
 
 encouragement and advice without 
 
 which this volume would 
 
 never have been 
 
 iv r it ten 
 
 ;85> 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chap. 
 I. 
 
 The Legacy of the Past . 
 
 Page 
 I 
 
 II. 
 
 The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 
 
 H 
 
 III. 
 
 The Preludes of the ballad Epic 
 
 35 
 
 IV. 
 
 Charlemagne' *s Tournament 
 
 55 
 
 V. 
 
 The Hercules Saga in (Mediaeval Song 
 
 72 
 
 VI. 
 
 Circe the Island Goddess . 
 
 92 
 
 VII. 
 
 Fountain {Magic . 
 
 116 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Lyrics of Boiardo .... 
 
 139 
 
 IX. 
 
 Verse Letters of tAriosto . 
 
 153 
 
 X. 
 
 Italian Folk Songs .... 
 
 170 
 
 XL 
 
 The Tuscan Beranger 
 
 196 
 
 XII. 
 
 ZManzoni and (Modern Romanticism . 
 
 225 
 
 
 Epilogue ..... 
 
 256 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The aim of this little volume is twofold. First, to trace 
 out some of the influences acting on the more popular 
 forms of Italian song ; and secondly, to offer to English 
 readers, in the shape of translated extracts, specimens of 
 Italian poets whose works difficulties of language have 
 hitherto rendered inaccessible to the general public. 
 
 In carrying out the first part of my programme, I have 
 specially dwelt in the early chapters on the survival of 
 classical myths in popular tradition, and on their trans- 
 formation and modificaticn at the hands of minstrels and 
 poets. As Boiardo is the great exemplar, among the 
 more polished bards, of this species of assimilation, I 
 have illustrated it by following out some of the episodes 
 in which he has thus blended antique and mediaeval 
 mythology, so as to present them in consecutive and 
 intelligible form. It is only in this fashion that the 
 chivalric epic can be rendered readable to contempo- 
 raries, since its prolixity and discursiveness make it 
 wearisome to pursue continuously as a whole. Its ori- 
 ginal composition for piecemeal recitation places it in 
 a totally different category from modern literature, 
 addressed primarily to the mind through the eye. 
 
x Preface 
 
 In the chapters on Giusti and Manzoni I have tried 
 to emphasise their position as the two great influences 
 on the growth of modern Italian, the one through his 
 verse, the other through his prose, the unapproached 
 and unapproachable masterpieces of their respective 
 spheres of art. 
 
 My second object has been in the selection of passages 
 for translation, to open up as far as possible new ground, 
 choosing works that have not as yet been naturalised 
 in English literature. Since there is no version of 
 the " Orlando Innamorato " in our language, I have 
 drawn largely on it for passages illustrative of my 
 subject, especially as its beauties are, even in Italian, 
 disguised by the obsoleteness of the language, and it 
 has therefore the less to lose in the change of dress. 
 In my selections from Ariosto, again, I have borrowed 
 more extensively from his sparkling verse-letters than 
 from his better known "Orlando Furioso," since the 
 latter is available in a very adequate English translation. 
 
 My versions are in every case line for line transcripts, 
 that is to say, there is no transposition of the meaning, 
 which is placed clause by clause as in the original. I 
 have made no attempt to reproduce or imitate archaisms 
 of diction, which would in a modern writer be affecta- 
 tion, but have tried to reflect the simplicity and direct- 
 ness of the language of my text. A translation must 
 always be more or less of a compromise between literal- 
 ness and grace, but I have done my best to make the 
 new medium as transparent a vehicle as possible for the 
 transmission of the original author's ideas and intentions. 
 
Preface xi 
 
 I have to thank the publishers and editors of the 
 Dublin, National, and Contemporary Reviews, and of 
 The Gentleman's Magazine, for permission to republish 
 some chapters which had appeared at different dates in 
 those periodicals. 
 
 In conclusion, I have only to say that my little work 
 makes no pretension either to exhaustiveness or scholar- 
 ship, but if it inspire in my readers any of the interest 
 the subject has had for me, it will have succeeded in its 
 aim. 
 
 E. M. CLERKE. 
 
 London, May 1899. 
 
> ■ ■ 
 
 - 
 
 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Legacy of the Past 
 
 Mediaeval Europe woke up from the long intellectual 
 trance of the Dark Ages like a sleeper suddenly startled 
 from his dreams, still confused as to the boundaries 
 between vision and reality. The newly roused con- 
 sciousness of humanity was, for a time, disposed to blend 
 the real with the unreal, and to overlook the distinction 
 between the tangible world of sense and the impalpable 
 domain of fancy. All the more was this the case, since 
 to the collective as to the individual soul of man, thrill- 
 ing to the first supreme sense of self-recognition, ideas 
 were primarily interesting as items of its inner experience, 
 and only in a secondary sense as reflections of external 
 facts. Thus the same visionary attitude of mind which 
 produced mysticism in religion took the form of un- 
 critical receptiveness in the field of secular thought. 
 Fable seemed no less credible than fact, and the most 
 apocryphal legends were accepted on the same footing 
 as the best authenticated statements of history. The 
 faith that so readily digested marvels craved for a 
 perpetual supply of such stimulating food, and fiction 
 flourished in the sympathetic atmosphere of credulity. 
 
2 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 But, while the my vh- haunted imagination of the South 
 clung to the old bel ; efr, and metamorphosed without 
 renouncing them, the Northern races evolved a new 
 wonder-world for themselves, peopled by real or fictitious 
 heroes of their national story. In Transalpine Europe 
 there were thus formed two great nuclei of romance, 
 round which all the shadowy brain-creations of poets 
 grouped themselves for generations — the Courts of the 
 British Arthur and the Frankish Charlemagne. A series 
 of familiar figures revolving round these centres of action 
 were found, like the stereotyped masks of the Italian 
 Comedy of Art, a convenient basis for an indefinitely 
 varied superstructure of narrative and intrigue. 
 
 These stock characters and pieces soon became the 
 common property of Europe, over which there existed 
 then a freer interchange of popular ideas than at the 
 present day, when the literature of culture is, indeed, 
 cosmopolitan, but that of the vulgar strictly localised and 
 circumscribed. The itinerant ballad-singers and tale- 
 mongers who traversed the continent from a very early 
 age were the first seed-carriers of thought; but the 
 Crusades later gave the strongest impulse to that soli- 
 darity of popular sentiment of which they were the 
 visible embodiment, and without whose previous exist- 
 ence they would have been impossible. 
 
 So thoroughly did the heroes of Northern song become 
 naturalised below the Alps, that they have there to this 
 day a more vivid existence in the imagination of the 
 multitude than any actual historical figures, and among 
 the many stormy episodes that enliven the streets of 
 Naples a pitched battle between two rival " Rinaldi," or 
 chanters of the prowess of that doughty knight, is by no 
 means an uncommon one. But in Italy the luxuriant 
 
The Legacy of the Past 3, 
 
 efflorescence of Northern fancy was grafted on a sub- 
 stratum of classical tradition ; defaced, indeed, distorted 
 and disguised, but never wholly obliterated from the long 
 memory of the people. It was this obscure but unbroken 
 link with the past which gave its vigorous vitality to the 
 Renaissance in Italy. There the recovered lore of 
 antiquity stirred associations long dormant in the popular 
 heart, and re-sown on congenial soil, like the mummy 
 wheat of Egypt, fructified to a fresh harvest after its 
 secular burial of oblivion. 
 
 The Italian epic epitomises the Renaissance in its 
 fusion of two opposite currents of tradition. Their 
 assimilation was effected by the bizarre imagination of 
 Matteo Boiardo, whose single brain, says Signor Rajna,* 
 fulfilled the functions of popular fancy and tradition in 
 its performance of the miracle of recasting antique 
 material in mediaeval form. " Nature had endowed him 
 [says this writer] with a precious faculty, stimulated and 
 increased by the age in which he lived, of combining, of 
 harmonising, of bringing forth a new world from a chaos 
 of elements. . . . Every new creation generated an in- 
 definite number of others ; every cause drew after it a 
 whole chain of effects. Thus a new world was evolved, 
 which is, after the Dantesque, the most wonderful born 
 of the Italian imagination." 
 
 Thus all that he borrowed from legends, from 
 history, from tradition, he coined into new shape and 
 endowed with new life by the power of his vivifying 
 imagination. In the " Orlando Innamorato " he has in 
 this fashion enriched the familiar groundwork of the 
 chansons de geste with an embroidery of classical episode, 
 
 * " Le Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso." Pio Rajna. Firenze.. 
 Sansoni, 1876. 
 
4 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 imagery, and illustration, transformed, modified, recreated 
 by the shaping thought, and worked in with marvellous 
 profusion and felicity. Thus his work, though incomplete, 
 effected an artistic revolution, and left a glorious frag- 
 ment ready to the hand of his successor. If the fame of 
 the latter has eclipsed his own, it is due not to inherent 
 superiority of genius, but to the sudden maturity of intel- 
 lectual life in the interval between them. During the 
 century covered by the lives of the singers of the two 
 il Orlandos " (1434-1533) man aged fast, and the minute- 
 hand of thought travelled through a large arc on the dial 
 of progress. 
 
 In reading Boiardo we feel that the world was still 
 young when he sang. The deathless freshness of an 
 Immortal is on his lips, the limpid faith of childhood in 
 his verse, vivid with the illimitable possibilities of a yet 
 unexplored universe. Who, indeed, could say that 
 marvels should cease in an age which was to make 
 known the one-half of the round earth to the dwellers 
 on the other half? Might not the very laws of nature 
 themselves still have seemed pliant and plastic while the 
 visible horizon of humanity was capable of such indefinite 
 expansion ? 
 
 In the succeeding generation this foreglow of auroral 
 promise, vague with unshaped dreams, thrilled with 
 coming revelation, has already given place to the clear 
 noonday of accomplishment. Man has come of age and 
 entered on his inheritance, but in soberer mood ; the 
 flush has faded from the face of earth, and the universe in 
 ceasing to be a playground has begun to be a problem. 
 
 Ariosto reflects the change ; he is gay, but it is with 
 the calculated mirth of a worldling and cynic, not with the 
 unutterable joyousness of a child or savage. A materialist 
 
The Legacy of the Past 5 
 
 at heart, the gracious powers of nature have ceased to 
 be living presences to him, and he uses the hobgoblin 
 machinery of his predecessor with no more faith in its 
 reality than a stage manager has in the diablerie of his 
 Christmas pantomime. Human passion, most often in 
 its least exalted form, has taken its place as the motive 
 force of his drama, which by its appeal in this respect to 
 the modern spirit, has thrown into the shade the wilder 
 graces of that of his predecessor. The poetical licence 
 of the one degenerates into broad farce in the other, and 
 the leading motive of the elder bard, the representation 
 of the invincible hero as the captive of love, is caricatured 
 by his successor in the extravagances of his madness. 
 
 For it must be borne in mind that the exaltation of 
 love as the supreme inspiration of chivalry is the root 
 idea of Boiardo's drama, and that in this, as in his trans- 
 fusion of the classical material into the mediaeval mould, 
 he followed his instinct for assimilation of the most diverse 
 materials. Down to this day the stream of legendary 
 romance had flowed in two distinct channels, the chansons 
 de geste, or lays of the Carolingian heroes, forming the 
 repertory of the itinerant minstrel-craft of the market- 
 place, while the tales of adventure concerning the Knights 
 of the Round Table found more cultivated auditors in 
 baron's hall or lady's bower. Signor Raj na* discusses 
 at some length the theory that the Carolingian cycle was 
 linked on to a still older stock of popular romance dating 
 from the Merovingian period, with tne princes of that 
 dynasty as the subjects of its song, and an attempt is 
 made to identify the great Clovis himself with a mythical 
 hero called in French Foovent, and in Italian Fioravante. 
 
 * " Le Origini dell' Epopea Francese." Pio Rajna. Firenze. 
 Sansoni, 1884. 
 
6 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 Traces, too, have been found of a ruder metrical ditty 
 than the chansons de geste in the cantilene, a ballad sung 
 in chorus by those who had participated in the events it 
 celebrated, the time being marked by the clapping of 
 hands. These rudimentary forms of song had, however, 
 probably died out in Boiardo's day, and he was dependent 
 for his inspiration on the better known sources with which 
 we are still sufficiently well acquainted. 
 
 Although the main theme of the two sets of fable, 
 Breton and Frankish, the struggle of a Christian hero 
 against pagan foes and his final overthrow by treachery, 
 is identical, their treatment of it is essentially different. 
 War, which in the Carolingian epic filled almost the 
 entire canvas, is, in the Breton romances, relegated to 
 the background, and love takes its place as the primary 
 motive of the action. While thus presaging the modern 
 romantic spirit, they reflect, too, a much wider area of 
 contemporary thought, since they embody, on the one 
 hand, the visionary aspirations of mediaeval mysticism 
 represented in the Quest of the Holy Grail, and, on the 
 other, the traditions of still older creeds in the witcheries 
 of Morgan and Merlin. These complex sources of in- 
 spiration are wanting in the downright fighting epic of 
 Turpin, with its windy clamour of hard buffets unsoftened 
 by any intervening atmosphere of tender influence or 
 phantasmal thought. Thus broadly massed into two 
 distinct groups of fable, divergent in aim, in spirit, and 
 in the audiences addressed, remained the mythical 
 creations of early Europe until the advent of the poet 
 whose mission it was to give them a common and 
 abiding place in literature. 
 
 Too broadly sympathetic in his genius to isolate him- 
 self from the influence of the masses, Boiardo took the 
 
The Legacy of the Past 7 
 
 popular ballad epic of the chanso?is de geste as the 
 framework of his design, while he grafted on it the 
 amatory spirit of the more aristocratic chivalric ro- 
 mance, in his novel creation of the enamoured paladin. 
 Orlando, hitherto celebrated as the type of martial 
 prowess alone, and scarcely less famed as the con- 
 temner of the tender passion, is here made to bow to 
 its yoke, and the supreme triumph of love is attained 
 in the transformation of the hero of Roncesvalles into 
 the abject slave of Angelica. The same dual principle 
 is carried through all the minor episodes, enlivening 
 them with fresh significance, and breathing life into the 
 movements of the well-worn set of fighting automata, 
 which thenceforward stand transfigured in the glow of 
 passion kindled by the Italian Renaissance. That the 
 change was deliberately and consciously made by the 
 poet is proved by the subjoined stanzas, the opening 
 ones of the 18th Canto of Part II. 
 
 Britain the Great was glorious in its day, 
 And both for love and arms held in renown, 
 
 Whence still its fame resoundeth far away, 
 
 And honour still King Arthur's name doth crown. 
 
 For valiant knights their arms did there essay, 
 In many a fight, and wandered up and down 
 
 With ladies fair, in venturous quest of glory, 
 
 Whose prowess to this day yet lives in story. 
 
 King Charles in France high court did later hold 
 But not to match the first could it aspire, 
 
 Though doughtier far, and more robust and bold 
 Its knights, Rinaldo and Anglante's sire ; 
 
 For since to Love it closed its portals cold, 
 Kindled by holy wars alone to ire, 
 
 Not in such honour or esteem 'twas rated 
 
 As was the first whereof I have narrated. 
 
8 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 For 'tis from Love that glory first doth spring, 
 From Love doth man all worth and honour gain ; 
 
 Vict'ry and valour, Love 'tis that doth bring, 
 'Tis Love that knightly courage doth sustain. 
 
 Hence would I fain pursue my theme and sing 
 Of great Orlando as enamoured swain, 
 
 Returning where by Sacripante greeted, 
 
 I left him in the Canto last completed. 
 
 But Boiardo's assimilative genius did not restrict itself to 
 the material inherited from his predecessors in art, and 
 the lavish episodical embroidery interwoven into the 
 prismatic woof of his verse is often gathered from more 
 remote sources. Traces of the Druidical forest-faiths 
 of the North are there, as well as reminiscences of 
 demonology shared by all primitive humanity, together 
 with gracious offshoots of classical mythology, handed 
 down in semi-legendary form through the refracting 
 medium of the popular imagination. The result is a 
 bewildering phantasmagoria, wrought of blending and 
 dissolving shapes, defiant of analysis as some rich woof 
 which shows shifting play of line and colour on all its 
 intercrossing threads, as we turn it to the light to examine 
 its design. It is only by detaching one of these recurrent 
 subject-patterns from the involved mass of general detail, 
 that we can trace the manifold fragments of tradition 
 from which it is pieced together. Endless variations 
 on the familiar themes of the twelve Peers of France 
 and the twelve Knights of the Round Table already 
 existed, and in addition to the so-called chronicles of 
 Turpin and Geoffrey of Monmouth, a number of romances 
 such as " Les Quatre-filz-Aymon," " Ogier le Dannoys," 
 and " Regnault de Montauban " were current in France, 
 Provence, and Spain. In Italy similar tales passed from 
 mouth to mouth, and for two centuries previous to 
 
The Legacy of the Past 9 
 
 Boiardo, "I Reali di Francia," "Buovo d'Antona " 
 [Bevis of Hampton], and "La Regina Ancroia" had 
 been translated into the vernacular. The second of 
 these romances had been made the subject of a poem 
 in octave stanzas by an unknown poet, probably in the 
 early part of the fifteenth century, who, it is plausibly 
 conjectured, may have sung it about the streets as a 
 wandering minstrel. A more pretentious work in the 
 same metre was " La Spagna," a poem divided into forty 
 cantos and borrowed bodily from Turpin. The events 
 of Boiardo's time made the subject of a war between 
 Christian and Infidel Powers especially appropriate, and 
 the composition of the ct Orlando Innamorato," probably 
 begun in 1472 and broken off by the poet's death in 
 1494, coincided with the Turkish invasion of Europe,, 
 bringing it within view of a possible Ottoman conquest. 
 The shock given to Christendom by the fall of Constanti- 
 nople in 1453, when the poet was in his twentieth year, 
 was still recent when he planned his great work, and the 
 encroachments of the Porte on the Mediterranean con- 
 tinued during its progress. The taking of Otranto in 
 1480, and the atrocities committed by the Turks, who 
 massacred 10,000 of the inhabitants, spread panic 
 throughout Italy, and caused the Pope to contemplate 
 flight to France. The united forces of the league of the 
 Italian States against the invaders were commanded by 
 Alphonso, son of Ferdinand of Naples, brother-in-law of 
 Boiardo's sovereign, the Duke of Ferrara, and the eventual 
 triumph of the Christians was thus one of personal as 
 well as national interest in the circle of the poet. The 
 Moors were, moreover, still in possession of Southern 
 Spain until very near the end of his life, and the struggle 
 which ended in their expulsion must have lent an air of 
 
io Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 actuality to his celebration of the earlier wars against 
 them by the forces of Christendom. Through them, 
 too, Europe was in more direct contact with Eastern 
 manners than it has been at any time since, and 
 Mohammedan princes and emirs were more familiar 
 figures to Boiardo's contemporaries than to our own. 
 The preaching of a Crusade during his life-time was 
 another link with the subject of his poem, giving it 
 an epic character in its association with great issues of 
 public policy then in the balance. 
 
 Himself a man of action, concerned in all the events 
 of his time, the singer of Orlando had that acquaintance 
 with the motive forces of history which enabled him to 
 realise his theme. We can trace in his handling of it 
 the familiarity with nature gained in out-door life and 
 pursuits, giving his landscape an open-air effect wanting 
 in Ariosto's, which seems in comparison like the painted 
 boards and conventional drop-scene of stage properties. 
 Love of all knightly appurtenances, of splendid armour, 
 of finely tempered weapons, and above all of horses, is 
 apparent in his pages, and his portraits of steeds and 
 chargers are touched with more loving care than those of 
 their riders. 
 
 His life is known in little more than outline. Born 
 in 1434 at Scandiano, the family fief, within seven miles 
 of Reggio in Lombardy, he inherited an ancient name 
 and many feudal possessions, entitling him to call himself, 
 not only Count of Scandiano, but Lord of Arceto, Casal- 
 grande, Gesso, and Torricella. His poetic genius was 
 perhaps an inheritance in the maternal line, as the brother 
 and nephew of his mother, Lucia Strozzi, descended from 
 a branch of the great Florentine house, were distin- 
 guished in their day as writers of Latin verse. He was 
 
The Legacy of the Past i ! 
 
 held in great esteem by the princes of the House of 
 Este, and when Duke Borso went to Rome to receive 
 his investiture from the Pope in 147 1, was chosen to 
 form one of his train. The death of this patron within 
 a few days of his return was a cause of great grief to the 
 poet, but cost him no diminution of court favour, since 
 he was one of those appointed to escort the bride of the 
 new Duke Hercules I. from Naples to Ferrara, where 
 her marriage took place in 1473. Five years later the 
 governorship of Reggio was bestowed on Boiardo, and 
 this post, save for an interval in which he filled the same 
 office at Modena, he held until his death on December 20, 
 1494. He was celebrated for the mildness of his rale, 
 and is said to have even held the opinion, very extreme 
 in those days, that capital punishment should not be 
 inflicted for any crime. He was, however, a soldier as 
 well as an administrator, having taken part in the war 
 between Ferrara and Venice in 1482-84. 
 
 His marriage to Taddea, daughter of the Count of 
 Novellara, of the noble house of Gonzaga, took place in 
 1472, when he had reached the mature age of thirty- 
 eight. A previous romantic attachment is inferred from 
 a collection of love poems addressed to a lady, supposed 
 on the evidence of two acrostics to have been a certain 
 Antonia Caprara, born in Reggio in 1451, and con- 
 sequently seventeen years younger than the poet. 
 Allusions to the rose in some of the stanzas suggest that 
 she may have shared his affections with another lady of 
 that name, or both, perhaps, may have been objects only 
 of the imaginary passion simulated as part of the poetical 
 -equipment at that epoch. 
 
 There is little doubt, from internal evidence, that the 
 " Orlando Innamorato " was composed for the delecta- 
 
12 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 tion of the Court of Ferrara, each canto furnishing the 
 recital for a single day's sitting. Begun, it is conjectured,. 
 in 1472, it was interrupted on the completion of the 
 Second Book by the outbreak of the war with Venice in 
 1482, to be resumed on the conclusion of peace two 
 years later. Public disaster again came to suspend its 
 progress, and this time finally, for on the invasion of 
 Italy by Charles VIII. in 1494 the poem was broken off 
 abruptly in the middle of the ninth canto of the Third 
 Book, and the author's death before the end of that 
 fatal year closed his lips for ever. How much longer it 
 would have been, or how its protagonist's fortunes would 
 have ended, no one knows, and the poet himself was 
 doubtless equally ignorant, as from the episodical 
 character of the narrative, and its composition for oral 
 recitation, it was evidently woven from day to day in a 
 discursive stream meandering rather than progressing. 
 Its endless reiteration of battles and combats, of which 
 the incidents must perforce be monotonous, is attri- 
 butable in the same way to its origin, as the audience 
 took them in separate instalments, and probably craved 
 for such stirring scenes. No doubt they spent their 
 spare time from canto to canto in discussing the charac- 
 ters and actions of their heroes, living in the strange 
 fantastic world to which the artist's wizardry transported 
 them. 
 
 His function was thus the same as that filled in 
 humbler fashion by the wandering minstrel-craft, jon- 
 gleurs, giullari, and cantastorie, who, chanting their 
 doggrel in the streets and market-places, were the sole 
 repositories of the popular literature of Europe. Not 
 seldom a baronial hall was the scene of their improvised 
 entertainment, when the chatelaine with her maidens,. 
 
The Legacy of the Past 13 
 
 and the knight with his steward or secretary and chaplain, 
 formed the aristocratic part of his audience. The serving 
 folk and men-at-arms, with perhaps a mingling of peasants 
 or artisans from the neighbouring villages, filled the lower 
 places in the hall, and cast offerings proportioned to their 
 means into the story-teller's cap as he handed it round 
 after his recitation. If he were a master of his craft he 
 did not fail to give point to the latter by improvised 
 allusions to current events or the circumstances of those 
 present, adapting to their tastes or proclivities the open- 
 ing and closing strophes with which he introduced himself 
 and took his leave. From such lips were heard the first 
 rude strains of the measure which, polished and perfected 
 by an earlier bard than Boiardo, was to furnish the in- 
 strument for his many-voiced music. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 
 
 At two separate points of its orbit of development the 
 Italian Renaissance crosses the path of the English re- 
 vival of letters. The latter first comes under its influ- 
 ence at its very dawn in its 
 
 Morning star of song, 
 
 who openly modelled himself on his Italian contem- 
 porary, and feels it for the second time in the sources of 
 inspiration furnished by it in the "spacious times" of 
 the Elizabethan dramatists. Later ages may wonder at 
 the former conjunction of names, for Boccaccio's verse, 
 despite the crown of bays it earned him at the Capitol, 
 seems to us moderns scarcely worthy of having directed 
 and guided the inspiration of Chaucer. 
 
 The place as a poet of the author of the " De- 
 cameron" must, indeed, be determined less by the 
 intrinsic value of his work than by his function as a pre- 
 cursor, essaying a new development of his art, and pre- 
 scribing its course in the future. Immeasurably below 
 the other component members of the great Triad of the 
 earlier Renaissance, he was, in a truer sense than either, 
 the pioneer of subsequent Italian song. The unap- 
 proachable loftiness of Dante's theme forbade imitation, 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 15 
 
 the narrow limitation of Petrarch's condemned it to inane 
 reiteration. But Boccaccio, in giving the metrical 
 romance an established place in literature, supplied the 
 poetry of the future with its main outlet of expression, 
 and opened up to it a new and inexhaustible field of 
 subjects in harmony with modern taste. 
 
 The form, moreover, of the later Italian heroic ballad 
 was that first adopted by him as the best calculated for 
 versified narrative. The octave stanza, though not of 
 his absolute invention, since it already existed in popular 
 song, owes to him its introduction to that higher sphere 
 of cultivated letters where it later came to occupy so 
 large a place. The Theseid thus forms a landmark in 
 Italian letters as the earliest attempt to set a heroic sub- 
 ject to that plebeian phrase of melody destined to form the 
 structural basis of all the verse music of the Renaissance. 
 The poem, written in 1341, has the elaborate awkward- 
 ness of a first struggle for utterance in an unfamiliar form 
 of diction, while the ideas are still clogged by mechanical 
 difficulties of expression. These difficulties are aggra- 
 vated, too, by the effort to reproduce classical models, 
 while using, in the Italian vernacular, an idiom as yet 
 untried in such subjects. 
 
 For Boccaccio, a diligent and ardent student of the 
 newly-recovered literature of antiquity, was a much more 
 servile copyist of its forms than were his successors. 
 Those hoarded stores, in their time thoroughly assimi- 
 lated by the Italian mind, had furnished it with materials 
 for fresh growths, and were no longer reproduced in crude 
 incongruity. The Middle Ages are, in this sense, more 
 strictly classical than the later hybrid epoch of the Re- 
 naissance, when the complete fusion of antique fable with 
 popular tradition had taken place. 
 
1 6 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 The Italian epic then closely followed the ballad- 
 singers and vagrant story-tellers of the streets, not only in 
 its choice of subjects, but also in the episodical character 
 of the narrative, diverging into an inextricable mesh of 
 collateral channels. Boccaccio, on the contrary, like his 
 classical prototypes, preserves the unity of his design, 
 following throughout a single thread of fable unencum- 
 bered by any secondary issues. The difference in ten- 
 dency between the antique and mediaeval mind, shown in 
 this divergence, is highly characteristic of the two epochs, 
 and is still more strongly exemplified in their architecture. 
 The structural simplicity of the Greek temple, with its 
 severe subordination of ornament to design, on the one 
 hand, and the complex vistas of intersecting arches and 
 ramifying pillars in the Gothic cathedral on the other, 
 represent two opposite ideals striven after in all branches 
 of art alike, and typifying respectively the law of rest and 
 the law of growth. 
 
 The fable on which the Theseid is founded is described 
 by Boccaccio in his dedicatory letter to Fiammetta as 
 " a very ancient story, found by me and unknown to the 
 generality." Of this original, if it ever existed, no trace 
 has been found, nor does he give any other clue to it. 
 On intrinsic evidence, however, it may be pronounced 
 one of the popular chivalric romances, in which epochs, 
 characters, and manners are jumbled together with the 
 recklessness of an age innocent of archaeology. It is this 
 tale of the two Theban knights — Palamon and Arcite, 
 both prisoners in the hands of Theseus, and rivals for the 
 love of the fair Emilia — which Chaucer has familiarised to 
 English readers under the title of the " Knightes Tale." In 
 substance almost a reproduction of Boccaccio's romance, 
 his version differs from it so widely in diction, style of 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 17 
 
 expression, and metrical form, as to constitute an inde- 
 pendent and original poem. 
 
 The first book of the Theseid, narrating the expedition 
 of Theseus against the Amazons, his marriage to Hippo- 
 lyta their queen, and his return to Athens, accompanied 
 by Emilia, the young sister of his bride, is of the nature 
 of a prologue, and as such is omitted by Chaucer alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The siege of Thebes follows, at which Palamon and 
 Arcite, friends and kinsmen, are made captive, to under- 
 go a long imprisonment in a cell overlooking the garden 
 of the palace at Athens. Here they first catch a glimpse 
 of the heroine, whose appearance is heralded by one of 
 those descriptions of spring-tide so common among later 
 Italian poets : 
 
 From the glad aspect of the stars on high, 
 The earth a sweet and gracious influence drew, 
 
 And robed her form so beauteous to the eye 
 In vesture of fresh green and blossoms new ; 
 
 Each sapling tree reclothed its branches dry 
 With verdant leaves, while Spring's sweet stress did sue 
 
 The trees to bloom and fruit in rich redundance, 
 
 And crown the earth with beauty and abundance. 
 
 The little birds, in carols blithe and gay 
 Began to chant their amorous joys renewed, 
 
 Sporting on leafy bower and flowery spray, 
 While every living thing its servitude 
 
 To the same power did equally display, 
 
 And lusty youths inclined to amorous mood 
 
 Felt in their hearts love grow in strength and ardour 
 
 And his enchanted yoke press ever harder. 
 
 " Teseide," book iii. stanzas 6, &c. 
 
 This passage affords an illustration of the verbosity of 
 Boccaccio, in contrast with the quaint succinctness of his 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 English disciple, who compresses the essential portion of 
 the two stanzas into the three following lines : 
 
 The season priketh every gentil herte, 
 And maketh him out of his sleepe sterte, 
 And seith, " Arys and do thin observance." 
 
 In his description of the maiden he follows his prede- 
 cessor more closely, but with similar condensation of his 
 ideas. Boccaccio is at his best when writing of Emilia, 
 as his sympathy with feminine character enables him to 
 give her a more distinct individuality than he confers on 
 the male personages of his tale. Even through the 
 stilted conventionalities of the pseudo-classical style a 
 penetrating touch of caustic humour here and there 
 reveals his insight into the cold and narrow nature he is 
 analysing. 
 
 Emilia is a type of woman common enough in real 
 life, but seldom figuring as a heroine of romance ; with 
 affections strictly subordinated to self-interest, and a 
 heart thoroughly under the control of discretion, but 
 adapting herself, with all her superficial graces of mind 
 and person, to inspire a love she is incapable of returning. 
 She is, withal, redeemed from total insipidity by a 
 childish naivete even in the exercise of her small arts of 
 fascination, and by a maidenly innocence and freshness 
 that may be taken to excuse her lack of sensibility. The 
 poet's first picture of her is not devoid of grace and 
 sweetness, despite his redundance of language and 
 epithet : 
 
 Then fair Emilia, scarce to girlhood grown, 
 Guided and led by youthful fancy's play 
 
 But not by love, yet to her heart unknown, 
 At the same hour each morning took her way 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 19 
 
 Unto a garden trode by her alone, 
 
 Which close beside her chamber window lay, 
 And barefooted in morning gown went trilling 
 Her songs of love, the air with gladness filling. 
 
 And this her use and habit did pursue 
 
 The maiden sweet and simple, day by day ; 
 
 Now plucking with white hand the rose that blew 
 In new-born beauty on its thorny spray, 
 
 Then twining with it other flowers that grew, 
 
 She wreathed her golden head with garlands gay, 
 
 Till on a morn fell out, as chance directed, 
 
 A novel chance, by the maid's charms effected. 
 
 One beauteous morn, when she had ris'n from sleep, 
 And with her tresses blond her head had crowned, 
 
 Down to the garden fair her tryst to keep 
 She singing went and gaily sported round, 
 
 Of blossoms on the sward piled in a heap, 
 She swift and merrily her garlands wound, 
 
 And still her lays of love she went on singing, 
 
 With child-like mirth and angel voice sweet ringing. 
 
 At sound of that clear voice that softly flowed, 
 
 Arcite rose, who in his prison lay, 
 Beside the garden that was love's abode, 
 
 But nought to Palamon his friend did say. 
 He oped a window that the garden showed 
 
 In haste, to better hear that roundelay, 
 And thrust his head athwart the iron grating, 
 To see who such sweet music was creating. 
 
 " Teseide," book hi. stanzas 8, &c. 
 
 The reader will doubtless remember Chaucer's descrip- 
 tion of Emilia, but we insert it to facilitate comparison. 
 
 This passeth yeer by yeer, and day by day, 
 Till it fell oones in a morne of May 
 That Emelie, that fairer was to seene 
 Than is the lilie on hir stalk grene, 
 
20 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And fressher than the May with floures newe — 
 
 For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe, 
 
 I n'ot which was the fayrer of hem two — 
 
 Er it were day, as was hire wone to do, 
 
 Sche was arisen, and al redy dight, 
 
 For May wole hau no sloggardye anight. 
 
 Hire yelwe hair heer was browded in a tresse, 
 Byhynde hire bak, a yerde long I guesse, 
 And in the garden as the sonne uprist, 
 Sche walked up and down, and as hire liste 
 Sche gadereth floures party whyte and reede, 
 To make a sotil garland for hire heede, 
 And as an angel hevenly sche song. 
 
 Of the two prisoners who became enamoured of this 
 fair vision, one, as the poet tells Fiammetta in his 
 dedication, is intended to represent himself, adding that 
 she will have no difficulty in knowing which. The story 
 of his own love is told, he says, as far as the exigencies 
 of the story and necessary reserve permit, with sufficient 
 plainness to bring it to her mind. It was thus a roman 
 a c/ef that he was writing, but we have not the key which 
 Fiammetta possessed. Palamon, whose suit finally 
 achieves success, is presumably the one indicated, but 
 his courtship is of so very shadowy a character, not 
 including the interchange of a word with its object, that 
 a great deal must have been left to the imagination if it 
 were intended to portray a less visionary attachment. 
 Not Palamon, but Arcite, is first cognisant of Emilia's 
 presence, and he calls his friend to gaze on her as 
 follows : 
 
 And turning inward, in low voice he said 
 Unto his friend, " Oh, Palamon, look here, 
 
 'Tis Venus self from heaven here downward sped, 
 Hear'st thou her song ? Ah, if thou hold'st me dear 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 2 1 
 
 Come hither quick, and see ere she be fled. 
 
 'Twill give thee pleasure to regard so near 
 The queen of beauty in her charms eternal, 
 To us descended from the realms supernal." 
 
 Uprose then Palamon who heard his call, 
 So softly, of his step he scarce was 'ware, 
 
 And went with him unto the window small, 
 Where both stood still to see the goddess fair, 
 
 "Whom when he saw, in voice of lively fall 
 He said : " 'Tis Cytherea's self is there, 
 
 On thing so fair my gaze hath never lighted, 
 
 Or looked on aught that vision so delighted." 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 13, &c. 
 
 Chaucer, in narrating this scene, departs from his 
 original in making the captives engage in a hot dispute 
 as to the priority of their respective claims to secure the 
 affections of the lady, and Boccaccio has been censured 
 by modern critics for his failure to indicate any sense of 
 jealousy between them so long as both were in confine- 
 ment. This may, however, be true to nature, as their 
 passion under those circumstances remained an ideal 
 sentiment without prospect of fruition. He passes on to 
 an analysis, full of keen perception, of the feelings of 
 Emilia when an involuntary exclamation from Palamon 
 betrays the presence of the two spectators. 
 
 At that " Ah me ! " the maiden fair to see 
 
 O'er her left shoulder turned with sudden grace, 
 
 And to the window straight her eyes raised she. 
 Whereon the lovely pallor of her face 
 
 Flushed o'er with rosy shame. Who those might be 
 She knew not ; but uprising from her place, 
 
 With all the blossoms fair she had collected, 
 
 Her parting steps elsewhither she directed. 
 
22 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 But yet not all unmindful did she go 
 
 Of that " Ah me ! " and though too young in age 
 
 Of love's entire perfection ought to know, 
 Yet something of its feelings she could gauge, 
 
 And deemed herself admired, and felt a glow 
 
 Of pride, to think her charms could hearts engage, 
 
 And prized them more, and strove for their adorning, 
 
 When to the garden she repaired each morning. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 18 and 19. 
 
 And while the fair continued still to stray, 
 
 At times in company, at times alone, 
 For pastime in the garden bright and gay, 
 
 With furtive looks her eyes were ever thrown 
 Up to the window, whence first heard that day, 
 
 Came Palamon's " Ah me ! " in piteous tone, 
 Not urged by love, but rather love desiring, 
 To see if others gazed on her admiring. 
 
 And if she knew that others watched to see, 
 A mien of frank unconsciousness would feign, 
 
 And warble to herself as though in glee, 
 
 With sweetest voice of keen and subtle strain, 
 
 And on the grass 'midst bush, and shrub, and tree 
 With mincing step and guileless air amain, 
 
 Would mimic woman's gait in the endeavour 
 
 To charm the eyes of gazers dreamed of ever. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 28 and 29. 
 
 The subsequent course of the story follows, in both 
 versions, the fortunes of Arcite, released from his capti- 
 vity at the intercession of Peritheus. But freedom, 
 accompanied by a decree of banishment from Athens, 
 is, in the present state of his feelings, a boon of little 
 value ; and, after protracted wanderings in exile, he risks 
 all to return to the vicinity of the object of his affections. 
 In a menial capacity, and under a feigned name, he 
 reappears at the court of Theseus, where Emilia's eyes 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 23 
 
 alone are keen enough to penetrate his disguise. The 
 admirable discretion of the young lady, however, prevents 
 her from betraying her recognition either to him or 
 others, but we may imagine her to have been all the 
 more keenly conscious of the silent homage, the oppor- 
 tunity of offering which was all her admirer gained by 
 his proximity. But in Palamon, who accidentally hears 
 of his rival's appearance on the scene, the mere fact of 
 his presence suffices to excite transports of jealous 
 madness. 
 
 Succeeding by stratagem in escaping from prison, he 
 comes upon his kinsman in a wood, to which he had 
 resorted for his amorous meditations, and compels him, 
 though reluctantly, to engage in single combat on the 
 spot. The knights, absorbed in their duel, are uncon- 
 scious of the approach of a royal hunting party, until 
 Emilia herself interposes between them, and her appear- 
 ance is followed by that of Theseus, Hippolyta, and all 
 their train. An explanation ensues ; the knights confess 
 their identity and their rivalry in love of the fair Amazon. 
 Theseus, a chivalrous monarch, not only condones their 
 breach of prison and parole, but promises Emilia's hand 
 as the prize of a tournament, in which they are to do 
 battle at the end of a year, each attended by a hundred 
 knights of his choosing. 
 
 The preparations and preliminaries for the combat 
 offer a congenial field for the descriptive faculty of both 
 poets, and Boccaccio devotes whole pages to the enumera- 
 tion of the champions, presented by Chaucer with more 
 vigorous brevity. The most celebrated heroes of an- 
 tiquity are ranged on both sides, regardless of chronology, 
 and classical personages are freely introduced amid 
 mediaeval pageantry. The English bard's picture of 
 
24 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Lygurge, King of Thrace, may be cited as one of those 
 in which he adheres closely to his original : 
 
 Ful heye upon a char of gold stood he, 
 With four white boles in the trays, 
 Instede of cote armure over his harnays, 
 With nayles yehve and bright as eny gold, 
 He had a beres skyn col-blak for-old, 
 His long heer was kembd behynde his bak, 
 As eny ravens fether it schon for-blak. 
 
 The same description, as usual at greater length, does 
 duty for Agamemnon in the original : 
 
 High on a car with four stout bulls for team, 
 
 Great Agamemnon of Inachia rode, 
 A numerous train around, 'mid whom supreme 
 
 In armour of a baron bold he showed ; 
 And well the lofty honours did beseem 
 
 By Greeks in front of leaguered Troy bestowed, 
 Keen-eyed, stout-limbed, with beard like wing of raven. 
 His piercing look and mien bespoke no craven. 
 
 Nor burnished arms, nor mantle fluttering wide, 
 Locks combed or scented, gold or gems he wore, 
 
 But flung around his neck a bear's rough hide, 
 Clasped by the shining claws, so dread of yore, 
 
 In shaggy fold hung down at either side, 
 
 The bruised and rusted armour covering o'er, 
 
 And to the gazers was the truth notorious, 
 
 That o'er all comers he must be victorious. 
 
 Behind him following, but in garb and mien 
 
 Unlike, the youthful Menelaus came, 
 Clad in rich stuffs all precious to be seen, 
 
 Graceful and fair, unarmed his comely frame ; 
 And with his locks of gold that glittered sheen 
 
 The zephyrs toyed, while like a golden flame, 
 His amber beard upon his breast descended, 
 And all who gazed admired its beauty splendid. 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 25 
 
 He rode a mighty charger iron-grey, 
 
 And held a rein clogged thick with massy gold, 
 
 Around his neck the fluttering mantle gay, 
 
 Made music to the breeze that swelled its fold. 
 
 Had Venus' heart been vacant, all did say, 
 
 To gain her love he well might have made bold, 
 
 Thus lookers-on his manly grace applauded, 
 
 And to the skies his strength and beauty lauded. 
 
 Ibid, book vi. stanzas 21, &c. 
 
 Each of the interested parties repairs, on the eve of the 
 tournament, to the shrine of a patron divinity, to implore 
 a successful issue. Arcite has recourse to Mars, to whom 
 he appeals for victory in the fight; Palamon invokes 
 Venus, declaring himself indifferent to success in arms 
 so his love prosper ; and Emilia betakes her to the temple 
 of Diana, to entreat counsel and aid from the maiden 
 goddess. Each receives a favourable response despite 
 their conflicting wishes, but it is the votary of Venus who 
 in the end obtains the most substantial boon from his 
 patroness. By a curious and overstrained figure of 
 rhetoric, the prayers of Arcite and Palamon are personified, 
 that they may find their way to the abodes of the divinities 
 invoked. It is thus that the description of the palace or 
 temple of Mars is introduced, of which, as it is the 
 original of a celebrated passage in Chaucer, we subjoin 
 a portion for comparison. 
 
 In the wide Thracian fields, 'neath northern skies, 
 Where never-ceasing storms convulse the air, 
 
 And the dark host of clouds for ever flies 
 
 Before the winds that chase them here and there, 
 
 Through reeking wintry climes, where summer dies, 
 And by the curdling cold flung everywhere 
 
 Are watery globules and chill snows congealing 
 
 To hard and creaking ice o'er nature stealing. 
 
26 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 Deep in a barren wood uncouth and drear, 
 
 Where sturdy oaks grew close and thick and high, 
 All gnarled and rugged, harsh and old and sere, 
 
 Which with eternal shade the light deny 
 To earth's sad face, by growths of many a year 
 
 Hid from a thousand storms that raved on high, 
 Strange sounds came thence, and noises wild and eery, 
 Nor beast nor shepherd sought its shelter dreary. 
 
 Of the great god armipotent was seen 
 
 The palace, built of steel that glistened bright, 
 
 Which from its surface of resplendence sheen 
 Sent flashing back the sun's reflected light, 
 
 Abhorrent of that dismal place, I ween. 
 
 Strait was the iron door and scant in height, 
 
 The gates were all of adamant immortal, 
 
 And metal-plated was each massy portal. 
 
 The ideas here are undoubtedly striking, and only the 
 diffuse nervelessness of style prevents the passage from 
 rising to the high level of poetic eloquence to which it is 
 brought nearer in Chaucer's condensed rendering. Arcite's 
 prayer, on reaching the abode of the war-god, finds it 
 peopled by metaphorical abstractions like herself. 
 
 There Fury she beheld enthroned in glee, 
 With horrid visage all ensanguined o'er, 
 
 Death fully armed, and Stupor did she see, 
 And every altar reeked with floods of gore, 
 
 Which, shed on fields of battle, running free, 
 From human veins in crimson floods did pour, 
 
 Their fires were lit with brands from smoking cities, 
 
 And wrecks of war which nothing spares or pities. 
 
 With storied tales the temple walls were lined, 
 Above, around, by cunning hand made plain, 
 
 And first was all the booty there outlined 
 By night and day from captive cities ta'en, 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 27 
 
 Victims of brutal force in bonds confined, 
 
 And captives in sad garb, a piteous train, 
 Whole peoples bound in chains, strong places battered, 
 And iron gates and forts all rent and shattered. 
 
 And ships of war were seen equipped for fight, 
 And hollow cars, and faces marred with blows, 
 
 And doleful plaints were heard of grief and fright, 
 And Force was there triumphant in repose. 
 
 All wounds and hurts were sanctioned there by right, 
 And earth oozed red with blood of slaughtered foes. 
 
 On all sides round, in every aspect direful, 
 
 Dread Mars was pictured, tyrannous and ireful. 
 
 Ibid, book vii. stanzas 30 et seq. 
 
 Chaucer's rendering of this passage is a masterpiece of 
 vigorous compression, in which the essence of the 
 original is conveyed with added swiftness and energy of 
 expression. The octave stanza, despite its musical 
 charm, does not lend itself to concentration, and 
 Boccaccio's fine conceptions are often disguised by the 
 accumulation of detail with which they are overloaded. 
 As, moreover, he is impartial in his allotment of space to 
 the other divinities invoked, the triple multiplication of 
 the idea in the description of their respective abodes 
 becomes wearisome from iteration. Emilia's invocation 
 to Diana is, however, interesting from its candid simpli- 
 city in uttering her girlish doubts and uncertainties. 
 
 And if the gods already have disposed 
 
 In their eternal and august decree, 
 That all shall happen as hath been proposed, 
 
 Then bring unto my arms him who shall be 
 Most welcome to my heart and unopposed, 
 
 And who with firmest will desireth me. 
 To speak his name my lips I cannot tutor, 
 So lovable to me seems either suitor. 
 
28 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And let the other, wounded with the shame 
 
 Of losing me, be hurt by this alone, 
 And if this word to utter I may claim, 
 
 To me, oh goddess ! in these flames make known 
 Whose incense to thy godhead flies — what name 
 
 Shall his be who my future faith shall own. 
 So this pyre of Arcite then be reckoned 
 The emblem — and of Palamon the second. 
 
 At least my troubled soul shall feel less pain, 
 Less sadly for the vanquished party sigh, 
 
 And with a lighter heart the sight sustain 
 When from the lists I shall behold him fly. 
 
 My will, now so divided, then must fain 
 Take sides with one of those in arms who vie, 
 
 And see the other fly with heart made steady 
 
 By knowledge of the future fixed already. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 86 et seq. 
 
 The omen that follows is ambiguous like most revela- 
 tions of the future, the flame first quenched being subse- 
 quently rekindled, and Emilia, interpreting the prophecy 
 according to her desires, fails to discern its true signifi- 
 cance. The tournament takes its course, affording the 
 poet's imagination a large field for recounting incidents of 
 battle, enthralling to contemporary as they are wearisome 
 to modern readers. Arcite triumphs over his rival, but 
 Venus, mindful of Palamon's invocation, sends a Fury to 
 frighten the horse of the victor, who is unseated, and 
 receives a fatal injury from the fall. He lingers long 
 enough to celebrate his nuptials with Emilia, but subse- 
 quently languishes and dies, leaving her as a legacy to 
 Palamon. In his description of the death of Arcite the 
 poet touches a chord of human feeling rarely sounded in 
 that age, and showing him as the precursor of modern 
 pathos. 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 29 
 
 If she perchance, touched by my early fate, 
 
 In tender grief let fall one pitying tear, 
 Oh, haste to soothe, and bid her woe abate, 
 
 For that sweet face so lovely and so dear, 
 Hath filled my heart with love for her so great 
 
 That me her smile more than herself doth cheer, 
 I, more than she, am saddened by her sadness, 
 And change with her loved face from grief to gladness. 
 
 Thus, if the parted soul beyond the tomb, 
 Aught of what passes in this world can know, 
 
 Amid the dismal throng in realms of gloom, 
 Less sad and more courageous mine will go. 
 
 This said, he ceased ; nor speech did more resume, 
 While with a voice of tender grief and woe, 
 
 And words whose broken tones with anguish quivered, 
 
 His soul as follows, Palamon delivered. 
 
 Ibid, book x. stanzas 46 and 47. 
 
 The poem concludes with the funeral rites of Arcite and 
 the nuptials of Palamon, to whom the favour of Venus 
 thus secures the fruition of his hopes. With many de- 
 fects, it forms a landmark in literature, not merely from 
 its introduction into it of a new metrical form, but also 
 as containing the first true picture of girlhood in Euro- 
 pean poetry. In her innocent coquetry, her childish 
 artificiality, and her unfailing correctness of deportment, 
 Emilia stands alone as an attempt to realise feminine 
 character at a period when its types were purely conven- 
 tional, and is still perhaps the most lifelike ingenue in 
 ancient or modern art. 
 
 The Theseid is memorable, too, as the earliest versified 
 love-tale of the Middle Ages, in which sense it forms a 
 connecting link between mediaeval and modern letters, 
 no less than as the first attempt to give permanent form 
 to a class of fable extensively circulated among the un- 
 
30 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 lettered vulgar by oral tradition. The popular imagina- 
 tion, fed by the recitations of the vagrant rhapsodists 
 of the market-place, ran riot in similar subjects, and 
 the names of Lancelot and Guinivere, of Tristan and 
 Iseult, of Fiordiligi and Brandimarte, with endless varia- 
 tions on their loves and sorrows, were handed down from 
 lip to lip, and from generation to generation. It was on 
 this legendary store that Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and Ban- 
 dello, nay, Shakespeare himself, drew for the raw material 
 of their narratives ; it was here that Boiardo, Pulci, and 
 Ariosto found the inexhaustible supply of marvel and 
 adventure that enliven their brilliant verse. 
 
 Chaucer, too, appropriated to his own uses some of 
 this common stock of early romance, borrowing it at 
 second hand from the pages of Boccaccio with a frank 
 licence which was not in those days dubbed plagiarism. 
 How closely he adhered to his text, not only in the 
 general outline of the work, but even in its imagery and 
 illustrations, may be judged from the few passages here 
 quoted for comparison. Yet his version is rather a para- 
 phrase than a translation, and, according to Mr. FurnivalPs 
 analysis, out of 2250 lines only 270 are direct transcrip- 
 tions, while 374 bear a general likeness, and 132 a more 
 distant one to the corresponding ones in the original. 
 The superior brevity of his rendering, in which some 
 10,000 lines are represented by little more than a fifth of 
 their number, is sheer artistic gain, attained by judicious 
 compression and superior concentration of language. 
 
 The influence of foreign writers over Chaucer's mind 
 is explained by the absence in his own country of any 
 literature worthy to be so called, until created by him on 
 the basis of general European culture. The break in the 
 continuity of language effected by the Norman Conquest 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 3 1 
 
 had cut the country off from its earlier history and tradi- 
 tions, and the Anglo-Saxon tongue, surviving only as the 
 barbarous dialect of the rude vulgar, lost all power of 
 developing to any more advanced use. Hence the new 
 English language, slowly evolved from the fusion of the 
 two elements of population, and perfected in the four- 
 teenth century almost to its present form, found itself 
 without a past of its own on which to found the super- 
 structure of its future growth. It had reached a stage 
 of maturity in which the French fabliau and the Teutonic 
 myth were alike alien to it, and required a new starting- 
 point and a fresh fulcrum of thought from which to work 
 out the latent capabilities of its compound nature. This 
 Chaucer, a man of wide sympathy and many-sided intelli- 
 gence, gave it, by linking it to the awakening intellectual 
 life of continental Europe. 
 
 The rapid extension of international trade relations 
 helped to the same end, and their influence on literature 
 is strikingly illustrated by the English poet's mission to 
 Italy. Sent thither to establish a closer commercial con- 
 nection between England and Genoa, he spent the year 
 1372-73 in the northern Italian cities, and was thus 
 brought into familiar contact with the poetry and letters 
 of that country. His visit to " the worthy clerk, Fraunces 
 Petrarch," is matter of tradition, and if there be no record 
 of his having been brought into personal relations with 
 Boccaccio, he at least came well within the sphere of his 
 artistic influence. 
 
 Nor is his debt to be exhausted with the loan of a sub- 
 ject from the Theseid. The " Decameron," too, was laid 
 under contribution, supplying him with the tale of the 
 patient Griselda, and probably suggesting by its central 
 plan of a group of narratives linked to a central situation 
 
32 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 the similar framework of the Canterbury Tales. I n his 
 Troylus and Criseide he has given again an even closer 
 adaptation of Boccaccio's " Filostrato " than that of his 
 Theban lovers in the " Knightes Tale." The edition of 
 this work by Rossetti, in which the English text is collated 
 with a literal prose rendering of the Italian original, 
 supplies all the material for a comparative study of the 
 two. Of the Theseid, on the contrary, no English version 
 exists, although it was considered worthy of appearing in 
 a Greek translation as early as 1529. 
 
 Boccaccio had the rare fortune, shared with the two 
 modern novelists Manzoni and Scott, of eclipsing by his 
 fame as a prose writer that which he had previously 
 acquired as a poet. Crowned as such in the Capitol in 
 1342, six years previous to that plague of Florence which 
 supplied him with the tragic setting of his Decameron, 
 he shone among his contemporaries as the second lumi- 
 nary of Italian song, with a lustre surpassed only by that 
 of Petrarch. The founder of modern Romantic poetry, 
 who set the key to the master-singers of the Renaissance, 
 and exercised through Chaucer so potent an influence on 
 the germination of English letters, we may well ask why 
 as a poet he is now almost forgotten and his verse practi- 
 cally unread save by the historian of literature. 
 
 The answer is to be found in his want of dramatic 
 expression, and in the dilution of thought which swamps 
 the subject under a flood of words. Every sentence is 
 a circumlocution, every epithet an irrelevance, every 
 phrase an ambiguity. Nowhere lucid, the style is often 
 obscure, and in some passages corruption of text seems 
 to have supervened on original defect of construction. 
 Hence it is scarcely wonderful that semi-oblivion should 
 have overtaken Boccaccio's poetical works, and that 
 
The Theseid and the Octave Stanza 33 
 
 while in his own country they are never read and little 
 remembered, English students are satisfied to know 
 them in the more vigorous verse of their own chanti- 
 cleer of song, the clear- voiced herald of their dawning 
 prime of letters. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 
 
 The gradual evolution of the Italian chivalric epic from 
 the songs of the people can be best traced in one of its 
 most characteristic features, the address to the audience 
 at the opening and close of each canto. These invariable 
 apostrophes, called Saluto and Commiato, or greeting 
 and adieu, had, with the giullari and cantastorie of the 
 street corners, a religious character, recommending the 
 auditors to the care of Heaven or the Saints in a spirit 
 of piety often startlingly at variance with the theme of 
 the intervening entertainment. The tenth canto of one 
 of the earliest chivalric poems, "Spagna," closes in the 
 prevailing fashion, with the subjoined invocation — 
 
 In my next canto fitly to describe 
 
 This fierce and furious fight I will endeavour, 
 
 Christ and His Blessed Mother keep ye ever. 
 
 In a similar spirit the fiftieth canto of an early version of 
 Rinaldo's adventures concludes as follows : 
 
 When next I sing I'll with the end reward ye, 
 The king of heavenly virtues ever guard ye. 
 
 Matteo Boiardo, in giving the street ballad its courtly 
 and classical form, shaped, too, its simple prefatory 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 35 
 
 utterances into that consummate perfection which 
 only waited at the hands of Ariosto the stamp of his 
 powerful individuality to gain currency for all time. 
 Through the cantos of the "Orlando Innamorato" we 
 can trace this progressive transformation of the homely 
 greetings of the barn or the market-place into a series 
 of melodious preludes, to whose infinitely modulated 
 cadences the chords of the poet's lyre are swept with 
 all the freedom of improvisation. Adopting the form as 
 well as the matter of their humbler prototypes, the 
 masterpieces of Renaissance song still retained the 
 character of recitations, each canto being designed 
 either in appearance or reality for a single day's enter- 
 tainment. Their aim being thus different from that of a 
 purely literary work, the production of a succession of 
 striking episodes giving independent interest to each 
 chapter, rather than the sustained development of a 
 continuous action, we find in them the faults and 
 beauties entailed by such a plan of construction : on 
 the one hand absence of unity and sequence in the 
 different parts; on the other, inexhaustible fertility of 
 invention, lavish profusion of incident, and florid bril- 
 liancy of descriptive detail Abounding in rhetorical 
 perfections and constructive defects, they scarcely bear 
 to be read as a whole, and would perhaps be best appre- 
 ciated by modern readers in the form of extracts con- 
 nected by a slight thread of explanatory narrative. In 
 contrast with the severe unity of design exhibited by the 
 " Divina Commedia," they produce somewhat the same 
 effect as a gorgeous specimen of flamboyant architecture 
 compared with the majestic outlines of an Early Gothic 
 cathedral. And as the former, while defective in contour, 
 is rich in suggestion for the artist's pencil when studied 
 
36 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 in detail, so the romantic poems of Italy gain rather than 
 lose by analysis of their parts, and we do them no in- 
 justice in detaching from the general mass of the 
 structure some of its ornamental capitals for separate 
 examination. 
 
 In his earlier chapters, Boiardo, still mindful of his 
 plebeian models, occasionally recurs to the religious 
 ejaculatory form, as in the following lines closing the 
 nineteenth canto of his First Book : 
 
 But since this canto over long hath been, 
 Another day the rest I will recount, 
 If you return to hear the pleasant story, 
 So keep ye all the mighty king of glory. 
 
 Throughout the earlier part of his poem the prologue 
 
 stanzas are invariably recapitulations of the previous 
 
 situation, and of this explanatory formula the two 
 following are specimens : 
 
 Erewhile ye saw the havoc and dismay, 
 Wrought by King Agricane fierce of soul, 
 
 Like torrent through the coast that cleaves its way, 
 Or petard breaching ranks where it doth roll, 
 
 So with his sword he makes no idle play, 
 
 But strikes each standard and high banner pole, 
 
 Hews down the foe, and his own men doth scatter, 
 
 Nor cares which falls, the former or the latter. 
 
 " Orl. Inn." book i. canto ii. 
 
 Fair sirs, in the last canto I left off, 
 
 Where at the Saracens Astolfo jeers, 
 And, " Villain," saith, " thy vaunting fashion doff, 
 
 Unless thou vaunt in hell amid thy peers, 
 Of barons proud laid low to be thy scoff : 
 
 To what I plan for thee now ope thine ears, 
 Since with thy giant frame such rank doth tally, 
 First boatswain I will make thee in a galley." 
 
 "Orl. Inn." book i. canto iv. 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 37 
 
 It is not until the fifteenth canto that he first breaks 
 through the trammels of prescription by introducing one 
 of those passages of abstract reflection definitely adopted 
 by him as an invariable prefatory form from the twenty- 
 sixth canto onwards, and handed down by him as a 
 legacy to his successor. We subjoin this first example 
 of the newer form of introduction, which thus super- 
 seded the older fashion : 
 
 All things beneath the moon — wealth's vast increase — 
 Kingdoms, and realms, and rule, the whole world o'er, 
 
 Are subject to Dame Fortune's light caprice, 
 
 Who, when least thought of, opes and shuts the door, 
 
 And seeming white turns black, nor e'er doth cease 
 From change, but doth in war display her more 
 
 Unstable, fickle, shifty, and ungracious, 
 
 And beyond all things flighty and fallacious. 
 
 Ibid, book i. canto xv. 
 
 It is in these preliminary passages that the poet, liberated 
 from the restrictions of convention, had free scope for 
 the development of his personal genius, suppressed in 
 the narrative portions of his work by the exigencies of 
 his theme. Thus his vivid fancy, expatiating in its 
 enlargement, seizes on every mood of nature or his 
 own mind, as a means of reintroducing himself to his 
 audience. Here is a stanza in the form of a spring 
 greeting, a class of opening in which he evidently took 
 especial delight : 
 
 The season that doth heaven with light illume, 
 And gives the trees a vesture green to wear, 
 
 That fills the air and earth with love and bloom, 
 And tuneful birds, and flowrets blushing fair, 
 
 My song of love incites me to resume. 
 
 And bids me to all here once more declare 
 
38 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 The prowess and the deeds in lofty fashion 
 Wrought by Orlando in his am'rous passion. 
 
 Ibid, book ii. canto xx. 
 
 In the same spirit is the May carol with which he opens 
 the nineteenth canto of his Second Book : 
 
 I found myself one merry morn in May, 
 In a fair meadow decked with blossoms rare, 
 
 'Twas on a hill, the sea beside it lay, 
 All tremulous with splendour shining there, 
 
 'Mid roses on a thorn-bush green, her lay 
 Of love a damsel sang, and thrilled the air, 
 
 So sweetly moved her lips to dulcet phrases, 
 
 The thought of it my heart still stirs and raises. 
 
 A classical simile furnishes another introduction to his 
 auditors, with which he presents himself as follows : 
 
 A story-teller, Arion was his name, 
 
 In the Sicilian sea, or near those bounds, 
 
 Had voice and words so sweet that round him came 
 Dolphins and tunny-fish to hear the sounds. 
 
 That music fishes in the sea should tame 
 
 Is, in good sooth, a thing that much astounds, 
 
 But for my lyre 'tis greater grace and glory, 
 
 If it draw ye, fair Sirs, to hear my story. 
 
 Ibid, book ii. canto xxvii. 
 
 Sometimes he stimulates the curiosity of his hearers by 
 a foreshadowing of the exciting subject of his narrative 
 in the following fashion : 
 
 Morgana and Alcina and their charms 
 
 Have long delayed my Muse in her career, 
 
 Nor have I shown one brilliant feat of arms, 
 Nor the sky full of shivered lance and spear, 
 
 Now must the world all shake to war's alarms, 
 And blood above the saddle bows rise clear, 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 39 
 
 For, towards this canto's close, or I'm in error, 
 You'll come upon wounds, flames, fire, sword, and terror. 
 
 Ibid, book ii. canto xiv. 
 
 Again, when, in the following strain, invoking inspiration 
 from his subject, he contrives to herald its importance : 
 
 Now must my voice to my song's level soar, 
 And lordlier measure I must seek to find, 
 
 With bow more rapid sweep my lyre-strings o'er, 
 Since of a youth to tell I have a mind, 
 
 So rude and fierce, in ruin drenched with gore 
 To lay the world he well had been inclined, 
 
 Hight Rodamonte was this braggart heady, 
 
 Of whom I more than once have spoke already. 
 
 Ibid, book ii. canto vi. 
 
 It was this hero's name, immortalised in our language in 
 its derivative, rhodomontade, the invention of which 
 caused the author so much trouble that when he hit 
 upon it he galloped home straightway and desired all 
 the bells to be rung in token of rejoicing. The following 
 exordium ushering in the second canto of the Third 
 Book has all the triumphant glory of the dawn in its 
 imagery and versification : 
 
 The sun, crowned gloriously with golden rays, 
 
 His face uprist from ocean's rim afar, 
 And roseate dyed the sky, and from the gaze 
 
 Already hid the waning morning star, 
 Within the palace, from all sides, the lays 
 
 Were heard of pilgrim swallow, bar by bar, 
 And birds that in the garden dwelt, saluted 
 The rising day, with verse their joy that fluted. 
 
 The date of the commencement of the concluding 
 portion of the poem is fixed by the stanzas with which 
 the author addresses his audience in opening the first 
 
4o Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 canto of the Third Book, showing him to have resumed 
 the thread of his narrative at the close of the war with 
 Venice. 
 
 As sweeter doth to mariner appear, 
 
 Whom stormy gales have buffeted about, 
 The sight of tranquil deep and ripple clear, 
 
 Of air serene, and sky where stars look out ; 
 And as the pilgrim doth rejoice to near 
 
 The smiling plain when day puts dark to rout, 
 Since in the open he doth safely find him, 
 With night and rugged mountains left behind him. 
 
 Thus, since from us the infernal storm and stress 
 
 Of ruthless war departed has, I trow, 
 And joy and mirth return the world to bless, 
 
 And fairer than before this Court doth show. 
 
 will with greater pleasure, I confess, 
 
 Resume the jocund tale planned long ago, 
 Then come in courtesy to hear my story, 
 Fair ladies, lords, and knighthood high in glory. 
 
 He thus addressed himself to the Court of Ferrara, 
 alluding to events familiar to all present, and in which 
 he and his hearers had borne their part, but which 
 require the interpretation of history to make them intelli- 
 gible to the modern reader. 
 
 In another preface he takes the audience into his 
 confidence, expounding the plan of his work with con- 
 summate grace and beguiling simplicity in the subjoined 
 stanzas : 
 
 With many a flower, blue, yellow, red, and white, 
 Of every kind that in the woodland grows, 
 
 With fairest herbs I've made a nosegay bright, 
 Pinks, gillyflowers, pale lily, blushing rose, 
 
 Come forward all whom fragrance doth delight, 
 And pick and choose as fancy may dispose, 
 
 For some delight in lilies, some in roses, 
 
 And each and all show varying taste in posies. 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 41 
 
 So I in divers mode have planted o'er 
 
 With fights and love-affairs mine orchard plot, 
 
 Fierce hearts with joy on tales of battle pore, 
 The soft and gentle on the lover's lot. 
 
 Now to Ruggiero, left in battle sore 
 With Rodamonte on the meadow spot, 
 
 'Mid blows so stormy, and assaults so cruel, 
 
 That ne'er was seen the like of this fierce duel. 
 
 Idem, book iii. canto v. 
 
 The foregoing specimens will serve to show how com- 
 pletely the traditional forms, at first adhered to in the 
 composition of the " Orlando Innamorato," were dis- 
 carded ere its completion, and how great was the variety 
 of prefatory addresses by which they were gradually- 
 superseded. Now it is somewhat remarkable that 
 Ariosto, having so wide a field of choice open to him, 
 should have contracted instead of enlarging its limits, 
 practically confining himself to one style of exordium — 
 that couched in the sermonising vein of didactic or 
 philosophical reflection. The key to this anomaly must 
 be sought in the bent of his mind, which instinctively 
 selected human nature as its first, if not its sole, subject 
 of study. 
 
 Some modern critics see in the author of the "Furioso" 
 the embodiment of the pictorial genius of the Renais- 
 sance, but to me it seems as though they had mistaken 
 his temper and tendency, misled by the wonderful com- 
 mand of language which not only clothed but decorated 
 his ideas. For he was in reality totally wanting in the 
 painter's first gift, that discriminating power which seizes 
 on the salient and suggestive features of the subject and 
 assigns due artistic proportion to its relative parts. His 
 descriptions are of the catalogue order, mere unclassified 
 inventories of qualities or objects, and there is not 
 
42 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 throughout the " Orlando Furioso " a single passage that 
 calls up such a clear vision of any external scene as 
 Boiardo evokes with a sketch in verse like that of the 
 May morning just quoted. 
 
 Ariosto's strength lay in a different direction — in 
 dramatic power of describing and dramatic insight in 
 analysing human actions and motives ; in a keen, if not 
 profound comprehension of character; in realising, in 
 short, the world within, instead of the world without. 
 With nature he has little or no sympathy, and there is 
 scarcely a trace in his works of his having been touched 
 by her varying aspects. We know that he passed three 
 years as Governor of the Garfagnana, in the heart of 
 some of the finest scenery in Italy or the world. Morning 
 by morning he must have seen the conflagration of the 
 dawn tossed in flame from peak to peak of the blanched 
 and shattered pinnacles of Carrara, day by day watched 
 the Modenese Apennines stand out sculptured in sun- 
 shine, with the violet shadows on their flanks deepening 
 and shoaling as the light went and came above them ; 
 year by year seen the moving pageantry of the seasons 
 roll to and fro over the wide valley of the Serchio, 
 winding like a highway among the hills to where it was 
 lost in their blue gulfs of distance. Yet of all this we 
 find no hint in his verse, in which, despite its elegant 
 garrulity, the references to scenery are of the scantiest. 
 At most a garden or two, planted with ornamental 
 flowers carefully enumerated, a well-kept shrubbery with 
 fruit-trees and shady arbours, occasionally a fountain, 
 and more rarely a low hill, are mentioned with approval. 
 Some of the adventures he records take place during 
 maritime travel, and Notus or Boreas is duly invoked to 
 call up a storm, which is, however, introduced as a 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 43 
 
 purely conventional piece of stage mechanism, and in 
 the strictest subordination to the human action it pro- 
 motes. Boiardo, on the contrary, when he describes 
 the sea quivering in the morning splendour, suggests the 
 whole ocean in a single line, as does the skilled artist 
 with the pencil-sweep limiting its horizon. 
 
 Keeping in mind this difference in mental constitution 
 from his predecessor, it ceases to be surprising that 
 Ariosto should have rejected for his exordiums all the 
 models of pictorial and descriptive imagery left by him, 
 to follow him only in those which gave free play to his 
 own analytical and reflective turn of thought. His 
 initial stanzas being thus devoted to moral generalities, 
 we can reconstruct from them with tolerable accuracy 
 the poet's scheme of life, regarded from the genially 
 cynical point of view befitting a man well satisfied, in 
 the main, with himself and his surroundings. For it 
 must be remembered that all the philosophy handed 
 down to us is necessarily, from the mere fact of its sur- 
 vival, the philosophy of success, and that the real bitter- 
 ness of life remains mute in the inarticulate oblivion of 
 obscurity. Your true cynic is the man who has failed, 
 but whose opinions are consequently of no account, 
 while triumph, trumpet-tongued, has the ear of the world 
 and of futurity. Diogenes in his tub, blazoning obtrusive 
 self-abnegation in the pride that apes humility, is but a 
 sham pessimist compared to Lazarus amid his potsherds, 
 and the latter, though propounding no paradoxes and 
 enunciating no theories, is the more genuine if less noisy 
 philosopher. 
 
 Ariosto's cynicism we feel is but the imaginative 
 cynicism of prosperity, just sharp enough, like the agro 
 dolce sauce of Italian cooks, to give piquancy of savour 
 
44 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 to dainty viands, not to strew ashes on the homely or 
 insufficient fare of the less well served at the banquet of 
 life. The foibles and inconsistencies of humanity he 
 touches with a light hand, as much in caress as in 
 chastisement ; but its struggles and sufferings, its doubts 
 and self- questionings, he leaves unexplored in his brilliant 
 verse. Theology has no place in his system, and there 
 is no longer a trace of those religious invocations so long 
 adhered to by his predecessors. His code of morality, 
 indeed, is rather of a pagan than a Christian type, and 
 inculcating, as it does, only a certain measure of truth 
 and kindliness without any ascetic self-restraint, would 
 have sat lightly on an ancient Greek. The following 
 stanzas (first and second of canto xxi.) emphasising the 
 obligation of good faith, represent about the highest 
 moral level to which he soars : 
 
 No hempen rope doth bind a load so fast, 
 
 Or nail hold wood with such a forceful strain, 
 
 As faith, when o'er a lofty soul is cast 
 The bond of its indissoluble chain. 
 
 Nor was true faith by artists in the past 
 Depicted save in vesture without stain, 
 
 Draped in a fair white veil like a religious, 
 
 Since slightest soil or speck would make her hideous. 
 
 Good faith should be maintained then without spot 
 Whether to thousands pledged, or one alone, 
 
 Though in lone forest or sequestered grot 
 
 Remote from towns 'twere plighted all unknown, 
 
 As though before tribunals, and the knot 
 Of witnesses, in deed or parchment shown, 
 
 So, without oath or vow or any token, 
 
 The simplest promise should be kept unbroken. 
 
 In the two stanzas next quoted, opening respectively 
 the sixth and twenty-third cantos, sound moral lessons 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 45 
 
 are inculcated, perhaps all the more effectively that the 
 motive invoked is none of the highest : 
 
 111 fares the evil-doer who doth trust 
 That secrecy will hidden crime aye shroud, 
 
 For if all else were mute, the entombing dust 
 Of earth — nay air itself — would cry aloud. 
 
 And heaven ordains the sin itself shall thrust 
 The sinner — spent his term — to stand avowed ; 
 
 His own accuser, though by none suspected, 
 
 In unforeseen betrayal self-detected. 
 
 Let each one help the other, rarely fate 
 Omits the recompense good actions claim, 
 
 Or if she do, at least they bear no freight 
 Of death or loss, or ignominious shame. 
 
 Who injures others payeth soon or late 
 The unforgotten score against his name. 
 
 The proverb says, Men go forth nimble-footed 
 
 To meet each other, but the hills stand rooted. 
 
 Ariosto, however, is not seen to advantage in this com- 
 monplace garb of sententious morality, which ill beseems 
 his gay and worldly temperament. He is at his best in 
 the vein of playful sarcasm which characterises most of 
 his philosophical utterances and is his favourite method 
 of rebuke for falsehood or folly. His caustic irony, 
 indeed, spared nothing, not even himself, for we can 
 scarcely believe that the following stanzas on poetical 
 chroniclers were penned without conscious satirical 
 reference to his own servility to princely patrons. They 
 form an exception to his ordinary rhetorical outbursts in 
 being placed in the middle instead of at the opening of 
 a canto, and are part of St. John's discourse to Astolfo 
 during his journey to the limbo of lost property in the 
 moon, in search of the vanished reason of Orlando : 
 
46 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 Less pious was Eneas — nor so bold 
 
 Achilles as Fame tells — less Hector's fire — 
 And thousands there have been in days of old 
 
 Who might to higher place than these aspire ; 
 But palaces and villas, lands and gold, 
 
 Conferred by their descendants were the hire 
 Paid for transcendent and immortal glory, 
 Bestowed on them by writers of their story. 
 
 Scarce was Augustus so benign and good, 
 As Virgil's sounding trumpet doth proclaim, 
 
 His taste in poetry, 'tis understood, 
 
 Doth cancel the proscription's debt of shame. 
 
 Of Nero's crimes far less perchance we should 
 Have heard — and glorious yet might be his name, 
 
 Though earth and heaven he equally offended, 
 
 If scribes and authors he had but befriended. 
 
 In Homer's page Atrides now we see 
 
 With triumph crowned — the Trojans dull and cold, 
 And, faithful to her spouse, Penelope 
 
 Bear from her suitors insults manifold. 
 But whoso wishes truth from falsehood free 
 
 Reversed and changed should have the story told ; 
 Troy should victorious be, and Hellas routed, 
 And as a flirt Penelope be scouted. 
 
 And then, again, by history see betrayed 
 
 The fame of Dido, who, though pure of heart, 
 
 Is now reputed as a worthless jade, 
 
 Since Virgil played her an unfriendly part. 
 
 Nor marvel if some warmth I have displayed, 
 Or if my views at some length I impart, 
 
 Writers I love, as suits my former station, 
 
 Since I on earth pursued the same vocation. 
 
 " Orl. Fur." canto xxxiv. stanzas 24 etseg. 
 
 Like all flatterers, Ariosto occasionally gave a surrep- 
 titious vengeance to truth in an outburst of candour, 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 47 
 
 in the style of the subjoined sly hit at his fair auditors on 
 their most sensitive point : 
 
 Oh, happy cavaliers of elder days, 
 
 Who in lone valley or sequestered dell, 
 In cavern dark, or savage forest ways, 
 
 In dens of serpents, bears, or lions fell, 
 Found what in palaces scarce meets the gaze, 
 
 In our time, e'en of eyes that seek it well, 
 Women, I mean, who in their youth's fresh morning, 
 With beauty's title merit the adorning. 
 
 Ibid, canto xvi. stanza i. 
 
 And in another passage, under the form of a defence of 
 the fair sex against their calumniators, he contrives to 
 strengthen rather than weaken the case against them by 
 a reference to his own very unfavourable experiences. 
 His standard of constancy does not, however, seem to 
 have been sufficiently high to justify recriminations against 
 others, as we argue from what follows : 
 
 'Mid these complaints, and many more beside, 
 Along his road the King of Sarza spurred, 
 
 As now in murmurs low he faintly sighed, 
 Now spake in tones that distant echo stirred ; 
 
 While thus the female sex he vilified, 
 
 We must allow his reasoning was absurd, 
 
 Since for a bad one here and there detected, 
 
 At least a hundred good might be selected. 
 
 Though 'mid the many I have loved, I vow, 
 I have not found a single constant dame ; 
 
 That all are false I never will allow, 
 
 But on harsh destiny throw all the blame. 
 
 Many there are, and have been before now, 
 
 'Gainst whom to lodge complaint no man can claim, 
 
 But 'tis my fate if 'mid five score nonsuches 
 
 There be one jade, to fall into her clutches. 
 
48 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Nor will I cease to seek till, ere I die — 
 
 Nay, ere my locks more threads of silver show — 
 
 One day I yet may boast that even I 
 
 Some fair have found whose faith no change doth know, 
 
 If this occur (and yet my hopes are high 
 That it may be) I ne'er will weary grow 
 
 Of crowning her, as best I can, with glory, 
 
 With pen and tongue, in prose and verse, and story. 
 Ibid, canto xxvii. stanzas 122 et seq. 
 
 Ariosto's tone in speaking of women, of whom his real 
 estimate was evidently very low, alternates between 
 raillery and panegyric. We subjoin a specimen of the 
 latter, selecting two stanzas from the long opening passage 
 of the thirty-sixth canto, leading up to a tribute of flattery 
 to Vittoria Colonna : 
 
 Not Tomyris or Harpalyce dread, 
 
 Nor those who came to Turnus' — Hector's aid — 
 Not she who Tyrians and Sidonians led 
 
 Across the sea to Libya's shore embayed, 
 Zenobia not, nor she before whom fled 
 
 Assyria's, India's, Persia's hosts dismayed, 
 Not these alone, with others famed in story, 
 Deserve to shine for ever crowned with glory. 
 
 For women strong and faithful, pure and wise, 
 Not Greece and Rome alone have had to boast, 
 
 But every land on which the sun doth rise, 
 From the Hesperides to India's coast, 
 
 Whose worth and fame are smothered in such guise, 
 That of a thousand one is known at most, 
 
 Since of their deeds there then were none to tell us, 
 
 Save only writers masculine and jealous. 
 
 Ibid, canto xxxvi. stanzas 5 and 6. 
 
 The ethics of love occupy the largest space in the poet's 
 lucubrations, as the vicissitudes of the tender passion 
 itself supplied, no doubt, the subject of his most frequent 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 49 
 
 meditations, and the source of his most poignant emotions. 
 Adhering to the principle of allowing him as far as possible 
 to speak for himself, we extract one of the few passages 
 in which he takes an ennobling view of that sentiment. 
 
 In love full many a one feels pangs most sore, 
 Of which the greater part I have essayed, 
 
 Unto my hurt so varied o'er and o'er 
 That I can speak as one who's of the trade, 
 
 Hence if I say, as I have said before 
 
 In speech and writing, and have ne'er gainsaid, 
 
 That pain is light, or sharp and keen this latter, 
 
 Accept as truth my verdict in the matter. 
 
 I say, and said, and will say till I die, 
 
 Who knows himself entrapped in worthy snare, 
 
 Although he find his lady cold and shy, ] 
 Averse and distant to his burning prayer ; 
 
 Though hope be none, though love all wage deny, 
 Though toil and time be vainly wasted there, 
 
 If high his heart be set, in deepest anguish 
 
 He need not weep, although he droop and languish. 
 
 But weep should he who hath enslaved his will 
 To a fair tress of hair and bright eyes twain, 
 
 'Neath which doth hide a heart denied with ill, 
 "Where nought is pure and only dregs remain ; 
 
 The wretch would fiy, but with him carries still 
 Like stricken deer, the arrow's rankling pain, 
 
 Shame of himself and of his love he feeleth, 
 
 Nor dares disclose a wound no balsam healeth. 
 
 Ibid, canto xvi. stanzas i et seq. 
 
 Ariosto always treats this subject from an autobio- 
 graphical point of view, alleging his experience or be- 
 moaning his weakness with ingenuous naivete and frank- 
 ness. The following three stanzas were evidently penned 
 in one of those moments of disillusion which were 
 doubtless frequent with him : 
 
50 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Who sets his foot in love's entangling snare 
 Withdraw it ere his wings are limed as well. 
 
 That love is madness all the wise declare 
 With concord that our doubts should sure dispel. 
 
 Though all may not Orlando's fury share, 
 Some other sign their lunacy doth tell ; 
 
 And of insanity what proof more striking 
 
 Than sacrifice of self for others' liking ? 
 
 By varied symptoms shown, the cause is one, 
 Alike the frenzied folly whence they spring ; 
 
 Like a great wood, untracked and vast, where none 
 Finds the straight road 'mid paths all wandering, 
 
 To left, to right, and here and there they run — 
 In short, my reasoning to an end to bring, 
 
 He who in love grows old deserves no better 
 
 For all his pains, than manacle and fetter. 
 
 Well might ye answer me — Another's fault, 
 
 Friend, thou dost show, unmindful of thine own, 
 
 Full well (I answer), now my mind makes halt 
 In lucid interval, my case is known, 
 
 And much I strive and hope (the last assault 
 Repelled) to rest and leave this dance alone, 
 
 But all at once to do't my strength exceedeth 
 
 Since on my very bones the poison feedeth. 
 
 Ibid, canto xxiv. stanzas 9, &c. 
 
 From the following stanzas on jealousy we should have 
 inferred the susceptible poet's liability to this passion, 
 even if his biographers had not expressly stated it : 
 
 What happier or more joyous state had been 
 Than that of tender heart in amorous mood ? 
 
 What life more beatific and serene 
 Than to be bound by love's sweet servitude ? 
 
 Were man not goaded by that sting so keen 
 Of black suspicion — by that fear pursued — 
 
 And martyred by that dark and deadly passion 
 
 Of jealousy, whose rage takes every fashion. 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 5 1 
 
 While every other bitter interblent 
 
 Amid the honey of this sweetest sweet 
 Is but additional perfection lent 
 
 To love, its joy to heighten and complete, 
 More dainty tastes the liquid element 
 
 From thirst prolonged, and after fasting meat ; 
 Nor can the joys of peace be duly rated, 
 Save first the ills of war are known and hated. 
 
 Though eyes behold not what the heart would see, 
 And ever craves— e'en this may be made light, 
 
 The longer the slow hours of absence be 
 The greater joy when time doth reunite. 
 
 To service without wage we may agree 
 If hope survive, however faint and slight. 
 
 For service true is in the end rewarded, 
 
 Though long it seem to pass quite unregarded. 
 
 The angers, the repulses, and in short 
 All pains and torments love has to endure, 
 
 Do by their recollection but exhort 
 To fuller sense of joy that we secure. 
 
 But this infernal plague, if it distort 
 
 And poison the sick mind with ills past cure, 
 
 Makes even mirth and gladness when they follow, 
 
 Seem to the lover flavourless and hollow. 
 
 Ibid, canto xxx. stanzas g, &c. 
 
 In the next prologue quoted a genuine note of manly 
 tenderness for women escapes the mocking bard, suggest- 
 ing the idea of an utterance called forth by some actual 
 incident at the moment. 
 
 All other animals beneath the sun 
 
 Or live in peace, to quietness inclined, 
 Or if they come to blows, the male doth shun 
 
 To war upon the female of his kind. 
 Safe with her mate through woods the bear doth run, 
 
 The lion next the lioness you'll find, 
 Wolf is to she- wolf mild as gentle zephyr, 
 Nor doth the bull with fear inspire the heifer. 
 
52 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 What plague accurst then lends Megaera power 
 Dissension within human hearts to sow ? 
 
 That man and wife must wrangle by the hour, 
 And scold and rave in language vile and low. 
 
 Fresh blows on scratched and livid faces shower, 
 And bathe the marriage bed with tears of woe, 
 
 Nor tears alone do plenteously bestrew it, 
 
 But blood, oft shed in anger doth bedew it. 
 
 Methinks that man doth grievous outrage dare 
 On nature— and 'gainst Heaven's high law rebel, 
 
 Who a fair woman's face to strike can bear, 
 Or hurt one hair of hers in anger fell. 
 
 But whoso poisons her, or doth not spare 
 With cord or knife her spirit to expel, 
 
 A man I'll ne'er believe such wretch as this is, 
 
 But fiend in human form from hell's abysses. 
 
 Ibid, canto v. stanzas i, &c. 
 
 Though Ariosto's views of life may not seem to the 
 modern reader very novel or profound, we can well 
 believe that his contemporaries, dazzled by the florid 
 and brilliant language in which they were expressed, 
 may not have perceived that his sparkling epigrams in 
 octaves embodied only commonplace and obvious truths. 
 They may be best summed up in the celebrated defini- 
 tion of a proverb as " the wisdom of many and the wit 
 of one." For he converted the common stock of ideas 
 round him into an intellectual currency, stamped with 
 the impress of his genius and coined in the authority of 
 his name. 
 
 This novelty of form may be accepted as a substitute 
 for originality of substance, but it does not atone for the 
 absence of moral elevation in the utterances of the 
 laughing philosopher of Ferrara. The best that can be 
 said for him in this respect is that his morality, if not 
 
The Preludes of the Ballad Epic 53 
 
 lofty, was sincere ; that he assumed nothing he did not 
 feel ; and that if his ideal was placed low, he at any 
 rate lived up to it. There is abundant evidence in his 
 biography that he practised the facile virtues he preached, 
 and that if the standard he proposed to himself was not 
 a very exalted one, he at least attained its level. 
 
 That the scoffing attitude towards feminine charms 
 assumed by the singer of Orlando's madness was but a 
 pose may be inferred from the love poems addressed to 
 Alessandra Bennucci, the fair widow whom he certainly 
 loved and probably married. The following sonnet is 
 one of the many inspired by the golden locks which were 
 one of her real or fancied charms : 
 
 How can I worthily the praise unfold, 
 Due to thy charms angelic and divine, 
 Since e'en at thought of those fair locks of thine, 
 
 The tongue doth fail and speech grows dull and cold? 
 
 Though lofty style and phrase of dulcet mould, 
 Taught by all Greek and Latin schools, were mine, 
 Not half or part the meed could they assign 
 
 Of praise to those bright rippling knots of gold. 
 
 To see them shine so even and so long, 
 In wealth of silken skeins, to many a lute 
 
 Might furnish matter for eternal song. 
 Ah ! had I bit, like Ascra's bard, the fruit 
 
 Of laurel, so my praise would I prolong, 
 That I should die a swan, where I die mute. 
 
 Here we have more of Ariosto's real feeling than he dis- 
 plays in the persiflage of the brilliant prologue stanzas 
 which were part of the framework inherited from his 
 predecessor, already out of date in the change in the 
 conditions of art effected in the brief interval between 
 the two. The extension of the use of printing had 
 
54 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 wrought a revolution which, in obviating the necessity 
 for oral declamation, had deprived poetry of its original 
 raiso?i d'etre. The exquisitely finished exordium and 
 close of each canto in the " Orlando Innamorato " 
 divided it into separate instalments for recitation by 
 the singer, who resorts to the device practised by all 
 story-tellers from Scheherazade onwards, of holding on 
 the interest of his auditors by suspending his narrative 
 at the most thrilling crisis. The " Orlando Furioso," on 
 the other hand, though cast in the same mould as its 
 predecessor, was printed and published in strictly modern 
 fashion before being submitted to its author's patron, the 
 Cardinal of Este. The poetical forms adopted from the 
 earlier poem have therefore lost their real meaning, and 
 only survive as stereotyped and fossilised conventions. 
 The canto has become a chapter, the glorified ballad- 
 singer is merged in the courtly poet laureate, and the 
 romantic poem has become literature in ceasing to be 
 song. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Charlemagne s Tournament 
 
 In the brilliant opening of the "Orlando Innamorato " 
 we have the pure creation of Boiardo's imagination, as 
 the incidents are entirely of his own invention. True, 
 he introduces the stock figures of popular romance, 
 assuming a certain familiarity with their previous history 
 on the part of his audience, but he invests them with an 
 absolutely new invididuality, and clothes them for the 
 first time with the semblance of flesh and blood. The 
 puppet heroes of mediaeval fable take on the lineaments 
 of living actors on his crowded stage, and if his heroines 
 are of more conventional type, they are, at least, strongly 
 differentiated. While flagrantly violating all historical, 
 geographical, and archaeological truth, he adheres closely 
 to the unalterable facts of human nature, and never loses 
 sight of the essential distinctions of character between his 
 personages amid all the fantastic wizardry of his narration. 
 Their introduction on the scene in the first act of his drama 
 is perhaps the most vividly descriptive passage in early- 
 song. The curtain rises on it in the following fashion : 
 
 Fair Sirs and gallant knights assembled here, 
 
 To list to stories rich in new delight, 
 In silence, prithee, give attentive ear 
 
 To the fair tale my song shall now recite, 
 
56 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Then shall ye hear of actions without peer, 
 
 Of lofty toils and deeds of wondrous might, 
 By bold Orlando wrought 'neath Love's constraining, 
 What time King Charles as Emperor was reigning. 
 
 Nor deem it, Sire, so strange a thing if I, 
 
 Of great Orlando as enamoured tell, 
 For nought there is so proud beneath the sky 
 
 But is subdued by Love's o'ermastering spell, 
 Not strength of arm, or soul of courage high, 
 
 Not shield or mail nor sword so sharp and fell, 
 Nor other power, what might soe'er it wieldeth, 
 But unto Love succumbeth straight, and yieldeth. 
 
 This novel tale to few indeed is known, 
 
 By Turpin's self concealed — who deemed perchance, 
 
 Its tenor, to the valiant Count if shown, 
 
 Might umbrage give, and eke be viewed askance, 
 
 Since he was loser, matched 'gainst Love alone, 
 Who conquered all things else, as tells romance, 
 
 To wit Orlando — knight of fame and glory — 
 
 No more of preface — come we to my story. 
 
 " Orl. Inn." book i. canto i. stanzas 1 et seq. 
 
 He here claims originality for his tale with the fiction 
 that Turpin had deliberately suppressed it out of deference 
 to Orlando, and he then digresses to the doings of another 
 personage, Gradasso, for which he cites the Archbishop's 
 chronicle as authority, as was his wont for many incidents 
 not to be found in it, returning then to the tournament as 
 follows : 
 
 But here I leave him to his projects vain, 
 
 Since of his coming ye shall duly hear ; 
 To turn once more to France and Charlemayne, 
 
 Who musters baron stout and chevalier 
 And calls all Christian princes to his train, 
 
 Each duke and lord, and paladin and peer, 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 57 
 
 To the great tournament which he proposes 
 To hold in May-tide, at the Pasch of Roses.* 
 
 In court are gathered peer and paladin, 
 The feast to honour with observance due, 
 
 And from all sides and furthest bounds flock in 
 To Paris, crowds of people not a few ; 
 
 And thither Saracens their way too win, 
 For royal court was cried the world unto ; 
 
 And all received safe-conduct, say narrators, 
 
 Save only they were renegades or traitors. 
 
 And folk of Spain swarmed thick in every place, 
 Come in the train of barons great and high ; 
 
 Of King Gradonio with the serpent-face, 
 And Ferraguto of the dragon-eye ; 
 
 King Balugante, kin to Charles's race, 
 And Isolier, to Serpentin aye nigh, 
 
 And many more of noble rank and title, 
 
 Who shall be mentioned in the joust's recital. 
 
 With instruments did Paris all resound, 
 And bells and drums and clarions stirred the air ; 
 
 And war-horses with trappings were led round, 
 Of antique fashion now disused and rare ; 
 
 And gauds of gold and jewels did abound, 
 
 And tongues past counting were heard spoken there, 
 
 For all, to do the emperor's good pleasure, 
 
 Adorned their persons without stint or measure. 
 
 And now, as the eventful day drew near, 
 
 When the great joust they should begin to fight, 
 
 King Charles, in royal robes with festive cheer, 
 Unto his banquet-table bade invite 
 
 Each noble baron, lord, and cavalier, 
 
 Who came his feast to honour with their might ; 
 
 The numbers at that banquet ranged with cover, 
 
 Were thousands twenty-two, with thirty over. 
 
 * Whitsuntide, in Italian Pasqua Rosa, a favourite season for 
 tournaments in the old romances, Arthurian and Carolingian. 
 
58 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 King Charlemayne, with jocund face and mien, 
 
 Amid his paladins on golden chair, 
 High-seated at the table round, was seen, 
 
 In front of him the Saracens grouped there, 
 Who neither bench nor table used, I ween, 
 
 But lay like couchant hounds on carpets fair ; 
 Their custom and their wont herein retaining, 
 And usages and modes of France disdaining. 
 
 To left and right the tables fair to see, 
 Were duly ordered, as my volume sings, 
 
 Crowned heads sat at the first, of high degree, 
 The English, Lombard, and the Breton Kings ; 
 
 Otho, and Solomon, and Desiderio, three 
 
 With whose renown all Christendom yet rings ; 
 
 And next them came in order of gradation, 
 
 The Christian princes, ranged by worth and station. 
 
 To dukes and marquises the second place, 
 To counts and belted knights the third doth fall, 
 
 The House of Mayence doth high honour grace, 
 And Gano of Pontier above them all, 
 
 Rinaldo's glances blazed, for that vile race 
 
 Of traitors, with proud mien and words of gall, 
 
 Derided him amongst themselves with laughter, 
 
 Because his garb theirs was not fashioned after. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 8 et seq. 
 
 Since the modern reader is less well informed than 
 Boiardo's contemporaries as to the history and position 
 of these personages, he should bear in mind that Gano 
 or Ganelon is always mentioned with detestation as the 
 traitor who, out of jealousy of Orlando, betrayed Charle- 
 magne's rearguard at Roncesvalles to Marsilio, one of the 
 Saracen kings of Spain. His personal appearance was 
 forbidding, as he was six-and-a-half feet high, with fiery 
 hair and glaring eyes. Silent and moody, he disbelieved 
 in friendship or any form of moral good, and was a pre- 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 59 
 
 cursor of modern pessimism. His castle stood on the 
 Blocksberg, the loftiest summit of the Harz Mountains, 
 afterwards accurst as the haunt of witches and demons. 
 Rinaldo's poverty was evidenced in his old-fashioned 
 doublet, the subject of the traitor's mockery. This 
 paladin, the cousin and rival of Orlando, was the eldest 
 of the sons of Aymon, whose castle of Montalbano or 
 Montauban stood on the banks of the Tarn, near its 
 junction with the Garonne. His virtues were those of a 
 soldier rather than a citizen, as he was no less rapacious 
 than valiant, and paid his armed followers out of the 
 plunder of travellers. When outlawed by Charlemagne 
 for killing one of his knights by throwing a chess-board 
 at his head, he and his three brothers lived as freebooters 
 in a wood, like English Robin Hood and his merry men. 
 When he and Orlando come to blows the latter does 
 not fail to throw these adventures in his face, with that 
 plainness of speech in which the paladins indulged when 
 excited. 
 
 The banquet is progressing gaily, the courses, ushered 
 in with trumpet flourish, are borne round in dishes of 
 massy gold, and wine is served in cups of fine enamel 
 from the Emperor's table to those he delights to honour, 
 when the festivity is suddenly interrupted by an un- 
 expected apparition. 
 
 Then all is mirth and festive revelry, 
 
 And low-voiced converse fair the ear delights, 
 
 King Charles, who on such height himself doth see, 
 Girt round by kings and dukes and doughty knights, 
 
 All Paynimrie holds worth no greater fee 
 
 Than ocean sands the whirling tempest smites ; 
 
 When lo ! a sight both novel and amazing 
 
 Holds him and all around in wonder gazing. 
 
60 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 For at the great hall's end, in stern array, 
 Four giants entered, fierce and overgrown, 
 
 And in their midst a damsel made her way, 
 Behind whom walked a single knight alone ; 
 
 The morning star she seemed at break of day, 
 A golden lily, or a rose new-blown, 
 
 In short, to sum the truth and reach a sequel, 
 
 No charms were ever seen that hers could equal. 
 
 Though in that hall was Galerana seen, 
 Though Alda, great Orlando's spouse, was there, 
 
 Clarissa, Armellina mild of mien, 
 And many another one whose praise I spare, 
 
 And fair was each, and virtue's mirror sheen, 
 Or rather fair had seemed, till showed more fair, 
 
 That flower of loveliness whose radiant glory 
 
 Eclipsed all other beauties famed in story. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 20 et seq. 
 
 The bevy of fair ladies described here may require 
 some introduction to the reader, although they disappear 
 henceforward from the page, humdrum wives standing a 
 poor chance of remembrance in competition with the 
 bewitchments of Angelica. Galerana was the wife of 
 Charlemagne, sister of one of the Moorish kings. Alda 
 or Aude " La Belle," as she was styled, daughter of the 
 Count of Genoa and sister of Oliver, was married to 
 Orlando, and Clarissa or Clarice, sister of Yon or Huon, 
 King of Bordeaux, to Rinaldo. Angelica tells her tale 
 and makes her petition to Charlemagne, introducing her 
 attendant knight as Hubert of the Lion, unjustly 
 despoiled of his dominions, and herself as his sister. He 
 desires to be allowed to challenge all the knights to 
 single combat, on condition that if once unhorsed they 
 are to consider themselves his prisoners, but if the like 
 mishap befalls him, she is to be the prize of the victor. 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 61 
 
 These terms being granted by Charlemagne, who is 
 represented as prolonging his interview with her for the 
 pleasure of gazing on her, despite his venerable years, 
 she withdraws to the rendezvous, a solitary pine beside 
 Merlin's Rock. The next actor in the drama is Malagisi 
 the sorcerer, a famous character in romance. He and 
 his brother Vivian, twin sons of Duke Bevis of Aygre- 
 mont, and cousins of Rinaldo, were both stolen in 
 infancy. The slave woman who carried off Maugis or 
 Malagisi was devoured by a lion and a leopard, who 
 then killed each other in disputing for the child. The 
 latter was found under a hawthorn, whence he is called 
 d'Aubespine, by Orianda the Fay, who brought him up 
 and taught him magic and necromancy. By these arts 
 he took from the Saracen, Anthenor, the sword Fusberta, 
 and from a demon, whom he cheated by personating 
 another fiend, the enchanted horse, Bajardo, who under- 
 stood human speech. Both these fairy gifts he bestowed 
 upon his kinsman, Rinaldo. No sooner has Angelica 
 left the hall than this potent enchanter discovers by the 
 evocation of his familiars that she is a false and foul 
 witch, the daughter of Galafrone, King of Cathay, while 
 the pretended Hubert is his son, Argalia, equipped with 
 an enchanted steed and armour, especially a gilded lance 
 whose touch unhorses the stoutest knight. Even more 
 celebrated than this magic weapon is the ring of Angelica 
 which worn on the finger counteracts all spells, but trans- 
 ferred to the mouth renders the bearer invisible. By this 
 talisman the incantations of Malagisi, who tries to take 
 her captive while sleeping, are, frustrated, and he is made 
 prisoner by Argalia, while she takes possession of his 
 book, and is mistress of all his magic in addition to her 
 own. 
 
62 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Meantime the number of knights claiming to do battle 
 for Angelica is so great that they have to draw lots for 
 precedence, and the first chance falls to Astolfo of 
 England, whose beauty, insouciance, and tendency to 
 harmless braggadocio combine to make him one of the 
 most vivid and genial figures on Boiardo's canvas. Here 
 is the picture of him riding forth to the combat at 
 Merlin's Rock. 
 
 The day to eve already had declined, 
 
 Ere all the lots were fully drawn at last, 
 And Duke Astolfo, high and proud of mind, 
 
 Demands his armour, nor is aught downcast, 
 Though coming night the day makes dim and blind, 
 
 He saith, as one in valorous mood set fast, 
 That he will bring this fray to swift decision, 
 Unhorsing Hubert in the first collision. 
 
 This Englishman, fair Sirs, I'd have ye know, 
 
 Astolfo, was of beauty past compare, 
 Rich, but his courtesy made fairer show 
 
 Than e'en his wealth ; of goodly dress and air ; 
 Less skilled perhaps in arms, for oft o'erthrow 
 
 In fray or joust unhorsed, fell to his share, 
 But to ill chance ascribed he each fresh stumble, 
 Remounted dauntless, dauntlessly to tumble. 
 
 But to our tale ; in armour he was seen 
 Well worth a kingdom's ransom fairly paid, 
 
 For round his shield were set great pearls of sheen, 
 And gold the shirt of mail where'er displayed, 
 
 But priceless must the helmet be, I ween, 
 For there a mighty jewel was inlaid, 
 
 Which, unless Turpin's volume be misleading, 
 
 A ruby was, a walnut's size exceeding. 
 
 His charger trappings wrought with leopards bore, 
 Embroidered thick, and all with gold o'erlaid, 
 
 Alone he started forth, nor any store 
 On danger set, as on his path he strayed. 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 63 
 
 The day was spent, and unto night it wore, 
 
 When unto Merlin's Rock his way he made. 
 And there the gorgeous knight the horn uptaking, 
 Blew a loud blast, far distant echoes waking. 
 
 Uprose stout Argalia at his note, 
 From where his bulk beside the fountain lay, 
 
 And armed him cap-a-pie from heel to throat, 
 In harness all complete without delay, 
 
 And on Astolfo rushed in white surcoat 
 
 Which o'er himself and charger flowed away, 
 
 His shield braced on, his lance set firm and steady, 
 
 Which had so many knights unhorsed already. 
 
 A courteous greeting changed the pair between, 
 
 The terms of combat were defined anew, 
 The damsel next was shown upon the scene, 
 
 And then to proper distance both withdrew, 
 Ere charging each 'gainst each across the green, 
 
 Their shields advanced, knees gripped, with balance true, 
 But lo ! scarce touched, Astolfo at six paces, 
 Dropt, while his heels did with his crest change places. 
 
 Stretched lay the Duke upon the sand full low, 
 And cried indignant, Fortune false and fell, 
 
 Thou in despite of reason art my foe, 
 My saddle's was the fault, thou know'st right well, 
 
 My seat I sure had kept an' 'twere not so, 
 And won yon beauteous dame by valour's spell ; 
 
 Thou hast contrived the chance to earth that bore me, 
 
 To give yon Pagan knight a triumph o'er me. 
 
 Astolfo ta'en those giants huge between ' 
 
 Is led within the tent by their stout arms, 
 But when he of his harness stript is seen, 
 
 The beauty of his face the maid so charms 
 Shown in its dainty grace and comely sheen, 
 
 That pity for his case her bosom warms, 
 
64 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And he by her was with such honour treated, 
 As to a prisoner might be duly meted. 
 
 Unbound and all unguarded did he stray, 
 
 In pleasant dalliance the fount beside, 
 While fair Angelica by moonlight's ray, 
 
 Gazed on his beauty when she could unspied, 
 And when 'twas dark, his limbs she bade him lay 
 
 Upon the couch the curtains' screen inside, 
 She and her brother with the giant warders, 
 Kept watch outside lest he transgress their orders. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 59 et seq. 
 
 The first light of day brings on the scene the next 
 champion, Ferraguto, a Saracen giant, spell-charmed, like 
 Achilles, against hurt, save in one vulnerable spot. Un- 
 horsed, nevertheless, by Argalia's magic lance, he refuses 
 to be bound by the terms of the duel, renews the fight, 
 puts his opponent to flight, and slaying the four giants, 
 pursues Angelica, who spurs her palfrey towards the 
 forest of the Ardennes in haste to escape from her rude 
 wooer. Astolfo, left alone upon the field, picks up 
 Argalia's lance, which has been forgotten in the confusion 
 of the Saracen's onset, and returns to Paris with the news 
 of what has occurred. Rinaldo and Orlando, both con- 
 sumed with jealous passion, set out secretly on the track 
 of the enchantress, who has thus lured the two mightiest 
 paladins from their duty. Orlando only yields to his 
 impulse after a protracted struggle with his better nature, 
 in portraying which Boiardo shows himself not without 
 psychological insight. Meantime the tournament goes 
 on in their absence, the terms being that one knight is to 
 hold the lists against all comers until defeated, when the 
 victor takes his place. Serpentino was chosen to open 
 the battle, whose initial stage is described as follows : 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 65 
 
 The day broke fair, and dawned with blithesome cheer, 
 
 Nor ever sun arose more fair and bright, 
 First on the field King Charles was to appear, 
 
 Unarmed save for his greaves, in public sight 
 High on a mail-clad steed did he career, 
 
 With staff in hand and sword upon his right, 
 And round his feet in service meet and decent, 
 Flocked counts and knights, and barons high and puissant. 
 
 Lo Serpentino to the field doth pace, 
 Armed cap-a-pie, a wondrous mien he wore, 
 
 A mighty war-horse did he curb with grace, 
 Which pawed the ground with ardour fretting sore, 
 
 This side and that curvetting o'er the place, 
 With eyes like coals, and bit all frothed o'er, 
 
 Neighs the fierce brute such strait place ill-befitting, 
 
 And snorts with nostrils through which flames seem spitting. 
 
 And in like mood his daring cavalier, 
 With visage set and stern doth him bestride, 
 
 Arrayed in splendid arms doth he appear, 
 Firm in his seat with mien and air of pride ; 
 
 Men, women, children, point at him and peer, 
 Such nerve and valour are in him descried, 
 
 As give to all full reason for discerning, 
 
 That none save he the prize hath hope of earning. 
 
 As cognizance and bearing of this knight, 
 
 On azure shield a golden star doth shine, 
 And on his lofty crest all richly dight, 
 
 And surcoat fair, was wrought a like design ; 
 His shirt of mail and helmet strong and light, 
 
 Were counted to be worth a royal mine ; 
 And all his costly armour shone resplendent, 
 With gem and stone, and precious pearl and pendant. 
 
 So in the lists this champion takes his place, 
 
 And after he had duly paced them round, 
 He like a tower stood in the central space, 
 
 While from all sides the trumpet blast 'gan sound ; 
 
 E 
 
66 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 The jousters from the corners inward pace, 
 Outvying in rich attire whereon abound 
 Such gems and gold and pearls for every wearer, 
 That Paradise their presence had made fairer. 
 
 A paladin comes first to claim the fight, 
 
 Whose armour is with silver moons besprent, 
 
 The lord of Bordeaux, Angelino hight, 
 
 Well skilled in war, and joust and tournament ; 
 
 Then Serpentin made sudden movement light, 
 So swift he seemed a whirlwind as he went, 
 
 While from the other side like tempest heady, 
 
 Comes Angelino, lance in rest made ready. 
 
 Then full in front, where helm and shield unite, 
 
 Doth Angelin strike Serpentin a blow, 
 But backward yielded not the doughty knight, 
 
 Who 'neath the stroke bent to his saddle-bow ; 
 With fall so sudden doth the other light, 
 
 That both his heels he to high heaven doth show, 
 The cry goes up from all the field uproarious, 
 He of the star is up to this victorious. 
 
 Ibid, canto ii. stanzas 32 et seq. 
 
 The series of combats that follows are described with 
 amazing life and spirit, so that the interest is never 
 allowed to flag for a moment, until a critical stage of 
 the mimic battle is reached in which after the defeat of 
 the principal Christians, Grandonio, a pagan giant of 
 irresistible strength and ferocity holds the lists. The 
 princes of the house of Mayence, true to their nature, 
 slip away lest they should be called upon to answer to 
 his challenge, after they have seen the mighty Oliver 
 flung from the saddle and carried from the lists insensible 
 with his helmet cleft in twain, but help comes from an 
 unexpected quarter, for the high-spirited Astolfo, who 
 had been partially disabled by the fall of his horse early in 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 67 
 
 the day, determines at least to strike a blow for Christen- 
 dom, although unaware of the potent auxiliary he pos- 
 sessed in the lance of Argalia. A characteristic description 
 of his demeanour as he takes his place as a spectator 
 among the ladies is given in stanza 55 of the Second 
 Canto. 
 
 Astolfo hath returned the crowd among, 
 
 Borne by a palfrey white of easy pace, 
 Unarmed, save that his sword beside him hung, 
 
 And midst the ladies he with smiling face 
 Disports him with gay speech and ready tongue, 
 
 As one who overflows with witty grace, 
 But while he lounges thus, Grifon unseated, 
 Is by Grandonio flung to earth defeated. 
 
 The like fate having befallen all his subsequent anta- 
 gonists, he is left master of the field, and with intoler- 
 able arrogance loudly taunts the Christians with their 
 cowardice. 
 
 But if ere this that Pagan proudly spoke, 
 
 His insolence doth now all bounds defy, 
 He cries to all in words that ire provoke, 
 
 Ye Paladins, who wine-cups love to ply, 
 The tavern seek ye, vile and dastard folk, 
 
 In other games than drinking skilled am I, 
 Bravely this Table Round the world defieth, 
 So long as to its challenge none replieth. 
 
 When now King Charles these insults heard dismayed, 
 And saw his Court the scoff of Paynim foe, 
 
 With troubled look and mien that fear betrayed, 
 He cast around his eyes that seemed to glow ; 
 
 Where now are those who homage should have paid, 
 And who forsake me in this day of woe ? 
 
 Where Gano of Pontier, Rinaldo great, or 
 
 Orlando's self, vile recreant and traitor ? 
 
68 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Vile offspring of vile dam, false renegade, 
 
 An ye return, may I this instant die, 
 If these my hands hang thee not without aid ! 
 
 These words and many more King Charles doth cry. 
 Astolfo from behind heard his tirade, 
 
 And slipped away, unseen of every eye, 
 Then home returning, all so quick arrayed him, 
 That armed within the lists he soon displayed him. 
 
 Not that the valiant baron deemed in sooth, 
 
 A vict'ry o'er the Paynim stout to gain ; 
 But only sought in loyalty and ruth, 
 
 To do his duty unto Charlemayne. 
 Firm on his horse, he seemed in very truth, 
 
 A peerless knight, surpassing all the train ; 
 But those who knew him said, By gracious Heaven 
 Some other help than this to us be given. 
 
 With graceful mien, his head inclining low, 
 
 Before King Charles, he said, My Lord and Sire, 
 
 This haughty foeman to unhorse I go, 
 Since such, I understand, is thy desire, 
 
 The King, with troubled face, where scorn doth show, 
 Said, Go, and help ye Heaven in strait so dire ! 
 
 Then to those round he cried in indignation, 
 
 We wanted but this last humiliation. 
 
 Astolfo vowed that Pagan to enslave. 
 
 A captive at the oar upon the sea, 
 Whence the fierce giant doth so rage and rave, 
 
 That never equalled could his anger be. 
 Now will I tell in my next canto's stave, 
 
 If by the sovereign Lord 'tis granted me, 
 Chances more strange, and deeds and marvels greater, 
 Than e'er were sung or written by narrator. 
 
 Ibid, canto ii. 63 ct seq. 
 
 The amazement of the beholders at the result of the 
 encounter, in which the magic lance proves its efficiency. 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 69 
 
 causes a scene of great commotion, and the astute Gano, 
 guessing that Astolfo's victory must have been due to a 
 "fluke," returns with his followers, thinking to wrest his 
 easily earned laurels from him. Foiled in this expecta- 
 tion, they resort to their usual expedient of treachery, 
 and after one has been detected and disgraced for an 
 attempt to hold his own against Astolfo by having him- 
 self bound to the saddle in contravention of all the laws 
 of the game, the champion is finally unhorsed by a blow 
 from behind in an encounter in which three set upon 
 him together. Thereupon ensues a row royal, as Astolfo, 
 assailed by the whole house of Mayence, first lays Grifone 
 low with a broken head. 
 
 His helm of steel alone kept life within, 
 Now in the lists behold the melley rage, 
 
 For Gano, with Macarius, Ugolin, 
 
 Armed 'gainst Astolfo furious battle wage ; 
 
 While Turpin and Duke Namo both strike in, 
 With Richard, and in aid of him engage, 
 
 From all sides rush the folk in tumult swelling, 
 
 The scandal brings King Charles to aid its quelling. 
 
 Who soundly doth belabour each and all, 
 
 And more than thirty heads hath broke, I wis ; 
 
 What traitor, or what rebel, hear him bawl, 
 
 Hath dared disturb my feast with scene like this ? 
 
 He turns his charger through the seething brawl, 
 Nor e'er a chance to ply his staff doth miss ; 
 
 His path the mighty Emperor soon cleareth, 
 
 As each in fear or homage disappeareth. 
 
 Ibid, canto iii. stanzas 23 et seq. 
 
 Astolfo is naturally infuriated when the house of Mayence 
 tries to prove him the author of the disturbance, and 
 Grifone kneels at Charles's feet to invoke justice upon 
 him. 
 
jo Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Inform ye, Sire, from all here, high and low, 
 I do beseech ye, how the case hath been, 
 
 And if ye find that I to strike the blow 
 
 Against the Englishman, the first was seen, 
 
 All pains will I in patience undergo, 
 Though I be quartered here upon the green ; 
 
 But if contrariwise proved his wrongdoing, 
 
 Let him who wrought the ill accept its ruing. 
 
 With error wrath so clouds Astolfo's mind, 
 That Charles's presence he esteemeth nought, 
 
 But cries, False traitor ! ill to thee comes kind, 
 Vile offshoot of vile seed, with malice fraught, 
 
 Thy heart within thy breast my hand shall find, 
 And tear it forth, ere we from hence are brought. 
 
 Grifone saith, I fear thee not a tittle, 
 
 And in more fitting place will show how little. 
 
 But here by reason's sway I hold me bound, 
 Lest I dishonour my good liege and lord, 
 
 But still the Duke doth cry, Malignant hound, 
 Thief, ribald, curst of Heaven, by man abhorred ; 
 
 King Charles with clouded brow then darkly frowned, 
 And cried, Fore Heaven ! Astolfo, by my word, 
 
 An ye mend not your manners and your speeches, 
 
 A lesson ye shall learn that sorrow teaches. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 26 et seq. 
 
 But Astolfo's rage has become uncontrollable, and the 
 whole series of incidents is brought to a close by his 
 consignment to prison for brawling in the royal presence. 
 They form in one respect the most instructive example 
 of Boiardo's style and genius, as entirely created by his 
 own invention without aid from chronicle or fable, and 
 they show that supreme power of narration which makes 
 him one of the first of story-tellers. The animated 
 scenes which he unrolls before us, from the stir and hum 
 in the streets of Paris, and the great banquet interrupted 
 
Charlemagne's Tournament 71 
 
 by the appearance of Angelica, to the combats at Merlin's 
 Rock, and the varied passages of arms in the tournament 
 itself, have all the life and movement of the animated 
 pictures in a kinematograph, and the action, while its 
 separate threads remain distinct, never flags for a moment. 
 Consummate art of construction is displayed, too, in the 
 way in which it is made to prelude the main subject of 
 the poem, in the departure of Orlando, lured from his 
 duty by a fatal passion, and in the anticipation of the 
 treachery of the house of Mayence, to which we may 
 suppose him in the poem, as well in the chronicle on 
 which it was founded, to have fallen a victim at Ronces- 
 valles. The first act of the great poem is thus like the 
 overture of an opera, which heralds its music by pre- 
 liminary and prophetic strains. 
 
 Tasso, who borrowed many suggestions from Boiardo, 
 has followed on the lines of Angelica's arrival to lure the 
 knights from their allegiance, in the appearance of Armida 
 in the camp of Godfrey of Bouillon on a similar mission. 
 She, too, entices the Christian champions from the 
 crusading host under pretext of seeking redress for her 
 supposed wrongs, and like her prototype relies not merely 
 upon her personal charms but on her necromantic arts 
 to aid her in the accomplishment of her purpose. The 
 Damascus enchantress plays, however, a double part and 
 embodies a dual thread of traditions, as her ensnare- 
 ment of Rinaldo associates her with that other group of 
 sorceresses of whom Circe was the classical original. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Hercules Saga in Mediceval Song 
 
 The earlier Renaissance in Italy might more truly be 
 called a Reveille, since it was rather an awakening than a 
 new birth. Literature slept in the infancy of tongues and 
 dialects resulting from barbaric invasion, but the hoarded 
 wealth of fable and fiction handed down from antiquity 
 had a vivid and abiding life in the popular imagination. 
 Dante, with the instinctive craving of genius for the 
 widest possible audience, first divined the possibilities of 
 the new hybrid speech, which he found, by a philological 
 miracle, ready shaped to his lofty use. There is no 
 Italian literature behind him, yet the "vulgar" idiom 
 becomes in his hands an instrument of the widest range, 
 capable of uttering the most sublime flights of thought, 
 the most abstruse ideas of philosophy, the most exalted 
 forms of religious symbolism. The divorce between 
 folk-speech and letters effected by the divergence of the 
 Romance languages from the parent Latin having been 
 thus set aside, the store of oral and traditional material 
 for tale or verse accumulated in the long memory of 
 ages was ready to be poured through the newly opened 
 channel of expression. 
 
 But the host of phantoms that peopled the brain of 
 Europe had not dwelt there without undergoing some 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 73 
 
 process of transformation or development. Fable bred 
 fable, and legend branched into legend, dropping some 
 of their original features and assimilating new ones as 
 they grew. And as mythology naturally lost its religious 
 associations in a Christian atmosphere, divinities became 
 humanised, and demi-gods were deprived of their celestial 
 kinship, in their later avatars. Shorn of many of their 
 attributes, they survived rather as personifications of 
 some persistent abstraction, than as personages with a 
 definite life history. 
 
 The favourite ideal of this fantastic world, like that of 
 the elder past from which it sprang, is that of the 
 embodiment of irresistible strength exercised on behalf 
 of right, representing in both cases the craving for justice 
 of a rude age, when violence could only be matched with 
 violence, and the brute strength of the oppressor van- 
 quished by that of the deliverer. The classical hero and 
 the mediaeval knight-errant are thus but variations on a 
 single type, around which gathered the most motley 
 accretions of fable and fancy. Hercules, the "strong 
 man " of Greek and Asiatic tradition, was the prototype 
 of many other rude saviours of society, and his name 
 sums up the most characteristic features of all. 
 
 In mediaeval legend, again, the nebulous fame of many 
 a doughty knight has gathered itself into the aureole of a 
 single figure, and folk-rhyme and epical romance are 
 agreed in immortalising Orlando as the supreme incar- 
 nation of the heroic nature. Thus, while the surviving 
 fragment of the French epos and the two great chivalric 
 poems of Italy are alike dedicated to his name, it receives 
 still more widespread glorification in the humbler 
 apotheosis of popular speech. "A Roland for an 
 Oliver" is an English equivalent for scoring off an 
 
74 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 adversary, as " Faire le Roland " is, in French, synony- 
 mous with swagger; while presumptuous boasting is 
 chidden in the Italian adage, " Chi parla d'Orlando, che 
 non vide mai il suo brando " (To prattle of Orlando some 
 make bold, Who ne'er his mighty broadsword did behold). 
 
 The Orlandian legend, with which the Rhine country 
 is especially rife, owing to the vicinity of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 Charlemagne's capital, survives there in the name of 
 Rolandseck, while in Italy the Paladin's name clings to 
 many a spot, from the Sasso d'Orlando at Susa to the 
 Passi d'Orlando on the Appian Way, from the Torre 
 d'Orlando at Gaeta to the Vicolo della Spada d'Orlando 
 in Rome, and to the Padiglione d'Orlando, as the old 
 church of St. Angelo in Bologna is styled. The village 
 of Corciano in Umbria proudly bears as its municipal 
 insignia the " Quartiere," or shield of Orlando, quartered 
 red and white, deriving the privilege from a legendary duel 
 between the hero and one Cornaletto, a Pagan magnate 
 of the place, who in accepting baptism at the hands of his 
 conqueror obtained permission to wear his cognizance.* 
 
 In a little shrine at Roncesvalles the relics of the hero 
 were long venerated, and an Italian traveller, Domenico 
 Laffi of Bologna, saw there, as late as the seventeenth 
 century, not only his stirrup, mace, and boots, the latter 
 said to have been occasionally worn by the priest when 
 saying High Mass on great solemnities, but also the 
 famous horn Olivant, still showing the split with which 
 it was cleft by the mighty dying blast 
 
 O'er Fontarabian echoes borne 
 
 to the distant host of Charlemagne. 
 
 * M Una Leggenda Araldica." Alessandro d'Ancona. Imola. 
 1880. 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 75 
 
 Although it is the elder Orlando of Boiardo and 
 Ariosto, as well as of the song of Taillefer, who is most 
 familiarly known in European letters, the youthful hero, 
 styled in caressing diminutive Orlandino, has a history of 
 his own, still more fondly remembered by the peasantry 
 of Southern Europe. This part of the Orlandian legend 
 is embodied in a book which may perhaps boast the 
 most enduring popularity of any ever written, since after 
 more than five centuries of existence it still forms the 
 Italian rustic's chief repertory of fiction. " I Reali di 
 Francia " dates in its present form from about 1350, but 
 still earlier authorities for the traditions of Orlando's 
 youth are found in the French language, in the " Chanson 
 d'Aspremont" and "Les Enfances Roland,"* composed 
 in the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth 
 centuries respectively. As, however, the principal scene 
 of both is laid in Italy, they may have originated in that 
 country, from a desire to naturalise there the great 
 champion of Christendom. Both stories are combined 
 into a continuous narrative in " Le Prime Imprese del 
 Conte Orlando," a comparatively modern poem in the 
 favourite octave stanza by the Venetian poet, Lodovico 
 Dolce, who lived from 1508 to 1568-69. 
 
 Orlando, according to these traditions, though not, like 
 Hercules, Jove-born, is at least of the highest earthly 
 lineage, since he springs, on his mother's side, from the 
 royal house of Pepin. Charlemagne's fair sister, Bertha, 
 having formed a clandestine attachment to a compara- 
 tively obscure young knight, Milo of Anglante, a cadet 
 of the illustrious house of Chiaramonte, her birthday 
 
 * Professor Saintsbury ascribes this Chanson to the twelfth cen- 
 tury. " The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory." 
 Edinburgh : Blackwood. 1897. 
 
76 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 festivities furnish the occasion of his surreptitious intro- 
 duction into her presence among her girl friends, 
 disguised in female attire. The Emperor's rage is so 
 great at the discovery of the trick that he condemns the 
 hapless lovers to the stake, and the sentence is only 
 commuted on the intercession of the sage, Namo of 
 Bavaria, into one of perpetual banishment. The pair, 
 now wedded, set forth on a long and toilsome journey 
 which brings them finally to Sutri, and here, in a cave 
 still known as the Grotta d'Orlando, the future Paladin 
 is born. Proving, like his classical prototype, a most 
 irrepressible infant, he rolls across the floor ere he 
 can be swaddled, whence a fanciful derivation of his 
 name from Rotolante, and requires four nurses to 
 supply his prodigious appetite. The serpents strangled 
 by the cradled son of Alcmene are paralleled by a 
 she-bear and cubs disposed of by the baby hands of 
 Orlandino, while his biographer dwells as follows on 
 the resemblance of his lineaments to those of the elder 
 hero : 
 
 The likeness of the child might truly know 
 
 Whoso the infant Hercules had seen, 
 Alike in limbs and stature did he show, 
 
 And kept that mould in after life I ween. 
 'Tis true his look was fierce, for there the glow 
 
 Of spirit bold, informed both glance and mien, 
 Yet was he aye in act humane and tender, 
 And white of heart as swan of milky splendour. 
 
 " Le Prime Imprese del Conte Orlando," canto ii. 61. 
 
 A little later on the poet describes his hero as accoutred 
 in a fashion that recalls the traditional garb and arms of 
 Hercules : 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song yj 
 
 But ten short years he counted — yet in might 
 The Hebrew Samson truly seemed to be, 
 
 A goat-skin was the garment of the wight, 
 And for a sword a sturdy staff grasped he. 
 
 Bertha, who bore her sorrow's crushing blight 
 And absent from her side did Milo see, 
 
 Laments that threat, or prayer, or wrath, or wailing, 
 
 In aught to curb the boy are unavailing. 
 
 Idem, canto iii. 54. 
 
 The parti-coloured quartering of Orlando's shield is 
 traced by one tradition to this period of his career, when, 
 having organised his little companions as juvenile 
 gueriDas, he wore a garment patched together from 
 contributions of cloth levied on them. Such a patch- 
 work blouse, called a "schiavona," was, in point of fact, 
 the prescribed livery of a beggar or slave, and adopted 
 as such by pilgrims. 
 
 Meantime the sturdy little vagrant's imperial uncle 
 had arrived in Italy, and in returning from Rome 
 chanced to make Sutri one of his halting-places. Here 
 he banqueted daily in mediaeval fashion, in a great hall 
 open to the public, and among the crowd who flocked 
 to gape at the royal meal, a winsome beggar-lad soon 
 became conspicuous by his bold bearing. The cul- 
 minating point of his audacity, when, taking literally a 
 jesting remark made by one of the gentlemen in waiting, 
 he snatched the first dish from the imperial table, is 
 described as follows by his poet-biographer: 
 
 But lo ! there comes with royal pomp, to meat, 
 The Emperor, with all his knightly train, 
 
 And at the festive board now takes his seat, 
 Where lords and marquises to wait are fain, 
 
 Poised Orlandino stands on ready feet, 
 Like hawk on wing, with eager gaze astrain, 
 
J$ Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 To watch the cupbearers in turn appearing, 
 Of whom the first is seen the table nearing. 
 
 Then Orlandino waiteth not I ween, 
 
 For him who should the part of butler play, 
 
 But without bow or reverence is seen 
 The vase with nimble hand to snatch away, 
 
 Regarding not those lords of haughty mien, 
 Nor caring right or justice to obey, 
 
 Off darts the boy in flight the bird's outspeeding, 
 
 Or Parthian arrow's airy rush exceeding. 
 
 Idem, canto iv. 28, 29. 
 
 The youthful marauder, encouraged by impunity, on 
 the following day lays sacrilegious hands on no less a 
 prize than the Emperor's own drinking-cup, thereby 
 attracting the attention of the monarch, who has him 
 tracked to his cavern home. The recognition of his 
 mother, and her reconciliation to her imperial brother 
 form the natural sequel of the episode. The theft of the 
 cup and the bestowal of the royal favour in requital of 
 an act of daring violence recall an incident of the 
 Herculean legend, of which they seem a distorted 
 version. For the Theban hero, firing an arrow at the 
 sun in resentment for the inconvenience suffered from its 
 rays, receives not only the pardon of Phcebus for his 
 impiety, but a reward for his intrepidity in the shape of a 
 golden cup. 
 
 The close of" Les Enfances Roland " having thus left 
 the child triumphantly reinstated in his natural position, 
 the " Chanson d'Aspremont " takes up the thread of his 
 adventures, when, as a boy of thirteen, he is confided to 
 the care of Archbishop Turpin, and detained in the 
 Castle of Laon, in order to prevent him from following 
 the Emperor on a fresh expedition into Italy. The 
 passage of the army, however, excites his martial ardour 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 79 
 
 to such a pitch that he finds means of escape, and 
 presents himself in the camp with four companions 
 mounted on horses unceremoniously requisitioned from 
 some Breton bumpkins. 
 
 In this campaign he performs two of his most famous 
 exploits, often the subject of allusion in the records of 
 his later career, the successive defeats of the Saracen 
 warrior-kings, Almonte and Troiano. The horse Brig- 
 liadoro, the sword Durindana, and the horn Olivant are 
 all trophies of his victory over the first of these antago- 
 nists, from whom was also adopted, according to this 
 version, the celebrated cognizance of the quartered 
 shield. 
 
 Thus accoutred with all his heroic paraphernalia, 
 Orlando had no other gift to solicit from fortune than 
 that of a wife, and with this the siege of Vienne enables 
 the chroniclers to provide him. Here, while Charle- 
 magne is engaged in reducing to submission his rebel- 
 lious vassal, Girart, the fair Alda, daughter of this 
 chieftain's brother, Renier of Genoa, is forcibly carried 
 off by Orlando, while inadvertently straying beyond the 
 walls. Rescued with difficulty from his tempestuous 
 wooing by her brother, Oliver, she eventually becomes 
 the bride of her ravisher, after her fate has been decided 
 by the issue of the famous five days' duel fought by the 
 two paladins on an island in the Rhine. 
 
 The story of Orlando's later career grows in com- 
 plexity in the hands of the two great Italian singers who 
 have chanted it, interweaving those exploits in which he 
 follows in the footsteps of his classical prototype with 
 what may be termed the stock business of mediaeval 
 knight-errantry. The strange alchemy of Boiardo's 
 genius fused without apparent incongruity the two 
 
80 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 opposite classes of adventures, metamorphosing at will 
 the material inherited from the elder past. The uncon- 
 scious freedom with which he recast his subject is 
 manifested in his treatment of the hydra fable, of which 
 the essential idea is retained in the power of self-multi- 
 plication possessed by the monster, while it is here 
 incarnated in a giant instead of in the classical dragon. 
 This formidable antagonist forms the last of a series 
 defeated by Orlando at the several gates of Falerina's 
 enchanted garden, and the description of the battle is a 
 specimen of the poet's wonderful power of vivifying the 
 ancient myths. The difficulty of the task is declared to 
 be apparently insurmountable, 
 
 Because a giant of vast strength and size 
 Doth, sword in hand, the entry guard amain, 
 
 And if in combat slain perchance he dies, 
 
 Two more spring from his blood upon the plain ; 
 
 The same as he, for each of these likewise 
 Doth other four produce if he be slain, 
 
 With infinite increase of his posterity 
 
 In ever growing numbers and temerity. 
 
 But ere unto that portal he attain, 
 All built of massy silver glittering sheen, 
 
 Much more for him to do doth yet remain, 
 And skill and knowledge will he need I ween, 
 
 Yet doubting fears the Count do not detain, 
 Too full of courage lofty and serene, 
 
 But to his heart he saith, that nothing feareth, 
 
 " He conquers all things who but persevereth. " 
 
 Thus with himself communing did he stray, 
 Down by the slope upon its northern side, 
 
 Where, as he reached the plain, before him lay 
 A flowery vale with level surface wide, 
 
 There tables white were spread in fair array, 
 In readiness a gushing fount beside, 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 81 
 
 And golden goblets on all sides were gleaming, 
 With savoury viands in abundance teeming. 
 
 " Orlando Innamorato," Part II. canto iv. 63, &c. 
 
 A book with which the paladin has been provided by 
 a friendly damsel warns him of a hidden snare, a chain 
 held by a Faun ambushed in the thicket, and designed 
 to entangle the unwary adventurer who should fall into the 
 trap so temptingly baited. Forewarned of the danger, 
 he slays the Faun, and proceeds to encounter the hydra- 
 natured monster at the gate. 
 
 When towards the giant doth Orlando fare, 
 Nor feels a moment's dread of such a fight, 
 
 His life had known so many, that no care 
 Of this one's issue can his soul affright, 
 
 On comes the monster huge, and from mid air 
 A furious sword-stroke deals with all his might. 
 
 The Count, on one side stepping did evade it, 
 
 And with his fairy brand full soon repaid it. 
 
 Above the hip he smote his bulky foe, 
 
 And chain and plate of mail were all in vain, 
 
 For through cuirass and hauberk crashed the blow, 
 And cleft him to the other thigh in twain, 
 
 With joy now did the son of Milo glow, 
 
 And deemed the combat o'er, the foeman slain, 
 
 And in the upshot took great pride and pleasure, 
 
 As his dead foe on earth his length did measure. 
 
 For dead he was, and in such streams around 
 
 His blood gushed forth that earth was flooded o'er, 
 
 But as beyond the bridge it touched the ground, 
 A fire enkindled round the pool of gore. 
 
 As soared the flame with living radiance crowned, 
 A mighty giant grew within its core, 
 
 Armed was he and seemed breathing fire and passion, 
 
 And then was born a second in like fashion. 
 
82 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 They seemed in very sooth true sons of fire, 
 As swift and fierce as though all flame within, 
 
 With mien aglow, and looks ablaze with ire, 
 And e'en the Count delayeth to begin, 
 
 Nor plan of action doth his mind inspire, 
 Since lose he will not, yet 'twere loss to win. 
 
 For though he overthrew them both, his trouble 
 
 When they were born again would but redouble. 
 
 Idetn, Part II. canto iv. 72, &c. 
 
 The chain with which the vanquished Faun had sought 
 to ensnare him is his resource in this dilemma, and with 
 it he eventually succeeds in binding fast both his 
 monstrous antagonists. To another series of his heroic 
 labours belongs one in which two famous classical feats 
 are combined, since he sows with the dragon's teeth of 
 the Cadmian fable a field ploughed by a pair of furious 
 bulls like those yoked by Jason. The supernatural 
 machinery is set in motion by a blast from an enchanted 
 horn, according to time-honoured prescription. 
 
 He raised the horn, and blew from lusty throat 
 As one who with its use was well acquaint ; 
 
 A peal of thunder seemed the mighty note, 
 Prolonged in distance ere its sound grew faint, 
 
 As on the ear its closing echoes smote, 
 
 A rock split open 'neath the spell's constraint — 
 
 A hundred fathom towered that cliff of wonder, 
 
 Which now with great convulsion gaped asunder. 
 
 And when the rock was cloven through and through, 
 Two bulls thence issued forth with dreadful sound, 
 
 In terror each his fellow did outdo, 
 
 Such fire and fury in their looks were found : 
 
 Their horns were iron, hair that backward grew 
 
 Did with strange hues each monstrous head surround, 
 
 Since here with black, and there with green 'twas tinted, 
 
 Now red, now gold, it shone and gleamed and glinted. 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 83 
 
 Orlando paid the book no more regard, 
 But turned to where the rock had split in twain, 
 
 Nor aught too soon was he upon his guard, 
 For with a crash the bulls rushed out amain. 
 
 Dismounted from Bajardo on the sward, 
 
 He firmly stept to meet them o'er the plain ; 
 
 The first came on, and stooped its head stupendous, 
 
 And struck the Count in flank with force tremendous. 
 
 Eight fathom was he flung, ere down he slipt 
 To earth again, with heavy shock and fall; 
 
 On came the second, and with horn steel-tipt 
 Broke through chain-armour, plate, and hauberk all. 
 
 Skyward once more he flew, then earthward dipt, 
 Till bones and flesh did sorely ache and gall, 
 
 No wound, 'tis true, had either foe implanted, 
 
 Since the bold knight was 'gainst all harm enchanted. 
 
 Ask not if turmoil did his soul confound, 
 
 No human tongue its state to tell might dare ; 
 
 As with his feet firm planted on the ground, 
 He showed his sovereign strength sublime and rare, 
 
 And strokes terrific dealing all around, 
 Made Durindana whistle through the air, 
 
 While on the horns and hide of each tormentor, 
 
 The doughty knight rained blows right, left and centre. 
 Idem, Part I. canto xxiv. 26, &c. 
 
 The bulls show signs of giving in sooner than the 
 champion, who on this occasion outdoes the feats of the 
 most famous Espada of the Corrida of Seville or Madrid. 
 The climax comes when, 
 
 At last Orlando seized, to end the battle, 
 One of the mighty horns of those fierce cattle. 
 
 His left hand grasped the horn, and thus held fast, 
 The beast, which bellowing loud, raged to and fro. 
 
 With bounds prodigious tried its forces vast, 
 But not for this Orlando would let go, 
 
84 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Bajardo's bridle he had loosed and pass'd 
 Beneath his belt, and yet did wear it so, 
 This, of stout chain-work wrought, the Count now seizes, 
 And with it leads the bull where'er he pleases. 
 
 And while the one he thus had tricked and tamed, 
 Still gripping fast the horn by which he held, 
 
 The other bull, to wrath more dire inflamed, 
 
 Wheeled round, and struck with ardour nothing quelled. 
 
 The Count then dragged the first to where, far-famed, 
 A marble pillar rose from days of eld, 
 
 To mark the tomb where King Bavardo rested, 
 
 As the inscription round its shaft attested. 
 
 Then with the bridle which the first had ta'en, 
 The second he made captive to his power ; 
 
 When to the column he had led the twain, 
 On both such furious blows he 'gan to shower 
 
 That all the rage of one and each did wane, 
 
 Nor halts that warrior bold, earth's pride and flower, 
 
 But so betwixt the bulls his sword disposes, 
 
 Its point in front, its hilt behind reposes. 
 
 Then of a trunk a cudgel stout he made, 
 And like a rustic set himself to plough, 
 • Before him urging those fierce bulls dismayed, 
 Compelled to tread the furrow straight, I trow, 
 With threats and blows his tree-trunk on he laid, 
 
 Such merry farming ne'er was seen till now, 
 As Durindana shears the ground it passes, 
 And cuts through sticks and stones, and roots and grasses. 
 Idem, Part I. canto xxiv. 35, &c 
 
 The next blast of the horn brings forth a monstrous 
 dragon, glittering in iridescent mail, and breathing flames 
 which consume in a trice the Count's shield and armour. 
 Even thus defenceless, he triumphs eventually and pro- 
 ceeds to complete the task imposed on him. The 
 passage descriptive of its fulfilment is especially charac- 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 85 
 
 teristic of the poet, since it exemplifies the strong realism 
 with which he works out his theme, never shrinking from 
 pursuing it to its ultimate details, however extravagant. 
 
 Thus striking at haphazard, to and fro, 
 
 In that blind struggle, dark and dim and drear, 
 
 Right on the neck at last he smote the foe, 
 And from the trunk the gory head did shear. 
 
 Which, taken by the Count, a horrid show 
 Made, as he grasped and gazed upon it near, 
 
 Streaked green and brown, vermeil and red and yellow, 
 
 The teeth he drew, each grislier than its fellow. 
 
 The valiant Count then doffed his helm, and laid 
 The dragon's teeth its concave space within, 
 
 Next to the new-ploughed field his way he made, 
 As the book's rhymes had taught — the field wherein 
 
 Was King Bavardo's sepulchre displayed, 
 There all the poisoned seed he planted in. 
 
 Turpin, whose word is nowhere to be doubted, 
 
 Says knightly plumes from the bare earth then sprouted. 
 
 Gay plumes, I say, that knightly crests adorn, 
 Rose by degrees from out the soil all round, 
 
 Then helms and mail-clad breasts grew up like corn, 
 Till bust and arms were clear above the ground. 
 
 First footmen, and then horse, came forth new-born, 
 All shouting Arms ! To Arms ! with martial sound. 
 
 With drums and flags and cries they come in surges 
 
 While on Orlando's breast each lance converges. 
 
 The Count, while gazing on this wondrous sight, 
 Saith in his heart, This foul and evil seed 
 
 With Durindana I must reap in fight. 
 If ill I fare, 'tis thanks to mine own deed, 
 
 Why doth the human race still take delight 
 In blaming others for their folly's meed ? 
 
 But he, in sooth, hath double cause for weeping, 
 
 Who evil sows, to harvest in worse reaping. 
 
86 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 The Count, this said, delayed not to be gone, 
 Since little time to arm himself remained ; 
 
 The doughty knight his armour buckled on, 
 But neither lance nor shield had he retained, 
 
 Sprung from the ground Bajardo's back upon, 
 He spurs him on, by lofty pride sustained, 
 
 Against the folk whose myriads round extended, 
 
 Doomed, though scarce born, to die ere day was ended. 
 
 Now to what purpose one by one to tell 
 
 The blows that rained — the wounds and bruises sore ? 
 Since Durindana, charmed by fairy spell, 
 
 Nor arms nor shield can stand as fence before. 
 Suffice it, Count Orlando, fierce and fell, 
 
 Despatched them all before the day was o'er, 
 When slain, upon the field their burial followed, 
 For corpses, arms, and steeds the earth straight swallowed. 
 
 Then, when the Count had gazed around each way, 
 And saw dispersed and slain those numbers vast, 
 
 Who in this life had made so brief a stay, 
 And in one spot from birth to burial pass'd, 
 
 He set unto his lips without delay, 
 
 The horn, to blow a third and final blast, 
 
 Achieve the quest, and be its trophy's captor, 
 
 As I shall tell you in another chapter. 
 
 Idem, Part I, canto xxiv. 52, &c. 
 
 The reward earned by the knight as the sequel of the 
 long series of preliminary labours successfully accom- 
 plished proves a disappointment to his martial ardour. 
 With faculties strung to the highest pitch in expectation 
 of the culminating struggle, he raises the horn once more 
 to his lips, with the following result : 
 
 So loud a blast he blew, that tired outright 
 
 Was the stout champion by the horn so weird, 
 
 Nought came to view, while day declined to night, 
 And much some mocking trick or jest he feared; 
 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 87 
 
 When lo ! a little spaniel, snowy-white, 
 
 Loud barking on the bloomy mead appeared. 
 The Count gazed on the hound, and said, By Heaven ! 
 To me some worthier quest than this be given ! 
 
 Idem, Part I. canto xxv. 2, &c. 
 
 He flings the book of instructions on the ground, and is 
 departing in disgust, when the damsel who had been his 
 prompter throughout implores him not to throw away 
 the transcendent gift now proffered by fortune. The 
 white spaniel is, she explains, the emissary of the Fata 
 Morgana, the dispenser of wealth, the guardian of 
 treasure, and by the assistance of the little beast the 
 favour of its mistress may be secured through the capture 
 of another spell-wrought quadruped, whose place in her 
 witcheries is set forth as follows : 
 
 Morgana, she of whom I speak to you, 
 
 Who doth, as queen, o'er all things joyful reign, 
 
 Hath sent her stag to roam the wide world through, 
 Which, white of hair, hath golden antlers twain ; 
 
 By magic art so wrought this end unto, 
 
 That never in one place doth it long remain, 
 
 But ever speeds, to flight than pause far apter, 
 
 And seeks through earth, but never finds a captor. 
 
 Nor could it e'er by any force be ta'en, 
 
 Save by assistance of the spaniel white, 
 Which first doth find it, then pursues amain, 
 
 And chases in full cry with all its might ; 
 Led by its voice, you then must track the twain, 
 
 For like an arrow's is their airy flight; 
 Six days untired the dog with clamour chases, 
 Then on the seventh, makes halt, nor further races. 
 
 For on that day a fountain's brink they gain, 
 Wherein the stag doth plunge in sore affright, 
 
 And without hurt or trouble there is ta'en, 
 To give its hunter fortune and delight, 
 
88 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 For six times daily doth it shed full fain 
 
 The antlers of its brow — each left and right 
 Of thirty branches, and their mass furcated, 
 May at a hundred pounds be roughly rated. 
 
 And thus such treasure shall you have in store, 
 When the enchanted stag you captive lead, 
 
 That you shall be content for evermore, 
 
 If wealth and riches make men blest indeed ; 
 
 And to the love of that bright Fay moreo'er, 
 Of whom I tell, you may perchance succeed, 
 
 I mean Morgana, beauteous, radiant-seeming, 
 
 And fairer than the sun at noontide beaming. 
 
 Ibid. Part I. canto xxv. 9 et seq. 
 
 This phantom animal resembles the brazen-hoofed, 
 golden-antlered, Arcadian stag chased by Hercules, and 
 fulfils a like function in drawing down on the champion 
 the wrath of its protecting divinity. But while the Greek 
 hero is visited with Diana's vengeance for the slaughter 
 of her nimble-footed favourite, it is for the contrary 
 offence of despising the chase of such a prey that 
 Orlando becomes the object of Morgana's persecution. 
 The slighted Fay evokes a fresh series of enchantments 
 in order to make him her captive, ending, after many sur- 
 prising adventures, in his triumph and her subjugation. 
 The number and variety of the Orlandian giant- 
 combats recall those of the stout Theban. Thus in one 
 he vanquishes his adversary as Hercules does Antaeus, 
 by lifting him bodily from the ground and squeezing him 
 till he is senseless. ("Orlando Innamorato," Part I. 
 canto xx. 23, &c.) In another he overcomes by 
 shattering his opponent's head with a blow of a club 
 used as a substitute for Durindana, then temporarily lost. 
 (Idem, Part II. canto iv. 15, &c.) In voracity, too, he 
 rivals his classical model, and the quarter of horse con- 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 89 
 
 sumed by him on his arrival at Albracca corresponds to 
 the quarter of an ox which forms a meal for Hercules. 
 One of the Herculean adventures is, on the other hand, 
 assigned by Boiardo to Rinaldo, who is robbed of a 
 damsel by a Centaur in crossing a stream, just as Deianira 
 is carried off by Nessus. 
 
 But in the interval of over half a century that had 
 elapsed before Ariosto took up the dropped thread of 
 his predecessor's story, the Greek myths had lost their 
 lately renewed vitality, and no longer put forth fresh 
 blossoms of gracious fantasy. The Olympian machinery 
 and nomenclature survived as properties inherited from 
 the past, but faith had faded into mannerism, and their 
 use was retained only as a form of literary affectation. 
 The new element of caricature enters into the later 
 Renaissance renderings of such fables, and there is 
 already a foreshadowing of Cervantes in Ariosto. Thus 
 the Herculean deliverance of Hesione from a sea- 
 monster is rather parodied than recast in the similar 
 intervention of Orlando on behalf of a fair captive, whose 
 plight is described as follows : 
 
 Approaching to the naked rock as near 
 
 As a strong hand might cast a stone with ease, 
 
 A plaint he seems — yet scarcely seems — to hear, 
 So faint his ear it reaches on the breeze. 
 
 He leftward turns, and 'neath the crag-wall sheer 
 Down by the water's edge a woman sees, 
 
 Bare, as when newly-born, of fold enswathing, 
 
 Bound to a trunk ; her feet the ripples bathing. 
 
 Because as yet too distant — and because 
 
 Her face is stooped— he knows not who is she. 
 
 Both oars he pulls in haste, and nearer draws, 
 All eagerness hereof informed to be ; 
 
9° Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 When lo ! the bellowing shore resounds, nor pause 
 
 Doth echo make from cave and wood and lea, 
 The waves boil up, and lo ! the monster neareth, 
 Beneath whose bulk the ocean disappeareth. 
 
 As from dark valley steaming doth ascend 
 A tempest-swollen cloud all big with rain, 
 
 And darker than blind midnight doth impend 
 O'er all the world, and daylight quench amain, 
 
 Thus swims the beast, and seaward doth extend, 
 And seems to fill afar the watery plain, 
 
 The ocean thrills ; Orlando nothing falters, 
 
 Looks proudly on, nor heart nor aspect alters. 
 
 " Orlando Furioso," canto xi. 32, &c. 
 
 The burlesque tendency suggested by the arrival of the 
 deliverer in a boat pulling a pair of sculls is carried still 
 further in the ensuing combat, whose issue is decided by 
 his cramming the anchor down the monster's throat. 
 These modernising touches show how completely the 
 feeling of the older world had vanished from later 
 Italian art, while its decadence is explained by its re- 
 tention of the dead forms from which the animating 
 spirit had departed. Ariosto with his farcical treatment 
 has given the coup de grace to antique fable, and in this 
 closing travesty of the Herculean myth we have a fore- 
 shadowing of the pantomime and musical farce of our 
 own day. 
 
 But the inexhaustible vitality of Greek fantasy has 
 secured for it yet another Renaissance in the revived 
 Hellenism of which, in English letters, Shelley and 
 Keats were the earliest, and William Morris the latest 
 exponents. French poetry has found a wealth of inspira- 
 tion at the same source, and as a contrast of modern with 
 mediaeval classicalism we quote one of the six sonnets 
 which M. de Heredia, the most brilliant living master of 
 
The Hercules Saga in Mediaeval Song 91 
 
 the neo-classical school, has dedicated to the illustration 
 of the Herculean legend. " Centaurs and Lapithae " is 
 the title of this specimen of the latest embodiment of 
 the undying creation of Hellenic fancy. 
 
 Unto the feast the nuptial throng doth crowd, 
 Centaurs and warriors drunk with merriment, 
 And flesh of heroes shows in torchlight blent 
 With fulvous hair of Children of the Cloud. 
 
 A laugh, a din, a shriek — the Bride, scarce vowed, 
 Struggles in hairy arms, her purple rent, 
 And hoof-strokes clatter on bronze armament, 
 While sinks the table 'mid the tumult loud. 
 
 But he who dwarfs the greatest rises now, 
 A lion's muzzle wrinkling on his brow, 
 Bristling with tawny hair — 'tis Hercules. 
 
 And through the mighty hall, from end to end, 
 Cowed by the eye which flames of wrath doth send, 
 The monstrous herd with snorts reluctant flees. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Circe the Island Goddess 
 
 The early popularity of the fable of Circe is shown by 
 its appearance in the Odyssey in two forms, both doubt- 
 less traditional variations of the same original. That 
 Calypso is but a duplicate of her sister-enchantress is 
 evident from the identity of epithet and language, both 
 obviously prescriptive, applied to them, as well as from 
 the general similarity of outline in their story. Both 
 island goddesses, they become enamoured of the wander- 
 ing mortal cast on their shores, and detain him in gilded 
 captivity, but eventually consent to speed the parting 
 guest on his way. They share the same descriptive 
 epithet, "of the braided tresses," * are similarly engaged 
 when first introduced in " singing with a sweet voice," as 
 they fare to and fro before a loom, and are clad in the 
 same fashion, " in a great shining robe, light of woof and 
 gracious," with a golden girdle cast about the waist and a 
 veil on the head. Mercury is in each case the agent of 
 deliverance, and " the goodly Odysseus " makes both his 
 fair hostesses swear a like oath "not to plan any hidden 
 guile to his hurt." Calypso is, however, a much more 
 shadowy personage than Circe, whose previous career, 
 
 * The translations are from Messrs. Lang and Butcher's 
 " Odyssey." 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 93 
 
 her murder of her husband, the Prince of Colchis, and 
 consequent exile by her family to a lonely island, seems 
 to give her a footing in the actual world on a substantial 
 basis of human turpitude. 
 
 Popular piety in the Middle Ages by no means called 
 in question the existence of the heathen divinities, but, 
 while dethroning them from the supernal heights of 
 Olympus, assigned them place and power in its own 
 demoniac mythology. Circe, however, underwent a 
 more gracious transformation, and was relegated to 
 that elfin world in whose fantastic creations Northern 
 fancy ran riot. Here we find her under many names 
 and in varying disguises — as the baleful but beautiful 
 fairy queen who selects a favoured mortal to share the 
 sensuous joys of her existence. In early British fable 
 she appears as the sister of Arthur, she who transported 
 
 Mystic Uther's deeply wounded son 
 
 to her enchanted Isle of Avalon when he passed from 
 earth. The mortal love of this fair dame was the knight 
 Ogier, called the Dane, though his country was not 
 northern Denmark, but the " Dennemark " or Ardennes 
 frontier between France and Belgium, the district which 
 conferred pseudonym and patronymic on William de la 
 Marck, " the wild boar of Ardennes." Legend tells how 
 Ogier was one day carried by his horse, Papillon, along a 
 track of light to Avalon. There, beside a sparkling 
 fountain, he sees a beautiful maiden who offers .him a 
 golden crown wreathed with flowers. He no sooner puts 
 it on than all memory of his former life is obliterated from 
 his mind, and he becomes the contented slave of the fairy. 
 But one day his crown slips off into the fountain, his memory 
 returns, and all the dormant feelings of his former self 
 
94 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 reawaken within him. He revisits earth to find that two 
 hundred years have passed away in what seemed a few 
 rapturous hours in Avalon. Charlemagne and all his old 
 associates have departed, and earth has no longer a place 
 for him, so he finally returns to fairy-land, where he still 
 dwells in a long trance ot bliss.* 
 
 The fountain in this legend is no chance accessory, for 
 Morgain in all her phases is invariably connected with 
 water ; and we must remember that Circe herself was not 
 only of oceanic lineage, but that her four attendant 
 maidens " were born of the wells and the woods and the 
 holy rivers which flow forward into the salt sea." 
 
 Now the water-loving nature of the fay is not only a 
 link with Circe, but serves also to connect her with a still 
 wider set of associations. For in Breton speech her 
 name, slightly disguised as Marie Morgan, is the desig- 
 nation of the mermaid or woman-fish, the form under 
 which Derceto or Atergatis, the Phoenician Venus, was 
 worshipped.! 
 
 In some cities of Asia Minor the fish, originally sacred 
 to this divinity, are still held in superstitious reverence, 
 though the pond in which they are enclosed has been 
 generally re-christened after Abraham or some saint ; 
 and even in Ireland a relic of the same Phoenician 
 worship survives in the "holy fish" believed by the 
 peasantry to inhabit the "holy wells" that abound 
 through the country. The water-fairy, Melusina, is 
 
 * " Curious Myths of the Middle Ages." By S. Baring-Gould. 
 
 t An early Greek coin represents Aphrodite standing on two 
 dolphins with tails coiling right and left, while she passes her 
 fingers through her long tresses with the traditional action of the 
 mermaid. The mirror, too. bestowed on the latter was part of 
 the paraphernalia of the Paphian Goddess. 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 95 
 
 of the same origin, but the class of stories in which 
 she figures diverge into channels foreign to the Circe 
 myth. The thread of legendary romance is thus ever 
 twined of many strands, baffling the attempt to trace it 
 home to a single starting-point. 
 
 The Fay Morgain or Fata Morgana is, as we shall see 
 later on, the most conspicuous representative of the 
 classical enchantress. The many-facetted invention of 
 Boiardo, however, gave a multiform aspect to every 
 theme he dealt with, and he created a group of guileful 
 goddesses, differing more or less from the original type. 
 But in the enchanted palace of the first of the series he 
 puts before us, as though to strike the keynote of similar 
 situations, the tale of Circe in its classical form, availing 
 himself of a favourite device of mediaeval poetry by 
 describing it as the subject of decorative representa- 
 tion. Such an arcade or loggia as he portrays, with its 
 frescoes of successive scenes, must often have been before 
 his eyes in the cloisters and churches of Modena and 
 Ferrara. 
 
 Orlando, the most redoubtable champion in Christen- 
 dom, having incautiously drunk from a bowl proffered 
 him by a lovely damsel on a bridge, has been thereby 
 deprived of memory, and enthralled to the fairy, Dragon- 
 tina, who keeps a preserve of knights similarly bewitched 
 to fight her battles and do her bidding. The paladin's 
 entry into the enchanted garden takes place as follows : 
 
 On Brigliadoro enters by the gate 
 The mighty Count of Brava dazed in mind, 
 
 He sees a palace wrought with art so great 
 As all imagining to leave behind. 
 
 A cloister fair and wide doth rest its weight 
 On amber shafts and base of gold refined ; 
 
96 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 With marbles white and green the floor is gleaming, 
 And gold and azure on the roof are beaming. 
 
 The Count then turned to view the fair arcade, 
 With walls three-fronting, painted every one — 
 
 The master's hand such cunning had displayed 
 That Nature here might see herself outdone. 
 
 'Mid other rare and curious things portrayed, 
 Through varied scenes a story seemed to run ; 
 
 Damsels and knights than buds in May were rifer, 
 
 And each one's name was writ in golden cipher. 
 
 There stood a damsel on the salt-sea beach, 
 
 Her face so tinted with life's vivid hue, 
 That whoso gazed half seemed to hear her speech, 
 
 As with soft words men to the shore she drew, 
 And then to beasts transformed them all and each, 
 
 Bereft of human shape, a bestial crew ; 
 As boars or wolves or lions some imbruted, 
 And some to griffins winged or bears transmuted. 
 
 And here a ship to reach the land is seen, 
 Thence stepping to the shore a cavalier, 
 
 Who, with his honeyed words and gallant mien, 
 Inflamed to love that damsel without peer. 
 
 The key that locked the magic draught, I ween, 
 In act to give him she doth next appear, 
 
 The potion yielding, by whose virtue aided 
 
 So many knights to beasts she had degraded. 
 
 Next was she shown by love so blindly led 
 For that bold Baron come across the main, 
 
 That, lured by her own arts, herself instead, 
 To drink of the enchanted cup was fain. 
 
 Turned to a milk-white hind as then she fled, 
 In hunter's snare behold her trapped and ta'en. 
 
 Circella hath the painter writ above her, 
 
 And giv'n the name Ulysses to her lever. 
 
 •' Orl. Inn." book i. canto vi. stanzas 47 et scq. 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 97 
 
 The story of the transformation of the enchantress into a 
 hind, unless of Boiardo's own invention, shows that the 
 myth of Circe had become sufficiently popularised in 
 mediaeval Italy to receive additions and modifications- 
 The situation of this, and similar regions of enchantment, 
 beyond a river, which must be crossed to reach them, 
 invests them with the island character traditionally re- 
 quired for their isolation from the everyday world, true 
 marine islands not being easily accessible to the paladins, 
 who travelled generally by land. After some tremendous 
 encounters, in which the enthralled knights are compelled 
 to do battle with their friends and kinsfolk, the Garden 
 of Dragontina is finally destroyed by Angelica's ring, the 
 deus ex machina of the poem. 
 
 Orlando meets a still more formidable sorceress in the 
 kingdom of Orgagna, where Falerina, princess of that 
 country, holds a number of knights in durance by the 
 potency of her spells ; but, like Circe, retains one by the 
 witchery of love alone. The Paladin, warned of the 
 dangers to be encountered here, is, of course, doubly 
 determined on the enterprise, and is presented by his 
 friendly informant with a book containing directions for 
 counteracting the various forms of enchantment about to 
 be encountered. The description of Falerina's garden is 
 interesting as an ideal mediaeval landscape, faithfully re- 
 flecting the surroundings of an ordinary Italian villa, and 
 suggestive rather of fresh and flowery pleasantness than 
 of any of the more sublime aspects of nature : 
 
 On the right hand a fountain spouted wide, 
 Its living wave in bounteous plenty shed ; 
 
 A marble figure standing in the tide, 
 
 Forth from its breast the gushing water sped, 
 
 G 
 
98 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And on its brow was writ, This stream will guide 
 
 To the fair palace whoso will be led 
 To lave his brow and hands the Count doth hasten 
 In the refreshing coolness of its basin. 
 
 Flanked was by a tall tree on either hand 
 That fountain all embowered in verdure green, 
 
 A stream it poured that gladdened all the land 
 With purest water of crystalline sheen. 
 
 It ran 'twixt blossoms on a flowery strand, 
 And was the same the writing meant, I ween, 
 
 Which on the forehead of the image printed, 
 
 The peerless Count had read, as has been hinted. 
 
 To reach the palace then he took his way, 
 
 There to resolve on further enterprise ; 
 And as his path beside the margin lay, 
 
 He gazed on the fair scene in mute surprise. 
 It was the very blossom-time of May, 
 
 That broke in flush of bloom before his eyes ; 
 Such perfumed breaths from all the place were stealing, 
 As filled the heart with every blithesome feeling. 
 
 Soft dales and pleasant heights the eye did greet, 
 And beauteous woods of larch and pine were there, 
 
 And birds on verdant boughs in cadence sweet, 
 Sang their wild wood-notes on the fragrant air ; 
 
 Rabbits and kids and stags with flying feet, 
 All creatures harmless and of aspect fair, 
 
 Swift hares and does, amid the trees were chasing, 
 
 The pleasant garden with their antics gracing. 
 
 Orlando took the streamlet for his guide, 
 And after he had gone some way, full soon, 
 
 Beneath a hill, the rising ground beside, 
 He saw a palace all of marble hewn ; 
 
 Yet saw not all ; since partly it did hide 
 Behind the trees around it thickly strewn ; 
 
 But when its stately mass he came close under, 
 
 He fairly lost himself for very wonder. 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 99 
 
 Since not of marble was that pile, the which 
 Had caught his eye athwart the green arcade, 
 
 But on the palace-walls of lofty pitch, 
 
 Enamels glowed, and scales of gold inlaid. 
 
 A gate it had of treasure all so rich, 
 
 The like to human eyes was ne'er displayed, 
 
 In height it measured ten, in width five paces, 
 
 With emeralds lined, and rubies on both faces. 
 
 Ibid, book ii. canto iv. stanzas 20 et seq. 
 
 Wall decoration has certainly made a great stride here 
 since the days when the companions of Ulysses in the 
 forest glades came upon " the halls of Circe builded of 
 polished stone, in a place with a clear prospect." The 
 dwelling of Homer's goddess would evidently have 
 seemed a very unadorned and unpretending structure 
 to the luxuriant imagination of the Italian poet. 
 
 The entry into Falerina's garden proves a task of super- 
 human difficulty, one door only being visible at a time, 
 which vanishes as soon as its guardian-monster is disposed 
 of, a process repeated at each in succession. Orlando, 
 however, is instructed by his guide-book how to proceed 
 in these emergencies, and when about to engage in single 
 •combat with one of the formidable janitors, a bull, the 
 touch of whose horn consumes like flame, takes the pre- 
 liminary precautions recommended. He fills his ears 
 and helmet with roses so as to exclude sound, and thus 
 protected, like the companions of Ulysses, proceeds with 
 the adventure : 
 
 Thus both his ears he had so firmly sealed, 
 With roses thickly crushed and closely wound, 
 
 That to his sense no outer stir appealed, 
 
 Though strained to listen for the faintest sound. 
 
 So to the stream beneath whose wave concealed, 
 Full many a one had watery burial found, 
 
ioo Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 A tiny lake it formed, in calm reposing, 
 With tranquil wave pellucid depths disclosing. 
 
 The Count had scarcely reached the brink, when lo ! 
 
 A gurgling eddy 'gan to fret and boil, 
 Up rose a Siren singing from below, 
 
 Hid from the sight her beauty's hideous foil ; 
 All woman what above the wave doth show, 
 
 All fish beneath, with writhing scaly coil, 
 Plunged to the waist, her lower limbs she covers, 
 What's foul doth hide, and what is fair discovers. 
 
 Then 'gan she sing in dulcet tones so sweet 
 The birds flocked round to listen to her strain ; 
 
 But scarce had come on airy pinions fleet, 
 
 Ere, lulled with sweetness, they to sleep were fain. 
 
 Nought heard the Count, but by the book's receipt, 
 A semblance of attention did maintain, 
 
 And listening feigned — then, as the volume bade him, 
 
 Down on the sward beside the marge he laid him. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 35 et seq. 
 
 While he feigns to sleep, the Siren approaches the shore 
 to slay him thus helpless, but has the tables turned on 
 her by the knight, whose stratagem enables him to take 
 her by surprise. Having slain her, he proceeds to dye 
 his armour in her blood with the following result : 
 
 No spot he leaves but is in gore imbrued, 
 His harness else, like wax upon the pyre 
 
 Had melted piecemeal 'neath the onset rude 
 Of the terrific bull, whose nature dire 
 
 When stirred to rage nought earthly had withstood, 
 Who hath one horn of steel and one of fire, 
 
 Consuming all with touch of flame and iron, 
 
 Save what had drunk the life-blood of a Siren. 
 
 Ibid, stanza 43. 
 
 We have here the fusion of the singing Siren with the 
 monstrous form of Scylla, which produced the mediaeval 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 101 
 
 mermaid. This hybrid, white endowed with the vocal 
 spells of the bird-woman of classical art, a creature not 
 of the sea, but of the shore, is adorned with the fish-tail, 
 wherewith the jealousy of Circe disfigured the maiden 
 Scylla. The association of the whirlpool with the 
 woman-fish is dimly conveyed by the Italian poets in 
 the eddy which always precedes her appearance, as in 
 the passage just quoted and a similar one in "Tasso," 
 while the original scaly-tailed woman or goddess was the 
 aquatic Venus of the East. 
 
 The Siren recipe having proved effectual in securing 
 him victory over the bull, Orlando encounters with equal 
 success an armour-plated ass and a hydra giant. The 
 three preliminary contests, in each of which one of 
 the senses, as in the one narrated, is the subject of 
 allurement, probably symbolise temptation in various 
 
 forms. 
 
 The destruction of Falerina's garden is eventually 
 effected by cutting down a tree, the golden fruit on 
 whose high and slender stem the Paladin had been 
 instructed how to pluck. The fairy herself, found con- 
 templating her image in a sword which she is endowing 
 with spells for his destruction, is made prisoner and 
 compelled to act as guide to another man-trap filled with 
 ensnared knights, in the realm of Morgana. 
 
 This elfin queen, the typical fairy of Italian song, is 
 associated with a curious natural phenomenon. In calm 
 weather, the inhabitants of Reggio, on the Straits of 
 Messina, see a phantom city, with towers and walls and 
 moving population gleaming beneath the gentian-blue 
 waves, and call this submarine mirage the palace of the 
 Fata Morgana. Whether her fictitious existence origi- 
 nated solely in the refraction spectre, or her name was 
 
<o? Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 only fancifully bestowed upon it, the association truly 
 indicates her position as a sea-witch, and Boiardo 
 accordingly not only establishes her in a subaqueous 
 realm, but assigns her, among other supernatural 
 insignia, two mysterious fishes who feed on gold and 
 silver. Teutonic fable, however, with which as a North 
 Italian he came in contact, steps in to modify her 
 character, making her the guardian of a treasure sug- 
 gestive of the Rhine Gold, the submerged hoard of the 
 Nibelung, whence the poet, embroidering his theme as 
 he goes along, proceeds to give her an allegorical signi- 
 fication as the goddess of Fortune in general. 
 
 Orlando is forcibly introduced to her kingdom by a 
 giant who seizes him in a combat on a bridge, and leaps 
 bodily into the stream, carrying him in his arms. The 
 wonders of the under world are then disclosed to 
 him as follows : 
 
 On through the grotto goes he without fear, 
 And travels there some three miles' length or so, 
 
 Without a ray the darkling path to cheer, 
 When marvel strange encounters he, for lo ! 
 
 A stone that shone with radiance bright and clear 
 Its ray like fire, in vivid burning glow, 
 
 Illumed his way, all things ai*ound defining, 
 
 As though the noonday sun in heaven were shining. 
 
 And by it was a stream before him shown, 
 Some twenty fathom wide, or maybe less, 
 
 And from beyond it shed its light the stone, 
 In a field piled with t;ems in such excess 
 
 As 'twould a volume take me to make known, 
 For in clear sky not stars so thickly press, 
 
 Nor spring such plenty hath of flowers and roses, 
 
 As there of pearls and gems the light discloses. 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 103 
 
 That river whereof I have sung before 
 
 Was by a bridge so scant and narrow spanned, 
 
 Scarce a half palm's breadth did it measure o'er, 
 An image iron-wrought on either hand 
 
 Stood, like a man-at-arms, to guard the shore ; 
 Beyond the bridge did the wide plain expand, 
 
 Where lay the treasure by Morgana hoarded, 
 
 Now hear the marvel strange that place afforded. 
 
 For scarce the son of Milo had set foot 
 
 Upon the narrow bridge, across to fare, 
 When lo ! the graven image standing mute 
 
 Lifts from the other side a club in air, 
 That blow, indeed, had fall'n with little fruit 
 
 If the Count's magic sword had met it there ; 
 But parrying stroke were vain, for, hear the wonder, 
 The bridge it smites, and straight the bridge goes under. 
 
 While yet the Count doth on this portent brood, 
 
 And greatly marvel as he thinks it o'er, 
 Lo ! now behold another bridge protrude 
 
 By slow degrees, where that had been before. 
 Orlando steps thereon in daring mood, 
 
 But need is none to tell the tale once more, 
 The figure bars the way across the river, 
 Doth strike the bridge, and straight the bridge doth shiver. 
 Idem, book ii. canto viii. stanzas 18 et seq. 
 
 This spell is frustrated by the simple expedient of jump- 
 ing across the stream, which Orlando, though in full 
 armour, clears at a bound, to find himself confronted 
 with fresh prodigies on the other side. Of these the poet 
 weaves a further web of mystery as he goes along, blend- 
 ing Oriental fable with the fantastic creations of his own 
 brain into a new phantasmagoria : 
 
 When he had come the meadow bank unto, 
 Where her vast treasure had Morgana rolled, 
 
 Before him, stiff and upright, came in view 
 A king who did a numerous audience hold ; 
 
104 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 All stood, while he was seated 'mid the crew. 
 His limbs were all compact of massy gold, 
 And o'er them layers closely were adjusted 
 Of rubies, pearls, and diamonds, thickly crusted. 
 
 All seemed that king to reverence and to dread, 
 
 Before him was a table laden fair, 
 With viands, as though for a banquet spread, 
 
 But all was wrought of hard enamel there. 
 A shining brand was hung above his head, 
 
 Which threatened death each moment from the air, 
 And on his left, removed by distance narrow, 
 Was one who held on bended bow the arrow. 
 
 And one stood by his side who seemed his twin, 
 So close resembling him in mien and air, 
 
 Who held a written scroll his hand within, 
 And this was what the legend did declare : 
 
 Nor wealth, nor all the goods that man doth win, 
 Which he possesses with such fear and care, 
 
 No power avails, nor pleasure finds admission, 
 
 Where they are gained or held in dark suspicion. 
 
 Wherefore that king such gloomy mien did wear, 
 
 And cast suspicious glances all around ; 
 Before him on the banquet table fair, 
 
 A golden lily the Carbuncle crowned. 
 Which like a lamp illumed with vivid glare, 
 
 The hall and every nook within its bound, 
 Although the square its mighty space did cover 
 A hundred fathom stretched each way and over. 
 
 With living rock all roofed and vaulted o'er 
 The place was, and round closely walled was it, 
 
 Thence exit was obtained by portals four, 
 Each richly wrought and carven bit by bit, 
 
 No window had it through which light could pour, 
 But solely by the Carbuncle 'twas lit, 
 
 Which in that cavern shed such radiant splendour, 
 
 J. hat scarce the sun the day more bright doth render. 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 105 
 
 The Count, who this meantime but little heeds, 
 
 Unto an entrance door directs his way, 
 But all so dark the vault as thence it leads, 
 
 The Paladin knows not which side to stray ; 
 But doubling back he from within proceeds, 
 
 In turn the other portals to essay ; 
 And tries them all with endless pains and labour, 
 More dark is each and dismal than its neighbour. 
 
 But while he stood absorbed in musing slow, 
 The wondrous stone enchained his heart and eye, 
 
 And to his mind seemed living fire aglow ; 
 But as in haste to snatch it he drew nigh, 
 
 The brazen figure with the bended bow, 
 Incontinent a hurtling shaft let fly : 
 
 The Carbuncle it struck, and its diffusion 
 
 Of radiance quenched 'mid clamour and confusion. 
 
 And on the instant lo ! an earthquake shock 
 
 Swayed all the place, and moaning shook the ground, 
 
 Bellowed on every side the hollow rock, 
 
 Nor was there ever heard more dreadful sound. 
 
 The Count stood firm and moveless as a stock, 
 As one in whom no fear was ever found ; 
 
 When lo ! the Carbuncle, the lily crowning, 
 
 Once more sheds light, the dark in radiance drowning. 
 
 Once more Orlando did its theft essay, 
 
 But scarce had touched it with his hand, when lo ! 
 
 The archer next the king without delay 
 Let fly a golden arrow from his bow ; 
 
 An hour this time endures the earthquake's fray, 
 The cavern rending as in earth's o'erthrow ; 
 
 The light vermeil, once more, when all is stilly, 
 
 Returns to crown with fire the golden lily. 
 
 Now doth Anglante's Count reflect how he 
 
 Can seize the beauteous stone of light the source ; 
 
 His shield he took, and placed a screen to be 
 Between the archer and his arrow's course, 
 
106 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 Then the Carbuncle snatched, and instantly 
 
 The arrow struck the shield with ringing force ; 
 But the vain blow it fully met and parried, 
 And the Carbuncle thence Orlando carried. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 24 et seq. 
 
 Finding his way through the grotto by the light of the 
 stone, the Paladin succeeds in rescuing Rinaldo and a 
 number of other knights enclosed in a crystal prison as 
 the captives of Morgana. Her affections are centred in 
 Ziliante, a beauteous youth, who is eventually rescued 
 also, after she has changed him into a dragon to guard 
 her bridge by the terror of his aspect. It is noteworthy 
 that she is the only one of Boiardo's elfin queens who 
 exercises this power of transformation, which is, indeed, 
 as in the case of the classical enchantress, a faculty 
 generally reserved for oceanic divinities in the fable of 
 all countries. Queen Labe, the Circe of the " Arabian 
 Nights," who transforms Prince Beder into an owl, is an 
 island sorceress ; Queen Gulnare, similarly endowed, is 
 a Princess of the Sea ; and it is in her capacity as an 
 ocean or water nymph that Morgana is equally gifted. 
 Boiardo was here the faithful interpreter of a tradition, 
 which he followed, perhaps, rather instinctively than 
 consciously. 
 
 In " Mambriano," a chivalric poem, of which the com- 
 position intervened between that of the " Innamorato * 
 and "Furioso," its author, Francesco Bello, known as " II 
 Cieco di Ferrara," introduces an island fairy, Carandina, 
 who resembles Circe in her attentions to shipwrecked 
 sailors. Mambriano and Rinaldo, who successively 
 arrive in this fashion, are rivals for her favour, until the 
 friendly wizard, Malagisi, plays the part of Mercury by 
 rescuing the latter with the aid of a counter-potion. 
 
 
Circe the Island Goddess io 7 
 
 The personal charms of Carandina are described in the 
 hyperbolical fashion of the day : 
 
 Had she but lived when Troy still ruled the land, 
 And Venus from the shepherd gained the prize, 
 
 Not to the goddess had he stretched his hand, 
 Nor Troy been burned to ashes in such wise ; 
 
 For as those fair and tender limbs he scanned, 
 And caught the lovely looks of beauteous eyes, 
 
 Not the mere apple for which gods had striven, 
 
 But Troy and his own self had Paris given. 
 
 As every star that gems the vault on high, 
 'Tis said its splendour from the sun doth take, 
 
 All beauty that on earth enchants the eye, 
 Is loved and honoured solely for her sake ; 
 
 As Zephyr lulls all storms with gentle sigh, 
 
 So her sweet speech a calm of soul doth make ; 
 
 Cheers noble hearts, and e'en the pusillanimous 
 
 Uplifts to actions lofty and magnanimous. 
 
 " Mambriano," canto ii. stanzas 31 et seq. 
 
 The abundance of water in Carandina's garden recalls 
 Calypso's island, where " the wells of four streams set 
 orderly were running with clear water, hard by one 
 another, turned each to a separate course," and the fish- 
 tank formed by the converging rills is not without a sug- 
 gestion of the ponds of Atergatis : 
 
 Full in the garden's midst a fountain gushed, 
 All bordered round with trees of beauty rare, 
 
 The home of birds, whose voices never hushed, 
 Poured dulcet music on the pleasant air. 
 
 Forth from the hill the sparkling waters rushed, 
 In many a rill to course the garden fair, 
 
 All hastening towards a basin broad and brimming, 
 
 Where various fishes in the depths were swimming. 
 
108 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 With every fruit that ripens 'neath the sun 
 Or teems on earth, the garden did abound, 
 
 And there, moreover, many a beauteous one 
 To earth denied was in perfection found ; 
 
 There all spoke love — there speech of war was none — 
 There Venus' self as reigning queen was crowned, 
 
 'Mid music, song, feasts, games, and joys yet rarer, 
 
 In all which Mambriano was made sharer. 
 
 Ibid, canto i. stanzas 64 et seq. 
 
 The burlesque genius of Ariosto found a congenial sub- 
 ject in the episode of the fay Alcina, left unfinished 
 by his predecessor, and devoloped by him into a true 
 Circe fable. Characteristically introduced with a faint 
 flavour of Phoenician tradition, while exercising her 
 power over fishes, this sea-witch is endowed by her latest 
 bard with those irresistible spells of transformation gene- 
 rally ascribed to her oceanic kinsfolk. The hero, Rug- 
 giero, borne to her island by the Hippogriff, or flying- 
 horse, ties up that aerostatical animal to a myrtle-tree, 
 which remonstrates in a human voice against such treat- 
 ment, and proves to be the Paladin, Astolfo, thus trans- 
 formed by Alcina. Ariosto, in his usual colloquial strain, 
 describes the newly-arrived knight as refreshing himself 
 after his journey when surprised by this marvel : 
 
 His parching lips in the wave cool and sweet 
 
 He laves, and through its tide his hands doth pass, 
 
 From out his throbbing veins to draw the heat, 
 Enkindled by the weight of his cuirass ; 
 
 Small wonder if it irked in course so fleet 
 Since not for brief parade he wore its mass, 
 
 But had, thus fully armed as for a tourney, 
 
 Made at one stretch three thousand miles of journey. 
 " Orl. Fur." canto vi. stanza 25. 
 
 The poet's vigour of language is exemplified in the 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 109 
 
 following homely metaphor borrowed from Dante ; while 
 the idea of the human myrtle was originally derived by 
 both poets from Virgil : 
 
 As when a log of wood with empty core 
 All void and sapless on the hearth is flung, 
 
 And the moist air that filled each gaping pore 
 By the flame's ardour from its veins is wrung, 
 
 With inner groans it seethes and splutters o'er, 
 Till its internal rage find vent and tongue, 
 
 So plains and moans and querulously grieveth 
 
 The injured myrtle, till its bark it cleaveth. 
 
 Ibid, stanza 27. 
 
 The courteous knight apologises, full of remorse for the 
 sufferings unwittingly inflicted on a sentient being, and 
 requests to hear the story of so strange a metamorphosis. 
 The imprisoned spirit introduces itself as Astolfo, the 
 English Paladin who, with the air of a lady-killer with 
 which Ariosto has endowed him, cannot refrain from 
 boasting of his conquest of Alcina : 
 
 Of gracious mien, triumphant still in wooing, 
 My very charms have been my own undoing. 
 
 He then goes on to tell his story, beginning with his 
 release with others from Morgana's prison by the arms of 
 Orlando : 
 
 Returning from those islands far and lone, 
 Washed on the eastward by the Indian sea, 
 
 Where in a dark and dismal grotto thrown 
 Rinaldo and some others were with me ; 
 
 Whence with that prowess for which he is known, 
 The Cavalier of Brava set us free. 
 
 I held my way along the sandy reaches, 
 
 Where in its rage the north wind howls and screeches. 
 
no Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 Led by our pathway and an adverse fate, 
 
 Upon a lovely shore one morn we came, 
 Where, looking o'er the sea was situate 
 
 The castle of Alcina, mighty dame. 
 And her we found, just issued from the gate, 
 
 Alone upon the beach, before the same, 
 Where without hook or line she drew the fishes 
 Unto the shore according to her wishes. 
 
 There nimble dolphins swam, and at their heels 
 Came the gross tunny-fish with mouth agape, 
 
 And oily-headed sharks and ancient seals, 
 
 Stirred from their drowsy sleep by many a cape, 
 
 Gilt-heads and mullet, salmon, blackfish, eels, 
 Swam round in shoals of every size and shape, 
 
 Sawfish and whales, all monsters of the ocean, 
 
 Thrust from the deep their mighty backs in motion. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 38 et seq. 
 
 Among the other marine monsters assembled is a whale 
 which the Paladins take for an island. Alcina, mean- 
 while, receives them courteously, but looks on Astolfo, 
 as he declares, with especial favour : 
 
 Alcina drew these fish from out the sea, 
 
 By virtue of mere words and muttered spell, 
 
 The Fay Morgana' s fairy sister she, 
 
 Twin-born, but first or last I cannot tell. 
 
 And straightway when Alcina looked on me, 
 As her face told, my aspect pleased her well, 
 
 With plotting skill and cunning she proceeded 
 
 To part me from my comrades, and succeeded. 
 
 Ibid, stanza 40. 
 
 She effects her purpose by entrapping him on the whale's 
 back under the following pretext : 
 
 And if you would behold a siren fair, 
 
 Who with her song doth pacify the deep, 
 
 To yonder island strand we will repair, 
 
 Where at this hour she ever tryst doth keep. 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 1 1 1 
 
 The mighty whale she showed, which floating there 
 
 We deemed, as I have said, an islet steep, 
 I ever rash and bold (in lamentation 
 I say it) ventured on the great cetacean. 
 
 Ibid, stanza 40. 
 
 The monster instantly puts to sea, carrying him and the 
 fay, who has also embarked on it, to her island realm. 
 Here he shares her power and splendour until the 
 moment comes for him to expiate his folly by his peni- 
 tential transformation : 
 
 Too late I knew her nature false and vain, 
 
 Which loves and unloves in a moment's space ; 
 
 But two brief months' duration had my reign, 
 Before a brand-new lover took my place. 
 
 The Fairy drove me from her with disdain, 
 An outcast from her favour and her grace. 
 
 And then I learned, since mis'ry truth discovers, 
 
 Like fate had met a thousand former lovers. 
 
 Lest they her life of wickedness declare, 
 
 When wandering hence by her caprices spurned, 
 
 On this rich soil she plants them here and there, 
 To olives some, and some to larches turned, 
 
 To palms and cedars some, while others share 
 
 The form which I by this green shore have earned ; 
 
 Some flow as streams, some rage as beasts ferocious, 
 
 As most doth please this Fairy's pride atrocious. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 50 et seq» 
 
 Ruggiero, even though thus forewarned, falls headlong 
 under the spell of the fickle dame, to whose allurements 
 the poet gives a secondary allegorical significance, which 
 may, indeed, point his moral, but which rather mars than 
 adorns his tale. The interposition of the good, but 
 prosy fairy, Melissa, rescues him and all the other knights 
 
112 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 from their degraded condition, finally vanquishing the 
 potent and perfidious Alcina. 
 
 The idea, however, embodied in her and her sister- 
 hood, of female fascinations rendered irresistible by 
 alliance with the supernatural had not yet disappeared 
 from Italian song, and it was reserved for a later age to 
 reverse the Homeric tradition by associating witchcraft 
 exclusively with age and deformity. Tasso's Armida 
 conquers more hearts by her beauty than by her incanta- 
 tions, though it is by means of the latter that she first 
 leads Rinaldo, the young Achilles of the Christian Iliad, 
 a captive to her island bower. In his description of her 
 emergence from the water preceded by an eddy in the 
 stream, as well as in the lulling power of her song, Tasso 
 closely follows Boiardo, though, unlike the earlier Siren, 
 she is entirely human in shape. The description of 
 Armida's palace, where the triumphs of love are depicted 
 on the walls, recalls, too, the passage descriptive of 
 Falerina's dwelling in the " Orlando Innamorato " : 
 
 A circle forms the rich and sumptuous hall, 
 And in its heart, the centre of the ring, 
 
 A garden is enclosed abloom with all 
 
 Of rare or treasured flowers on earth that spring, 
 
 Round in confusion rise arcade and wall, 
 By demons piled in mass bewildering, 
 
 And in their tangled snare of pathways winding, 
 
 The garden lies close hidden from all finding. 
 
 The greater entrance-way the pair pass through 
 (Since by a hundred the vast pile is gained), 
 
 There gates of sculptured silver fair to view, 
 On massy golden hinges creaked and strained, 
 
 But since art here material doth outdo, 
 
 They stopped to gaze upon the figures feigned, 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 1 1 3 
 
 Which lacked but speech alone for life's perfection, 
 Nor even that to cheat the eye's detection. 
 
 Distaff in hand, Alcides there tells o'er 
 Tales to Maeonian handmaids ; even he 
 
 Who routed Tartarus, the stars upbore, 
 
 Now turns the spindle, while Love laughs to see ; 
 
 With deadly arms that erst the hero wore, 
 Iole's feeble fingers sport in glee, 
 
 The lion's hide flung o'er her person slender, 
 
 Seems raiment all too rough for limbs so tender. 
 
 A sea is opposite ; with surges hoar, 
 
 Its broad cerulean fields are foaming white, 
 
 Its central space a double row spreads o'er 
 Of ships and arms, and weapons flashing light ; 
 
 Gold flames the deep, and all Leucadia's shore 
 With martial conflagration blazes bright, 
 
 Caesar leads Rome, Mark Antony the legions 
 
 Of Egypt, Araby, and Ganges' regions. 
 
 You might have deemed the Cyclades afloat, 
 Or crashing mountains in collision there, 
 
 So each on other rushed, so fiercely smote 
 The tow' ring ships together, pair and pair, 
 
 There darts and torches flew, there might ye note 
 The deep a ghastly load of slaughter bear, 
 
 But lo ! ere Vict'ry knew which side to favour, 
 
 The fair Barbarian Queen in flight doth save her. 
 
 And Antony, too, flies, forsaking those 
 
 Fond hopes of empire which had filled his breast, 
 
 He flies not — nay, no fear the hero knows, 
 Her flight he follows, led by her behest ; 
 
 In him behold a man in whom as foes 
 Love, wrath, and shame contend in fierce unrest, 
 
 As now on the fierce battle and its chances, 
 
 Now on the flying sail he turns his glances. 
 
 " Ger. Lib." canto xvi. 
 H 
 
141 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Tasso has modelled whole passages on corresponding 
 ones in Virgil, and Armida's reproaches, when Rinaldo 
 is released by the arrival of his comrades with a counter 
 spell, are copied almost literally from those which Dido 
 heaps on the departing Eneas. And as the woman has 
 vanquished the sorceress in her case, so modern romantic 
 sentiment here triumphs over the classical and mediaeval 
 spirit which had so long clung to the ancient story, and it 
 is henceforward invested with a new r character. 
 
 In Spanish literature we find it treated from this later 
 point of view, which Calderon has emphasised in the 
 title of his Circe drama, " El Mayor Encanto Amor " 
 (" Love the Greatest Enchantment "). In this version it 
 triumphs, indeed, on all hands, for only to its spell is 
 Ulysses vulnerable, while the enchantress, dying in 
 despair at his departure, finds all her witchcraft helpless 
 against its power. 
 
 Thus in the modern Circe the purely human element 
 alone survives, and the kernel-thought she embodies, 
 asserting the supreme spell of beauty over men's hearts, 
 stands out at last in bare simplicity stripped of all the 
 husks of fiction that had overlaid it. For a certain 
 recrudescence of popular taste had, in the Middle Ages, 
 again obscured what classicalism had tended to make 
 clear, restoring some of the ruder legendary forms dis- 
 carded by Greek culture. So while Hellenic Aphrodite 
 rises from the Paphian foam in undimmed loveliness, 
 having cast the scaly slough of the Eastern fish-god- 
 dess, her deformed progenitor, the grotesque mediaeval 
 imagination revives that monstrosity in the mermaid or 
 siren, whose close connection with the water-witch of 
 Italian song is proved by the identity of Montana's name 
 with the Marie Morgan, or woman-fish of Breton folk- 
 
Circe the Island Goddess 115 
 
 lore. The shadowy association which linked this hybrid 
 of the deep to the class of ideas more gracefully em- 
 bodied in the island goddesses, Venus,* Calypso, and 
 Circe, may be dimly traced in the gold-fed fish of Mor- 
 gana, in Caradina's well-stocked tank, in Alcina's pisca- 
 tory sport, and in the holy fish, the object of mysterious 
 veneration to the Irish peasantry. But if such survivals 
 do little more than remind us how completely we have 
 broken with the past to which they belonged, they also 
 show how deeply rooted in human nature must be a tra- 
 dition which has so long haunted the brain of mankind. 
 They point the moral that if Circe the sorceress is finally 
 deposed, Circe the woman lives and reigns for ever, and 
 that, as the motto of Calderon's drama puts it, Love is 
 still the greatest enchantment. 
 
 * Among other fables connecting Venus with the fish avatar 
 is one narrating how she and Cupid, meeting the giant Typhon 
 by the banks of the Euphrates, were so terrified at his aspect 
 that they jumped into the stream and took the form of fishes. 
 The Italian pesce d'apvile is perhaps connected with this worship, 
 April being the month of Aphrodite. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Fountain Magic 
 
 Belief in the magical virtue of wells and springs was 
 part of the universal nature worship common to primi- 
 tive man, and survived long enough in Northern France 
 to be denounced by Christian bishops, together with 
 other remnants of the ancient Druidical faith. But the 
 more exclusive association of love-spells with fountain 
 magic may be traced to the rites of the Syrian moon 
 goddess, identified under her various synonyms with 
 water as the source of fertility, and venerated in many 
 localities in connection with sacred ponds. Hence 
 Boiardo interwove, as usual, a double strand of fable, 
 when he linked the love-fountains of the Ardennes to the 
 spells of Merlin, the Cymric wizard. There is, indeed, 
 a parallel in Irish legend to the exercise by the latter of 
 his power in this region for the cure of a fatal passion. 
 The champion, Cuchullain, we are told, having, like so 
 many heroes of romance, been enticed away to visit 
 the fairy Fand on her happy isle, leaving his own true 
 love, Emer, pining in his absence, the wrongs of the 
 latter are avenged by the inconstancy of her rival, who 
 deserts her mortal admirer to return to her own realm in 
 the Isle of Man. He loses his senses and flies to the 
 mountains in delirious rage, but is cured by the Druids 
 
Fountain Magic 117 
 
 by the administration of " the drink of oblivion," which 
 he has no sooner swallowed than all memory of the fairy 
 and her enchantments is obliterated from his mind. A 
 similar potion cures the jealousy of Emer, which was of 
 the nature of insanity, and both are restored to their 
 normal state of mind. In Boiardo's version of the story 
 of Merlin's Fount, it had an analogous origin, having 
 been designed as an antidote to the philtre whence 
 sprang the fatal passion of Tristan and Iseult. Rinaldo, 
 enamoured of Angelica, is here the sport of its power. 
 
 Within the wood the amorous Baron tries 
 To peer, and what it hideth to seek out ; 
 
 A grove of shady bushes he descries, 
 
 Girt by a clear and rippling stream about. 
 
 Charmed with the fair and festive spot, he hies 
 Toward it straight, with neither fear nor doubt, 
 
 Where in the midst a fountain meets his vision, 
 
 Work not of human hands, but art Elysian. 
 
 Of alabaster wrought, all gleaming white 
 Its structure, and with gold so thick o'erlaid, 
 
 So richly ornamented and bedight, 
 It shone like flame within the flowery glade ; 
 
 Merlin 'twas built it, that the doughty knight, 
 Sir Tristan, by its magic might be stayed 
 
 From longer that fair Queen with love pursuing 
 
 Who later, as we know, was his undoing. 
 
 Sir Tristan, hapless wight, by dire behest 
 Of evil fate, ne'er reached the fountain shore, 
 
 Though often he rode forth upon the quest, 
 And far and near that country travelled o'er ; 
 
 Such virtue by its waters was posse'st, 
 
 The knight who drank it, hot with love before, 
 
 Was of the am'rous passion straight divested, 
 
 And her he erst adored thenceforth detested. 
 
n8 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 High stood the sun, and sultry was the day, 
 
 When Prince Rinaldo reached the flowery shore ; 
 
 All dewed with heat, and weary with the way, 
 He, tempted by the water bubbling o'er, 
 
 Leaped from Bajardo's back without delay, 
 And quenched both love and thirst, now felt no more ; 
 
 For that chill draught, once tasted, wrought its mission, 
 
 And straightway changed his am'rous heart's condition. 
 
 Now in his soul as vile doth he despise 
 Pursuit of thing so shallow, slight, and vain, 
 
 And e'en those charms which to his dazzled eyes, 
 Before seemed superhuman, doth disdain, 
 
 And from his memory drops in careless wise ; 
 For such strange spell that water doth contain, 
 
 That now his will, beneath its transformation, 
 
 Holds fair Angelica in detestation. 
 
 " Orl. Inn." book i. canto hi. stanzas 32 et seq. 
 
 Upon the feelings of the latter the counter-spell of the 
 Fountain of Love works a contrary effect somewhat 
 later, and the meeting of the pair with their sentiments 
 towards each other reversed is described by the poet 
 with the subtle self-mockery characteristic of the Renais- 
 sance, but less often found in Boiardo than in his suc- 
 cessors. 
 
 Forth from the wood in mood of lofty pride, 
 
 That warrior rode, who knew no thought of fear, 
 
 Thus lost in thought, he reached a river-side, 
 
 Where flowed a sparkling stream crystalline clear, 
 
 Its bloomy marge had nature prankt and pied 
 With every flower that spring-time bids appear ; 
 
 To shade the lovely shore from sun and weather, 
 
 A pine and beech and olive grew together. 
 
 The stream of love it was that sparkled here, 
 Not witched by Merlin's magic like the first, 
 
 For innate virtue in the waters clear 
 
 Here wakes in hearts of men love's fiery thirst ; 
 
Fountain Magic IX 9 
 
 Full many an ancient knight and cavalier, 
 
 By error led, hath sipped its wave accurst ; 
 Rinaldo drank not, since as was narrated, 
 His thirst he at the other fount had sated. 
 
 Lured by the beauteous spot, the knight was fain 
 Here for a while to rest and take his ease, 
 
 So loosing from Bajardo's neck the rein, 
 
 He let him graze the mead as he should please ; 
 
 In heedless mood he then reclined amain 
 
 Upon the marge to sleep 'neath shady trees. ^ 
 
 The Baron slept, nor sense kept watch to tell him, 
 
 The chance, as you shall hear, that next befell him. 
 
 Angelica, when from the dreadful fight 
 
 So fierce and obstinate, she fled away, 
 Reached the same stream, where thirst bade her alight 
 
 On the green sward, to drink without delay. 
 Now list to novel chance, how Love the sprite 
 
 Chastised the haughty dame that said him nay. 
 For, as the Baron 'mid the flowers reclining 
 She saw, love filled her heart with sudden pining. 
 
 Her snowy palfrey to the pine made fast, 
 Unto Rinaldo sleeping she draws nigh, 
 
 Looks on the knight, and feels her strength ebb fast, 
 And knows not, hapless maid, what course to try. 
 
 The mead was thick with blossoms strewn broadcast, 
 And lilies fair with moss-rose buds did vie, 
 
 Her fair hand strips and strews them ever faster 
 
 Right on the face of Montalbano's master. 
 
 Whereon Rinaldo waking lifts his eyes, 
 
 And sees the damsel stand above him there, 
 
 Who greets him with all honour, friendly-wise ; 
 But he, with clouded brow and altered air 
 
 Leaps to his saddle and in surly guise, 
 Rejects her gentle speech and greeting fair, 
 
 Through the dense thicket he before her flieth, 
 
 Who at his heels upon her palfrey hieth. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 48 et seq. 
 
120 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Bajardo's fleetness makes the race a hollow one, and 
 Angelica is hopelessly distanced by her quondam lover. 
 But as there is always a touch of nature even in Boiardo's 
 farcical situations, he infuses a ring of genuine emotion 
 into the lamentations of the fair pursuer, which enables 
 her to appeal, however remotely, to our sympathy. 
 
 Now would he but at least permit mine eyes 
 
 To rest a little while upon his face, 
 And thus to check or temper in some wise 
 
 The fire of love that me consumes apace, 
 All reason, well I know, my love defies, 
 
 But where love is, there reason hath no place ; 
 As harsh, and stern, and rude though I accuse thee, 
 Be whatsoe'er thou wilt, I thus would choose thee. 
 
 And while lamenting thus, she turned toward 
 The shady beech her gaze bedimmed with dew, 
 
 Ye blessed flowers, she cried, and blessed sward, 
 Who the dear touch of that fair visage knew. 
 
 How envious I of partial fate's award, 
 
 Which happier lot than mine bestows on you, 
 
 Since I would die this moment on condition 
 
 That unto me should come such blest fruition. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 48 et seq. 
 
 But Rinaldo is not allowed to escape with impunity the 
 wrath of the divinity defied, and love's vengeance is 
 brought about by a fanciful episode, perhaps suggested to 
 the authors mind by some antique representation of Cupid 
 or Apollo and the Graces. The scene is thoroughly 
 characteristic of his power of invention in handling the 
 threadbare themes of classical mythology, and is de- 
 scribed in what is perhaps one of the most exquisite 
 passages of purely fantastic description ever evolved 
 from the more sportive moods of poetry. In a glade of 
 the forest Rinaldo comes upon Love and his three com- 
 
 
Fountain Magic 121 
 
 panions dancing on the green, and all four, immediately m 
 turning upon him with reproaches for his treason to the 
 laws they hold sacred, pelt him with the flowers they 
 are carrying. The fair petals sting and wound like fire, 
 and the anguish they inflict almost reduces the knight to 
 death's door. The passage is one of those translated in 
 Dr. Garnett's admirable work on " Italian Literature," so 
 it would be superfluous to quote it here, and we only 
 append the stanzas descriptive of the termination of the 
 scene. 
 
 Nor could he tell if gods or men were those, 
 
 Nor prayers availed, nor aught such foes could rout, 
 
 And thus they tarried, nor e'er took repose, 
 Till on their shoulders wings began to sprout, 
 
 Of white and gold, vermilion blent with rose, 
 And from each plume a living eye looked out, 
 
 Not peacock-orbed, or other fowl's in seeming, 
 
 But like a lovely maiden's softly gleaming. 
 
 Then straight did they uplift themselves in flight, 
 And one by one unto high heaven upsoared. 
 
 Rinaldo on the lawn in doleful plight, 
 Now left alone, with tears his state deplored, 
 
 O'erwhelmed so sore with pain and woe, that quite 
 His senses ebbed away in grief outpoured, 
 
 And in the end such anguish did invade him, 
 
 That as one dead upon the swa^d he laid him. 
 
 Idem, book ii. canto xv. stanzas 30 et seq. 
 
 Thus ends the vision, which seems real while it lasts, 
 yet has the iridescence of a soap-bubble in its swift 
 transit across the stage. The neglect of Angelica's 
 flower greeting is avenged by a floral chastisement, and 
 the only cure to be found, as the knight is informed by 
 Pasithea, who returns with the message, is a draught from 
 
122 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 the Fountain of Love. He obeys the prescription, and 
 is at once healed of his wounds and restored to his 
 passion, which is, however, still doomed to frustration, 
 as its object, ere he meets her again, has steeled her 
 heart against him once more by a chance draught from 
 Merlin's Fountain. Thus the game of cross purposes is 
 played to the end by the working of these opposite 
 spells. 
 
 The idea of two fountains mutually counteracting or 
 correcting each other has its root in Eastern fable. Thus 
 in the Book of Sindibad, a youth on his way to marry a 
 princess is first changed into a woman by a draught from 
 one spring and then restored to his sex by drinking from 
 another endowed with opposite virtue. In another tale 
 a monkey is seen to transform himself into a man, and 
 vice versd by plunging alternately into two adjoining 
 pools. This miraculous quality of water becomes a love- 
 spell in classical legend, according to which oblivion of 
 passion was attained by a plunge in the river Selinus, 
 while the opposite character of Cupid's two sets of arrows, 
 the one sharp and golden, to act as the stimulus of love, 
 the other blunt and leaden as its soporific, was acquired 
 from immersion in different fountains. 
 
 In his version of the story of Narcissus, Boiardo treats 
 it as another instance of Love's retributive justice, and 
 grafts fresh outgrowths on his theme with the usual 
 licence of his luxuriant fancy. The sepulchre of Narcissus 
 thus becomes the centre of a whole cycle of love stories 
 and fountain magic. 
 
 Beyond the bridge a plain was seen to fold 
 Around the rock whence welled the fountain's wave ; 
 
 A sepulchre of marble did it hold, 
 
 Not wrought by human art that gorgeous grave, 
 
Fountain Magic 123 
 
 A script above in letters all of gold, 
 
 Ran thus : That soul in dreams doth idly rave, 
 Which of its own fair face enamoured sigheth, 
 Here sepulchred the young Narcissus lieth. 
 
 Narcissus was in times antique and dim 
 A youth so lovely and of charms so rare, 
 
 No picture painter's brush did ever limn 
 Could image forth a thing so passing fair ; 
 
 But scornful he as beauteous, for in him 
 As oft in others, grace with pride did pair, 
 
 For rarely are these qualities found parted, 
 
 Whence many a one hath perished broken-hearted, 
 
 And as the Queen of Orient did in sooth 
 The fair Narcissus love with fond excess, 
 
 And found him void of pity and of ruth, 
 Indifferent to her love and tenderness, 
 
 She pined in sadness for the lovely youth, 
 And wept from dawn to dark in sore distress ; 
 
 Addressing him such words of supplication, 
 
 As might have moved the sun from heav'n's high station. 
 Ibid, canto xvii. stanzas 49 et seq. 
 
 The imprecations of this slighted fair one on her death- 
 bed move the gods to grant the vengeance she claims, 
 and a fountain is again the instrument of retributive 
 chastisement. 
 
 And so did it befall, for to the place 
 
 Where gushed the fountain as my lay hath told, 
 
 Narcissus came, chance-led by sylvan chase, 
 Through having run a stag far through the wold ; 
 
 He stooped to drink, and saw his own fair face 
 There imaged, which he now did first behold, 
 
 And, gazing on't, was in such error taken 
 
 That his own semblance love in him did waken. 
 
124 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Now who such strange event hath heard amain ? 
 
 Oh Love's stern justice, how thy bolts destroy ! 
 Since o'er a fountain's brink he sighs in vain 
 
 For that which having, he can ne'er enjoy. 
 That soul so pitiless of others' pain, 
 
 By kneeling dames adored, who to the boy 
 Gave worship rather to a god belonging, 
 Now self-enamoured dies of hopeless longing. 
 
 And gazing on his image, fairest sight 
 
 The world contained, for beauty without peer, 
 
 Doth waste away for utter sheer delight, 
 And pine like withered lily, pale and sere ; 
 
 Or severed rose — so drooped the winsome wight, 
 Till the fair face of white and damask clear, 
 
 Dark eyes and merry glance, Love's food and fuel, 
 
 Fell Death destroyed, the world's destroyer cruel. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 53 etseq. 
 
 With the classical legend here narrated Boiardo in his 
 habitual fashion proceeds to weave additions of his own, 
 connecting it with the fanciful beliefs of a later chapter 
 of popular romance. For the Fairy Silvanella, coming 
 on the body of the dead Narcissus, still beautiful in 
 death, is smitten with his fatal beauty, and also pines 
 away after having erected for him the beautiful sepulchre 
 described above. She bequeaths to the fountain a fresh 
 set of maleficent spells, whose working is told as follows : 
 
 For she, desiring partners in that pain 
 Which lingering death in amorous pining brought, 
 
 Such malice in her woe did still retain, 
 That fairy spells she on the fountain wrought, 
 
 And whoso passed that way, nor did refrain 
 From looking on the wave with magic fraught, 
 
 Saw 'neath its surface girlish faces gleaming, 
 
 With wreathed smiles and fair and gracious seeming. 
 
Fountain Magic l *S 
 
 And such a charm is in their glances seen, 
 That whoso looks departeth thence no more, 
 
 But all dissolved in love, upon the green 
 Must die at last upon the flowery shore. 
 
 Here passed, in evil hour for him, I ween, 
 A gallant king, for daring famed, and lore, 
 
 Who with his lady rode, her name by token 
 
 Was Calidora, his Larbin was spoken. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 59 et seq. 
 
 This lady, widowed of her lord by the fatal fountain, 
 has taken up her abode close by, with the humane pur- 
 pose of warning others of the danger, and has engaged a 
 knight to prevent any from passing that way by force if 
 necessary. Here the story is linked on to the adventures 
 of Orlando, who with his companions chances upon the 
 spot, and is only dissuaded from doing battle with its 
 warder by the recital of its strange history from the lips 
 of the bereaved Calidora. 
 
 Here we have a perfect example of the amalgamation 
 of classical and mediaeval material by Boiardo, and can 
 trace step by step the process by which the watery 
 mirror-spell of antique myth shapes itself into a shadowy 
 suggestion of the Naiads' Pool of Teutonic fable. The 
 latter idea, in its fully developed form, is carried out in 
 his next specimen of water-magic. It will be observed 
 that the entire series forms a cycle, in which the subject 
 undergoes a species of evolution, assuming gradually a 
 more materialised, and, so to speak, anthropomorphic 
 form. Thus the original fable of a philtre in which 
 water acts as a love-medicine, either for cause or cure, 
 passes into the shadow myth, and this mirror-spell again 
 into the visionary glimpses of phantom faces. We shall now 
 see how this latter invention embodies itself in the actual 
 flesh and blood water-nymph, enjoying a festive and 
 
126 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 frolicsome subaqueous existence in stream or haunted 
 well. 
 
 The germ of this phantasy, to which the Naiad fountain 
 in which Hylas was drowned furnishes a classical analogy, 
 may be traced still further east, and in Persia a well near 
 the city of Kashan is to this day believed to be of un- 
 fathomable depth, and to have enchanted groves and 
 gardens at the bottom. The Persian hero, Hatim Tai, 
 again, jumps into a well in search of a certain vizier's 
 son, who had been enticed down by the beauty of the 
 Naiad Queen. He succeeds in his mission, but only 
 persuades the young man to return to his friends after 
 he has received his fair hostess's promise to visit him 
 above ground. 
 
 Of a similar character is the Rhine-country legend of 
 the origin of the celebrated spring of Baden, according 
 to which three young men, riding through the forest, are 
 accosted by three nixies, who rise from a well and invite 
 them to dance upon the sward. They do so, nothing 
 loth, but find themselves by a sudden subsidence of the 
 ground deposited at the bottom of a lake and confronted 
 with an irate water-king, who is with difficulty pacified 
 by his daughters' entreaties. The visitors are whirled by 
 an eddy to the surface after three magical pebbles have 
 been bestowed on them. The first is accidentally dropped 
 into the lake, raising a storm accompanied by a flight of 
 pursuing serpents ; the second falls on a rock whence 
 the Baden spring gushes out; and the third is retained 
 by its possessor without any noteworthy result, showing 
 that the end of the tale must have been forgotten, as 
 popular fable never reaches so " lame and impotent a 
 conclusion." 
 
 Water-fays, with Morgain at their head, play a leading 
 
Fountain Magic 127 
 
 part in Breton romance, and the Lady of the Lake, who 
 bestows Excalibur on Arthur, inhabits a subaqueous 
 palace, declared by Merlin to be " as fair a place as any 
 on earth." The mysterious Isle of Avalon, to which the 
 water-witch, Morgain, transports Ogier, belongs to the 
 same class of watery elysium, and the wreath of oblivion 
 with which she crowns his brow has its counterpart in 
 many aqueous spells. We shall now see how Boiardo 
 deals with all this legendary matter, letting him tell for 
 himself how his hero finds his way to the Naiads' Bower. 
 
 But first will I recount what chance befel 
 Brave Count Orlando, led so far astray, 
 
 As ye have heard, by false enchanter's spell, 
 
 To where Great Charles seemed worsted in the fray ; 
 
 He deemed that all before him fled pellmell, 
 In headlong rout of terror and dismay, 
 
 Until they reached the sandy flats and surges, 
 
 Where Ardennes forest on the ocean verges. 
 
 A thicket there of verdant laurel grew, 
 Girt by a gushing fount's pellucid stream, 
 
 Where the accursed host was lost to view, 
 Dissolving into smoke like empty dream ; 
 
 That the Count wondered at a chance so new, 
 And portent so unheard, ye well may deem, 
 
 Who in that heat with droughty fever burning, 
 
 Passed to the wood, much evil fortune earning. 
 
 From Brigliadoro's back, when once inside, 
 He sprang to sip the fount that sparkled near, 
 
 And leaving him fast to a laurel tied, 
 
 Stooped from the bank above the ripple clear ; 
 
 Within its depths a structure fair he spied, 
 Which held him there intent on it to peer, 
 
 For there a crystal chamber met his glances, 
 
 With ladies thronged, who vied in songs and dances. 
 
128 
 
 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Those lovely ladies through the dance did wind, 
 And sung in cadence tuned to love's device, 
 
 In the fair crystal palace walled and lined 
 With gold and gems, inlaid with stones of price ; 
 
 The day already to the west declined, 
 When bold Orlando bent him in a trice, 
 
 To see the end of chance so marvel-freighted, 
 
 Nor further thought, debate, or counsel waited. 
 
 But as he was, all armed into the tide, 
 
 He plunged, and to the bottom went full soon, 
 
 To find him standing in a meadow, pied 
 
 With all the flowers that ever bloomed in June. 
 
 The gallant Count then to the palace hied. 
 With heart so light and in such merry tune, 
 
 That for sheer joy he never more bethought him, 
 
 Whence he had come, or what had hither brought him. 
 Ibid, book ii. canto xxi. stanzas 43 et seq. 
 
 The poet breaks off here to close his second book with 
 a peroration to his audience, leaving his hero in inglorious 
 captivity, and six whole cantos of the third book inter- 
 vene before he returns to his rescue, bringing three other 
 knights to effect it, with Fleur de Lys, the lady of one of 
 their number. 
 
 He in the camp — of Agermant I tell, 
 Was hailed with honour by the warlike train, 
 
 But now to further speech of him farewell, 
 While to my former tale I turn amain, 
 
 And of Anglante's Count narrate the spell, 
 Who found himself in strangest error ta'en, 
 
 Amidst the Naiads in the Fount of Laughter — 
 
 Now shall ye hear what chanced to him thereafter. 
 
 Within their watery home these Naiads dwell, 
 And like to fish disport themselves therein, 
 
 And mighty fabrics raise by magic spell, 
 For all designs of theirs attainment win ; 
 
Fountain Magic 129 
 
 The knights of earth they ofttimes love full well, 
 
 For life unmated doth fair dames chagrin, 
 Such fays abound from whom no art delivers, 
 Nor hidden only in the depths of rivers. 
 
 These in the fount that is of laughter hight, 
 
 A mansion beautiful beyond compare 
 Had built of gold and silver shining bright, 
 
 And in the festive dance disported there. 
 Already have ye heard Orlando's plight, 
 
 When from his steed dismounted unaware, 
 He in the dainty tide found fond illusion, 
 As I have told at the last book's conclusion. 
 
 And how the ladies welcomed, and were fain, 
 With pomp and revelry him there to treat, 
 
 Who all unfettered freely did remain, 
 
 Ensnared by love of the enchantment sweet ; 
 
 His face he mirrored in the watery plane, 
 While sense and feeling from his mind did fleet, 
 
 The Naiads, gay and mirthful beyond measure, 
 
 In gazing on him found their joy and pleasure. 
 
 Ibid, book iii. canto vii. stanzas 6 et seq. 
 
 An enchanted wood is among the defences with which 
 they have girt round their bower, and here surprising 
 adventures await the rescue party, consisting of Rug- 
 giero, Gradasso, and Brandimarte. Fleur de Lys has 
 armed herself with counter-spells, and bids them hew 
 manfully with their swords at the trees that oppose their 
 progress, but sore temptation assails them when they do 
 so. Ruggiero has no sooner cut down a laurel than dis- 
 comfiture overtakes him in the following fashion : 
 
 But when the beauteous tree was stricken low, 
 And in the dust its crown of triumph lay, 
 
 From out its trunk a lovely maid did grow, 
 With golden tresses shining like the day, 
 
 I 
 
130 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And vivid eyes like living stars aglow, 
 
 Who wept as one to torment sore a prey, 
 With speech so soft and voice so modulated, 
 The fiercest heart its rage would have abated. 
 
 Canst be so cruel, Baron fair, said she, 
 
 As to take pleasure in my wretched plight ? 
 
 If in my present state thou leavest me, 
 
 My feet as roots deformed will clasp this site, 
 
 My body to a trunk transmuted be, 
 
 My arms as rigid boughs stretch left and right, 
 
 This face rude bark will mask, these golden tresses 
 
 As leaves and frondage meet the wind's caresses. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 18 et seq. 
 
 The distressed damsel persuades the courteous knight 
 to lead her to the river, and the result may be imagined 
 by any expert in fairy tales : 
 
 As on the river bank the pair arrive, 
 
 The lovely nymph there took him by the hand, 
 
 And of his former self did so deprive, 
 
 One burning longing did his soul command, 
 
 Headlong into the living wave to dive ; 
 Nor did the lady his desire withstand, 
 
 But as they stood, thus arm and arm together, 
 
 They sprang into the stream's abysses nether. 
 
 Below in the fair palace crystalline, 
 They were made welcome with all festive glee; 
 
 There Sacripant did with Orlando pine, 
 And many a baron and much soldiery ; 
 
 The Naiads with them danced in glittering line, 
 And flutes and tabors piped of revelry, 
 
 And thus, in song and jest, and games and dances, 
 
 The days go by in joy that sense entrances. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 21 et seq. 
 
 A different form of temptation assails Gradasso, and 
 proves equally irresistible to his particular weakness. 
 His fortunes are recounted as follows : 
 
Fountain Magic 131 
 
 Gradasso had remained within the wood, 
 Nor found or track or pathway to win through, 
 
 And 'mid the trees his passage that withstood, 
 A feathery ash was ever first in view, 
 
 And as he hewed it with his broadsword good, 
 Lo ! a great war-horse clove the trunk in two, 
 
 With shining coat of roan and sorrel blended, 
 
 Dame Nature ne'er had made a steed so splendid. 
 
 The bridle in his mouth was massy gold, 
 
 His harness rich with pearls and stones so rare, 
 
 That for vast treasure it had well been sold. 
 Gradasso takes no thought and has no care, 
 
 That all is wrought in false enchantment's mould, 
 But he with courage high approaching there, 
 
 The broidered rein doth seize on undisputed, 
 
 And leaps into the saddle agile-footed. 
 
 Then straight the charger bounded into air, 
 
 Nor stooped again to earth, but through the sky 
 
 Did soar aloft and swiftly onward fare, 
 
 As one in dreams doth sometimes think to fly ; 
 
 No battle or assault in arms did e'er 
 
 Inspire with dread Gradasso's spirit high, 
 
 But here, I grant you, fear his breast assaulted 
 
 To see himself to such great height exalted. 
 
 For lo ! a hundred paces high and more 
 The phantom creature through the air did fly, 
 
 The Baron looked below, but still did soar, 
 On this strange ladder, as to scale the sky. 
 
 Good space of heaven they thus had traversed o'er 
 When 'neath them was the river seen to lie, 
 
 The beast enchanted then to earth descended, 
 
 And diving in the fount, its roamings e*ded. 
 
 Thus 'neath the wave Gradasso plunged amain, 
 While to the surface swam the mighty steed, 
 
 And hied him to the forest back again, 
 As swiftly as though wings his hoofs did speed ; 
 
132 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 But 'neath the water did the knight remain, 
 
 His heart within him changed in very deed, 
 And while all memory of the past forsook him 
 To sporting with the Naiads he betook him. 
 
 To sound of trump they trode a measure gay, 
 Unknown on earth its woven steps of glee, 
 
 And in each pass and pause they kissed alway, 
 With melting lips that never closed might be ; 
 
 And in such act all memory swooned away, 
 In lapse that easy pardon wins from me, 
 
 Who hold that such sweet kiss from lips so parted, 
 
 Converts with luscious touch the hardest hearted. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 24 et seq. 
 
 There now remains but a single knight to effect the 
 deliverance of his comrades, and the subtle allegorical 
 meaning underlying the whole passage is emphasised in 
 the fact that it is by the assistance of his own true love 
 that he is enabled to resist the spells of the alluring 
 nymphs. Brandimarte is here the type of constancy, 
 and is therefore alone worthy to be victorious in the 
 struggle with the enchantments that assail that virtue. 
 He owes his triumph to the aid of Fleur de Lys, and it 
 is achieved in the following fashion : 
 
 Of shrubs and trees he felled above a score, 
 
 And saw from each a novel task unfold, 
 Now giant birds that painted feathers wore, 
 
 Now fairy palaces, now heaps of gold ; 
 But all soon faded and were seen no more, 
 
 For Brandimart with front secure and bold, 
 No heed doth pay but left them all behind him, 
 And thus at last did near the river find him. 
 
 But when the Baron came upon the shore, 
 
 His face flushed over with a lively red, 
 And changed in mind, he by a longing sore 
 
 To plunge into the amorous wave was led ; 
 
Fountain Magic 13 J 
 
 To stress of strong enchantment given o'er, 
 Thought of Orlando and all else was fled, 
 And he had headlong flung himself demented, 
 If Fleur de Lys had not the act prevented. 
 
 For she with magic artifice had wound 
 Four wreaths or coronals of blossoms rare, 
 
 With herbs in strange and distant places found, 
 That freed from magic spell whoso should wear ; 
 
 With one now Brandimarte's head she crowned, 
 Then did from point to point his mind prepare, 
 
 With ordered plan, when in the enchanted river, 
 
 Orlando from its magic to deliver. 
 
 The gallant knight, when she her mind had spoke, 
 
 Incontinent his lady's hest obeyed, 
 And plunged into the river 'mid those folk 
 
 Who all around him danced, and sang, and played ; 
 But not like them with mind distraught and broke, 
 
 Saved by the garland Fleur de Lys had laid 
 Upon his brow, where it secure reposes, 
 Wove by her magic of enchanted roses. 
 
 As through those halls of revelry he strayed, 
 
 In the fair palace gold and crystalline, 
 On the Count's brows one coronal he laid, 
 
 And did forthwith the other two assign 
 Unto his comrades twain, then was displayed 
 
 To all the four at once the spell malign, 
 They left the ladies and their joys sad-hearted, 
 And from the stream reluctantly departed. 
 
 Like hollow gourds they floated where on high 
 Each martial crest did first to sight appear, 
 
 The helmets next and shoulders met the eye, 
 And then with ease they to the bank drew near, 
 
 Where swept aloft like airy butterfly, 
 That circles round the flame it holds so dear, 
 
 They by a mighty blast in air uplifted, 
 
 Were in a flash from out the forest drifted. 
 
 Ibid, stanzas 31 et seq+ 
 
'34 
 
 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Thus, in Boiardo's last water witchery, the true love-spell 
 has conquered the false, and in the progress of the idea 
 through his pages from the original fetish faith in a water 
 philtre, through the classical shadow-myth of Narcissus, 
 we have reached its ultimate phase in the mediaeval 
 phantom-fable, with its underlying moral and allegorical 
 significance. Here the old elemental beliefs practically 
 vanish from Renaissance poetry, for Ariosto, in taking 
 up the unfinished theme left him by his predecessor, 
 does so in a thoroughly modern spirit, and either aban- 
 dons or burlesques all the fantastic creations of the 
 wonder-world into which the elder bard transports us. 
 A materialist at heart, he craves for no super-sensuous 
 elysium, and sees no shadowy background to the world 
 of physical facts so vividly present to him. Love, in his 
 creed, needs no extraneous aid to reinforce its own 
 witcheries, and the siren-snares of fount and stream so 
 conspicuously paraded in the " Orlando Innamorato " are 
 superseded in its sequel by the personal charms of the 
 witch-woman herself. Merlin's Fount only appears to 
 introduce a series of tableaux from Italian history, with 
 no hint of its magical attributes, and no gnome or nixie 
 beckons from its brim to tempt the traveller to sip its 
 lethal wave. The illusory brain-phantasms of the 
 Middle Ages, the sylvan semi-humanities of the elder 
 world, vanish like ghosts at cock-crow, before the search- 
 light of that mocking genius by whom the haunting 
 presences of primeval nature are exorcised for ever from 
 the domain of modern song. 
 
 But Boiardo's water-spells were not exhausted by 
 those suggested by older fable or tradition, for the 
 closing cantos of his work contain the most marvellous 
 series of enchantments found throughout its pages, to 
 
Fountain Magic 135 
 
 which the wandering champion is introduced by a 
 Fountain Fay's instrumentality. Mandricardo, who here 
 makes his first appearance, is the hero of this adventure, 
 for a fresh set of actors take their places on the stage at 
 the opening of each book, and as Agramante, Roda- 
 monte, Ruggiero, and all the other African chiefs pre- 
 sent themselves in the initial chapter of the Second 
 Book, so Mandricardo, the fierce King of Tartary or 
 Scythia, sets out at the beginning of the Third to avenge 
 his father, Agricane, on his slayer, Orlando. Vowing to 
 take neither arms nor steed, but to win both on the way, 
 he starts, unarmed and unattended, on his enterprise, 
 and is met on its threshold by the following experience : 
 
 Thus wandering all alone had he passed through 
 Armenia's land, and many countries wide, 
 
 Till he one day did from a hillock view 
 A fair pavilion by a fountain side. 
 
 And with the thought straight bent his steps thereto 
 That if he horse or armour there descried, 
 
 By methods fair or foul would he endeavour, 
 
 To seize, nor would depart without them ever. 
 
 So when upon the level plain he trode, 
 
 He passed inside the curtains without fear. 
 
 Nor far or near a human creature showed 
 To guard the fair pavilion and its gear. 
 
 A voice alone from where the fountain flowed, 
 Low gurgling 'mid its water tinkling clear, 
 
 Said : Cavalier, ye by excess of daring 
 
 Are prisoner made, and stayed from farther faring. 
 
 But whether he heard not or gave no heed, 
 He to the words gave little thought or care, 
 
 But the pavilion searched to help his need, 
 If horse or armour he might chance on there ; 
 
 And arms upon a carpet spread indeed, 
 He saw, with all befitting knightly wear : 
 
136 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And to a pine-tree by the fountain's eddy, 
 Saw hitched a steed caparisoned and ready. 
 
 That gallant Baron, without heed or thought, 
 
 Did in that harness swiftly him array, 
 And took the steed, but when to go he sought, 
 
 A fire before him kindled was straightway. 
 The pine-tree first the conflagration caught, 
 
 And burned was to the roots without delay ; 
 The fire spread round about, on all things gaining, 
 The tent and fount alone untouched remaining. 
 
 Trees, grass, and stones, that place contained were swept 
 
 By flames devouring, in confusion dire, 
 While stretching wide the blaze advancing crept, 
 
 Till round the knight it closed in circling spire, 
 And on him last, the fire enchanted leapt, 
 
 And helm and shield and all his mailed attire, 
 The shirt of steel and chain and plate together, 
 Burned on his back, like straw in scorching weather. 
 
 In circumstance so strange the cavalier 
 
 Did of his usual courage nought abate, 
 But from his horse that lofty soul sprang clear, 
 
 And dashed right through the fire so passing greatt 
 When to the fountain come in his career, 
 
 In leaped he, to the bottom diving straight ; 
 No other hope of safety was there left him, 
 Since of his very shirt the flames bereft him. 
 
 Idem, book iii. canto i. stanzas 15 et seq. 
 
 Here he finds himself a prisoner to the Fountain Fay, 
 who has in her keeping the arms of Hector, brought 
 hither and bestowed on her by Eneas in gratitude for a 
 service she has rendered him. The sword alone is miss- 
 ing, for it has passed into the possession of Orlando, and 
 is no other than the celebrated Durindana, which the 
 winner of the rest of the trophy is bound to recover in 
 order to complete it. An extraordinary series of com- 
 
Fountain Magic 137 
 
 bats and enchantments then begin, in all of which Man- 
 dricardo is victorious. The story is worked out with 
 amazing verve and vividness, but some of the stanzas of 
 the closing scene must serve as specimens of the brilliant 
 descriptive passages with which the episode abounds : 
 
 The serpent slain, straight looked the cavalier 
 On the dark grotto, overhead and round ; 
 
 A carbuncle gleamed there as chandelier, 
 And like the sun by day, shone underground. 
 
 The tomb was from a single stone cut clear, 
 And so o'erlaid and with adornments crowned, 
 
 Of polished silver, coral, lucid amber, 
 
 A finger's breadth of rock showed not the chamber. 
 
 A lofty throne was in its midst upreared, 
 
 Of whitest ivory without a stain, 
 And on an azure cloth gold-starred and sphered, 
 
 Like altar-cloth or pall draped o'er it plain, 
 A knight all panoplied to sit appeared, 
 
 Who, as in rest, unheeding did remain, 
 Appeared, I say, not did so, be it noted, 
 The empty arms no human figure coated. 
 
 These arms those of the doughty knight had been, 
 Who is through all the world so much renowned ; 
 
 Of Hector, I would say, who, well I ween, 
 With every virtue prized on earth was crowned. 
 
 His panoply, whereof to speak I mean, 
 Without the sword, without the shield was found, 
 
 Where was the shield my verse above declareth, 
 
 The sword, hight Durindan, Orlando weareth. 
 
 The burnished plates shone dazzling to the sight, 
 Which scarcely suffered they on them to rest, 
 
 With gold inlaid and priceless jewels bright, 
 Great emeralds, rubies, pearls, all of the best, 
 
 Wild longing Mandricardo's heart filled quite. 
 A thousand years it seemed till in them drest, 
 
138 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 The hauberk and each piece he weighed appraising, 
 But most upon the ornate helm kept gazing. 
 
 Upon its crest a lion ramped in gold, 
 Whose paw held out a scroll of silver fine, 
 
 Beneath it, golden, too, the casque's close mould, 
 With six-and-twenty clasps of one design ; 
 
 But its full front the carbuncle did hold, 
 
 Which like a lamp illumed that dreary mine, 
 
 And as its nature is, shed radiance sparkling 
 
 Through every corner of the cavern darkling. 
 
 While still the knight stood gazing, as in awe, 
 Upon the arms, well worthy of such gaze, 
 
 He heard a clang behind, as who should draw 
 An iron gate aside, whose hinges graze, 
 
 And turning, many ladies enter saw, 
 Who moved in numbers through the dance's maze ; 
 
 Clad in strange garb and new, the ranks assigned them 
 
 They took, while pipes and shells rang shrill behind them. 
 
 And gambolling all round, they pirouetted, 
 
 And bounded vertically high in air, 
 And dancing thus, began a song that fretted, 
 
 On high notes, in shrill unison voiced there, 
 The strain, than starlings' keener, passion-whetted, 
 
 Through the lone vault resounded everywhere ; 
 Then in the end they ceased in hush unanimous, 
 And knelt down all before the knight magnanimous. 
 Ibid, canto iii. stanzas 25 et seq. 
 
 This adventure was directed to the glorification of the 
 house of Este, since Hector's arms and shield with their 
 cognizance, a white eagle on a blue field, were intended 
 to pass eventually into their possession. But this piece 
 of courtly flattery, which the poet's death cut short at the 
 stage here reached, was part of the treasure bequeathed 
 by him to the genius of his successor. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Lyrics of Boiardo 
 
 Few literary masterpieces have had so strange a history as 
 Boiardo's " Orlando Innamorato." Forgotten for over 
 three centuries in the land that gave it birth, while re- 
 produced in the disguise of a paraphrase, on the title- 
 page of which its original author's name did not even 
 appear, it was once more restored and brought to light 
 in a splendid modern edition, with exhaustive notes and 
 introduction, published in London in 1831 by Sir 
 Anthony Panizzi of the British Museum. 
 
 The first complete edition of the original text, pub- 
 lished at Scandiano in 1494, a year after the poet's 
 death, by his son, Camillo, was followed by fifteen 
 others, of which the last appeared in Venice in 1545. 
 It was entirely superseded, sixty years after its author's 
 death, by the " rifacimento," or adaptation of Francesco 
 Berni, a facile and humorous poet with a great com- 
 mand of the Tuscan vernacular. He takes many 
 liberties with the original, altering, omitting, and trans- 
 forming according to his own humour, and treating the 
 subject as far as possible from that comic point of view 
 which was so much his specialty that the adjective 
 Bernesque has been coined from his name to describe 
 this jocose vein in poetry. Thus Boiardo's poem fell 
 
140 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 into complete oblivion, and ceased to be reprinted, a 
 neglect which Signor Rajna attributes to " the pedantry 
 of language which has been so fatal to Italian literature 
 from the fifteenth century onwards." It is, no doubt, 
 full of archaisms of language, solecisms in grammar, and 
 antiquated or local phrases ostracised by the fastidious- 
 ness of the purists, but it has, nevertheless, a freshness, 
 of spirit, and an intimate sense of immediate inspiration 
 which have evaporated in the more polished medium to 
 which it was transferred by its remodeller. The tyranny 
 of the Tuscan tongue could alone have had power to 
 relegate so great a work to the limbo of literary 
 fossils. 
 
 It bears, however, every appearance of imperfect 
 transcription in the first instance, and perhaps even of 
 having been taken down in parts from oral renderings 
 current among the Lombard people, since Boiardo was 
 himself a man of high scholarly attainments and a 
 master of classical expression. Like all Italian poets of 
 his age, he made his debut in Latin, and only as his 
 powers developed found utterance in his native tongue. 
 But in the lyric poems we have a specimen of his use of 
 the latter which seems more studied and has less of the 
 character of an improvisation than the " Orlando," and 
 which we therefore presume, though not published until 
 1499, fi ve years after his death, to have been left by him 
 in a complete and revised form ready for the press. 
 Here, though the language is not free from the anti- 
 quated forms then current in districts where it was only 
 in process of adaptation to polite use, it has none of the 
 slipshod colloquialisms which occasionally crop up in 
 the great narrative poem. This volume, entitled "Sonetti 
 e Canzone del Poeta clarissimo Matteo Maria Boiardo, 
 
Lyrics of Boiardo 141 
 
 Conte di Scandiano," had also slipped out of sight under 
 the dust of ages, and only reached, as far as is known, a 
 second edition, published in 1501, within two years of 
 its first appearance. From this obscurity it was rescued 
 by the same indefatigable editor who had done so much 
 for the memory of its author, and a splendid edition of 
 only fifty copies was printed by Sir Anthony Panizzi for 
 private circulation in 1835. It is now very rare, and 
 can only be had when a copy accidentally happens to 
 come into the market. 
 
 A selection of fifty-four of the pieces contained in it 
 had, indeed, been given to the world by Venturi in 1820, 
 but in this mutilated form much of its original sense and 
 meaning is obscured. The lyrics consist entirely of 
 love poems addressed, in the poetical fashion of the day, 
 to a lady whose identity is shrouded in mystery, though 
 conjectured on the evidence of two acrostics to have 
 been Antonia Caprara, born in Reggio in 1451. The 
 poet's attachment to her, if not entirely imaginary, 
 is supposed to have lasted through the years 1471 
 and 1472, and hints in the poems suggest that she 
 was married, and died young. The volume is divided 
 into three books. In the first the poet celebrates 
 the charms of his lady, and his own passion; in 
 the second he reproaches her with her coldness and 
 cruelty ; and in the third there is a mixture of both 
 themes, and her indifference and beauty are alter- 
 nately sung. 
 
 The opening sonnet seems to imply that the lyrics 
 were composed long after the emotion that elicited them 
 had evaporated, and they must thus be regarded rather 
 as records of a past than as utterances of a present 
 sentiment. It runs as follows : 
 
142 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Love, from whose own fair sun some rays I caught, 
 In the sweet days when life put forth its flowers, 
 Invites me to call up from memory's bowers 
 
 What then with joy, but now with dole is fraught. 
 
 Thus have I gathered what my mind distraught 
 Spake in the season of Love's rapturous hours, 
 When with voice glad, but hindered in its powers, 
 
 To syllable fond words 'mid sighs I sought. 
 
 Now with embitted faith, by falsehood sweet 
 Consumed, my soul not merely lays aside, 
 But flies in scorn the error of its youth. 
 
 Yet surely, he who without glow or heat 
 
 Of love, doth pass the years of life's spring-tide, 
 May live, but bears no living heart in sooth. 
 
 The tenour of this sonnet seems inconsistent with the 
 theory that Antonia Caprara was the lady to whom the 
 lyrics are addressed, since it certainly implies that the 
 passion they portray was experienced in youth or early 
 manhood. This in her case was impossible, as she was 
 seventeen years the writer's junior, and his attachment to 
 her is conjectured to have begun only in his thirty-seventh 
 year, an age which to an Italian seems very serious if not 
 almost venerable, and one to which he would never apply 
 the term eta fiorita^ used here in the second line to 
 describe the date of this phase of his life. The whole 
 context certainly presents an obstacle to the acceptance 
 of the received theory, if it be not absolutely fatal to it. 
 For my part, I should be inclined to put back the 
 date of Boiardo's romance to a much earlier period than 
 that usually assigned to it, or to conjecture that his lyrics 
 have a more general character than that suggested by a 
 mere superficial interpretation of them, and that they 
 
Lyrics of Boiardo 143 
 
 sum up what the poet may have experienced at different 
 times and for different objects of his adoration. 
 
 The first Canzone is, like most of its companion pieces, 
 strictly impersonal, expressive of a form of admiration 
 equally applicable to any lady. 
 
 I. 
 
 Who shall find voice and words commensurate 
 
 "With utterance of what in my heart doth lie ? 
 Who to my thought lend wings, the high and great 
 
 Desire I feel, to track in flight on high ? 
 Unless it soar elate, 
 
 And my poor speech attain 
 
 Where I would bid it fly, 
 Who of my star shall sing in fitting strain ? 
 Of fair things she is fairest I maintain, 
 
 Nor thought can e'er her beauty fitly tell, 
 Since Heaven to hide it from man's sight is fain, 
 
 And doth forbid the height where it doth dwell. 
 Unless Love's aid to us be shown 
 
 In order that the spell 
 Of its bright realm by us be felt and known. 
 
 II. 
 
 Lend aid, O Love, lest my weak spirit fail 
 
 To gauge the height of that embellishment 
 Which to adorn this time doth so avail 
 
 Its shining glory to our age is lent. 
 If brighter shines, when pale 
 
 The fires of day around, 
 
 Amid stars thinly sprent, 
 The moon, with purest silvery radiance crowned, 
 And all with flames her pallid face is bound, 
 
 And light her horns doth fill resplendently, 
 On her alone our eyes intent are found, 
 
 Since light from her alone they now may see, 
 Thus shines this luminary here on earth, 
 
 And sole containeth she, 
 All beauty, grace, nobility and worth. 
 
144 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 in. 
 
 As in the night-sky liquid and serene, 
 
 The Star of Love comes forth before the day, 
 With golden beams and such effulgence sheen, 
 
 The whole horizon shimmers with its ray. 
 And she doth lead, I ween, 
 
 The lesser stars in queue, 
 
 Who round her all give way, 
 And yield the sky, and lowly homage do ; 
 And then, distilling showers of precious dew, 
 
 From her damp tresses, which in moisture steep 
 The herbage green and flowers of varied hue, 
 
 She soaks the land with pearls that she doth weep ; 
 My Lady thus from all the prize doth gain, 
 
 Since Love doth with her keep, 
 And all the charms of others render vain. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Whoso hath seen dawn breaking in the skies, 
 
 With rose and jacinth crowned, and so bedight 
 That ere from out the deep the day doth rise, 
 
 All heaven is painted with its flush of light ; 
 And deeper grow the dyes 
 
 Of rose incarnadine, 
 
 Beside which quenched outright 
 Were all our hues that like to it are seen ; 
 And the rude shepherd marvels much, I ween, 
 
 At the red Orient's vermilion glow, 
 Which slowly spreads o'er all the sky its sheen, 
 
 And as he looks more lucent still doth grow, 
 Thus shows the angelic visage in like guise, 
 
 If any dare I trow 
 To look her in the face with steadfast eyes. 
 
 V. 
 
 As when with fiery rays from out the main, 
 The sun to meet the dawn of day doth leap, 
 
 And as though hung 'twixt sky and watery plain, 
 Doth trembling tread the pavement of the deep. 
 
Lyrics of Boiardo 145 
 
 And when he grasps the rein 
 
 His fiery team to steer, 
 
 And with gold wheels the steep 
 Of heaven ascends in luminous career ; 
 No eye may dare to fix his radiance clear 
 
 Since gold and crimson mingle in its blaze, 
 Whose splendour our dull sight doth dim and blear, 
 
 And blunt our human vision with its daze ; 
 Such is the aspect of this visage bright, 
 
 Which, since it met my gaze, 
 Hath ta'en from it all other power of sight. 
 
 VI. 
 
 O sweetest thought that doth with Love a flight 
 
 So lofty take, and sing the visage fair, 
 The thought whereof doth melt my heart outright, 
 
 Remembering its form and semblance rare ; 
 Give over enterprise so bold and high 
 
 Since so far may not dare 
 The powers that in our human nature lie. 
 
 The breaks and pauses in this measure, as in all the 
 Petrarchian lyrics, had a meaning in their own day that 
 they have lost in ours, since they were adapted to some 
 form of musical notation. The names " Sonetto " and 
 "Canzone" were not the mere metaphorical applications of 
 the terms of one art to another so much in vogue in 
 modern parlance, but had a literal significance descriptive 
 of the metrical arrangements they described. Sir Anthony 
 Panizzi writes an interesting disquisition upon this branch 
 of the subject in his essay on Boiardo, prefixed to the 
 edition of his chief work. " Boiardo's poetry," he says, 
 " though in the manner of Petrarch, has all the marks of 
 originality. His imagery and style, as well as his diction, 
 are his own, and he resembles more the character of 
 the predecessors of the bard of Laura than that of his 
 
 K 
 
146 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 successors. His poetry was not written to be read, but to 
 be sung, and was subject to those musical as well as 
 metrical laws by which that of Petrarch had been 
 governed. In his days music was still subject to poetry, 
 and the inanimate instruments were designed to support, 
 not to drown, the human voice. Hence it is that lyrical 
 compositions written since that period, and not intended 
 to be accompanied by such music, are no longer possessed 
 of the same melodious harmony. The lines of Petrarch, 
 with those of Dante, Cavalcanti, and a few others of the 
 same stamp, as well as those of Boiardo, breathe a strain 
 of sweet, majestic, rich, and glowing melody which has 
 seldom, if ever, been seized by even the happiest imitators 
 of Petrarch." 
 
 Dr. Garnett remarks, in referring to this passage, that 
 " Panizzi seems to consider Boiardo the last of the truly 
 melodious lyrists of Italy, though it is just to point out 
 that his remark respecting the predominance of the in- 
 strument over the voice did not become applicable until 
 the seventeenth century, and that he elsewhere seems to 
 confine the decay of Italian melody to the centuries 
 immediately preceding his own time (1830)." 
 
 The divorce between the higher forms of poetry and 
 music had, however, set in much earlier, and Metastasio 
 is the only recent Italian poet of any eminence who has 
 sought to reunite them. As to the effects of the change 
 on lyrical poetry, Panizzi goes on : " The distribution 
 of accents or pauses in the lines of the old bards was 
 determined by the musical time, and when the sister art 
 ceased to be the inseparable companion of poetry, a 
 spurious and artificial jingle was affected, whilst pure 
 melody was no longer one of the principal elements in 
 poetry. Hence it is as difficult to understand by what 
 
Lyrics of Boiardo 147 
 
 means the lyrical effusions of the ancient poets read so 
 peculiarly and at the same time so simply musical, as it 
 is impossible to emulate their exquisite beauty in this 
 respect. We may safely affirm that there has not been 
 in Italy, during the past two centuries, a man capable of 
 writing one single canzone possessing the melody of those 
 which were left by the poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries." 
 
 But we moderns, in thinking of 
 
 Music married to immortal verse, 
 
 must carefully clear our minds of all ideas of operatic 
 strains or even of the more ancient cadences of national 
 airs. The notation prescribed for Italian lyric poetry 
 was, we may be assured, of a much more severely 
 formalised character than our lightly moving measures, 
 and the phrases to which sonnets and canzoni were written 
 survive, if anywhere, in some of the old church chants 
 with their constantly reiterated closes. They were, no 
 doubt, traditional, and would sound strangely remote and 
 outlandish to our ears, accustomed to such infinitely 
 varied modulations. As in the chanting of the psalms, 
 a number of words would be sung on a single note, with 
 a rise or fall of tone for the closes. 
 
 The only survival at the present day of what we may 
 suppose to have been a form of this very ancient decla- 
 matory music is the extraordinary chant to which the 
 Tuscan peasant dramas, called Maggi, are sung. These 
 plays, which turn on classical or religious subjects, such 
 as the story of Cyrus, of the Conte Ugolino, of Saul and 
 David, or some legendary saint, are invariably written 
 in rhyming quatrains, each recited to the same phrase of 
 melody, closing with a prolonged note like a cry, and 
 
148 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 repeated without change or variation throughout the 
 entire piece. Thus, as it is always in the same pitch, 
 the characters must be exclusively represented either by 
 men or women, since the voices must all sing the same 
 notes in the same key. A similar chant is still used by 
 the Sicilian and Calabrian mountaineers for the recitation 
 of popular poetry, each class of song having its special 
 measure traditionally prescribed. 
 
 The chants of the more polished lyric bards must, 
 however, have been subdued to more harmony with 
 the words than this primitive voice of the hills 
 and woods, which sounds like an echo of an older 
 world. 
 
 It is obvious that a totally different standard of criticism 
 must have been applied to poetry when it had to con- 
 form to a musical canon whose laws are entirely unknown 
 to us, from any prevailing at the present day, when it is 
 generally taken in by the eye alone. Whether owing to 
 these rhythmical limitations on his genius or not, Boiardo 
 is much more grave and restrained in his lyrics than in his 
 octaves. The Canzone just quoted is evidence of this 
 difference, in its emulation with the great masters of his 
 art. Its series of images for his lady's beauty take the 
 form of a stately procession through the hours of night 
 and dawn, to the splendid pasan of sunrise, which touches 
 the highest note of lyrical ecstasy. It is noteworthy as 
 an illustration of the author's exceptional endowment 
 with the colour sense so apparent in many of the 
 descriptive passages throughout his works and forming 
 one of the points where he seems to come into touch 
 with the modern world. 
 
 The passionate love of flowers, which is another of his 
 characteristics, is apparent in Sonnet xxx., written in one 
 
Lyrics of Boiardo 149 
 
 of the moments when the writer's star of love was supposed 
 to be in the ascendant : 
 
 Give rose and lily with full hands to me, 
 And pinks and fairest blossoms strew around, 
 All who to weep my woes with me were found 
 
 Now of my joy and gladness sharers be. 
 
 Give blossoms white and vermeil, fair to see, 
 To match this day bright colours should abound, 
 With luscious perfume sprinkled be the ground, 
 
 That all the place may with my mood agree. 
 
 Pardon doth grant, and peace to me hath given 
 
 My gentle foe, nor doth my death desire, 
 She whose sole boast is mercy and not hate. 
 
 Then wonder not if I am all on fire, 
 
 But wonder rather that not spent and riven 
 Is my poor heart in bliss and joy so great. 
 
 No poet, ancient or modern, has associated nature more 
 intimately with all his moods and feelings than Boiardo, 
 who, in his transports of joy or woe, seems to feel as 
 though love were immanent in the universe. His eyes 
 are ever, too, fixed on heaven, and he unrolls before us a 
 marvellous series of sky-scapes, in which all the pageantry 
 of day and night are painted in few words, and as though 
 with a brush loaded with colour. But his favourite hour, 
 as we can easily see, was the dawn, which he never tires 
 of imaging forth in its summer glory of crocus and carna- 
 tion. It has, indeed, a special charm in Italy, as in all 
 southern countries where the sun rises to near mid-heaven 
 at noon. Under the shortened shadows the high relief 
 of morning is lost, and the landscape becomes flat and 
 featureless in the almost total absence of chiaroscuro. 
 In the evening its beauty is restored, but the heated air 
 
150 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 has lost some of its transparency, and only with the fresh- 
 ness of the dawn recovers its full magic as a scene-painter. 
 Boiardo felt this instinctively, and while his sunrise effects 
 are amongst those most frequently recurred to, he has 
 seldom, if ever, described a sunset with anything like the 
 same vivid glow. The following Sonnet, No. xix., opens, 
 as do many of his songs, like an aubade : 
 
 The hour of day that doth to love invite 
 Contentment to my inmost soul doth bring, 
 
 As dawn I see come forth in rose hues bright, 
 And from soft shade hear Philomena sing. 
 
 The morning star such fulness hath of light 
 All others fade where she her ray doth fling, 
 
 As Sol she leads behind her in his might, 
 In her own beauty proudly triumphing. 
 
 To all I hear or see of sweet and rare 
 
 The love-lit face I liken in my mind, 
 And ever see its perfect semblance there. 
 
 And in the dewy mead her image fair 
 By turns in rose and lily now I find, 
 And now to both together her compare. 
 
 The sonnet preceding this is remarkable for its embodi- 
 ment in the third line of a well-known phrase of Dante's 
 11 II tremolar della marina," showing how great was the 
 influence which the elder poet, though so remote from 
 him in style and subject, had over Boiardo's mind. He 
 has reproduced the same idea, though in his own language, 
 in one of the initial stanzas in the " Orlando " : 
 
 No fairer heaven doth sparkle to our sight, 
 All gemmed with orbs to which Night homage pays, 
 Nor the deep all aquiver 'neath the rays 
 
 Of rising sun in calm expanse of light. 
 
Lyrics of Boiardo 151 
 
 Nor e'en those stars which from supernal height 
 Distil the dews of morn on arid ways, 
 Nor shining ice, nor rime whereon the blaze 
 
 Of sunlight in resplendence glitters bright. 
 
 Nor aught unto our mortal gaze doth show, 
 
 How lovely, or how sweet so'er it be, 
 That shines on heaven or breathes on earth below, 
 
 So fair as the mild glance's radiancy 
 
 Of those bright eyes that Love doth guide, I trow, 
 And who believes not dares not look to see. 
 
 Bad weather has so rarely been a source of inspiration to 
 the Muse, that we subjoin Sonnet xxxix. as an instance 
 of Boiardo's indentification of himself with all the moods 
 of nature : 
 
 What envious rain and wind of blusterous might 
 Doth Fortune to my onward way oppose ! 
 And buffet me about with frozen snows, 
 
 That me she may detain from my delight. 
 
 But nought the frowning sky doth me affright, 
 Since true good will no evil weather knows, 
 And such a fire within my bosom glows 
 
 That plashing rain and cold unfelt are quite. 
 
 Since I with Love walk in close company, 
 
 He warns me from the false and crooked path, 
 And makes the straight and level highway clear. 
 
 White flowers and roses white now seem to me 
 
 The driving flakes whirled down by heaven in wrath, 
 While thinking on live Sun which I draw near. 
 
 Boiardo is less happy in those reproaches to his lady 
 which seem to have been in his day part of the prescribed 
 ritual of the lover's worship. The reiteration of this 
 phase of love, with its constant deaths invoked and 
 martyrdoms undergone, has always an artificial ring in 
 
152 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 the ears of the modern reader, who is apt to discount 
 them in accordance with the prosaic standard of a 
 utilitarian age. But in the best of these pieces, in which 
 the author expresses his love for nature at least as strongly 
 as his passion for his innamorata, he rises to a level 
 sufficiently high to entitle him to rank with the great 
 lyrists of his time. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Verse Letters of Ariosto 
 
 The two opposite currents of tradition, so strangely 
 fused in the Italian literary revival, are traceable in the 
 dual aspect of Ariosto's works. While as the singer of 
 Orlando he is but a courtier and man of letters masquer- 
 ading as a popular minnesinger, he adopts in his other 
 writings the mannerisms snd standards prescribed by the 
 later fashion of a reversion to antique models. The 
 most inimitable of imitators, he infuses life into the 
 closest copy by the exuberance of his own nature, and 
 breathes into his most trivial utterances a meaning and 
 vitality which are totally absent from the pseudo-classi- 
 calism of the later and debased Renaissance. 
 
 Horace, whose character and career offered some close 
 parallels to his own, was in an especial degree the object 
 of his sympathy and study, so much so that whatever 
 success he achieved in Rome during the Pontificate of 
 Leo X. was due rather to his skill in the interpretation 
 of his Roman prototype than to his own poetical merits. 
 The versified epistle, a style of composition of which 
 Horace was the great exemplar, if not the absolute 
 inventor, was seized upon accordingly by his kindred 
 genius as a vehicle for that semi-moralising, semi-intro- 
 spective vein of thought in which he showed the way to 
 
154 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 so much of our latter-day prose. Half sympathy, half 
 egotism, the letter, in the form of a tete-a-tete on paper, 
 takes the whole world into the confidence of the writer, 
 and is addressed to humanity at large under cover to a 
 single individual. There is no such effectual method of 
 self-revelation, since it mirrors forth for us the man either 
 as he is, or as he elects to appear, a scarcely less valuable 
 index to character. Ariosto, too strongly moulded for 
 mental posturing, is carelessly or cynically sincere in 
 self-delineation, and his poetical epistles have the stamp 
 of the portrait of a master painted by himself. 
 
 His life coincided with that " golden prime " of culture 
 in Italy when the long-sown seed of the past ripened 
 suddenly to a harvest. The forty years between his birth 
 and Boiardo's (1434-1474) formed an interval which 
 separated the working lives of the two singers of Orlando 
 by the difference between one epoch of human progress 
 and another. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge had 
 been plucked, for good or ill, before the younger pcet 
 came of age. 
 
 He was of a noble family established in Ferrara since 
 1300, whose patronymic was derived from a place called 
 Riosto. From his mother, Daria Maleguzzi, he inherited 
 the poetic ability of her father, Gabriele. In 1503 he 
 entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, the 
 patron to whom his letters so frequently refer. The date 
 was a fateful one for him, since in the same year, having 
 finally abandoned Latin for vernacular poetry, he began 
 the "Orlando Furioso," his constant task during the 
 next thirteen years. In 15 13, when he was thirty-nine, 
 the only serious attachment of his life began in a 
 meeting in Florence with the fair widow, Alessandra 
 Benucci, to whom his love songs are addressed. He is 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 1 55 
 
 believed to have married her, but never acknowledged 
 her as his wife, from the fear, it is supposed, of losing 
 some ecclesiastical preferments held conditionally on 
 celibacy. A coolness between him and his patron, trace- 
 able in the letters, began with his refusal to comply with 
 the desire of the latter that he should take Orders, and he 
 eventually transferred his services to the Duke of Ferrara, 
 from whom he received an allowance. In 1522 he was 
 appointed Governor of the Garfagnana, where, under 
 circumstances of great difficulty, as we shall see from 
 the letters, he played his part most honourably and well. 
 " While I am in power I will have no friend but justice," 
 was his official motto, and the saying shows that his 
 cynicism veiled a power of rising to a conception of 
 public duty rare in an age of unblushing self-seeking. 
 The duties of the post were most irksome to him, and 
 the Duke failed to support his authority as he desired. 
 Recalled at the end of three years of exile, he returned 
 to Ferrara in June 1525, built himself a small house, and 
 devoted the remaining eight years of his life to revising 
 his poem and constantly remodelling his garden, his 
 official duties being limited to the superintendence of 
 Court pageants and theatricals. He lived to complete 
 the final edition of the " Orlando Furioso," which was 
 published in 1532, and died on Christmas Day of the 
 ensuing year of the sudden aggravation of an old com- 
 plaint, anaemia, probably due to weakness of the 
 heart. 
 
 On many of these phases of his life, as well as on the 
 manners and events of his time, his letters throw a flood 
 of light. 
 
 Seven in number, these satires, as the poet has styled 
 them, using the word in its classical sense as signifying a. 
 
 
156 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 discussion or dissertation, not necessarily in the vein 
 which we moderns have agreed to call satirical, are more 
 truly letters than either the Satires or Epistles of 
 Horace, inasmuch as they are more exclusively personal 
 either to the writer or his correspondent. They contain 
 none of the keen-edged social parables and studies from 
 life so prominent in their classical prototypes, and are 
 altogether of a more intimately autobiographical character. 
 Ariosto, indeed, had little taste for subtle discrimination 
 of the half-tones in portraiture, and his grasp of human 
 nature is limited to the appreciation of passions and 
 foibles common to all. Hence he gives us no types 
 from the Court of Ferrara or from the suite of the 
 Cardinal of Este in any degree corresponding to the 
 sketches of Tigellius, the singer, Ummidius, the miser, 
 or Maenius, the parasite, outlined for us by the sharp- 
 pointed stylus of the Augustan bard. His private 
 worries, his dealings with his patron, his health, his 
 regimen, his pecuniary affairs, are his principal themes, 
 the treatment of which is illuminated by touches of hard- 
 bitten shrewdness and gleams of caustic humour scattered 
 at random here and there. 
 
 These everyday topics are descanted on in the measure 
 consecrated by Dante, with its endless chain of linked 
 triplets, and closes long deferred to the end of letter or 
 canto. The unbroken sequence of this form of versifica- 
 tion gives an apparent abruptness to the style, every 
 transition of idea coming like a sudden check amid the 
 ceaseless flow of the metre. Indeed, it is not always easy 
 to follow the poet in his rapid plunges of thought through 
 the pauseless cadences of his triple chimes, which leave 
 no break for change of subject or style. Varying in 
 length from some 500 to 800 lines, the Satires, written in 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 157 
 
 the ten years from 1517^1527, cover the busiest period 
 of the poet's life. The first, addressed to his brother 
 Galasso, contains the most minute and housewifely direc- 
 tions for the lodging which he desires to have taken for 
 him in Rome, whence he passes on to explain the motive 
 of his journey. 
 
 Galasso, near the temple that doth win 
 
 Its name from that bold priest, who Malchus' ear 
 So deftly shore away from hair and skin, 
 
 Lodging provide me for four beasts and gear, 
 Reckoning a room apiece for me and Jack ; 
 
 My mule and one old jade be stabled near. 
 Where'er I lodge, in room or attic back, 
 
 Be few the stairs and much the light, I pray, 
 Nor place for fire and chimney let it lack ; 
 
 Nor for the steeds less thought and care display, 
 Since quarters fine would serve them not a pin 
 
 If wanting in due store of straw and hay. 
 A wool or cotton mattress (not too thin) 
 
 My ribs to natter, in my couch be laid, 
 So that for sleep I need not seek the inn. 
 
 Of dry and seasoned firewood store be made, 
 That one accustomed homely fare to dress, 
 
 May cook plain beef or mutton by its aid ; 
 I want not one to furnish forth a mess 
 
 So spiced as e'en death's palate to provoke 
 And the grave's inmates rouse to fresh excess. 
 
 Let Ser Vorano — born the earth to soak 
 With dripping fat — in such one's spits and pans 
 
 Up to the ears his greasy muzzle poke; 
 Who hunger for food's sake desires and fans — 
 
 Not food for hunger's— may on viands brood, 
 And for such dainty meals lay all his plans. 
 
 By my new valet be a bond made good 
 By earnest money, with a cook home-fed 
 
 On bread and garlic, with his brethren chewed, 
 Fresh from their spades, while he the oxen led ; 
 
 Who now doth sigh for pheasant, pigeon, quail, 
 
 
158 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And tires of sameness in his daily bread ; 
 
 And who can tell the difference without fail 
 'Twixt flesh of goat or boar, when mountain-bred, 
 
 And that which fattened in th' Elysian vale. 
 
 The second Satire is written to his brother Alessandro 
 and another friend, Lodovico da Bagno, both in the suite 
 of the Cardinal of Este in Hungary, and deals with the 
 much-vexed question of his own refusal to accompany 
 that princely prelate on his journey thither. He paid 
 the forfeit in the loss of the favour of his patron, whose 
 anger, fanned by envious and malicious courtiers, caused 
 the poet's dismissal after fifteen years' service and 
 flattery. Let us hear how he gives voice to his heart- 
 burnings and recriminations in his self-imposed banish- 
 ment. 
 
 Fain would I, Alexander, brother mine, 
 
 And gossip Bagno, news from ye obtain, 
 If courtly memories to us incline. 
 
 If still my lord accuse me, and complain, 
 And if some plead my cause, and say whereto, 
 
 Whilst others leave this place, I here remain. 
 Of if all trained to adulation's cue 
 
 (The art to which we most observance pay), 
 Ye help him to my blame with reasons new. 
 
 A fool is he who doth his lord gainsay, 
 Although he should aver he hath espied 
 
 The sun at midnight, or the stars by day. 
 And if he choose to praise or to deride 
 
 An absent one — then tuned to the same key, 
 A chorus loud is heard on every side. 
 
 And he who dares not through humility 
 His mouth unclose, applauds with pliant face, 
 And says with every feature, I agree. 
 
 He goes on to enumerate all his reasons for refusing 
 to accompany his patron, alleging the prohibition of 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 159 
 
 physicians, who judged the northern winter dangerous for 
 his health, and his horror of the suffocation of the 
 stoves and the unwholesomeness of the food as the main 
 obstacles. 
 
 And heady wine, to me forbid by all 
 
 As worse than poison, at your feasts is quaffed, 
 And sacrilege 'tis held to shirk the call. 
 
 On all their meats strange savours they engraft, 
 "Where pepper, cardamoms, and spices blend, 
 
 To me marked baneful by the leech's craft. 
 Here you may tell me that I could depend 
 
 On finding for my seat some ingle nook, 
 Where no foul exhalations could offend. 
 
 And that my viands as I pleased, the cook 
 Should dress apart, my wine I could dilute, 
 
 Drink nought or little as my taste should brook. 
 Then while you feasted, I must dull and mute 
 
 Sole in my cell from morn to eve abide, 
 At lonely board that might Carthusian suit. 
 
 With pots and dishes I must be supplied, 
 From kitchen and from parlour, and with store 
 
 Of household goods endowed like new-made bride. 
 
 In the following passage his financial position and rela- 
 tions to his patron are portrayed in phrases which have 
 all the ring of sincerity in their bitterly reproachful strain. 
 
 You might say next — Then let your victuals straight 
 
 By your own man at your own cost be ta'en, 
 And eat your fowl cooked at your private grate. 
 
 But my poor service doth not yet obtain 
 Such guerdon from the Cardinal in fee 
 
 As might a hostelry in court maintain. 
 To thee no thanks, Apollo — nor to thee 
 
 Fair college of the Muses — not the stuff 
 To make a mantle have I earned through ye. 
 
 — Oh yes, my lord has giv'n you — Yes enough 
 For mantles more than one — I grant 'tis true, 
 
 But not for love of ye one frill or ruff. 
 
160 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 If to his praise my verse attuned hath been, 
 
 He says 'tis pleasant idling, and more grace 
 I should have done him in his following seen. 
 
 And if in Milan's Chancery a place 
 Is mine, where with Constabili I share 
 
 A third of not'ry's fees in every case. 
 'Tis but because as courier swift I fare, 
 
 And changing beasts and guides, ride spur and boot, 
 O'er rock and mount, and death and peril dare. 
 
 Marriage is the subject of the third Satire, written to his 
 cousin, Annibale Maleguccio, on his betrothal, and con- 
 taining precepts based on that shrewd practical wisdom 
 of which the poet had so large a store at the service of 
 his friends. The habits of fine ladyhood, in those days 
 evidently the same as in ours, the abuse of rouge and 
 cosmetics, extremes either of feminine piety or dissipa- 
 tion, form in turn the subject of his pungent diatribes, 
 while his recommendation of a medium share of good 
 looks, avoiding the opposite poles of beauty and ugliness, 
 forms an amusing contrast to his rapturous laudations 
 elsewhere of the charms of Alessandra Benucci, the fair 
 widow, believed to have been his unacknowledged wife. 
 He begins by expressing his disappointment at having 
 been left to hear from outsiders the news of the coming 
 event in the following very simple and natural terms : 
 
 All other friends, dear Hannibal, save thee, 
 
 Give me the news that thou a bride hast won, 
 Thy silence wounds — the fact doth gladden me. 
 
 Perchance thou hid'st it, lest I counter run 
 To thy desire, as one to censure led 
 
 The act in others he hath left undone. 
 But much thou errest, if thou thus hast said, 
 
 For I, though single, find no cause for blame, 
 If Jack and Peter, Paul and Martin wed. 
 
 Nay, rather my condition mourn, and claim 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 1 6 1 
 
 Indulgence, if by varying chances still, 
 Are ever thwarted my intent and aim. 
 
 For I have ever held, and ever will 
 
 That save with woman at his side to tame, 
 
 His better nature man cannot fulfil. 
 
 Coz, thou dost well to marry, but give ear, 
 
 Think well on't first, for later spoken " no," 
 Serves not to change a " yes " once uttered here. 
 
 In this my counsel I would clearly show, 
 Though univited to such part by thee, 
 
 What thou should'st seek, what fly from and forego. 
 Thou laugh'st at me, perchance, and dost not see 
 
 How I can guide thee, who did never own 
 Such chain on neck or foot from shackles free. 
 
 But hast thou — when two play at cards, ne'er known 
 That who looks on takes of the game a view 
 
 More just than his by whom the stakes are thrown ? 
 If my advice then hit the target true, 
 
 Or go anear — be by its guidance led, 
 If not — to it and me give folly's due. 
 
 But ere I further go, one word be said, 
 If thou dost marry urged by love's decrees, 
 
 Thine impulse follow, and undoubting wed. 
 All virtues hers, so she thy fancy please, 
 
 And well I know no orator, in Greek 
 Or Latin, could dissuade thee by his pleas. 
 
 The poet's motives for remaining in the service of the 
 Duke of Este are discussed in the fourth of these epistles, 
 addressed like its predecessor to Annibale Maleguccio. 
 His office, entered on in April 151 8, was that of 
 cameriere or famigliare, with a monthly salary of eight 
 gold scudi, or twenty-one lire (about fifty-two francs), in 
 addition to allowances for rations and forage for a horse. 
 Its regular duties of superintendent and organiser of 
 court spectacles and dramatic entertainments were varied 
 by occasional missions to the other Italian capitals, as 
 
 L 
 
1 62 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 the bearer of letters of condolence or congratulation to 
 their respective sovereigns. His position had doubtless 
 its drawbacks, and he complains of it as follows, in his 
 usual grumbling tone of philosophic contempt for his 
 surroundings, though these were not on the whole un- 
 congenial to him. 
 
 With most men here I know I disagree, 
 
 Who life at Court a grand one deem alway, 
 Which seems instead dire servitude to me. 
 
 With all my heart let whoso likes it stay, 
 To leave it I myself will not be slack, 
 
 If Maia's son but smile on me one day. 
 One load or saddle fits not every back, 
 
 What one may bear with scarce a thought will gauge 
 Another's tender points, and gall and rack. 
 
 Ill can the nightingale endure the cage, 
 Goldfinch and linnet less of prison tire, 
 
 But in one day the swallow dies of rage. 
 Let who doth meed of hat or spur desire 
 
 Serve King or Cardinal, or Pope or Duke, 
 To nothing of all this do I aspire. 
 
 Sweeter the turnip in my ingle nook 
 I dress myself, and on a skewer impale, 
 
 Then peel, with vinegar and must to cook, 
 Than at another's table flesh of quail 
 
 Or boar or thrush. My sleep 'neath drugget rude 
 Is sound as though 'neath gold and silken veil. 
 
 And more I love to rest in lazy mood 
 My limbs, than boast that they have travelled been 
 
 'Mid Scythians, Indians, or the Ethiop brood. 
 
 A very much more onerous charge was conferred upon 
 the facile-tempered, ease-loving court poet in his appoint- 
 ment in February 1822, to the Governorship of the 
 Garfagnana, a turbulent outlying province of the Ferrarese 
 dominion. In this exile — for so he regarded it — he passed 
 more than three years, with the title of Ducal Commis- 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 163 
 
 sary, and the duty of restoring some semblance of order 
 among a people of banditti. Despite his reluctance to 
 fill a position apparently so incongruous, he discharged 
 its functions admirably, and this episode of his life is 
 the one that gives the highest idea of his character and 
 powers. 
 
 The mountain-locked Valley of the Serchio, straitened 
 between the Modenese Apennine on the one side, and 
 the Apuan Alps or Carrara Mountains on the other, was 
 a debatable land constantly disputed between Florence, 
 Ferrara, and Lucca, whose frontiers met on its border. 
 Conquered by the Florentines during the reign of Leo X., 
 its inhabitants, on the death of that Pontiff in 1521, had 
 revolted in favour of the House of Este. On Decem- 
 ber 7 of that year the Citadel of Castelnuovo was cap- 
 tured by the townspeople from the Florentine Governor, 
 Bernardino Ruffo, an event still commemorated in a 
 piece of sculpture over the gate of the tiny capital, repre- 
 senting an eagle holding a lion in its claws. In one 
 impregnable eyrie, that of the Verrucole, the flag of Este 
 had been upheld throughout the Florentine occupation 
 by a garrison of banditti, who naturally claimed and 
 received an amnesty in reward for their fidelity. Other 
 malefactors, though without such title to pardon, were 
 able to secure equal immunity by crossing the mountain 
 borderland, everywhere easily accessible, into the ad- 
 joining territory of Florence or Lucca. The legendary 
 brigand, Filippo Pacchione, was one of these, though 
 some doubt is now cast on his capture and release of the 
 author of the " Orlando Furioso." Each petty magnate 
 was at feud with his neighbour, and the year 1521 had 
 witnessed the murder of the Count of San Donnino, 
 shortly followed by that of his widow^and son, in their 
 
164 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 own castle, by the bravoes of a rival chieftain, Pier 
 Maddalena. 
 
 A guard of ten mounted crossbow-men was the mili- 
 tary force with which the ex-court-playwright was ex- 
 pected to trample out these live embers of faction and 
 revolution. Yet the indolent poet laureate of Ferrara 
 proved an energetic and capable governor, who, though 
 he generally shrank from inflicting the extreme penalty 
 of the law, and was described by his turbulent subjects 
 as " too good," succeeded, by the enforcement of severe 
 edicts against brigandage and its abettors, in pacifying 
 his province and extirpating some of its worst dis- 
 orders. 
 
 The Fifth Satire, giving his own impressions of this 
 striking phase of his life, is the most interesting, and 
 illustrates, moreover, the strange difference between the 
 earlier and later mind in its attitude towards natural 
 scenery. Unmitigated abhorrence is the sentiment with 
 which a country, now ranking amongst the most beautiful 
 in Italy, is regarded in Ariosto's pages. The rich valley, 
 opening a golden highway between the ramparts of its 
 flanking mountains, unrolls an ever-changing panorama 
 of loveliness, with its shifting perspective of ravine and 
 gorge, and ridge and hanging forest, crowned by the 
 phantom Alps of Carrara, lifting to heaven the ethereal 
 pallor of their marble cliffs. Miniature fortresses, their 
 walls formed by a ring of houses facing inwards, hang as 
 cornices on every crag, and command each its own vision 
 of unsurpassable loveliness. We shall see how the 
 beauties of this enchanted valley were viewed by the 
 great singer of the Renaissance, who preludes, by way of 
 contrast, with a description of the tamer scenery of his 
 home : 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 165 
 
 Sweet promptings the blank page with words to fill 
 
 Our Reggio's beautous scenes erst breathed in me, 
 My native nest too did like mood instil. 
 
 Thy fair Mauritian home in dreams I see, 
 And that bright spot swift Rodano beside 
 
 With shady seat, fit scene for Naiad's glee. 
 The fishpond with whose clear pellucid tide 
 
 The garden girds itself, the brook whose rapid flow 
 The sward doth furrow, to the mill to glide. 
 
 Nor doth my memory lose the vines that grow 
 In fields where bounteous Bacchus doth preside, 
 
 Or hill and glen the high-set tower below. 
 
 Was ever dwelling less than this of mine 
 
 For sacred studies fit ? Of all delight 
 More void ? More full of dreariness malign ? 
 
 'Twixt east and south the Pania's naked height* 
 Doth gird me in — elsewhere the jagged chine 
 
 A pilgrim's fame makes glorious hems the sight. f 
 Deep in a ditch I dwell, and if I pine 
 
 To move a foot, must climb with rude essay 
 The savage spurs of woody Apennine. 
 
 The social condition of his district and his own conse- 
 quent troubles are next descanted on, in a passage which 
 is one of the most instructive presentments of the condi- 
 tion of Italy at the time : 
 
 If forth I walk or in my castle stay 
 
 Complaints and cries and brawls salute my ear, 
 Thefts, murders, hates, and ires attend my way. 
 
 So that with brow now clouded and now clear, 
 Some I must e'en entreat, some threat and blame. 
 
 One there condemn, absolve another here. 
 Whole sheets I daily write — despatches frame — 
 
 Succour or counsel craving from the Duke, 
 
 * Pania alia Croce, one of the Apuan Alps. 
 
 t Monte Pellegrino, in the Modenese Apennine. 
 
1 66 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 The robbers round about to chase and tame. 
 
 For know, the licence of this land doth brook 
 No curb, since first the panther in its hold 
 
 Clutched it, the lion's rending claws then took. 
 Assassins roam abroad in gangs so bold 
 
 Whoso is sent to capture them must hide 
 Stuffed in a bag, his flag, nor dare unfold. 
 
 Most wise who near the castle doth abide. 
 To him the business touches still in vain 
 
 I write, but fitting answer is denied. 
 Each little town lifts up its horns amain, 
 
 They number eighty-three, divided all 
 By fell sedition that therein doth reign. 
 
 Think if Apollo, when on him I call, 
 Will to these caves from classic Delphi haste, 
 
 To hear unceasing noise of strife and brawl. 
 What drove me here ? inquire full well thou may'st, 
 
 From studies sweet, companionship most dear, 
 To hide me in this drear and trackless waste. 
 
 Know that not avarice of mine was here 
 In fault, for ever well content was I 
 
 With stipend from Ferrara drawn each year. 
 But thou know'st not, perchance, as time went by, 
 
 And war broke out, how slow leaked forth the store, 
 And how the Duke then wished the charge should die. 
 
 While raged the war, unmurmuring this I bore, 
 I murmured only when that time past through, 
 
 The hand then shut unclosed to me no more. 
 While worse 'twas that my place in Milan too 
 
 Where law was hushed 'mid war's tumultuous din, 
 Left me my stipend in arrear to rue. 
 
 I hasten to the Duke and thus begin, 
 My want relieve, or let it irk you not 
 
 That I should go elsewhere my bread to win. 
 The Garfagnana people, then red-hot 
 
 From their revolt, which chased Marzocco out 
 To seek another pasture ground, I wot, 
 
 With heralds, and with letters most devout 
 To leave them not, the Duke full loudly prayed, 
 
 Their wonted chiefs and honours still without. 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 167 
 
 Of me was improvised election made, 
 
 Perchance because the time was over brief 
 For choice more fitting to be duly weighed, 
 
 Or else, that on my liege's mind the grief 
 Of these his subjects lighter sate than mine, 
 
 And duly thankful I for such relief, 
 Thankful, in sooth, for the intent benign, 
 
 Rather than for the gift, great though it be, 
 Yet foreign to my wishes and design. 
 Now if you ask this people touching me, 
 
 Harshness, not mercy, they with one consent, 
 Will say would with their wicked works agree. 
 
 And they perchance with me are ill content, 
 As I with them, and like the fool am I, 
 
 Who knew not how to prize the gem chance sent. 
 
 He goes on to illustrate his meaning in the prevailing 
 fashion of the time, by a wealth of more or less apposite 
 similitudes, of which the subjoined may serve as a 
 specimen : 
 
 Like him of Venice in the days gone by, 
 
 On whom the king of Portugal bestowed 
 A Moorish barb of value rare and high. 
 
 Who straight his sense of gift so royal showed 
 (Unmindful that to different trades pertain 
 
 Rudder and reins, each used in different mode) 
 By leaping on the steed, when he was fain 
 
 W T ith hands the saddle — spurs the flanks to clutch. 
 " Ye shall not throw me ! " then he cried amain, 
 
 The horse leaps upward, goaded overmuch, 
 And the good sailor deeper in his side 
 
 Clasps the keen spurs, more sharp than lance's touch. 
 With blood his mouth and bridle both are dyed, 
 
 Nor knows the steed which mandate to obey, 
 Since this doth check, that urge to forward stride. 
 
 But with a bound or two cuts short delay, 
 While to the earth is flung the cavalier, 
 
 Head, ribs, and shoulder bruised from his essay. 
 
1 68 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 When white from head to foot with dust and fear, 
 He rose at last, small thanks the King had won, 
 
 For he with plaints pursued the royal ear. 
 Far better he — far better I had done, 
 
 He for the steed, and for the province I, 
 To say, Hereto, Lord, fitness have I none, 
 
 Another grace with gift so rare and high. 
 
 The poet still held the governorship of the Garfagnana, 
 when the proposal that he should go as ambassador to 
 Clement VIII. elicited a letter to Buonaventura Pistofilo, 
 Secretary to the Duke. In this Satire, the sixth of the 
 series, he moralises in a strain which modern taste might 
 deprecate as trite and obvious on the insufficiency of 
 ambition to satisfy its votaries, illustrating the fate of the 
 over-aspiring by the following pretty fable. 
 
 A gourd there was, which once so high did sprawl 
 
 That in a few brief days its shoots o'erlaid 
 A neighb'ring pear-tree's topmost branches tall. 
 
 The pear one morning oped its eyes dismayed, 
 From sleep prolonged— and saw the garland fair 
 
 Of fruitage new upon its crown displayed. 
 And said: Who art thou ? How hast clambered there ? 
 
 And where wast thou, ere I alas ! gave o'er 
 These wretched eyes to slumber unaware ? 
 
 Her name she told, the spot showed where of yore 
 She had been planted — whence in three months' time 
 
 With swift ascent she to such height did soar. 
 And I (rejoined the tree) did scarcely climb 
 
 So high, when frost and heat I had defied, 
 And all the winds, for thirty years of time. 
 
 But thou, who in a trice to heaven dost stride, 
 Be sure, that rapid as has been thy growth 
 
 Decay as swift shall overthrow thy pride. 
 
 A purely personal matter forms the subject of the Seventh 
 Satire, addressed to Cardinal Bembo, probably between 
 
Verse Letters of Ariosto 169 
 
 1526 and 1528, and recommending to him the poet's son, 
 Virginio, for whom he desired to find a suitable tutor while 
 studying at the University of Padua. The difficulty, as he 
 explains, lay in the disreputable character of the scholars 
 of the time, a phenomenon due to the paganising ten- 
 dency of their studies. The Satires, of which this is the 
 last, cover a relatively small portion of Ariosto's life, in 
 the later part of which he abandoned this style of com- 
 position. Invaluable as a luminous exposition of the 
 inner workings of his mind, they furnish also a vivid 
 reflected image of the society in which he moved, and it 
 is scarcely too much to say that we learn more about 
 the Renaissance from these semi-jocular epistles than 
 from any other single set of writings handed down to us. 
 Their very homeliness is a guarantee of their fidelity, as 
 it shows that nothing is either added or omitted for 
 effect. No incident is too minute, no detail too prosaic, 
 to be worked into the heterogeneous mosaic of their 
 triple rhymes, and they thus serve to show that the ver- 
 satile Muse of the writer was equally at home in the real 
 and the fabulous, the familiar and the remote. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Italian Folk Songs 
 
 The seeming anomaly that the highest order of poetry is 
 the product of an early stage of civilisation is easily ex- 
 plained if we remember that only in that phase of 
 society has it a genuine function to fulfil. It is then not 
 an ornamental or conventional form of diction, but the 
 only mode of speech possible to a mind charged with 
 ideas never expressed, and incapable of expression in 
 the ordinary language in use around it. It is the struggle 
 for utterance of thoughts which must be conveyed in 
 figures and metaphors, because primitive speech, dealing 
 only with material facts, has no ready-made symbols for 
 them. The poet is, in short, the man whose mind is 
 ahead of his language; the pioneer of thought into 
 hitherto unexplored fields of conquest ; and his powerful 
 imagination, thus forging the instrument with which it 
 works, stamps it with his own creative impress, giving it 
 a directness and vitality of which all later graces of 
 diction are but insipid adulterations. Only in the 
 early youth of an idiom could the Psalms of David, the 
 Iliad of Homer, or the Divine Comedy of Dante have 
 been produced. 
 
 All primitive peoples use the language of poetry when 
 they seek to convey abstract ideas, uncoined as yet into 
 
Italian Folk Songs 171 
 
 the common currency of speech. The Zulu, for instance, 
 who has no words for describing qualities apart from the 
 objects possessing them, can only do so by comparisons. 
 If a thing is round he says " it is like a ball " ; if a man is 
 straight, "he is like an assegai." A particular kind of 
 spotted cotton is known amongst them as " the Pleiades," 
 and gradations of colour are distinguished by the names 
 of different sorts of beads forming the currency of the 
 country. When Cetewayo, in answer to a deputation, 
 said that " to introduce spirits into a country was to 
 steal the brains of the people," he used the language of 
 Shakespeare, and was a poet without intending it. 
 
 The Irish peasant, in similar fashion, uses terms of 
 expression in speaking his own rude language which 
 might be transferred to an epic poem. The grandfather 
 of the writer, having lost his way among the mountains 
 of Killarney, was directed to the right path by a peasant 
 in an Irish sentence of which the subjoined line is a 
 literal translation : 
 
 Where yonder mountain's brow the drop from heaven divides. 
 
 Even when rendered into English, the Irish turns of 
 thought and imagery are often singularly forcible and 
 impressive, like the phrase of a roadside blind beggar in 
 the south of Ireland, who solicited the alms of passers- 
 by " for a poor blind man under a lonesome cloud of 
 darkness." A sightless person is always described by 
 the Irish as " dark," so that " the dark girl " means the 
 blind girl, not a brunette as in ordinary English. 
 
 It is the spontaneousness and sincerity of whatever 
 supplies a genuine want in contradistinction to the 
 artificial coinages of eclecticism that gives to popular 
 poetry its special value as an index to national character. 
 
172 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Italian song is peculiarly suggestive in this respect, since 
 it has remained almost entirely the pure tradition of the 
 people, little, if at all, affected by external or literary 
 influences. It thus faithfully mirrors the tastes and 
 tendencies of the different populations inhabiting the 
 Peninsula, who may be roughly divided into two classes, 
 typified by the Tuscan and the Piedmontese, while 
 Sicily, from the peculiar vicissitudes of its history, is, in 
 respect of poetry, the meeting ground of both. 
 
 The broad line of demarcation between the races on 
 the hither and farther shores of the Po is strongly 
 marked in the popular poetry of those two sections of 
 the country. The] songs in the sub-alpine districts, in 
 their greater rapidity of thought, definiteness of subject, 
 and simplicity of diction, reflect a type of character 
 practical, resolute, energetic, closely akin to that of 
 northern peoples, while in the mid-Italian lyrics, with 
 their limitation of idea, generally to a single aspect of 
 the theme, their delicate analysis of feeling, and inex- 
 haustible fertility in decorative language, we can trace 
 the subtler genius and more reflective temperament of a 
 southern race. Classed respectively as songs of action 
 and of emotion, the one may be held to express energy, 
 the other sensibility in the people from whom they 
 spring. 
 
 The folk-songs of Piedmont are almost exclusively of 
 a dramatic character, narrating historical or legendary 
 incidents in brief, condensed language — very frequently 
 in the form of dialogue. Now, of this narrative poetry 
 there is not a trace elsewhere from the Alps to the Faro, 
 in the living lore of the people, though that it once 
 existed amongst them and has died out is proved by 
 the copies of old poems of this character still extant in 
 
Italian Folk Songs 173 
 
 libraries and museums. As Signor Rubieri says, speak- 
 ing of historical poetry, " while the sub-alpine wrote 
 nothing but remembered much, the Tuscans wrote much, 
 but remembered nothing." 
 
 In Tuscany we have narrative entirely replaced by 
 introspective poetry, describing the poet's own state of 
 mind or external things in relation to it, the beloved 
 object transfigured by his fancy, or some aspect of 
 nature reflecting his mood at the moment. In Sicily 
 alone do the two classes of poetry exist to any consider- 
 able extent side by side, for while it has, like Piedmont, a 
 large stock of legendary and historical verse, it has, in 
 common with Tuscany, an equally rich supply of canzoni, 
 or detached emotional stanzas. But while the latter 
 are the early and spontaneous growth of the soil, the 
 former are obviously of later, and probably foreign origin. 
 Their presence is perhaps due to Provencal influence, 
 which, felt in Piedmont from geographical contiguity, 
 was exercised in Sicily through the sway of a foreign 
 dynasty, of which one sovereign, Frederick II., was him- 
 self a trouveur of no mean order. Thus, through the 
 entire of the peninsula of Italy, it is only at the foot of 
 the Alps that we find the versified narrative, or ballad, 
 so dear to northern taste. 
 
 The most remarkable of these ballads is one which, 
 widely diffused under the title of " Donna Lombarda," 
 recounts the end of the tragic-fated Rosamond, captive 
 and consort of Alboin, king of the Italian Lombards. 
 Compelled by her tyrant-spouse to drink from the cup 
 made from the skull of her father, the king of the 
 Gepidse, slain in battle, she avenged herself for the 
 outrage by her husband's murder, concerted with his 
 shield-bearer, Helmichus or Elmegiso, with whom she 
 
174 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 fled to Ravenna, taking with her a quantity of jewels 
 and treasure. Here her beauty and wealth excited the 
 cupidity of the Byzantine prefect, Longinus, who per- 
 suaded her to rid herself of Helmichus by a cup of poison 
 presented to him on leaving the bath. 
 
 Helmichus drank, but, suspecting the nature of the 
 draught before finishing it, compelled the traitress to drain 
 the remainder. It is this closing episode in the career of 
 the fatal " Lombard Woman " that the ballad narrates : 
 
 Lovest thou me, Lombard woman, 
 
 Lovest thou me, lovest thou me ? 
 What must I do ? to a husband 
 
 Wedded I be, wedded I be. 
 Perish thy mate, Lombard woman ! 
 
 Slain and by thee, slain and by thee. 
 What must I do that he perish ? 
 
 Slain and by me, slain and by me ? 
 Listen and learn in what manner 
 
 Slain he shall be, slain he shall be. 
 Close by the house in the garden 
 
 Hideth a snake, hideth a snake. 
 Take thou its head and to powder 
 
 Grind it and break, grind it and break. 
 In the black wine then infuse it, 
 
 Fill the cup high, fill the cup high. 
 Your husband will come home from hunting 
 
 Thirsty and dry, thirsty and dry. 
 Pour me some wine, Lombard woman, 
 
 With thirst I pine, with thirst I pine, 
 What hast thou done, Lombard woman ? 
 
 Turbid the wine, turbid the wine. 
 'Twas but the sea-wind at even 
 
 Stirred the lees up, stirred the lees up. 
 Drink then thyself, Lombard woman, 
 
 Drain thou the cup, drain thou the cup. 
 What must I do since this moment 
 
 No thirst have I, no thirst have I ? 
 
Italian Folk Songs 175 
 
 By my sword's point thou shalt drink it, 
 
 Drain the cup dry, drain the cup dry. 
 One drop from the goblet she hath ta'en — 
 
 Pale grows the Lombard woman's cheek. 
 A second drop hath she drunk amain — 
 
 The Lombard woman a priest must seek. 
 A third drop drinks she, and help were vain — 
 
 Let the Lombard woman her grave bespeak. 
 
 Count Nigra, who has made this ballad a subject of 
 special study,* believes it to date from the same epoch 
 as the event it chronicles — that is, the sixth century. As 
 the Italian language did not then exist, his conjecture is 
 that the song was transformed with the development of 
 the idiom, in its oral transmission from lip to lip. 
 
 Notwithstanding its archaic style and the rudeness of 
 the dialects in which it is preserved, it is a fine remnant 
 of early popular poetry, not without an element of tragic 
 power in the swiftness with which the action hurries to 
 the close. It exists, with very trifling variations, in the 
 principal dialects of North Italy, the above translation 
 being from the version current in the Canavese district, 
 where Count Nigra describes it as sung to a most lugu- 
 brious chant, probably as old as the words. 
 
 Clotilda, the daughter of Clovis, is the heroine of 
 another historical ballad, which narrates her ill-treatment 
 at the hands of her husband, Amalaric, king of the 
 Visigoths, and the vengeance wreaked on him by her 
 three brothers ; but the North Italian version of the tale 
 is apparently nothing more than a transcript of the 
 Provencal rendering of the same subject. 
 
 The military spirit of the Piedmontese is very con- 
 spicuous in their ballad literature, in which the incidents 
 
 * "Canti Popolari Piemontesi." Conte Costantino Nigra. 
 
176 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 and the vicissitudes of a soldier's life make a large figure, 
 as in the following specimen from the Monferrino 
 dialect : * 
 
 THE RETURN. 
 
 Speak, fair youth, I prithee say, 
 From what land dost tidings bring ? 
 
 In the wars I've been away, 
 In the wars a-soldiering. 
 
 Prithee tell me, oh fair youth, 
 
 My true lover did you see ? 
 Yes, I've seen him in good sooth, 
 
 Though his face was strange to me. 
 
 Gentle youth, pray tell me where 
 Thou didst see him and with whom ? 
 
 At the Abbey of St. Clare, 
 
 Where they bore him to the tomb. 
 
 Prithee, oh fair youth, declare, 
 What his garments' tint and hue ? 
 
 White and russet was his wear, 
 Like an emperor to view. 
 
 O fair youth, I prithee say, 
 
 Was he honoured by his peers ? 
 Fifty torches led the way, 
 
 And as many cymbaleers. 
 
 To the earth she sinks tear-laden, 
 
 Sinks to earth in grief and woe. 
 Cheer ye, cheer ye, pretty maiden, 
 
 And in me your lover know. 
 
 A common phase of Italian domestic life is illustrated by 
 ballads like the following, expressive of the grievances of 
 the son's wife under the roof of his parents : 
 
 * " Canti e Racconti." Domenico Comparetti. 
 
Italian Folk Songs 177 
 
 THE DAUGHTER-IN-LAW. 
 
 When I lived in my father's dwelling, 
 
 Good macaroni was my food. 
 Now I am married, there's no telling 
 
 If macaroni's bad or good. 
 
 When in my mother's house I tarried, 
 
 On finest paste I used to dine, 
 I scarcely know since I am married, 
 
 Whether the paste be coarse or fine. 
 
 And while the mistress and her daughter 
 
 The macaroni all devour, 
 The son's poor wife, with pail and water, 
 
 Stays in the corner pots to scour. 
 
 And while the daughter and her mother 
 May drink good wine and have their fling, 
 
 The son's poor wife can drink no other 
 Than water from the nearest spring. 
 
 And while the mistress and her daughter 
 May go to balls and dance and play, 
 
 The son's poor wife must have it taught her 
 To rock the babe the livelong day. 
 
 Matrimony, from whatever point of view, does not seem 
 to be regarded with much favour by Piedmontese lasses, 
 if the following stanzas may be taken as representative of 
 their feelings towards it : 
 
 Sing merrily, all ye maidens, 
 
 Who are unmarried still, 
 For other thoughts when wedded 
 
 And cares, your minds will fill. 
 
 Your husband's father and mother, 
 And husband you'll have to please ; 
 
 Must handle distaff and spindle, 
 And needle for broideries. 
 
 M 
 
178 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 You'll have your hand on the table, 
 
 To cut the paste alway ; 
 You'll have your foot on the cradle, 
 
 To rock the babe all day. 
 
 The spirit of the French chanson is echoed in these 
 Piedmontese ballads, which have the same incisiveness 
 of style in their brief narratives, often in the form of 
 dialogue. It is strange, as marking a wide divergence 
 in national character, that the love-ditty proper, the 
 staple of central and southern Italian song, should not 
 exist at all in Piedmontese, and in the other sub-alpine 
 dialects, only as an obvious imitation. In Venice and 
 Istria it has a stamp of spontaneity, as it is seasoned 
 with a dash of espieglerie characteristic of the vivacious 
 natives of the lagoons. Here is, for instance, a Venetian 
 serenade with its sentiment thus qualified with a touch 
 of ironical self-ridicule : 
 
 False traitress ! Couldst thou but a notion form 
 
 Of all the pains I've borne for love of thee! 
 Whilst thou wast in thy chamber close and warm, 
 
 Outside among the shrubs poor I would be ; 
 Rosewater then appeared the rain and storm, 
 
 The lightnings love's own signals seemed to me ; 
 The tempest rude a zephyr 'mid the leaves, 
 
 While I was there outside beneath thy eaves. 
 Outside beneath thy eaves I made my bed, 
 
 As coverlet the sky above me spread. 
 The doorstep as a pillow 'neath my head, 
 
 Alack, poor me ! how hard the life I led ! 
 
 A cradle song, or Ninna IVanna, from the Istrian dia- 
 lect may serve as a specimen of a class of compositions 
 generally consisting of rhymes with little or no meaning, 
 evidently intended only to vocalise some sing-song 
 lullaby : 
 
Italian Folk Songs 179 
 
 I told you before and I tell you so still, 
 My baby will soon go to sleep, yes, he will. 
 Little by little off he'll go, 
 Like wood that's green by a fire that's low, 
 The green wood never in flames doth start, 
 Core of his father's and mother's heart ; 
 The green wood never sends sparks on high, 
 Sleep my heart, sleep my hope, hush a bye. 
 
 But it is in Tuscany that we find the characteristic spirit 
 of Italian folk-verse typified and concentrated. The 
 poetry of this race, who " lisp in numbers," consists of 
 endless variations on the inexhaustible theme of love, all 
 constructed on a prescribed model and cast in a traditional 
 mould. It is the utterance of generations of youthful 
 hearts, ranging through infinite gradations of tenderness 
 rather than of passion, that meets us in these exquisite 
 word-harmonies, all tuned to the same key and inspired 
 by the same dominant motive. The Tuscan " Rispetti," 
 or love-greetings, are almost invariably cast in an octave 
 stanza composed of two pairs of alternate and two of 
 consecutive rhymes, the latter prettily styled "rime 
 baciate" (kissing rhymes). In the closing quatrain, 
 the idea expressed in the two first lines is invariably 
 repeated in the two last, but with an inversion of the 
 phrase, in the following fashion : 
 
 With thy fair mien and ways, speech fairer still, 
 Thou raisest me to life and then dost kill, 
 With thy fair speech, and fairer mien and ways, 
 Thou killest me, and then to life dost raise. 
 
 The antiquity of this form of versification is proved by 
 the direction appended to one of the old lauds published 
 in 1485, "to be sung like the Rispetti," that is. to the 
 same melody or chant. Every phase of the tender 
 
180 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 passion is expressed in these stanzas ; nor need quarrel- 
 some lovers be at a loss for a vehicle for their feelings, 
 since there are " Dispetti " ready-made to hand for the 
 purpose, to say nothing of " Disperate," " Contra-dis- 
 perate," and " Scampanate." Here is an example of the 
 mildly reproachful strain, addressed by a maiden to a 
 fickle swain : 
 
 Light youth, you do as does the changeful leaf 
 That yields and turns to every passing breeze, 
 
 Or like the serpent, when her vesture brief 
 She sheds, to deck her in fresh liveries. 
 
 And like the serpent of the earth you be, 
 
 To others kind, but venomous to me, 
 
 And like the serpent of the earth you are, 
 
 At peace with others, but with me at war. 
 
 The language of hyperbolical compliment is common to 
 lovers in all climates, but surely golden tresses have 
 never been more daintily commended than in the sab- 
 joined apostrophe of the Tuscan peasant : 
 
 Would'st see thy servant die of love straightway, 
 Dress not in curls those shining locks of thine, 
 But down along thy shoulders let them stray, 
 
 Where they seem skeins of gold from out the mine. 
 Where they seem skeins of finely-threaded gold, 
 Fair are the locks and fair the head they fold ; 
 When they seem skeins of gold and silk most rare, 
 Fair are the locks, and she who combs them fair. 
 
 The tender inconsistencies of a lover's fancy are expressed 
 in the following stanza, in which the epic octave is sub- 
 stituted for the rustic form : 
 
 Oh flower of beauty that dost ever blow, 
 
 Unchanged through all the seasons of the year, 
 
 Who looks on thee, and doth thy sweetness know, 
 Hath a perennial spring for ever near ; 
 
Italian Folk Songs 181 
 
 Oh, flower of beauty, midst the people go, 
 And learn how fair to all thou dost appear ; 
 Oh, flower of beauty, rather hide apart, 
 For I alone would know how fair thou art. 
 
 A quaint conceit of a kind much in vogue with the elder 
 minnesingers of all countries, is embodied in the following : 
 
 Now would to Heav'n that love were judged by weight, 
 
 And who were short of love should pain endure, 
 For that such sentence ne'er should be my fate — 
 Unless the scales were false — I then were sure. 
 Unless the scales were false, and gave no sign, 
 Unto which side the balance should incline ; 
 Unless the scales were false and crooked quite, 
 And none should know how love to weigh aright. 
 
 Another example is a variation on the common type 
 from having an extra pair of lines — ten instead of eight : 
 
 Did I but think my love could list to me, 
 
 With lusty voice then would I shout and sing, 
 
 But sundered by hills, vales, and mounts are we, 
 Nor can my voice to such far distance ring. 
 
 We're sundered by the leaves of corn-fields green, 
 
 He cannot hear me with such space between ; 
 
 We're sundered by the leaves of trailing vine, 
 
 He cannot hear me from his house to mine ; 
 
 We're sundered by the leaves of poplars tall, 
 
 He cannot hear me, he is out of call. 
 
 The form of the Rispetti is used for improvisation upon 
 all subjects, as in the subjoined stanza, in which Beatrice 
 di Pian degli Ontani, the shepherdess-improvvisatrice of 
 the Abetone, replied to a question about her education : 
 
 My lads and lasses, prithee wonder not, 
 
 If my rude song in faulty verses flow, 
 For to my house no teachers came, I wot, 
 
 Far less to schools for learning did I go ; 
 
182 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 And would ye know the school I did frequent, 
 'Twas round these hills in hail and rain I went, 
 And would ye know the study that I made, 
 'Twas fetching wood and digging with the spade. 
 
 The " Strambotto " is generally more rude and frag- 
 mentary than the " Rispetto," seldom completely repro- 
 ducing the epic stanza on which it was originally modelled. 
 " Stornelli," or " Fiori," are ejaculations in song, beginning 
 with the invocation of a flower, and sung to the dance- 
 music of the saltarello. Here is an example of what may 
 at first have been intended as a sort of game played while 
 dancing : 
 
 Oh flower of rye, 
 From a glad heart now let me sing for joy, 
 Once more at peace with my true love am I. 
 
 The singular chant that echoes among the hills of 
 Tuscany, as from valley to valley and from slope to slope 
 the peasants converse with each other in its far-heard 
 rhythm, is not the music to which any of their popular 
 songs are set. It is the versified peasant dramas called 
 "Maggi," as was pointed out in a previous chapter, that are 
 sung to these wild, weird notes, the whole dialogue being 
 sustained on a single musical phrase of a few bars, re- 
 iterated through a performance that frequently lasts for 
 hours. This traditional phrase, with its long-drawn 
 recurring cry, is the favourite vehicle for popular prose 
 utterance throughout Tuscany, and to its wailing cadence 
 the peasants in the long summer evenings may be heard 
 recounting, by the hour together, their joys and sorrows, 
 deaths or other incidents of family life, either to an 
 audience or in soliloquy. May not Horace and Tibullus 
 have heard the same notes in the rude rhythm in which 
 they describe the peasants of Latium as exchanging 
 
Italian Folk Songs 183 
 
 vituperative epithets or singing behind the plough ? 
 Horace, indeed, speaks of this primitive Saturnian metre 
 as having been supplanted by the introduction of Greek 
 culture, but it is at least possible that it may still linger 
 in these highlands amid a people who have seen more 
 revolutions and been less affected by them than any 
 other race on earth. 
 
 The poetry of the Marches is almost identical with 
 that of Tuscany, as may be seen in the example of two 
 Rispetti, spoken by a youth and maiden respectively : 
 
 With what a grace, sweet maiden, dost thou move, 
 How fair thou art with that bright head of thine ; 
 
 Earth thrills beneath thy foot her joy to prove, 
 And trees break into flower and blossoms shine. 
 
 Thy graceful step doth call the blossoms out, 
 
 Like roses that in April blush and pout ; 
 
 Thy beauteous mien doth bid the flowers appear, 
 
 Like roses when the summer months are here. 
 
 Now look ye what misfortune hath been mine ! 
 
 To have a tongue, and yet perforce be mute, 
 To pass my own true lad and give no sign, 
 
 To see him — and be powerless to salute, 
 I greeted him, indeed, in thought and heart, 
 Though thou, poor tongue, of speech hadst lost the art, 
 I greeted him, indeed, in heart and thought, 
 Though thou, poor tongue of mine, couldst utter nought. 
 
 In Umbria and Latium the octave stanza is lengthened 
 — in the latter by repeating the two opening lines again 
 at the close — in the former by extra variations on the 
 Ritornelli, as follows : 
 
 I go, my love, to roam from thee so far, 
 That news of me can scarce come back to thee, 
 
 But as a sign, I leave behind a star ; 
 When it no longer shines, weep, love for me. 
 
184 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 When night or day it shines no more on high, 
 Weep, pretty love, for I am like to die. 
 When day or night it shines on high no more, 
 Weep, pretty love, for I am at death's door. 
 
 When the bright star no longer shineth clear, 
 Weep, pretty love, for I am on my bier. 
 When the bright star no more on high is found, 
 Weep, pretty love, for I am underground. 
 
 In Naples, where an element of the grotesque enters into 
 southern passion, the songs which are so prominent a 
 feature of popular life are principally in burlesque vein. 
 Produced for public competition on the festival of 
 Piedigrotta (September 8), the one then chosen by 
 public acclamation as the queen-song of the year attains 
 universal celebrity. 
 
 The popular wit is apparent in the trade songs or 
 street cries of Naples like this, §< Zuoccolaro, zuoccole," 
 in which the dealer in clogs or wooden shoes advertises 
 his wares : 
 
 Wooden shoes, who'll buy, who'll buy ! 
 
 Wooden shoes, who wants a pair ? 
 Though the price is none too high, 
 
 I'll abate it to the fair, 
 Who her charms hereby renews — 
 Wooden-shoe-man, wooden shoes ! 
 
 Some there are so small and neat, 
 
 Fashioned with especial care, 
 Made express for dainty feet, 
 
 Meant alone for such to wear, 
 That their beauty nought may lose — 
 Wooden-shoe-man, wooden shoes 
 
 As each nail I hammered straight, 
 
 I began to sigh amain, 
 Thinking what a precious weight 
 
 Would the senseless wood sustain. 
 
Italian Folk Songs 185 
 
 Wishing I such lot might choose — 
 Wooden-shoe-man, wooden shoes ! 
 
 Many a heart with love on fire, 
 
 Will your fate with envy see, 
 Many a lover will desire 
 
 Such a pair of clogs to be. 
 Then poor me will they abuse — 
 Wooden-shoe-man, wooden shoes ! 
 
 If among you one is found 
 
 Who doth love — I prithee take 
 These, which make no creaking sound, 
 
 Mamma's suspicions to awake, 
 Fear not if my wares you use — 
 Wooden-shoe-man, wooden shoes ! 
 
 Ever honest with the fair, 
 
 I ne'er wrangle o'er the price, 
 For all difference to square, 
 
 A few honeyed words suffice. 
 Thus their favour ne'er I lose — 
 Wooden-shoe-man, wooden shoes ! 
 
 The cry of the laundresses of the Vomero, " Jesce sole !" 
 (Out sun !) is thus amplified in verse : 
 
 Out sun ! shjne out ! and hide no more, 
 
 Nor leave us here to sigh in vain, 
 See how to pray you o'er and o'er, 
 
 So humbly we poor girls are fain. 
 To burn our faces black, indeed, 
 In hottest haste you come full speed, 
 To bleach our sheets when we implore, 
 
 On crutches must you limp amain, 
 Out sun ! shine out ! and hide no more, 
 
 Nor leave us here to sigh in vain. 
 
 The remaining stanzas are in the same spirit, which also 
 animates the Song of the Grinder or Arrotino : 
 
1 86 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 women, here comes the grinder, 
 
 Women who wants to whet ? 
 Come quick at this reminder, 
 
 To have your scissors set. 
 I keep the grindstone turning, 
 
 With a whirli whirligo, 
 'Tis a pleasant way of earning, 
 
 That our merry trade doth show. 
 
 From Calabria comes the following stanza to a lady of 
 the name of Anna, with a play on the word Anno, the 
 year : 
 
 Anna, thy name is borrowed from the year, 
 
 And all the beauties of the year are thine, 
 Thou bear'st high summer in thy glances clear, 
 
 While on thy flesh the snows of winter shine. 
 Ripe fruits of autumn thy warm lips appear, 
 
 Thy face of very spring-tide is the sign, 
 And if I e'er should lose thee, sweetheart dear, 
 
 My whole year gone, what day should then be mine ? 
 
 The character of Sicilian song is variously ascribed to 
 Arab and Provencal influences, but Signor Vigo,* the 
 most exhaustive writer on the subject, would trace it 
 still further back to the old Greek culture of the island. 
 But these are speculative theories, while the identity of 
 character of its earliest traditional form with that of 
 Tuscany is a palpable fact. Cast, too, in the octave 
 stanza, though of slightly different structure, and similarly 
 expressive of various phases of feeling — love, hatred, 
 jealousy, or anger — these emotions are clothed in that 
 larger amplitude of exaggeration and hyperbole derived 
 from contact with an Eastern race. Other forms of 
 poetry, approaching more nearly to the ballad type, are 
 of modern growth on a soil where verse is the spontaneous 
 
 * M Canti Popolari Siciliani." Leonardo Vigo. 
 
Italian Folk Songs 187 
 
 utterance of the people. Their taste seems to demand 
 uniformity rather than variety of sound, as the form of 
 octave stanza, the use of which among them can be 
 traced back to the fifteenth century, is constructed on a 
 single pair of rhymes alternated throughout, while for 
 these they prefer a certain amount of assonance, generally 
 produced by the inversion of the vowels, as in via and 
 vat. The following specimen of the Sicilian octave is 
 formed, all except the closing lines, of cynical proverbs 
 dovetailed together in evident bitterness of spirit : 
 
 To fallen tree, the axe, the axe straightway ! 
 
 To man in prison, death without debate, 
 Unlucky who relations' help doth pray, 
 
 He who hath nought should lean upon the great. 
 A wife is never a true friend, they say, 
 
 Who hath a mother 'scapes the worst of fate, 
 When beat of drum broke on the public way,* 
 
 My best friend played the hangman for me straight. 
 
 The next example recalls Petrarch's sonnet, " Vago 
 Augelletto " : 
 
 Oh turtle-dove, who of thy gentle mate, 
 
 The lost companionship dost aye deplore, 
 Who mak'st thy moan in places desolate, 
 
 And with thy tears the way dost moisten o'er, 
 Come hither, and to me thy woes narrate, 
 
 And I will tell what makes my heart so sore ; 
 Thou thy dead love dost weep disconsolate, 
 
 I mourn her living still, but mine no more. 
 
 Its intimate association with the life of the people gives 
 a peculiar interest to the national poetry of Sicily. It is 
 here that at harvest-time and other festive seasons the 
 village streets may be heard echoing to those contests in 
 
 * The police or soldiers to arrest rioters. 
 
1 88 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 song which the memory of the peasants enables them to 
 sustain, sometimes for hours together, an exercise which 
 they call cantar lu Ruggiero. A man and woman, for 
 instance, will answer each other in appropriate stanzas 
 on a given subject, such as censure and praise of the fair 
 sex, from house to house, or from threshing-floor to 
 threshing floor, until one or other is beaten off the field 
 from the exhaustion of his repertory. Their stock is often 
 a very extensive one, and a village weaver-girl is said to 
 have known by heart 600 canzoni, or 4800 lines of verse. 
 The retentiveness of the popular memory thus exercised 
 is illustrated by an incident witnessed by Signor Salamone- 
 Marino, who assisted at what he calls the popularisation 
 of a poem at Borgetto in 1867. The piece happened to 
 hit the public fancy from the local allusions and biting 
 sarcasms on well-known characters, with which the 
 author (a countryman of the name of Salvatore d'Arrigo) 
 had seasoned the traditional panegyric on the saint 
 whose feast was being celebrated. The people flocked 
 round to listen, and, after two or three recitals, were 
 able to repeat, without missing a syllable, the entire 
 poem of thirty-one octave stanzas, which in a few days 
 thus attained a wide circulation. 
 
 Each class of poem, such as drinking songs or love 
 ditties, has its special traditional musical measure, and 
 among them is the chant of the Tuscan Maggi, whose 
 wild stave is believed to be of Arab origin. The voice 
 is generally accompanied by some stringed instrument — 
 violin, lute, or guitar — and singing and dancing are com- 
 bined in " La Ruggiera," defined as a pantomimic song- 
 dance. Two couples go through the figure with much 
 gesticulation, pausing for the vocal part of the per- 
 formance, which consists of words chosen at discretion, 
 
Italian Folk Songs 189 
 
 sung to a prescribed melody, accompanied by guitars 
 and violins. The name recalls that of " Sir Roger de 
 Coverley," but it is scarcely likely that the English 
 country-dance is called after Sicilian Roger. 
 
 Stefano La Sala, one of the principal popular poets of 
 Sicily, a poor and hard-working nailsmith of Palermo, is 
 described by Signor Vigo, who visited him in his humble 
 forge, as chanting poems and stories in all metres to the 
 monotonous beat of the hammer on the anvil — a 
 Harmonious Blacksmith indeed. 
 
 The blind minstrels of Palermo form a regular guild, 
 constituted under legal sanction in 1661, possessing 
 diplomas which they keep religiously guarded from pro- 
 fane eye under triple key, and bound to certain religious 
 observances, among them the annual production of a 
 song in honour of the Madonna for her Feast on 
 December 8. Cn this anniversary Signor Vigo says it 
 is interesting to see them competing for public favour, 
 each rehearsing in turn the new song and new words, 
 while their boy-guides congregate together and amuse 
 themselves with childish sports. The society consists of 
 thirty members, all singers and players, some inventors of 
 new rhymes (trovatori), others rhapsodists, repeating from 
 memory only. Having acquired a prescriptive right to 
 hold their weekly meeting in the portico of the Jesuit 
 convent, they were at perpetual feud with the Order, 
 which vainly sought to dislodge them. 
 
 The public competitions between rival bards in 
 classical Greece are recalled by those which take place 
 between the Sicilian improvvisatori as described by Signor 
 Vigo: 
 
 11 Among the most pleasing and novel spectacles are 
 the tenzoni (contests). Fairs are held in Sicily to which 
 
190 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 different poets repair, singing and accompanying them- 
 selves like the early troubadours, and each followed by a 
 crowd who applaud and pay him. Disputes then arise 
 between the admirers of this one or that, leading to com- 
 petitions between the poets, either brought together by 
 their respective partisans, or meeting accidentally under 
 a tree or in a booth or tavern, it matters not where, 
 provided there be plenty of wine from capacious jars 
 to moisten contentious throats. The combatants are 
 debarred the use of prose, and forbidden weapons, for 
 which they are searched before the duel begins. They 
 exchange salutations, challenges, and questions in verse, 
 and generally proceed after the first greetings to pro- 
 posing intricate questions which must be answered im- 
 promptu ; then as the contest becomes more animated, 
 they pass on to witticisms or sarcasms, and woe to 
 whichever falters or has not his rhymes at command — 
 woe to the vanquished ! His defeat mortifies his 
 adherents, and he retires sometimes followed by hisses, 
 but boasting of former triumphs and challenging the 
 victor to fresh combat at another fair ; the latter mean- 
 time empties his flask, joyously twanging the lute, viol, 
 or psaltery, whose tinkle is still heard in some remote 
 villages. Sometimes, and indeed this is the usual end 
 of the contest, the defeated party rushes at his conqueror 
 to make an end of him, and force scarcely avails to keep 
 them apart, until the priest intervenes, and makes them 
 exchange a fraternal embrace. These formal contests 
 resemble duels to the death, but in the more peaceful 
 competitions the poets eulogise the saint whose feast is 
 being held, answering each other impromptu, and this 
 takes place, for instance, at San Giovanni di Galerno on 
 June 24 every year." 
 
Italian Folk Songs 191 
 
 The author narrates as follows the proceedings at this 
 feast in 1852 : 
 
 " In presence of five or six thousand spectators the 
 image of the saint was brought out and placed upon the 
 car, on which ascended five poets, Antonino Russo, 
 aged six, led by his father, Salvatore a smith, Giovanni 
 Pagano, farmer, Andrea Pappalardo, shoemaker, and 
 Salvatore da Misterbianco, farmer. The poets cele- 
 brated in turns the life and miracles of the saint, and 
 then came to a tournament amongst themselves; all 
 used the Sicilian octave except Pappalardo, who used 
 the sestine with the last two lines rhyming together; 
 none withdrew from the field, all were facile and imagina- 
 tive improvvisatori, and if one were to bear off the palm, 
 I should assign it to the smith, as endowed with the 
 greatest play of fancy. All five were judged worthy of 
 prizes. The people applauded or were silent, though on 
 other occasions they sometimes make the poet descend 
 from the platform if he fails to give satisfaction, hesitates 
 or stops, and they took such pleasure in the performance 
 as to stay scorching in the sun for over two hours. 
 None know how or when this contest was instituted, but 
 all agree that it is very ancient." 
 
 Of Sicilian ballad literature the most remarkable relic 
 is the "Baronessa di Carini," reconstructed piecemeal 
 from the lips of the people by Signor Salvatore Salamone- 
 Marino, and published by him with a commentary.* 
 The subject is the fate of Caterina La Grua, murdered 
 
 * i< 
 
 La Baronessa di Carini " and " La Storia nei Canti Popo- 
 lari Siciliani," Salvatore Salamone-Marino. Among the prin- 
 cipal collectors of Italian folk-songs, besides those already cited, 
 are Giuseppe Tigri, "Canti Popolari Toscani " : Niccolo Tom- 
 maseo, «' Canti Popolar iGreci, Illirici, Corsi e Toscani " ; Angelo 
 
192 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 by her father on December 4, 1563, in his rage at the 
 discovery of a love affair carried on in his absence. To 
 this tragedy, probably historical, legend has appended 
 the descent of her lover to the infernal regions to visit 
 her shade, resulting in his conversion and subsequent 
 life of penance. At the old castle of Carini, opposite 
 the island of Ustica, on the northern coast of Sicily, 
 the impress of a blood - stained hand on the wall 
 is still shown as that made by the ill-starred heroine 
 in her fall. An extract descriptive of the sunrise on 
 the morning of her death may serve as a specimen of 
 the ballad : 
 
 Incarnadine descends the morning light 
 
 On Ustica's gaunt spine and on the sea, 
 The swallow soars aloft on pinions light, 
 
 To greet the sun with matin song of glee ; 
 But lo, the sparrow-hawk doth bar her flight, 
 
 With greedy eyes the fluttering bird that see, 
 Back to her nest she hies her in affright, 
 
 And scarce escapes the peril she doth flee. 
 Nor dares look forth, but hides in fear of capture, 
 Hushed and forgot her wonted song of rapture. 
 
 The popularity of this ballad is attested by the existence 
 of fragments in various parts of Italy ; and the lament of 
 the lover is recognisable by some characteristic features 
 in the Neapolitan song " Fenesta che luciva." The feats 
 of celebrated brigands form the theme of several Sicilian 
 ballads, which, however, do not treat them from the 
 sympathetic point of view generally accorded to such 
 heroes in popular literature. 
 
 Dalmedico, " Canti del Popolo Veneziano " ; Giuseppe Pitre, 
 " Sui Canti Popolari Siciliani " ; Giuseppe Morosi, " Studi sui 
 Dialetti Greci " ; Achille Canali, " Canti Popolari Calabresi." 
 
Italian Folk Songs 193 
 
 The tenacity of race distinction on Italian soil is 
 illustrated by the survival in Sicily of two foreign 
 nationalities, whose identity centuries of residence have 
 not sufficed to merge in that of the native population of 
 their adopted country. Of these the Albanians, planted 
 in the sixteenth century, are the most numerous, reckoned 
 at 85,000 between Sicily and Calabria. Here they form 
 separate village communities, retaining their own customs 
 and religious rites, and speaking a language known as 
 Greco- Albanese, Latin, as they term that of their neigh- 
 bours, being little understood by them. At the ecclesi- 
 astical seminary, founded for their priests in the eighteenth 
 century, the Athenian dramas are acted by the students 
 on gala occasions. They still regard Greece as their 
 native country, and from some of their settlements in 
 Sicily go in pilgrimage to the top of a mountain before 
 dawn on June 24, and, with their faces turned to the 
 East, address the following invocation to the Morea : 
 
 Oh fair Morea, 
 Since leaving thee I ne'er have seen thee more, 
 There is my sire, 
 There doth my mother dwell, 
 I left my brothers' graves upon thy shore, 
 
 Oh fair Morea, 
 Since leaving thee I ne'er have seen thee more. 
 
 Although the Siculo-Albanians have imitated the 
 Sicilian stanza in some of their recent poetry, their 
 primitive songs are of a totally different character, always 
 unrhymed, very irregular in metre, and of a more 
 fantastic and Eastern cast of thought. In the subjoined 
 specimen, rhyme has been substituted in the translation 
 for the sonorous rhythm of the original, which cannot be 
 reproduced in English : 
 
 N 
 
194 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 Haste to the garden now 
 
 Thou bright and merry maiden, 
 Cull there an olive bough, 
 
 With the black olives laden. 
 Black as the maiden's eyes of night, 
 Oh, maiden mine snow-white, 
 Maiden, my heart's delight. 
 
 Run to the garden quick, 
 
 Oh bright and merry maiden, 
 The quince's branch there pick, 
 
 With the white quinces laden. 
 Like the fair maiden's brow of light, 
 Oh, maiden mine snow-white, 
 Maiden, my heart's delight. 
 
 Speed on the garden way, 
 
 Oh bright and merry maiden, 
 Pluck a pomegranate spray, 
 
 With its red fruitage laden. 
 Like the fair maiden's blushes bright, 
 Oh, maiden mine snow-white, 
 Maiden, my heart's delight. 
 
 Haste to the garden now, 
 Thou bright and merry maiden, 
 
 Break there an apple bough, 
 With the sweet apples laden. 
 
 Like the maiden's form so round, so slight, 
 
 Oh, maiden mine snow-white, 
 
 Maiden, my heart's delight. 
 
 A still earlier immigration is represented in Sicily by 
 50,000 Lombards, descended from soldiers of that 
 nation who accompanied the first Norman conquerors 
 into the island. After the lapse of more than seven 
 centuries they still form a distinct element in the popu- 
 lation, and speak a Lombard dialect, adulterated, not 
 with Sicilian idiom, but with the Norman-French of their 
 
Italian Folk Songs IO c 
 
 early brothers-in-arms. They, too, have their songs 
 modelled on the Sicilian stanza, but with a strain of 
 burlesque more in harmony with German taste, recalling 
 the fact that this race came of Teutonic stock. 
 
 While the influence of all the various elements in the 
 Italian population is distinctly traceable in the poetry of 
 the nation, its two most strongly contrasted types are 
 embodied in that of the Arno Basin and of the Subalpine 
 Slope. In the one we have the utterances of a self- 
 reflective mood, centred on a single theme, and set, as 
 it were, to minor keys of thought; in the other, an 
 unimpassioned chronicle of facts, told in verse often 
 rude and bald, but animated with dramatic spirit, and 
 moving with the brusque vivacity of a military quick 
 step. In the preponderance in the one of feeling, in the 
 other of action, we see portrayed with curious distinctness 
 those two opposite but complementary types of national 
 character which made Piedmont the sword, as Tuscany 
 is the brain of Italy. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Tuscan Beranger 
 
 No man since he who first sung of the other world in a 
 tongue previously despised in this has exercised so 
 powerful an influence on the Italian language as the 
 modern satirist of the Tuscan hills. What Dante 
 effected for the spoken vernacular of his own day, 
 raising it to be the model of classical diction, Giuseppe 
 Giusti did for the rural idiom of his native mountains, 
 rendering it the ideal standard of speech, and that, too, 
 at the very time when the national aspirations for 
 political unity rendered some such common standard a 
 necessity for Italy. 
 
 Born of a family of provincial gentry in the little town 
 of Monsummano, perched high above the green amphi- 
 theatre of the Val di Nievole, he made it his recreation 
 from boyhood to wander on foot among the encircling 
 Apennines, there gathering from the lips of the 
 peasantry those pungent touches of wit and pathos, 
 keen-whetted as by the sharp air of the uplands, with 
 which he has enriched modern Italian. Like the 
 mediaeval craftsman, who elaborated from the homeliest 
 types of nature the exquisite ornamentation of his foliated 
 shafts, Giusti has wrought into his polished lines with 
 consummate effect the shrewd proverbs interchanged in 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 197 
 
 fence and foil of rustic wit by the hardy mountaineers of 
 Pistoia or the rude shepherds of the Maremma. So 
 entirely, indeed, is his vocabulary drawn from the dialect 
 of his rural fellow-countrymen, that while it is regarded 
 as the purest ideal of Italian Attic, it has been found 
 necessary to publish a specially annotated edition of his 
 poems for the use of non-Tuscan readers. 
 
 The present prevailing fashion in Italian literature 
 tends, it must be confessed, to an exaggeration of the 
 peculiarities of Giusti's style, and the reaction led by him 
 against pseudo-classicalism threatens, like all reactions, 
 to carry public taste into an opposite extreme, that of 
 giving literary currency to all the familiar colloquialisms 
 of Florentine street slang. The idiom of the Mercato 
 Nuovo may be a very quaint and forcible vehicle for 
 popular wit and eloquence, yet at the same time quite 
 incapable of giving utterance to all the ideas of a higher 
 plane of culture. 
 
 The name of Beranger, borrowed by Giusti's com- 
 patriots for their favourite lyrist, refers in reality to but 
 one aspect of his character, that of a poet of the people.. 
 The sunny singer of Parisian Bohemianism has no chord 
 on his lyre that vibrates to those minors in which the 
 Italian satirist sounds the notes of a deeper pathos — a 
 sterner moral. Not a lyre, indeed, but a violin is his 
 instrument, capable of those penetrating poignancies that 
 pierce to the quick of human nature. In the Tuscan 
 character, through all classes and degrees, a keen and 
 caustic sense of humour is associated with a profound 
 sensibility to melancholy impressions. This dual nature,, 
 in which the sources of laughter and tears are placed 
 close together, was reproduced in Giusti in its most 
 intensified form, and he repeatedly analyses it in his 
 
198 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 writings. Thus in the lines to Gino Capponi he describes 
 himself as expressing, 
 
 This smile whose seeming mirth is grief defied. 
 (Questo che par sorriso ed e dolore), 
 
 while to Girolamo Tommasi he writes in the same strain : 
 
 But ah ! a laugh that echoes not within, 
 For like the starving mountebank am I, 
 Who, gnawed by want, to please the crowd must try 
 With gibe and grin. 
 
 It is this tragic sense of the incongruities of life that 
 gives its trenchant incisiveness to Giusti's verse, 
 sharpened, like a two-edged sword, with the double 
 keenness of ridicule and wrath ; the vehicle, now of 
 denunciation, trumpet-tongued as the blast of an accusing 
 angel, now of pungent raillery levelled at injustice or 
 abuse with the seemingly unconscious pleasantry of 
 Piilcinella. Half harlequin, half Mephistopheles, he 
 launches jests or sneers indifferently, and is either grim 
 or jocose as the humour takes him, but ever with such 
 unfailing mastery of his weapons that neither jest nor 
 sneer fails to cut to the bone. 
 
 No kindred spirit to Beranger, with the bubble and 
 sparkle of French vivacity in his effervescing verse, have 
 we in this scathed and scathing moralist, whose airiest 
 lines suggest such deeper meanings as though the frown- 
 ing gaze of the genius of Tragedy were fixed on us from 
 beneath the hollow comic mask, and whose cap and 
 bells crown the grisly protagonist of the Dance of Death. 
 Rather among a people resembling the Tuscan in their 
 shrewd sense and keen humour will English readers 
 seek a parallel to the Italian poet, and in Giusti's 
 habitual turn of mind and thought find a curious faraway 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 199 
 
 kinship to those of Robert Burns. Giusti, like Burns, 
 wrote in a rustic idiom, though with a polish of style that 
 fitted it to classical use ; like Burns, he lived much 
 among the people and was the interpreter of their feel- 
 ings ; like Burns, he contemned and scorned the flimsy 
 shams of society, and recognised with the same intensity 
 the common stamp of universal humanity which they 
 ignore. Both natures were perhaps originally com- 
 pounded of the same metal, but moulded by circum- 
 stances and surroundings to uses and capabilities as 
 different as are those of a finely-tempered Italian rapier 
 from those of a stout and serviceable Scottish dirk. 
 
 The active part of Giusti's life was coincident with 
 that incipient phase of the Italian revolution when an 
 ever-growing sense of exasperation in men's minds, a 
 feeling of bitter wrong and burning humiliation, was 
 undermining the structure of foreign domination as surely 
 and silently as the gradual operations of nature sap the 
 foundations of a ruin. All the vital forces of the country 
 were engaged in preparing the national renovation; all 
 its intellectual and moral strength was bent to the same 
 purpose ; and art and literature were either pressed into 
 the service of patriotism or neglected altogether. Thus 
 Giusti, born a poet, was developed into a political 
 satirist by the conditions of the society in which he 
 moved, concentrating its seething passions into that 
 series of epigrams which were not the least among the 
 myriad forces all working to the same result of national 
 liberation. He belonged to that unfortunate generation 
 of Italians who sowed in blood and tears the harvest 
 which their descendants were to reap in joy ; and who 
 by a succession of abortive conspiracies and insurrections 
 drew down upon their country and themselves all the 
 
200 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 miseries of repression. The poet saw the machinery of 
 mediaeval statecraft in full operation around him — the 
 scaffold and the dungeon the familiar allies of authority ; 
 the official spy and paid informer the vile tools of 
 tyranny; exile and proscription the wages of patriotic 
 aspiration; and his heart burned within him, and wrath 
 armed his pen with that concentrated energy of diction 
 which made his epigrams resemble, not squibs, but 
 thunderbolts. 
 
 He was not, however, a mere political lampooner, but 
 a social satirist as well, who has held up to opprobrium 
 the most characteristic vices of his age and country in a 
 series of personifications which resemble Hogarth's cari- 
 catures in their vigour and fidelity. A gallery of odious 
 types, all more or less products of political profligacy, are 
 made to pass before us like the slides of a magic lantern, 
 revealed in their native hideousness by the focussed light 
 of his withering power of epithet. Thus the venal 
 alliance between money and birth is the theme of "La 
 Scritta" (The Contract), descriptive of the nuptials of a 
 worthless and impoverished patrician with a usurer's 
 daughter ; the vulgar ambition of the rich tradesman, 
 that of " La Vestizione " (The Investiture), in which 
 Becero, the ex-grocer, is decorated with the insignia and 
 title of u Cavaliere." The base arts of a career in which 
 conscience, honour, and self-respect are sacrificed to 
 worldly advancement are flagellated in "Gingillino" ; 
 the contemptible figure of the political weathercock 
 is pilloried in the " Brindisi di Girella"; fashionable 
 frivolity and aristocratic inanity are satirised in " II 
 Ballo " and "II Giovinetto"; while the demoralising 
 effects of the Government lottery on the rural classes are 
 portrayed in "II Sortilegio" and the "Apologia del 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 201 
 
 Lotto." So universally recognised were the types he has 
 thus depicted, that the names affixed to them have passed 
 into the language as contumelious epithets to stigmatise 
 similar characters. Personal satire, however, he held in 
 the greatest abhorrence, and nothing so roused his ire 
 as the attempt to identify his typical abstractions with 
 particular individuals. 
 
 Giusti's genius was somewhat late in maturing, and his 
 early years gave no special promise of ability. Born in 
 1809, he was sent, after a somewhat desultory preliminary 
 training, to the University of Pisa, then rather a school of 
 revolutionary principles and juvenile dissipation than of 
 learning or morals. The youthful poet graduated much 
 more brilliantly in the former than in the latter course of 
 education, and his father was so disgusted with his con- 
 duct that he recalled him from the University at the end 
 of three years and kept him at home for an equal lapse 
 of time. In 1832 he returned to Pisa, having in the 
 interval begun to try his prentice-hand at verse-making, 
 and after eighteen months more of the old student life of 
 idleness and folly took his degree in Jurispudence in 
 June 1834, having devoted fifteen days to reading for his 
 examination. That it did not require a very profound 
 course of preparation may be inferred from the fact that 
 one of the students about the same time enlivened the 
 dulness of his legal studies by versifying a great portion of 
 the Canon Law, and sent up at his examination, on the 
 theme " De Pallio," a paper in rhyming couplets, for 
 which the professors, quite unconscious of the poetical 
 nature of the composition, gave him most favourable 
 marks. This University life, with its friendships and 
 follies, its political enthusiasms and reckless defiance of 
 discipline and order, had a lasting influence on Giusti's 
 
202 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 character, and to " The Memories of Pisa " he conse- 
 crated the poem which he himself preferred among all 
 his productions, in which he recalls with undisguised 
 exultation that he was ever found in the ranks of the 
 most illustrious scapegraces. 
 
 Having taken his degree, he established himself in 
 Florence under pretence of practising as a lawyer, but 
 continued the same round of amusement, alternating 
 with desultory reading, passing his subsequent life be- 
 tween the Tuscan capital and the parental roof at 
 Montecatini. In 1835 he wrote the verses which first 
 made him known as a political satirist, under the form of 
 a mock lament for the death of the Emperor Francis I. 
 of Austria. In the autumn of the same year he suffered 
 the most bitter sorrow of his life, caused by the faithless- 
 ness of a lady for whom he felt his first and only serious 
 attachment. To her was addressed the exquisite love- 
 poem, " All' Arnica Lontana," in a brief absence at the 
 seaside, during which the poet was superseded in her 
 fickle affections. He went through months of despairing 
 grief, and was so far inconsolable that he was never 
 again, according to his own repeated declarations, 
 capable of the same depth of feeling, and that any subse- 
 quent wound to his heart was, in comparison, but a mere 
 graze. 
 
 He was next to experience all the terrors of physical 
 suffering, for a long and painful malady of the digestive 
 organs attacked him in 1843 m consequence of a series 
 of nervous shocks acting powerfully on his sensitive fibre. 
 The first was the conflagration of his writing-table under 
 his eyes, owing to the burning down of a candle, in- 
 cautiously left lighted while he slept, an accident which 
 •cost him the fruits of years of labour in notes and memo- 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 203 
 
 randa ; the second a protracted attendance on the death- 
 bed of an uncle to whom he was much attached ; and 
 the third an encounter in the streets of Florence with an 
 infuriated cat, which flew at him unprovoked, and attacked 
 him with teeth and claws. The fear of hydrophobia, 
 induced by this singular mischance, so preyed on his 
 mind as to cause a total disarrangement of the digestive 
 functions, producing not only acute pain but also total 
 apathy of mind and incapacity for mental exertion. His 
 letters at this period gave a sad picture of his state, and 
 in one of them he replies to the would-be consolatory 
 reflection of a friend, that suffering is always the lot of 
 genius, by saying that " when under the pincers one 
 would bid adieu to the brain of Galileo." 
 
 Travelling was tried as a remedy, and in 1844 he took 
 a trip to Rome and Naples in company with his mother, 
 renewing old and contracting new friendships on the 
 way, and, among other notabilities, meeting on intimate 
 terms the brothers Poerio. The return journey was 
 signalised by a pleasant little incident. At a village 
 hotel at Sant' Agata, between Capua and Gaeta, the 
 company discovering, in the course of conversation, that 
 our travellers came from Pescia, began to cross-examine 
 them about "the famous poet Giusti," and the truth was 
 finally revealed by the mother's embarrassed silence and 
 conscious glance at her son when asked if the subject of 
 discourse was handsome. 
 
 The distractions of travel procured Giusti a short 
 respite from suffering, but in the ensuing autumn he had 
 so severe a relapse that he believed his death imminent, 
 and wrote a paper containing his testamentary disposi- 
 tions in regard to his works, as well as a skeleton auto- 
 biography, to form a groundwork for the history of his 
 
204 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 life by one of his friends. He, however, recovered, and 
 was able in 1845, with the assistance of his friend Mayer, 
 to edit the first edition of his poems for the press, urged 
 to undertake the task by the publication of a pirated 
 edition at Lugano, in which they appeared mutilated and 
 distorted. 
 
 Perhaps the most agreeable phase of his life was that 
 which followed, during which the friendship of Manzoni 
 and Grossi opened to him a new range of sympathies and 
 affections. It began through the happy accident of 
 having accompanied his friend Giorgini in a trip to 
 Spezzia, where the Marchesa d'Azeglio and Vittorina 
 Manzoni (afterwards the wife of Giorgini) were taking 
 the baths. These ladies being about to return home the 
 following day, Giusti and Giorgini, starting in a little car- 
 riage to escort them as far as Genoa, finally accompanied 
 them all the way back to Milan, where Giusti, during a 
 month spent under Manzoni's roof, won all hearts by his 
 graces of mind and manner. 
 
 This episode occurred in the autumn of 1845, and the 
 correspondence which followed shows the close and 
 tender friendship which bound him for the remainder of 
 his life to Manzoni and Grossi, as well as to d'Azeglio 
 and to Gino Capponi, at whose house he always stayed 
 when in Florence. These men were linked together by 
 the noble aim they had in common in all their labours, 
 the political and moral regeneration of their country. 
 
 Manzoni's letters to Giusti breathe, like everything 
 that came from his pen, the most exquisite and lovable 
 soul that ever accompanied so high an order of genius ; 
 a soul whose intellectual and moral attributes were not, 
 as too often happens, in direct antagonism but in 
 harmonious combination, the one forming the perfect 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 205 
 
 complement of the other. He winds up one letter of such 
 playfulness as only he could have written with the 
 touching request : " And you, my dear and good Gep- 
 pino, make haste to love me, for I am old, and there is 
 no time to be lost about it." In another he addresses a 
 grave though affectionate rebuke to Giusti for having, as 
 was reported, allowed himself to be led away into ridi- 
 cule of religion, as well as into personal satire ; from 
 which accusations the poet writes in all humility to 
 exculpate himself. For the first he excuses himself on 
 the plea of inadvertence and want of reflection, but 
 meets the second with a point-blank denial, save in the 
 case of public and historical personages. The incident 
 shows how the influence of a character like Manzoni's 
 may keep up the whole moral standard of a nation. 
 The Lombard novelist, who devoted ten years to re- 
 writing his great work in order to assimilate its language 
 to the purer Tuscan, frequently applied to Giusti, the 
 master of that idiom, for advice and assistance, and 
 many of his letters are dissertations on the meaning of 
 popular phrases and turns of expression. 
 
 It may be imagined how the revolutionary movement 
 •of 1848 was hailed by these votaries of Italian liberty. 
 Giusti raised a company in his native place which formed 
 part of the heroic band of Tuscan volunteers slain at 
 Curtatone and Montanara. He regretted that the state 
 of his health did not permit him to share the glory and 
 peril of the campaign, but he entered the ranks of the 
 National Guard, and underwent drill and discipline as a 
 private before rising to the rank of Major. Under the 
 new constitution of Tuscany he was returned as deputy 
 to the Assembly, and took part in its debates, main- 
 taining as firm an attitude of opposition to the extremes 
 
206 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 of liberal as he formerly had to those of despotic govern- 
 ment. The fall of the Ridolfi Ministry, under the 
 repeated attacks of the minority of the Chamber, elicited 
 his witty sonnet on " Majorities," beginning Che i piic 
 tira?w i meno, and directed against the apathetic attitude 
 of the more numerous party. Its pungent satire is quite 
 as applicable to Italian politics in our day as it was 
 in his. 
 
 Giusti did not long survive the public misfortunes fol- 
 lowing on the brief dream of national emancipation ; his 
 health had been declining for some time, and in the 
 autumn of 1849 he was attacked with a severe miliary 
 fever, from which he recovered, indeed, but with the fatal 
 germs of tubercular consumption in his system. To the 
 last he continued his literary labours, and his sick-room 
 in the Palazzo Capponi was lined with books, and the 
 bed, from which he was to rise no more, strewn with 
 papers and memoranda. The disease made rapid 
 progress, and death came suddenly in the end. On 
 March 31, 1850, in his forty-first year, he was suffocated 
 by the bursting of a blood-vessel, and died before the 
 aid of science or religion could reach him. He lies 
 buried in the church of San Miniato, on the cypress- 
 studded height overlooking Florence, and the inscription 
 on his monument records that from the graces of the living 
 idiom of his country he created a form of poetry never 
 before attempted, and used it for the castigation of vice 
 without derogating from the belief in virtue. 
 
 Giusti's life and character are illustrated by a mass of 
 letters, which are among the greatest models of episto- 
 lary style extant in any language, and are invariably re- 
 commended to students of Italian as the nc plus ultra of 
 vivacity and purity of diction. They give the impression 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 207 
 
 of the most unstudied spontaneity, and seem to reflect 
 the mood of the writer at the moment, now witty now 
 tender, exalted with the most lofty sentiments of wisdom 
 or morality, bitter with cynical irony, or tragic with the 
 terrible eloquence of suffering. Here is a portion of one 
 addressed to the Marchesa d'Azeglio in October 1844 : 
 
 " My dear Friend, — I write to you from Colle in 
 Val d'Elsa, a little village which by courtesy is called a 
 town. The air of these districts is good ; the people in 
 the main as good as the air ; and Poldo Orlandini, who 
 has received me into his house, is own brother to that 
 Checco Orlandini whom you saw at the Mayers', and 
 who, in that process of mutual friction that we call social 
 intercourse, has kept his primitive stamp, a shade rough 
 to one accustomed to everything polished, but of sound 
 metal. The touch of these pavements was like the 
 pouring of fresh oil on a dying lamp to my health ; but 
 after eight or ten days' breathing space I am not going 
 to be such an ass as to be caught by the bait of hope 
 that has been dangled before me so long. The un- 
 tempered air of Leghorn plays the very mischief with a 
 man whose nerves are strained like the strings of a 
 violin. Up here the winds arrive, I might almost say, 
 watered, and even that accursed African blast, after the 
 exertion required for reaching these heights, is so changed 
 that it seems as if it were almost a native of them. 
 
 " I mount a pony every morning that seems scarcely 
 bigger than a pigeon, and which, being accustomed to 
 carry the doctor, tries to turn down every lane and stop 
 at every door like the tinker's donkey. These peasants, 
 who look no higher than the beast's legs, call out to me 
 from all sides, 'Oh, doctor, is that you?' Indeed, a 
 
208 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 few days ago a woman brought her child out to me to 
 the road to be physicked, and it was no easy matter to 
 persuade her that I had nothing of the doctor but the 
 mount. From the very first the animal and I had made 
 a pact of mutual forbearance, and after going five or six 
 miles at a pace suited to my invalid pulse, we return 
 straight home as pleases heaven. The natives of Colle, 
 whose eyes are not trained to a certain harmony between 
 the horse and rider (only think how indispensable in our 
 Cascine, or your ramparts !), see nothing extraordinary in 
 the discrepancy between my Florentine surtout and the 
 Maremman saddle, but unlucky me, if I were to stumble 
 upon some summer visitor accustomed to breathe the 
 unadulterated air of the capital ! If I ever wished to 
 split myself in two after the fashion of St. Anthony it 
 would be now, and I would give anything to be able to 
 dismount from the saddle in spirit, while I remained 
 there in the flesh, to see the figure I cut. Not being 
 equal to that, I study myself as best I can in my shadow, 
 and sigh for the pencil of him who drew the vignettes 
 to Don Quixote." 
 
 Here is an extract from another written to a friend, 
 Luigi Alberti, in which he analyses his physical suffer- 
 ings, and after some preliminary description continues : 
 
 " When in bed it seems as if the time to get up would 
 never come ; when up, every hour before going to bed 
 seems a thousand ; in the house, I feel a mania to go 
 out j when out of doors a passion to rush back to the 
 house ; when standing I long to sit down, when sitting 
 to stand up, and so on in everything. Add to this, now 
 the most burning desire for life and health, now a weary 
 longing to have done with it once for all ; on one side, 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 209 
 
 the dearest memories, the best loved faces, with all the 
 follies, hopes, and seductions of youth crowding on my 
 mind ; on the other, the future, now glowing with light, 
 now gloomy with silence and darkness ; now imaged as 
 a place of rest, now as an interminable and unknown 
 track, or again as a black and fathomless abyss. Days 
 of calm that hold me in suspense like a soul in Limbo, 
 and in which my complaints 
 
 Sound not as wild laments but gentle sighs ; 
 
 and then again a spasm which has no defined name or 
 locality, which, without being a distinct pain or a re- 
 cognised affection, mimics and includes all the tortures 
 of a hospital ; resembling in this some of those fashionable 
 phrases which say nothing but suggest everything. A 
 red-hot pincers rending the vitals — a garment of flax- 
 carding machines — a strait-waistcoat which cramps and 
 racks me from head to foot — are feeble comparisons for 
 this class of tribulation. There are sluggard troubles 
 which delight in sticking close to you inbed ; there are 
 others which have the noble ambition of keeping you 
 company at table, out walking, at the theatre, and even 
 at the ball ; granting you a sort of habeas corpus which 
 never releases your mind from the wretched feeling of 
 having a prosecution hanging over you. Mine is one of 
 those maladies of vagrant tendency which are little be- 
 lieved in until they go so far as to set half-a-dozen 
 chemists hard at work, four doctors in commotion, and 
 to strew sand before the door." 
 
 Giusti's was doubtless one of those obscure maladies 
 in which mind and body act and react upon each other 
 in a series of mutual jars, and the sensitive organisation 
 of genius had to discount thus in bodily pain its exalted 
 
 o 
 
210 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 intellectual privileges. In these letters the poet's dis- 
 position and character are seen under their best aspect, 
 and there are some, such as the letter of advice to a boy 
 entering college, and of consolation to a young cousin 
 afflicted with lameness, which for their combination of 
 practical wisdom and admirable sentiment deserve to be 
 written in letters of gold. 
 
 Few artists have left so clear and minute an analysis 
 of their creative impulses as Giusti, who had the power 
 of dissecting and detailing, like an indifferent spectator, 
 all the wayward vagaries of inspiration in his own mind. 
 He describes how in the first frenzy of working out an 
 idea he would sit at his desk for hours, writing, erasing, 
 sketching out, recasting, in a fever of activity and 
 creation ; then, disgusted with the futility of his attempts 
 at expression, would fling aside his papers in disgust, and 
 abandon all mental exertion for a phase of wild gaiety 
 and social distraction. Then, after an interval, his glance 
 would light accidentally on the notes he had been at 
 work on, and he would find that the fancied failure con- 
 tained all the elements of completion, and only required 
 in reality a little arrangement and reconstruction to be 
 a presentable addition to his literary offspring. His 
 biographer, Signor Frassi, tells us that when the first idea 
 of a subject kindled in his brain he began to cast it into 
 shape, whatever the place or circumstances in which he 
 chanced to find himself; while walking or in society, 
 listening to conversation or making himself agreeable to 
 a lady, however otherwise engaged, the rhymes and verses 
 went on forming themselves in his mind. As soon as 
 the plan was thus blocked out, he would read the rough 
 draft to his friends, to ladies, servants, or any audience 
 he could get, judging of its effect not so much from their 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 211 
 
 words as from the expression of their faces, or some in- 
 voluntary gesture of dissent or approbation. Then modi- 
 fying and changing whatever had seemed to fall flat or 
 be unintelligible, he would lay it by for some time 
 until he had forgotten it, and could judge of it from some 
 fresh point of view, when he would put it through another 
 process of reconstruction. He was not less prompt in 
 adopting and assimilating the ideas of others than in 
 taking corrections and suggestions from them, so that 
 his mind, always on the alert, gathered materials every- 
 where. 
 
 The insight his life gives into his method of working 
 is an additional instance of the unwearied patience of 
 genius in pursuing its ideal ; for we find that these playful 
 trifles, apparently spontaneous and facile as though 
 written impromptu, were in reality the result of infinite 
 thought and pains. Each was kept by him for months, 
 during which it received day by day the last finish- 
 ing touches of perfection from his fastidious taste ; 
 attaining by the substitution, here, of a more concisely 
 forcible phrase, there of a more felicitous epithet, that 
 consummate degree of polish in which it was finally given 
 to the world. The facsimiles of the manuscripts prefixed 
 to the editions of his works are embroidered with erasures 
 and corrections, in which it is apparent how laboriously 
 the final thought struggles into luminous expression. 
 
 It was not through the ordinary channels of publicity 
 that Giusti's poems reached their readers, for the rigorous 
 censorship of the press made it impossible to make use 
 of it for their circulation. It was in manuscript form that 
 they left their author's hands, then passed eagerly from 
 one to another, they were copied, recopied, multiplied and 
 reproduced, until they attained in this primitive fashion 
 
212 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 a diffusion as great as if they had issued from the press 
 in several editions. Signor Carducci, who has written a 
 brief memoir prefixed to one edition of these poems, 
 relates how when a boy he was dragged from one remote 
 village to another to transcribe and recite them. Thus 
 it came to pass that Giusti, by a fate singular if not unique 
 in modern letters, was a famous poet before a line of his 
 had been printed. It was, indeed, only by the surrep- 
 titious publication of his works by others that he was at 
 last induced to edit them for the press. 
 
 The working on his mind of the society in which he 
 lived, and the forcible impressions he received from its 
 abuses, are vividly portrayed in some of his pieces, which 
 give thus an analysis of the poet's methods from his own 
 point of view. They sum up in his own condensed 
 phrases the story of the evolution of his genius, and 
 show how it was bent or warped to satire by bitterness 
 of spirit inspired by the circumstances around him. The 
 poem addressed to Gino Capponi is of this introspective 
 character, and is interesting as an example of his graver 
 style. The metre he has here chosen is, as he says in a 
 note, an old one, which notwithstanding its great difficulty 
 he desired to restore, as the additional line lends greater 
 dignity and weight to the tripping octave stanza. 
 
 As one who mid the torrent's rush doth guide 
 
 His bark, while angry currents stem the way, 
 Seems to stand motionless, while past him glide 
 
 Shores, hills, and distant woods in shifting play; 
 So doth my mind amid the eddying tide 
 
 Of human destinies bewildered stray, 
 And while the varied scene doth pass before it 
 Of universal life, feels coming o'er it 
 
 Dull stupor, that no utterance dare essay. 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 213 
 
 Till with the dizzy tumult wearied quite 
 
 The secret forces of my soul I feel, 
 And gaze and think, and fail to grasp aright 
 
 What to mine eyes intent those sights reveal, 
 Nor feel within me of such verse the might 
 
 As should respond to that wild clarion peal. 
 So hurried by the stir and hum around me, 
 I dream and rave, and in its whirl confound me, 
 
 Like the dead leaf the wind doth drift and wheel, 
 
 But when from men afar, I meditate 
 
 Some task of subtle fancy breathing warm, 
 And in the mind's sweet toil would recreate 
 
 The heart that weary travail doth inform ; 
 Lo ! to assail me come importunate 
 
 As though of insects vile a buzzing swarm, 
 Past memories clothed in jeers to mock and flout me, 
 Like spectres armed with scoffs, all crowd about me, 
 
 Till they and I in combat strive and storm. 
 
 Thus to her room withdrawn, the maiden fair 
 
 In glad intoxication brief and light, 
 That, left by dance and music lingering there 
 
 Nor sleep nor weariness can put to flight, 
 Still seems to hear the hushed and vacant air 
 
 Thrill to the festive clamour of delight, 
 Till the impressions left by loving glances, 
 The lights, the whirl, the vortex of the dances, 
 
 Change to a troublous vision of the night. 
 
 The poet then goes on to describe his mental questionings, 
 as, in moments when inspiration flagged, he seemed to 
 doubt the genuineness of his vocation as a satirist, and 
 almost to loathe the darker view it compelled him to 
 take of life. 
 
 Then o'er this sea, whose perils thou dost brave 
 With sail so feeble and with bark so slight, 
 
 Doth storm-cloud ever lower and tempest rave, 
 And plaints of wretches drowned the hearing smite ? 
 
214 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Nor e'er doth laugh the sky, or pause the wave ? 
 
 And doth the sun in clouds aye veil its light ? 
 And in this dust much burdened and much daring, 
 Which on the road to heaven with thee is faring, 
 
 Is nought but vice apparent to thy sight ? 
 
 And who art thou with scourge so prompt to smite, 
 
 Who the harsh truth so harshly dost proclaim ? 
 And stinting praise to what is fair and bright, 
 
 Dost tune thy acrid verse to wrath and blame ? 
 Hast thou, thy standard following aright, 
 
 Learned Art's true ministry and secret aim ? 
 And hast thou first from thine own heart uprooted 
 Vain pride and folly to thy part unsuited — 
 
 Thou, whose rebuke would others' feet reclaim ? 
 
 Then, stung with grief, I breathe a sigh of care, 
 
 And curb my vagrant thoughts to musing slow. 
 As calling back the how, the when, the where, 
 
 My brief life-record o'er and o'er I go. 
 Ah ! thus the past retracing, I cull there 
 
 'Mid thousand thorns, but one poor flower ablow. 
 With error wroth — with error stained — now soaring 
 With the great few supernal heights exploring — 
 
 Now sunk to raving with the vulgar low. 
 
 Sad theme of wrath that solely fires me still, 
 
 How is my heart by thee opprest and tried ! 
 Oh butterfly, who in glad flight at will 
 
 From flower to flower along thy path dost glide, 
 And thou, sad nightingale, whose voice doth fill 
 
 With love songs all the woods at eventide, 
 Compared with your sweet tasks how sore doth fret me, 
 The strife of soul in which doth ever set me 
 
 This seeming mirth which is but grief defied. 
 
 The strange duality of genius, by which it seems to 
 override with irresistible compulsion the choice and will 
 of its possessor, has seldom been more vividly portrayed 
 than in this elaborate piece of mental self-dissection. 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 215 
 
 Similar phases of mind are analysed in the poet's more 
 ordinary vein of grim humour in his lines to Girolamo 
 Tommasi, while one of his common moods of satirical 
 morality expresses itself in the following four stanzas, 
 narrating a characteristic incident, and entitled " An 
 Involuntary Salute." The metre is one extensively used 
 by him, as it lends itself to the fierce bite of his verse : 
 
 Emilio smiled, because as once we fared 
 Together, through the maniac's dread abode, 
 Awed by the dreadful spectacle it showed, 
 My head I bared. 
 
 But if he would in churlish mood go past 
 Without salute, all who are short of brain, 
 His hat upon his brows well might remain 
 Nailed firm and fast. 
 
 My wont it is to do misfortune grace, 
 And without varnish of the Pharisee, 
 To trace the working of divine decree 
 In misery's case. 
 
 Before the illustrious dunce whom wait upon 
 Obsequious greetings of the servile mass, 
 Before fools aping wisdom's mien, I pass 
 Contemptuous on. 
 
 In the same metre are the lines addressed to a popular 
 singer, satirising with condensed bitterness the social 
 homage paid him, and the comparative neglect of learning 
 and scholarship. The concluding stanza sums up the 
 ironical lesson of the preceding ones : 
 
 Boys, learning is in vogue, but how insane 
 Who money to your schooling would devote. 
 'Tis throat and ear are wanted — ear and throat — 
 Plague take the brain ! 
 
 One of the most brilliant of Giusti's political satires was 
 
216 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 that entitled " King Log," in whom his compatriots had 
 no difficulty in recognising his own sovereign, the reigning 
 Grand Duke of Tuscany : 
 
 To King Log the Supine, 
 
 Who our Frog-land rules over, 
 
 My knees I incline 
 And my head I uncover ; 
 
 To him from heav'n lighted 
 
 This ode is indited ; 
 
 Oh sweet and benign 
 
 Is King Log the Supine. 
 
 On his wat'ry estates 
 He crashed down with a spatter, 
 
 For you know wooden pates 
 Ever make the most clatter. 
 
 But soon the noise ended 
 
 And mutely extended, 
 
 For derision a sign, 
 
 Lay King Log the Supine. 
 
 But this sight roused the fen 
 
 To a pitch of distraction, 
 " And is this the end then 
 
 Of a monarch of action ? " 
 [Of language with glib use 
 Croaked chorus amphibious.] 
 "To be hissed from the bog 
 Why such fuss, O King Log ? 
 
 *• Shall a trunk from the grove 
 Be thus crowned to degrade us ? 
 
 'Tis a blunder of Jove, * 
 Or a hoax he hath played us ; 
 
 Pack off without fracas 
 
 This Most Serene jackass, 
 
 And dismiss from our bog 
 
 His Inertia, King Log." 
 
The Tuscan Beranger 217 
 
 Hush, hush, all ye fools 
 
 Who declaim with such vigour ; 
 To reign o'er your pools 
 
 Leave this royal lay-figure. 
 To empty your purses 
 Or silence your verses, 
 To butcher or flog 
 Is no part of King Log. 
 
 The sport of each shift 
 Of the currents and breezes, 
 
 In his palace adrift, 
 He just floats as chance pleases, 
 
 The deep leaves unsounded 
 
 In statecraft well grounded, 
 
 Oh wise and expert 
 
 Is King Log the Inert ! 
 
 For a moment decoyed 
 If his head he submerges, 
 
 By its lightness up-buoyed, 
 See how quick it emerges 
 
 In safe high and dryness ! 
 
 He well is styled Highness, 
 
 For the title doth square 
 
 With King Log to a hair. 
 
 Do ye pine for the lash 
 
 Of a serpent to rouse ye ? 
 Sleep contented to plash 
 
 In the mud that doth house ye. 
 O impotent blockheads, 
 For your toothless sockets 
 Seems created express 
 Good King Log's Supineness ! 
 
 For a nation that teems 
 
 With good things so abundant, 
 Common sense were it seems 
 
 But a virtue redundant. 
 
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220 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Star-gazers and builders 
 
 The staircase and spy-glass 
 Adopted from her, 
 
 For her horns form an eye-glass, 
 While her shell's corkscrew gyral 
 Suggested the spiral. 
 
 Here's a health to the Snail ! 
 Whom I bid you admire all. 
 
 Content with the comforts 
 
 The gods have provided, 
 With Diogenes' view 
 
 She has long coincided. 
 To breathe the fresh air 
 
 From her shell she ne'er issues 
 Convinced that to gad 
 
 Of her time were a misuse ; 
 Thus shunning diseases 
 Like snuffles and sneezes. 
 
 Here's a health to the Snail ! 
 Whom her dwelling so pleases. 
 
 Leave foreign comestibles 
 
 Of pungent savour 
 To tickle digestions 
 
 Long dead to home flavour. 
 She, feeling her organs 
 
 In good working order, 
 In search of provisions 
 
 Ne'er crosses the border. 
 But munches in quiet 
 The herbage close by it. 
 
 Here's a health to the Snail ! 
 Beast of regular diet. 
 
 Of conduct and manners 
 
 Few hold the calm tenor, 
 And more than one ass 
 
 Apes the lion's demeanour: 
 
221 
 
 The Tuscan Beranger 
 
 But she, though a mollusc, 
 
 From nature's own law 
 Learns in every dilemma 
 
 Her horns to withdraw. 
 Nor threatens terrific, 
 But frizzles pacific. 
 
 Here's a health to the Snail ! 
 Of all beasts least horrific. 
 
 Dame Nature, with prodigies 
 
 Furnished not sparely, 
 This privileged creature 
 Has gifted most rarely. 
 Because (executioners 
 Listen and wonder) 
 A new head she grows 
 
 If the old head you sunder. 
 Fact strange in narration, 
 But past refutation. 
 
 Here's a health to the Snail 
 The most blest of creation. 
 
 Ye owls stuffed with learning, 
 
 Who set up as preachers, 
 Though it seems not your fellows 
 
 Learn much from such teachers ; 
 Ye vagabond rovers, 
 
 Bon vivants, scapegraces 
 Ye masters enraged, 
 
 And ye servants sans places, 
 I pray sing in chorus, 
 This refrain sonorous, 
 
 Here's a health to the Snail I 
 Whose example's before us. 
 
 Hatred of artificial disguise was the keynote of Giusti's 
 character, and his writings are little more than protests in 
 various forms against all phases of affectation and hypo- 
 crisy. His constant aim was that absolute artistic sincerity 
 
222 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 which is one of the notes of genius, since it is only to strong 
 natures that complete power of self-revelation is given, 
 and the disguises of feebler souls are worn like a pauper's 
 uniform, rather from poverty than from choice. So in 
 Greek sculpture gods and heroes stand undraped, while 
 lesser mortals are clothed in convention and garbed in 
 formality. This directness of aim in Giusti is clearly put 
 in the lines to Girolamo Tommasi, which are throughout 
 a denunciation of the petty falsities of art : 
 
 My mood 'twixt grave and gay, dear friend, this vein 
 Of semi-serious piebald verse hath caught, 
 Nor can I plane the rough-hewn bark of thought 
 Nor mute remain. 
 
 I, too, mistook my cue, and in the heats 
 Of youth, with glance inspired and fervid lip, 
 Paid toll to Petrarch in a noviceship 
 Of amorous bleats. 
 
 But on my ear at every instant smote 
 A secret voice from conscience' deep recess, 
 In accents low, but with emphatic stress, 
 " Alter thy note ; 
 
 Why fear to show thy form without disguise, 
 And cramp its outlines in a borrowed suit ? 
 Shunning thine image as the senseless brute 
 Its shadow flies. 
 
 Ideas which thy thine inner self should gauge 
 Passed thus distorted through the prism of art 
 Faint reflex hues at second hand impart 
 To the dull page." 
 
 And farther on he again expounds his motives in adopting 
 the line marked out for him by the consciousness of his 
 powers and the necessities of the time : 
 

 The Tuscan Beranger 223 
 
 How blest were I my soul to tranquillise 
 If e'er o' o'er softer themes my thoughts might range, 
 To scatter flowers and feelings interchange 
 In tender guise. 
 
 Perish each venal fraud and selfish aim, 
 
 Though with them die my pen's rebuking sneer, 
 For my soul sickens at applause bought dear 
 By public shame. 
 
 But while our necks beneath this yoke are bowed, 
 Be our tongues armed with every stinging phrase 
 Of savage scorn, 'gainst infamy to raise 
 Their protest loud. 
 
 I ne'er will pen, so far as I can judge 
 Phrases, or feigned, or false, or worldly-wise, 
 Or seek as public censure to disguise 
 One private grudge. 
 
 But farces of our time, things as they are, 
 Describing when my pen is in the vein, 
 With heaven's good help, my yarn I'll spin in plain 
 Vernacular. 
 
 Praised be the man who to the end doth wear 
 His proper garb, although he may have died 
 A very dunce, if his lip ne'er hath lied, 
 Oh dunce most rare ! 
 
 That Giusti's command of the language of tenderness 
 was not less complete than his mastery of that of satire 
 is sufficiently proved by the beauty of the lines addressed 
 to the lady whose faithlessness exercised so baneful an 
 influence over his life. To this disappointment, as well 
 as to the increasing development of the satirical side of 
 his genius, is doubtless due the absence from his works 
 of a greater number of such effusions. 
 
 Little as there is in his writings to recall those of Dante, 
 he himself ascribes the development of his poetic faculty 
 
224 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 to his early and incessant study of the father of Italian 
 song. One of his first infantine tasks was learning by 
 heart the story of Ugolino, and the last work that occupied 
 him up to the hour of his death was a Commentary on 
 the " Divina Commedia." This essay, though left in a 
 fragmentary state, ought, if carefully edited and arranged, 
 to be of considerable literary interest. 
 
 It would be difficult to sum up Giusti's career as a whole 
 better than he himself has done in the sonnet addressed 
 to Tommaso Grossi in 1841, embodying the epitaph 
 which he would have chosen for himself, and to which 
 the unvarying consistency of his life fairly entitles him : 
 
 Behold me, Grossi, aged thirty-five, 
 
 With my wild oats at last entirely sown, 
 
 And on my head these strands of silver strown, 
 
 To temper the few follies that survive. 
 
 At a less stormy age I now arrive, 
 
 Half prose, half poetry — to thought now prone, 
 And now to sober mirth. — In part alone 
 
 'Twill pass, in part amid the human hive. 
 
 So downward, at this pace habitual grown, 
 
 Still humouring the crowd with jest and brag 
 Till death shall come to still each word and tone. 
 
 Too happy if the long and weary fag 
 
 Of life's highroad have earned my grave a stone, 
 With the inscription, " Faithful to his Flag." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 
 
 When Alessandro Manzoni died in Milan on May 22, 
 1873, full of years and honours, the world was momentarily 
 thrilled with the consciousness of having lost the greatest 
 literary figure that had been still a living presence to the 
 existing generation. The last survivor of that race of 
 giants whose task had been to bring literature into 
 harmony with the change in thought effected by the 
 French Revolution, he belonged in truth to an era long 
 past ere the close of his life of eighty- eight years, and 
 was the property of that generation which had seen the 
 Romantic movement inaugurated in Germany by its twin 
 luminaries, Goethe and Schiller, and carried to its cul- 
 minating-point in English letters by the genius of Walter 
 Scott. But unlike those great leaders, each of whom 
 was but the precursor of a whole army of followers, 
 Manzoni, the founder of Romanticism in Italy, may be 
 said to have epitomised in himself the movement which 
 he headed, and to have created a school comprised in 
 one man, as that man is summed up in one work. The 
 story of that work, as we shall later try to show, throws 
 some light on this unique phenomenon in the history of 
 letters. 
 
 While it would be a task of no little nicety to assign to 
 
 p 
 
226 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Manzoni his own special niche in the universal temple 
 of fame, that which he occupies in the imaginative litera- 
 ture of his own country is at least easily discernible. 
 Here he isfaa'/e princeps of all who have appeared since the 
 great cycle opened by Dante was closed on one line of 
 development by Tasso with his great Christian epic, and 
 on another by Ariosto with that other Comedy, which is no 
 longer Divine but Human. And between the humanity of 
 Ariosto, represented, or rather travestied in the aristo- 
 cracy of knights and ladies, and that of Manzoni, incarnated 
 in the idealised peasant type of Lombardy, yawns a gulf 
 marking the whole interval between mediaeval and modern 
 thought, the step from feudalism to democracy. This 
 gap is bridged, indeed, in Italian letters by two strong 
 individualities which loom across it, the one in the guise 
 of an antique Tragic Mask, the other in that of Venetian 
 Harlequin, inspired by the Muse of Comedy. But while 
 Alfieri was the latest avatar of the genius of classicalism, 
 Goldoni, who stripped the conventional mask from the 
 stereotyped quartet of the Italian stage to give free play 
 to the undisguised human features of his actors, sym- 
 bolised and heralded the era of Romantic literature. In 
 " Le Barufe Chiozote " and his other Venetian comedies, 
 we find for the first time that full sympathy with the lower 
 classes which is the predominant feeling in " I Promessi 
 Sposi." But Italian Romanticism, which thus appealed 
 straight to the heart of the people, drooped and languished, 
 because it commanded no truly national idiom in which 
 to address them. 
 
 The problem of Manzoni's career, the half century of 
 silence that followed its splendid fruition, must be referred 
 to the same cause, of which he was himself fully conscious 
 as fettering the free play of his powers. He did not 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 227 
 
 possess by birthright a literary language, and this dis- 
 ability reduced him to artistic dumbness for the latter 
 half of his life. This was the key at once to the barren- 
 ness with which his genius was stricken, and to the 
 scantiness of the Italian contribution to Romantic 
 literature down to the present time. 
 
 Like most great artists, he received in early childhood 
 the impressions most vividly stamped upon his future 
 work. Racy of the soil he sprang from, foreign culture 
 could never efface or supersede the ineffaceable memories 
 of rural Lombardy in which his mind was steeped. 
 Descended from a family of old but untitled provincial 
 nobility, he had among his own ancestors, the lords of 
 Barzio in the Valsassina, types of those petty tyrants 
 whose misdeeds he has held up to execration for all 
 time. A local proverb compares their turbulence to 
 that of the mountain torrent, and Massimo d'Azeglio, 
 when travelling in the district, learned a trait that might 
 have been added to the portrait of Don Rodrigo himself. 
 It seems that the code of Barzio required that the chief- 
 tain's dog should share in the homage paid to the family, 
 and the peasants were expected humbly to doff their hats 
 to him with the formula, "Reverissi scior ca," "Your 
 servant, Mister dog." 
 
 The only child of an ill-assorted marriage, Manzoni 
 was born when his father, Don Pietro, was about fifty. 
 His mother, Giulia, daughter of Cesare Beccaria, the 
 well-known economist and author, was considerably 
 younger, and no sympathy in tastes counterbalanced the 
 disparity in years. The dissensions of the pair ended in 
 a virtual separation, Donna Giulia making Auteuil, near 
 Paris, he rprincipal abode, and resumingher maiden name. 
 
 At the time of the poet's birth, on March 7, 1785, 
 
228 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 the family had long been settled at Lecco on Lake Como, 
 where his father owned a good deal of property, including 
 the beautiful villa of II Caleotto, his usual summer resi- 
 dence. In Alessandro Manzoni's features the peasant 
 type of Lecco was so exactly reproduced, that his friends, 
 walking through its streets in later years, were often dis- 
 posed to stop and exclaim at the likenesses of him they 
 met. He received his earliest impressions of life in the 
 house of a peasant, where, in accordance with the custom 
 of the time, he was put out to nurse. Here in the farm- 
 house of La Costa, one of those rambling buildings with 
 tiled roofs and small windows which stud the maize fields 
 of Lombardy, the poet, amid the hills round Como, so 
 familiar to his readers, imbibed that sympathy with out- 
 door life and rustic nature which is the dominant motive 
 of his romance. His foster-mother, Caterina, wife of 
 Carlo Spreafico, a lively little brunette, is generally 
 supposed to have been the original model of Lucia, 
 but many separate impressions probably converged in 
 that ideal type of simple womanhood. Caterina was a 
 good story-teller, and in the dusk of winter evenings 
 would often entertain her small audience, including her 
 baby charge, "Lisandrino," with many a tale of peasant 
 lore. 
 
 The next picture of our poet is as a very small boy, 
 sobbing inconsolably in the corridor of a monastery, 
 where the unexpected disappearance of his mother left 
 him alone among strangers. Thus at six years old, in 
 sore tribulation of heart, he began his school life at the 
 College of the Somaschi Fathers at Merate. His impres- 
 sions of this, and of other schools where he was sent later, 
 were none of the pleasantest ; he had little appetite for 
 books and much for food, and the provision was far 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 229 
 
 more ample for satisfying the former than the latter. 
 The cravings of an organism destined to last in working 
 order for close on ninety years were doubtless exorbitant, 
 for even in his father's house " Lisandro " often found 
 the fare insufficient, and the good-natured cook, Antonio, 
 would sometimes supplement the regular meals to which 
 Don Pietro restricted his son's appetite with contraband 
 snacks of bread and cheese at odd moments. His vaca- 
 tions at II Caleotto were bright spots in his school life, 
 and his days passed pleasantly in quail-netting among 
 the hills or in setting miniature water-wheels in the 
 streams. One memorable walk in company with a servant 
 deserves to be recorded, for the man took him to the 
 Capuchin Convent of Pescarenico, the same which his 
 readers know so well as the residence of Fra Cristoforo. 
 The place and scene sunk deep into the boy's imagination, 
 for the convent chapel was full of music and lights for 
 the afternoon service, and one of the friars singled out 
 their young visitor to take part in their devotions by 
 giving him a taper to hold, little dreaming how long that 
 trifling incident would be remembered. 
 
 Meantime the brain that was so busy storing up raw 
 material for the imagination to work on was sluggish in 
 other exercises, and the boy was often in disgrace with 
 his teachers for idleness or stupidity. On one occasion 
 while doing public penance in the middle of the room he 
 saw a companion taking advantage of his misfortune to 
 rifle his desk, and was detected in an attempt at mute 
 protest against the invasion of his property by a series of 
 grimaces and contortions. A sharp box on the ear from 
 the master brought him to a sense of his position, and 
 taught a truth illustrated later in his novel, that authority, 
 while often remiss in protecting the rights of the unfortu- 
 
230 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 nate, is never behindhand in repressing their efforts at 
 self-redress. Some of Renzo's experiences of the law and 
 its interpreters may have had their germ in this incident 
 of schoolboy life. 
 
 Released from the restraints of school at fifteen, and 
 turned loose on the temptations of city life, he was saved 
 only by the interposition of a friend from being ensnared 
 by them in one of their most alluring forms. He was in the 
 habit of frequenting the Ridotto, or public gaming-table, 
 and here the elder poet, Vincenzo Monti, found him one 
 evening absorbed in play. His remonstrance proved 
 efficacious, and the boy having promised to eschew the 
 fatal habit, went home to tell his mother of his resolution. 
 She applauded it, and proposed a trip to Paris to facili- 
 tate adherence to it. "No," he said, "I should deserve 
 no credit in that case, for I should not have conquered 
 myself. On the contrary, I will go to the Ridotto every 
 evening and look on without playing." He did so, and 
 at the end of a month came triumphantly out of the 
 perilous ordeal, cured for life of the fatal passion which 
 had so nearly drawn him into its vortex. 
 
 A great historic pageant, Napoleon's triumphal entry 
 into Milan, was witnessed by the boy-poet in 1800. He 
 assisted, too, at the state performance in his honour at 
 La Scala in the box of a lady, the Countess Cicognara, 
 who had made herself conspicuous by her denunciations 
 of the French. The First Consul, well aware of this, 
 focussed the lightnings of his eyes on her through the 
 evening as though he wished to fulminate her. The 
 unnoted schoolboy in the back of the box watched, 
 wondered, remembered, till, when, after the lapse of 
 twenty years the victor of Marengo died as the solitary 
 exile of St. Helena he concentrated the impressions of 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 231 
 
 that evening into one line of immortal verse. " What 
 eyes that man had ! " he exclaimed once as he recalled 
 the incident towards the close of his life, and on another 
 occasion he acknowledged that it had inspired the cele- 
 brated line in his ode. 
 
 The next scene of Manzoni's life was laid at Auteuil, 
 where he went to reside on his father's death in 1805. 
 Here mother and son moved in the small but select 
 literary clique of philosophers modelled on those of 
 the eighteenth century, and contemptuously styled by 
 Napoleon the " Ideologues." It comprised such men 
 as Volney the sceptic, Cabanis the materialist-doctor, 
 and Claude Fauriel, who, despite his own fame as a 
 philologist and critic, will be best known to posterity 
 from his share in forming the mind of the young Milanese, 
 with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. 
 
 Manzoni's courtship, at twenty-two, of Henriette 
 Blondel, the sixteen-year old, blue-eyed daughter of a 
 Genevese banker, inaugurated his happy married life of 
 twenty-five years. His marriage in February 1808 was 
 in more ways than one the turning-point of his mental 
 history, since it led unexpectedly to his conversion to 
 the Catholic faith, which he and his mother had aban- 
 doned for the sceptical opinions held by the set they 
 moved in. The first impulse came from his newlv- 
 wedded bride, who, coming under Catholic influences 
 in Paris on her wedding trip, was converted to that faith 
 from the Reformed Evangelical creed in which she had 
 been brought up. All her efforts were then directed to 
 winning her husband from infidelity, and some biographers 
 assert that she even threatened to leave him if he 
 remained unconvinced. A painful struggle then arose 
 in his mind, which, after months of anxious perplexity, 
 
232 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 resulted in his full and entire adoption of the Catholic 
 faith. On the subject of this momentous change he 
 always maintained a strict reserve, and its history was 
 never revealed by him to any one. A profound sense of 
 humility was the principal moral residuum of his phase 
 of scepticism, and he was once heard to declare that he 
 believed his life to have been exceptionally prolonged 
 in order that he might continue to acknowledge and 
 deplore the errors of his youth. It is remarkable that 
 " I Promessi Sposi " contains two instances of sudden 
 conversion, those of " Fra Cristoforo" and the "Inno- 
 minate," no doubt in some degree suggested by his own 
 experience. 
 
 His religious and artistic convictions were arrived at 
 simultaneously, for from the same period of his life dates 
 his definitive abandonment of the principles of classi- 
 calism for those of the Romantic school. With the bent 
 of his mind thus formed and settled he left Paris in 
 1 8 10, and took up his abode at Brusuglio, a villa 
 belonging to his mother, where his life for many ensuing 
 years was a domestic idyll, diversified by family interests 
 and country pursuits. Financial embarrassments, due 
 to the malversations of a dishonest agent, were found in 
 1818 to have necessitated the sale of his father's property, 
 with the villa of II Caleotto, associated with the memories 
 of his boyhood. It was in accordance with his unfailing 
 sympathy with the lower orders that, on finding his 
 peasants hopelessly indebted to the estate, he drew his 
 pen through the accounts and wiped out all arrears by a 
 universal act of grace. 
 
 The period of his literary activity was comprised in 
 the six years from 1819 to 1825, the thirty-fourth and 
 fortieth of his age. The remainder of his life was that 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 233 
 
 of a quiet country gentleman, much occupied with rural 
 pursuits, the rearing of silkworms, and grafting of olive 
 and mulberry trees. Although never a conspirator him- 
 self against Austrian rule, he was on terms of intimate 
 friendship with those who were, and narrowly escaped 
 being implicated in the movement of 182 1, through the 
 imprudence of one of its leaders in offering him a place 
 in the provisional government. On the incorporation of 
 Lombardy with the newly formed kingdom of Italy in 
 1859 he was nominated Senator, but never took any 
 active part in politics. 
 
 The latter half of his life was saddened by a series of 
 domestic misfortunes, beginning with the loss of his wife 
 on Christmas Day 1833. The death in the ensuing year 
 of his eldest daughter, Giulia, married to Massimo 
 d'Azeglio, was followed by that of his mother and 
 another daughter in 1841, and out of nine children born 
 to him only two survived him. Among his most inti- 
 mate friends was Tommaso Grossi, his fellow-poet and 
 novelist, who lived under his roof for years, and held the 
 place of a younger brother in his affections. When 
 Grossi's marriage dissolved this close companionship, 
 Manzoni filled the blank in his life by a second marriage 
 to Donna Teresa Stampa, a widow with a grown-up son, 
 who made him an attached and devoted wife, while her 
 son, Count Stefano Stampa, was unremitting in his 
 attentions to his step-father, who thenceforward spent 
 most of his time at the beautiful villa of Lesa on the 
 Lago Maggiore. 
 
 The brilliant verses of Giusti had early attracted the 
 attention of the Lombard poet, who saw in them "a 
 new glory for Italy," and he was drawn into intimate 
 personal relations with him in 1845, through the Tuscan 
 
234 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 poet's meeting with Vittorina Manzoni in company with 
 his friend Giorgini, who afterwards married her. A life- 
 long friendship resulted from his stay of a month under 
 Manzoni's hospitable roof at this time. 
 
 The inevitable solitariness of old age came upon 
 Manzoni in the successive deaths of friends and rela- 
 tives. Giusti died in 1851, Grossi in 1853, and he was 
 left for the second time a widower in 1861. Yet even 
 after so many griefs it was reserved for him to die of a 
 broken heart at eighty-eight, and taste a crowning sorrow 
 on the verge of the grave. On April 28, 1873, his eldest 
 son, Pier Luigi, his constant companion, counsellor, and 
 caretaker, who had filled the place of so many dear ones 
 lost, died at the age of sixty. A sad picture is that 
 presented by biographers after his death, of the bereaved 
 old man, wandering through his desolate house, calling 
 vainly for his son, or holding imaginary conversations 
 with him, unable to realise his loss. Weakened by a fall 
 coming out of church during the previous winter, he 
 rapidly succumbed under the added strain of mental 
 suffering, and died of cerebral meningitis within a month 
 of his son, on Ascension Day, May 22, 1873. 
 
 The almost regal obsequies in which the national 
 grief and veneration found expression formed a strange 
 contrast to the simple life of the unpretending poet. 
 Florence would have claimed his dust, to lay with that 
 of her illustrious dead in Santa Croce, but his family 
 preferred that it should rest in the cemetery of his native 
 city. The remains, after lying in state for two days in 
 the Municipal Palace, visited by thousands of his fellow- 
 citizens, were escorted to the grave by a magnificent 
 corfigc, comprising the Princes of the Royal House, the 
 great officers of State, and delegations from the Italian 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 235 
 
 municipalities. But the most fitting tribute to his memory 
 was Verdi's Requiem Mass, the splendid homage of art 
 to art, of genius to its fellow. 
 
 In Manzoni's character we find no trace of the strange 
 moral dualism, the perplexing discord between the 
 author's life and his works, which so often startles us in 
 the records of literature. He wrote loftily because he 
 felt nobly, and there is no note, through the whole 
 gamut of emotion struck in his works, that had not been 
 sounded in his own heart. Manzoni may be called the 
 laureate of justice, which is the protagonist of his muse, as 
 love is of that of other poets. The strongest motive 
 force in his nature was the hatred of injustice, and 
 though the most pacific of men, he was capable, at sight 
 of it, of being roused to something like a paroxysm of 
 fury. "Porci di sciori!" [Pigs of gentry!] he once 
 exclaimed with flashing eyes, in language of untrans- 
 latable vituperation, when walking in his old age through 
 the streets of Milan, he saw a carriage nearly drive over 
 an old woman, covering her with mud as it passed. His 
 great romance, though, like all true art, it points its moral 
 without obtruding it, is from title-page to finish a protest 
 against the oppression of the weak by the strong, of the 
 helpless by the tyrannical great. 
 
 His three larger works form a trilogy, each hinging on 
 a leading idea, referable to so many stages of Italian 
 history. " II Conte di Carmagnola" is directed against 
 civil discords, the curse of Italy in the past ; " Adelchi" 
 against foreign domination, her bane in his own time; 
 while in "I Promessi Sposi" looms up more dimly the 
 question of the future, not for Italy alone, but for the 
 world — the aspirations of the masses for enfranchisement 
 and equality. Thus drama is ever with him the vehicle 
 
236 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 for social speculation. In the two first works, the 
 author's protest is spoken by a chorus of the people, 
 while in the third it finds no distinct articulate utter- 
 ance, but forms the motive underlying the whole plot. 
 In the former there is a conflict of sympathy, as the 
 sentiment thus conveyed jars with the direct action, and 
 runs counter to the interest centred in the main actors. 
 
 Francesco Bussano, the principal figure of the first 
 piece, produced in 181 9, is an historical character, who, 
 born at Carmagnola in 1390, in the condition of a 
 shepherd-boy, rose to eminence as a soldier of fortune 
 in the service of Filippo Maria Visconti. This prince, 
 whose power he was mainly instrumental in consoli- 
 dating, became jealous of him for that very reason, and 
 by a variety of affronts disgusted him with his service, 
 and drove him to enter that of Venice. The tragedy 
 opens with the war against his former employer, in 
 which he is at first victorious. His clemency in releas- 
 ing the prisoners and his slackness in pursuit of the 
 foe excite suspicions of double dealing, and after a 
 series of intrigues he is inveigled to Venice and executed 
 as a traitor by order of the suspicious government 
 of the Republic. The drama follows literally the his- 
 torical facts save in deciding in favour of its hero the 
 doubtful point of his innocence. Its subject recalls 
 that of " Wallenstein," which may have suggested it. 
 Despite two fine scenes, in one of which Carmagnola 
 orders the release of the prisoners in defiance of the 
 Venetian commissioners, and in the other takes leave of 
 his wife and daughter on the eve of his execution, the 
 drama is deficient in interest as a whole. It wants the 
 organic vitality derived from a culminating point of 
 action, and resembles too nearly narrative in dialogue. 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 237 
 
 The chorus, interpolated at the end of the second act 
 and put into the mouths of supposed spectators of the 
 battle, traverses the general current of the action, which 
 has a soldier of fortune as its chief exponent. Fine as a 
 lyric, it is dramatically irrelevant, and contrasts in this 
 respect with Max Piccolomini's splendid panegyric on 
 peace in " Wallenstein," where, as springing from his 
 newly-born love for Thekla, it is artistically justified by 
 its connection with the main thread of the plot. The 
 writer of an article on " Italian Tragedy " in the Quarterly 
 Review for December 1820, though generally unfavour- 
 able to the author, calls this chorus "the most noble 
 piece of Italian lyric poetry which the present day has 
 produced," and subjoins a translation of it in extenso. 
 
 The subject of "Adelchi" is likewise taken from 
 Italian history, and is furnished by the invasion of 
 Charlemagne and overthrow of the Lombard monarchy in 
 772-74. Adelchi, or Adalgiso, is a Lombard prince who 
 performs prodigies of valour in defending the kingdom of 
 his father, Desiderio, holding the invaders at bay at Le 
 Chiuse, a line of impregnable fortifications stretching 
 across the head of the Val di Susa. The Franks are on 
 the point of abandoning the enterprise in despair, when 
 an emissary of the Pope arrives in their camp by un- 
 trodden paths over the mountains, and leads them by 
 the same route to the rear of the Lombard position. 
 The feelings of the enslaved Latins on witnessing the 
 subsequent rout of their oppressors are described in 
 the chorus, which is thus open to the same criticism as 
 that in " Carmagnola " of awaking a strain of sympathy 
 opposed to that felt for the hero, Adelchi. Its effect in 
 the original depends very much on the rhythm, difficult 
 to reproduce in English, and suggestive at once of weight 
 
238 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 and swiftness, like the moving thunder of galloping 
 horse : * 
 
 From moss-covered arches of ruins commanding, 
 From woods, from loud forges in ashes now standing, 
 
 From the furrow bedewed with the sweat of the slave, 
 A people dispersed doth arouse and awaken, 
 With senses all straining and pulses all shaken, 
 At a sound of strange clamour that swells like a wave. 
 
 In visages pallid and eyes of dull seeming, 
 
 Like sunlight through cloud masses suddenly gleaming, 
 
 The might of their fathers a moment is seen ; 
 In eyes and in visages doubtfully blending, 
 The shame of the present seems struggling, contending, 
 
 With pride in the thought of a past that hath been. 
 
 'Tis the lost Latin race, that by barbarous numbers 
 Subdued and defeated, the soil still encumbers 
 
 Where triumphed their fathers ; and helpless and weak, 
 As a flock given o'er to each spoiler voracious, 
 By the pitiless Goth to the Herule rapacious, 
 
 To the wandering Lombard is left by the Greek. 
 
 Now they gather in hope, to disperse panic-stricken, 
 And by tortuous paths their pace slacken or quicken, 
 
 As, 'twixt longing and fear, they advance or stand still, 
 Gazing once and again, where despairing and shattered, 
 The host of their tyrants flies broken and scattered 
 
 The wrath of the swords that are drinking their fill. 
 
 But hark ye ! those brave ones their leaguer thus holding, 
 And from hope of escape your oppressors enfolding, 
 
 By paths steep and rugged have come from afar ; 
 Forsaking the scenes of their festive carousing, 
 From downy repose of soft couches arousing, 
 
 In haste to obey the shrill summons of war. 
 
 * A translation of this chorus, in which Dr. Garnett colla- 
 borated, has been published in his " Italian Literature," but it is 
 taken from a different version, and some of the stanzas here given 
 are omitted. 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 239 
 
 In their castles they left their fair wives broken-hearted, 
 Who, while striving to part, still refused to be parted 
 
 'Mid repeated farewells choked by tears as they flowed ; 
 With war-dinted helmets on brows closely fitted, 
 In haste their dark chargers they saddled and bitted, 
 
 And rushed o'er the drawbridge that clanged as they rode. 
 
 And deem ye, oh fools ! that the meed and the guerdon 
 These warriors hope, is to lighten the burden, 
 
 The woes of a people to soothe and allay ? 
 If such the desire with these heroes that pleaded, 
 This pompous array and these toils were unneeded, 
 
 Unneeded the perils and pains of the way. 
 
 For they too are lords of a people degraded, 
 Condemned to the soil by their victors invaded, 
 
 Or crowded in dens of the cities they've lost ; 
 Had the lip of the victor one word only spoken, 
 The yoke of those slaves had been riven and broken, 
 
 The lip of the victor that word ne'er hath crost. 
 
 Then turn ye again to your ruins yet stately, 
 
 To peaceable toil in the workshops quenched lately, 
 
 To the furrow bedewed with the sweat of the slave ; 
 Draw closer ye yoke-fellows bound in one tether, 
 And speak of your hopes in hushed whispers together, 
 
 Sleep happy in error, in dreams fondly rave. 
 
 To-morrow ye'll learn, to fresh sorrow awaking, 
 
 That the victors, their rage 'gainst the vanquished forsaking 
 
 Have granted a peace which your tyrants doth save ; 
 That both reign in common, the booty dividing, 
 Clasp hands and pledge faith, while unchanged and abiding 
 
 In name and condition are master and slave. 
 
 The treachery of the Lombard chiefs during the sieges of 
 Pavia and Verona occupy the succeeding acts, working 
 up to the conclusion of the tragedy in the captivity of 
 Desiderio and death of Adelchi, who in reality escaped 
 to Constantinople. The woes of his sister Ermengarda, 
 
240 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 divorced by Charlemagne and dying of a broken heart, 
 interweave an element of romance with the historical 
 events, but are almost extraneous to the rest of the 
 action. Her delirious ravings on hearing of his marriage 
 with her rival Ildegarda end with the following lines : 
 
 Oh, were it but a dream ! which in the dawn 
 
 Should melt in mist, whence, drowned in troubled tears, 
 
 I might awake to find my Charles still near, 
 
 And hear him ask the cause, and with a smile, 
 
 For lack of faith upbraid me. 
 
 Despite many fine passages, the interest of the drama is 
 marred by its want of concentration, the action being 
 prolonged over a battle and two sieges. Manzoni's 
 dramatic power was far inferior to his lyrical gift, but it 
 is his prose that has made him immortal. Here he has 
 perhaps never been surpassed in his power of calling up 
 by a few simple words pictures that live in the reader's 
 memory for ever, like fragments of his own actual experi- 
 ence. The pages of " I Promessi Sposi " are strewn 
 with such vignettes, where a whole scene is suggested by 
 a few touches ; now landscapes, like Renzo's overgrown 
 and deserted vineyard, or the village sleeping in the 
 moonlight j now interiors, like Don Ferrante's library or 
 the convent parlour at Monza. Amid these minor gems 
 of genre painting, great tragic scenes, such as the plague- 
 stricken city, the Lazzaretto of Milan, or the castle of the 
 " Innominato," stand out in solemn perspective like the 
 larger features of a landscape overshadowing the minute 
 details of the foreground. 
 
 In his character-drawing Manzoni has a like equality 
 of touch, and the slight sketches of the minor personages 
 of his tale have the same masterly finish relatively to 
 scale as the great historical portraits of Cardinal 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 241 
 
 Borromeo and the " Innominate," in right of which he 
 may take rank as the Titian of literature. The very 
 supernumeraries of the piece, represented in other works 
 by the veriest lay figures, never flit across his stage with- 
 out leaving some trace of their individuality ; and even 
 the garrulous convent porter, who only speaks once as 
 he opens the door for Lucia's mother, is as vital as the 
 noble figure of Fra Cristoforo himself. Yet Manzoni's 
 detail is never trivial, nor his homeliness vulgar, for we 
 have in him the true artistic discrimination whose end is 
 always so perfectly attained as to justify its means, 
 however ordinary. 
 
 We have seen how he rises to his highest rhetorical 
 level in his tragedies when interpreting in lyrical form 
 the feelings of a multitude, and in his romance this 
 power is more fully displayed in his manipulation of 
 masses of men, swayed by a common impulse, yet com- 
 posed of discordant and incongruous element. On these 
 separate units he never loses his grasp, and while com- 
 bining them in single action, puts before us that multiple 
 personality of a crowd whose corporate volition is the 
 incalculable sum of many varying individual motives. 
 The aimless surging of the human tide, stirred by con- 
 trary currents of opinion, the power of blind caprices 
 working on many minds in common, the compound poten- 
 tialities of a multitude, have never been so thoroughly 
 realised as in the description of the bread-riot at Milan 
 and the mob-siege of the Forno alle Grucce. 
 
 On the tumultuous background of this angry multitude 
 Manzoni paints with masterly touches the portrait of the 
 old courtier, Antonio Ferrer, as he shows at his carriage 
 window "that face of humble, complaisant, obsequious 
 benignity which he had hitherto reserved for those 
 
 Q 
 
242 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 occasions on which he found himself in the presence of 
 his master, Don Philip IV., but was now obliged to 
 expend in propitiating the furious mob of Milan." 
 
 The helpless and bewildered crowd of villagers 
 roused by the night alarm, the gathering knots in the 
 streets of Milan, " like the scattered clouds which, 
 chasing across the sky after a storm, make people look 
 up and shake their heads, saying, ' The weather is not 
 settled,'" all such aggregations of human atoms are 
 described by him with like vivacity and force, while they 
 never unduly distract the attention from the main action 
 and the principal personages. This power of grouping 
 masses of men seems to be a typical characteristic of 
 Manzoni's genius, and was doubtless derived from that 
 philosophical tendency of his mind which balanced his 
 poetic temperament and gave him the power of regarding 
 humanity in its social as well as in its individual aspects. 
 
 Manzoni's first lyrical productions were a collection of 
 " Inni Sacri," or hymns for the various feasts of the 
 ecclesiastical year, composed during that phase of his 
 life following his marriage when all his writings were 
 religious, as a reparation for his period of apostasy. 
 They were surpassed in fame by his great ode " II 
 Cinque Maggio," written on learning the news of the 
 death of Napoleon at St. Helena on May 5, 1821. It 
 ranks as the most popular lyric in Italy, and justifies 
 the dictum of Goethe in a preface to an edition of 
 Manzoni's works published at Jena in 1827, that lyrical 
 poetry is the highest form of rhetoric, and that he knew 
 of no modern poet so qualified to excel in it as this 
 author. Translated into German by Goethe and Paul 
 Heyse, and imitated in French by Lamartine, this tribute 
 to a hero's memory has tempted the greatest masters of 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 243 
 
 other countries to essay its reproduction, which is ren- 
 dered difficult by the dependence of the original for its 
 effect on the interchange of the three different forms of 
 accentuation in Italian, in which it is placed on the 
 ultimate, penultimate, and antepenultimate syllables as 
 in citta, dolore, and tremolo. For these rhythmical 
 effects a greater frequency of rhyme is perhaps the best 
 English substitute, which, with the retention of the form 
 of the stanza, may give the effect of the versification. A 
 German critic, Herr Sauer, compares the opening phrase, 
 " Ei fu," to the initial bars of a great symphony preluding 
 the solemnity of its strain. 
 
 He was — and is not — without sign 
 
 Its latest breathings heaved, 
 Lies the once mighty clay supine 
 
 Of such a soul bereaved. 
 While earth as pulseless, stricken dumb, 
 
 The tidings hath received. 
 And muses on the latest hour 
 
 Of him — the man of fate — 
 Nor knows if to the blood-stained power 
 
 Of mortal tread as great. 
 In all the ages yet to come 
 
 Her dust shall palpitate. 
 
 Glitt'ring in royal state — adored — 
 
 I saw him — and was mute ; 
 Next with swift change o'erthrown — restored — 
 
 Last trampled under foot : 
 While thousand-voiced acclaimed the throng, 
 
 My Muse spake no salute, 
 By servile praise and cow'rdly taunt 
 
 That fallen glory strips 
 Alike unstained, she wakes to chant 
 
 So bright a star's eclipse, 
 And to his urn one deathless song 
 
 Now pours from virgin lips. 
 
244 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 The Alps and Pyramids alike, 
 
 The Tagus and the Rhine, 
 Have seen his bolts of thunder strike, 
 
 His lurid lightnings shine, 
 He burst where Don and Scylla roll, 
 
 And blazed from brine to brine ; 
 Was this true glory — wherefore ask ? 
 
 To after ages leave 
 The arduous sentence — ours the task 
 
 The image to perceive, 
 Whereof the Maker willed his soul 
 
 Should largest stamp receive. 
 
 The stormy nature's rapturous thrill 
 
 In great designs conceived — 
 The heart's unrest that nought could still 
 
 Till empire was achieved ; 
 And grasped the prize in which before 
 
 But madness had believed. 
 All— all he tasted — boast of fame 
 
 Enhanced as danger's prize — 
 The victor's crown — flight's bitter shame — 
 
 The throne — the exile's sighs — 
 Twice o er to dust abased — twice o'er 
 
 Exalted to the skies. 
 
 His name was heard when armed for strife 
 
 Two warring centuries, 
 Clashed in a jar with discords rife, 
 
 Yet hung on his decrees, 
 As arbiter he spoke their fate, 
 
 And hushed them at his knees. 
 He fell — to wear out empty days — 
 
 Hedged by a narrow isle ; 
 A mark for envy's rabid gaze — 
 
 Compassion's pitying smile — 
 For inextinguishable hate, 
 
 And love nought could beguile. 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 245 
 
 As o'er some shipwrecked wretch the surge 
 
 Sweeps with o'erwhelming might, 
 In waves which late from verge to verge 
 
 He scanned with straining sight, 
 Still hoping in the futile quest 
 
 On distant shores to light ; 
 So on that soul with gathered weight 
 
 Did tides of memory roll, 
 And oft he purposed to narrate 
 
 His deeds — and oft the scroll 
 To all futurity addrest 
 
 From his tired fingers stole. 
 
 And oft, as to still twilight paled 
 
 Day's apathetic rest, 
 He stood, his meteor glances veiled, 
 Arms folded on his breast, 
 By crowding memories assailed 
 Of all that life held best ; 
 Rehearsing how the tents rose fair, 
 
 'Mid echoing vales and meads, 
 The gleam of arms in serried square, 
 The surge of charging steeds, 
 And swift commands to which ne'er^failed 
 Fulfilment of swift deeds. 
 
 Ah ! by such bitter grief unmanned, 
 
 His spirit had been driven 
 To dark despair, had not a hand 
 
 In mercy stretched from Heaven. 
 Shown regions where to wing its way 
 
 To the soul's flight is given ; 
 And led him on to pathways bright 
 
 With hope that never ends, 
 Through fields eternal, to delight 
 
 That all desire transcends ; 
 Where darkling dies the fleeting ray 
 
 That earthly glory sends. 
 
246 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 Oh Faith ! immortal, blest, benign, 
 
 Proclaim thy triumphs loud, 
 Add to their record one more line, 
 
 For never soul so proud 
 To the mysterious shame divine 
 
 Of Golgotha hath bowed. 
 Nor let reproach for earthly fault 
 
 His weary dust offend, 
 The God who humbles to exalt — 
 
 Chastises to befriend — 
 Did to his dying couch incline 
 
 To bless his lonely end. 
 
 The fame attained by these spirited stanzas, which, 
 written off in the emotion of the moment, have all the 
 verve of improvisation, astonished no one more than 
 their author, who declared long afterwards that he was 
 quite unprepared " for the hit made by that ode, full of 
 Gallicisms and Latinisms." It established him at once in 
 the position of the first lyric poet in Italy, yet was 
 followed by no other effort in the same line. 
 
 But the debt of Italian literature to Manzoni cannot 
 be measured by the mass, nor even by the merit of his 
 work. It lay in the fact that he first, by a stupendous 
 effort, moulded the language in which he wrote to what 
 was practically a new creation of Italian prose in a form 
 adapted to the exigencies of modern letters. For it must 
 be borne in mind that from the fourteenth to the nine- 
 teenth century it had been written by but one master, 
 Machiavelli, while in fiction it had been untried from 
 the " Decameron " to " I Promessi Sposi." The novel, 
 which in England and France had had a long pedigree, 
 and a gradual progress to perfection, sprung in Italy full 
 grown from the brain of Manzoni, in a masterpiece un- 
 approached by his successors. He thus produced an 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 247 
 
 absolutely new form of literature in what was practically 
 a new language, written by an extraordinary tour deforce^ 
 and coined as he went along. 
 
 For it had been the fate of the idiom of his country to 
 be used in letters as an artificial convention, from the 
 time of fourteenth-century writers, by whom it was first 
 forged as an instrument of culture out of the raw material 
 of the spoken dialect, through the long line of their 
 followers, who, aiming at imitating them, kept it in a 
 state of pupilage, cut off from its vital spring in the life 
 of the people. Deprived thus of all power of growth or 
 expansion, it was reduced to a mere literary argot, a fit 
 vehicle for the utterances of scholiasts and pedants, but 
 not for the expression of human emotion. The laws by 
 which its bondage were enforced were of a puerility 
 inconceivable to foreigners, while their violation was 
 punished by literary ostracism. Meanwhile in Tuscany 
 alone was it spoken in a familiar form, while throughout 
 the rest of Italy provincial dialects were the means of 
 oral communication even among the educated classes. 
 The literary language, indeed, was and is learned by the 
 cultured as matter of education, but remains scarcely 
 less remote from their daily thoughts than Latin from 
 those of an accomplished Englishman. 
 
 Down to Manzoni's time, the principal staples of 
 literature, poetry and drama, abstract treatises and his- 
 torical works, were of a nature to be written with more 
 or less difficulty out of dictionaries and vocabularies. 
 With a novel, the principal creation of Romanticism, the 
 case is different, since, dealing with everyday life in its 
 familiar aspect, it requires the command of familiar 
 expression such as is learned, in Giusti's phrase, " only 
 from the living dictionary on two legs." How in Italian 
 
248 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 to attain such a form of utterance was the problem which 
 occupied Manzoni's thoughts all through his career. He 
 sought to solve it by grafting the dead branch of literary 
 convention on the growing trunk of the spoken idiom of 
 Tuscany, substituting the uso fiorentino, the living custom 
 of Florence, for all the rules of grammars and vocabularies 
 as the highest standard of philological fitness. This 
 linguistic revolution was the main work of his life, carried 
 out at such cost of pains and labour as I shall endeavour 
 to show. And if his followers have gone to too great 
 lengths in the same direction, adopting into the written 
 language all manner of fiorentinerie, the very slang of the 
 Florentine hucksters, the Billingsgate of the Mercato 
 Nuovo, it is no more than has befallen the work of all 
 reformers, social, political, and literary alike. How early 
 the problem of language presented itself to Manzoni's 
 mind, may be gathered from the following passage in 
 Sainte-Beuve describing his discussions with Fauriel 
 when about one-and-twenty : 
 
 " But the latter [Manzoni] amid his hopes felt some 
 bitterness of heart. Well aware that poetry can only 
 correspond to its original aim when rooted in social and 
 popular life, he readily perceived that Italy, from many 
 causes, was here excluded from her natural destiny. 
 Her political subdivisions, the want of a common centre, 
 inertia, ignorance, local pretensions, had created a pro- 
 found discrepancy between the spoken and written tongue. 
 The latter had, by deliberate choice of those who used it, 
 become a dead language, and could not appeal to the 
 different populations with direct and immediate efficacy. 
 And thus, by a singular contradiction, the first condition 
 of the existence of a pure and simple language of poetry 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 249 
 
 in Italy was that it should found itself upon artifice. 
 Manzoni was early alive to the gravity of this difficulty, 
 and even perhaps exaggerated it. He could not see 
 without envy mixed with admiration the whole population 
 of Paris applauding Moliere's comedies. The intelligent 
 and direct contact of an entire people with the master- 
 pieces of genius, while he felt it to be the true touch- 
 stone of the vitality of the latter, must, he declared, be 
 denied to a country like Italy, parcelled out into a number 
 of dialects. He who was destined one day to unite all 
 the lofty minds of his country in a common sentiment of 
 admiration, did not then believe such unanimity possible, 
 or grieved that at any rate it could not be based upon 
 the comprehension of the public at large. Fauriel 
 encouraged him with his authority, citing to him many 
 illustrious examples, even among Italian writers, and re- 
 minding him that all had more or less to struggle with 
 difficulties of the same kind." 
 
 These difficulties are further aggravated for the poet 
 by the severity of the code of the Italian Parnassus, where 
 the most severe restrictions on the use of language pre- 
 vail. This limitation of the vocabulary must sometimes 
 induce considerable modification of poetical ideas, as 
 the deficiencies of a traveller's phrase-book sometimes 
 affects his choice of viands, and compel him in default 
 of a word for " roast-beef" to content himself with roast 
 mutton. It may be suspected that in this sense there is 
 a good deal of poetical roast mutton in Italian literature. 
 
 But the limitation of the ideas treated in poetry renders 
 possible a corresponding limitation of language, while in 
 prose no such narrowing of the field is practicable. Here 
 the literary banquet is of the most miscellaneous character, 
 
250 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 calling into play all the resources of the menu, and re- 
 quiring the most homely comestibles to be duly named 
 and ticketed. 
 
 Now Manzoni's position on entering the field of letters 
 was this. He had no full command of any literary 
 language, writing Italian as one does a foreign tongue or 
 dead language, while the natural expression of his thoughts 
 was in Milanese dialect. So entirely was this the case, 
 that, having once published a prefatory treatise on the 
 drama in what passed as very fair French, he declares 
 that he found it far easier to write that language than 
 Italian. And in an appendix to his report on the Unity 
 of the Language he describes the difficulties attendant 
 on the composition of " I Promessi Sposi " as having 
 been such as "would move to pity," giving a vivid 
 picture of his blind groping in his memory and in books 
 for the Italian equivalents for phrases, which, presenting 
 themselves in dialect, or in Latin, or in a foreign language, 
 had to be "driven away like temptations." 
 
 The work written under these difficulties shows evident 
 traces of poverty of language, especially in its opening 
 chapters. The style, indeed, is always forcible from the 
 innate vigour of the ideas expressed ; but they seem 
 rather to force the language to fit them than to be 
 naturally and easily clothed with it ; and the effect pro- 
 duced is like that of one of Michael Angelo's great un- 
 finished statues, in which the original energy of the 
 conception struggles through the rough-hewn block, 
 despite its want of finer shaping. Manzoni was himself 
 so keenly alive to this imperfection of his work that he 
 undertook a laborious course of study to enable him to 
 correct it. In this arduous task, which he called " giving 
 his rags a rinse in Arno," he sometimes spent, as he 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 251 
 
 tells us, days in search of a single word, gleaning chance 
 phrases "from those who possessed them by right of 
 birth." He was assisted by two Tuscan authors, 
 Giambattista Niccolini and Gaetano Cioni, and the iden- 
 tity of their corrections was an argument of the necessity 
 for the changes proposed. 
 
 The result of these labours was the revised and Tus- 
 canised edition of " I Promessi Sposi," published serially 
 in 1840-42. The critics were by no means agreed at 
 first as to what now seems the evident improvement, and 
 even Giusti, the living vocabulary of racy Tuscan idiom, 
 who boasted that he " wrote by ear," as untutored musi- 
 cians sing and play, instead of ransacking dictionaries 
 and going on reproducing " the ink of ink," was only 
 converted to approval of the change in a scene described 
 by Manzoni in a letter to Alfonso delle Valle di 
 Casanuova : 
 
 " Giusti, in one of those familiar colloquies which are 
 to me now at once a dear remembrance and a sad 
 regret, said to me one day : ' What notion is this that 
 has come into your head of making all these changes in 
 your novel? For my part I liked it better as it was/ 
 ' Giusti though you are,' thought I to myself, ' and on 
 your own ground, you are out for once, and but let me 
 only have you at my mercy, and I will make you sing 
 another song.' So I said in reply : ' To explain the why 
 and the wherefore of it all would tire out my lungs, to 
 say nothing of your ears, but if your curiosity holds, I 
 think that by a short experiment among us three (my 
 son-in-law, Bista Giorgini, was present) we shall be able 
 to come to an understanding. Let us take the two 
 editions, open one at random, lookout the corresponding 
 
252 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 place in the other ; you two read some passages aloud, 
 and where differences occur, judge for yourselves.' No 
 sooner said than done. Giusti took up his protege, and 
 as he read, it was evident that he mouthed some phrases 
 and expressions like a man trying a dish and finding a 
 strange taste in it. Then, as he heard the variations read, 
 the involuntary changes of his face plainly said, ' Ah, that 
 is so,' and sometimes he would let fall under his breath 
 a muttered ' That's right.' But lo and behold ! after a few 
 sentences he stumbled upon one, long, involved, and 
 intricate, ' Nexantem nodis, seque in sua membra 
 plicantem,' like the serpent in Virgil's, as usual, magni- 
 ficent simile ; and as he concluded it with evidently grow- 
 ing disgust, he burst out with, ■ Oh, what a dreadful hodge- 
 podge ! ' But, before the words were well out of his lips, 
 he stopped awkward and mortified, I do not know whether 
 for having given me too great a triumph or for some other 
 cause ; but on hearing me burst out laughing, and on 
 seeing on my face a look of great satisfaction, he rallied 
 from his embarrassment and exclaimed, pointing his 
 finger at me, ' See how pleased he is ! ' ' What ? ' said 
 I, ' do you think it nothing to have got you to contradict 
 yourself so flagrantly ! ' The re-formed sentence was 
 read, and it ran so smoothly, and extricated itself so com- 
 pletely from its involutions, that it restored us all three 
 to our literary equilibrium." 
 
 It seems not unlikely that, in this want of a ready-made 
 medium of expression, we have the clue to the otherwise 
 unexplained mystery of Manzoni's cessation from literary 
 labour when in the prime of life and vigour, as well as 
 of the comparative sterility of Italian Romanticism sub- 
 sequently, down even to the present day. The language 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 253 
 
 is not yet nationalised j seems, indeed, almost as far as 
 ever from being so, and literary productiveness during 
 the transition stage is not to be looked for. " I Promessi 
 Sposi " was written by a herculean effort, such as required, 
 perhaps, the first vigour of the author's mind, and would 
 scarcely be repeated after the initial impulse of his creative 
 genius had spent itself. It thus remains the unapproached 
 masterpiece and monument of a whole epoch of letters. 
 
 Manzoni's difficulty in writing Italian extended even 
 to the most ordinary correspondence, and is a sufficient 
 explanation of the scantiness of his epistolary remains. 
 Even in his old age the simplest letter was a matter of 
 study, undergoing corrections innumerable, and only 
 appearing in presentable shape when copied for the 
 third time. The letters thus produced are often models 
 of simple expression, little suggestive of the pains 
 bestowed on them. One, addressed as a letter of intro- 
 duction to Grossi, deserves to be quoted as an epigram : 
 
 ' Dear Tommaso, — The bearer of this is one of the 
 many who desire to make your acquaintance, and of the 
 few who deserve it. 
 
 " Alessandro Manzoni." 
 
 The comparison between Scott and Manzoni is the 
 more inevitable, as the latter owned to having followed 
 in the footsteps of his Scotch prototype. " Then * I 
 Promessi Sposi ' is my best work," said Scott on re- 
 ceiving this admission from its author, whom he once 
 visited at his house in Milan. The careers of the two 
 great romance-writers offered, indeed, some parallels and 
 many divergencies. Both spoke as their vernacular a 
 rude though forcible provincial idiom, yet attained such 
 mastery over the literary languages of their respective 
 
254 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 countries as to produce in them works which are their 
 chiefest glories. Both excelled alike in poetry and prose, 
 yet attained their highest level in the latter. Both were 
 keen students of history, and brought minute anti- 
 quarian research to furnish the raw material for their 
 creative genius to work upon. But these traits of re- 
 semblance were balanced by greater dissimilarities. Alike 
 in their keen sense of humour, in their sympathy with 
 nature, in their wide comprehension of humanity, the 
 two authors were diametrically opposite to each other 
 in the attitude of mind accompanying these gifts. Both 
 excel in their historical pictures of manners, but while 
 the Scotchman creates a visionary past, disguised in the 
 glow of his fervid imagination, the Italian calls it up 
 stripped of its accessories, and unmasks its harsh and 
 unlovely features. The one shows his actors in gala 
 dress performing a stately pageant for the benefit of 
 posterity, the other takes us behind the scenes of history, 
 with its characters in everyday attire, and deprived of 
 the glamour due to scenic illusion. 
 
 Both Scott and Manzoni were descended from a race of 
 rude chieftains, lording it over a mountainous border 
 country, but while the one idealised the feudal system in 
 which his ancestors had borne sway, viewing it from its 
 heroic side alone, the other, looking at it from beneath in 
 its relation to the lower classes, stigmatised it as an instru- 
 ment of social oppression. Both loved rural pursuits, 
 and were accustomed from infancy to open-air life and 
 picturesque scenery; but the childish eyes of the one 
 were trained to the wild beauty of heath and glen, to the 
 shifting skies of Scotland, with their fleeting mists and 
 ragged glimpses of tearful blue, to brawling streams and 
 grey silhouettes of hills undulating against the horizon ; 
 
Manzoni and Modern Romanticism 255 
 
 the earliest vision of the other showed the ordered luxuri- 
 ance of the wide Lombard levels, the terraced flights of 
 vineyards sloping to the azure floor of Como, domed by 
 the steadfast serenity of Italian blue and fenced with 
 solemn snows by the silver battlements of Switzerland. 
 Thus, while Scott's landscape is shown in all the varying 
 moods of northern nature, Manzoni's is ever calm and 
 solemn, breathing the spirit of those broad skies and 
 level flakes of foliage which the Lombard and Venetian 
 masters love for their backgrounds. Nor was the contrast 
 less between the private character and lives of the two 
 men, for, though both alike were lovable and genial, 
 while Scott carried into his affairs the prodigality of his 
 exuberant imagination, and died a victim to the pecuniary 
 embarrassments in which his splendid dreams ended, 
 Manzoni regulated his life with the strong common sense 
 of which he himself declared poetry to be but the supreme 
 exaltation. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 The intellectual prepotency of France among the Latin 
 nations renders Italian literature little more than a branch 
 of that of the neighbouring country. The thought and 
 tendencies of Paris — and in this respect Paris is France 
 — are everywhere predominant, and their influence can 
 be traced through all the provinces of the world of letters. 
 Of ability there is much, but of originality little, and of 
 the individuality of character required to give a national 
 stamp to works of genius, absolutely none. The novels 
 are French novels in another language, the poems are 
 variations on those of the French schools of decadents, 
 symbolistes, v'eristes, or of some of the other subdivisions 
 under which poetry may elect to classify itself. 
 
 Meanwhile the search for novelty extends even to the 
 department of typography, and while rhyme is eschewed 
 as out of date, while old metrical forms are revived or 
 new ones invented, the very capitals heading the lines 
 are superseded by the undistinguished uniformity of the 
 commoners of the alphabet. The next reform will perhaps 
 be to abandon the separateness of the lines in favour of 
 continuous printing, leaving the M.Jourdai?is of criticism 
 to discover whether they are reading verse or prose. 
 
 As in France, taste in subjects is often morbid, and 
 the tone of thought pessimistic, a mood which in its 
 ultimate results is destructive of all true art, as it obliterates 
 
Epilogue 257 
 
 chiaroscuro, and merges lights and shadows in a universal 
 monotone without contrast or relief. Thus the generation 
 expectant of the Revolution was more fruitful of greatness 
 than that which entered on its fruition, and the hopes of a 
 second spring for Italian art as a consequence of political 
 unification have been as yet belied. 
 
 The difficulty of language is yet unsolved, as the common 
 speech of all classes is still the provincial dialect, and the 
 sphere of literature remains apart from that of life. Italy 
 has not yet found her true identity in her newly consti- 
 tuted organism, and speaks with an uncertain and hesi- 
 tating voice. It may be that she will not wake to her 
 full utterance, will not gain free command of her new 
 individuality until moral as well as political unity is 
 attained by the close of the long struggle with the 
 Papacy which divides her with a line of cleavage cutting 
 more deeply to the roots of her being than the old frontiers 
 of territorial demarcation. 
 
 The tendencies of her modern bards have been play- 
 fully satirised by one of their number who has unhappily 
 passed out of the ranks of living poets. Felice Cavallotti, 
 the brilliant leader of the Italian Republicans, orator, 
 statesman, man of letters, tragically slain in a political 
 duel outside the gates of Rome, was no lover of recent 
 innovations, as the following _/V« d* esprit on the tastes and 
 tendencies of his contemporaries sufficiently shows. It 
 is headed " The Modern Elzevirs, by a Pensioner of the 
 Muses," and was written in Milan a propos of the Feast 
 of Santa Vittoria on December 23, 1877 : 
 
 Santa Vittoria ! thou of toasts and speeches 
 And songs — to-day wilt have abundant store, 
 
 While poets throng to enter glory's niches, 
 I leave them, pensioned off for evermore. 
 
 R 
 
2 5 8 
 
 Fable and Song in Italy 
 
 In casting me aside the count was reckoned 
 At ten years' service — there or thereabout — 
 
 Now on the half-pay list, with pen infecund 
 Afar from Pindus will my days run out. 
 
 Bards major, minor, minim, microscopic, 
 
 I see go by, their several paths upon, 
 With thoughts and thoughtlets primed on every topic, 
 
 While I stand melancholy looking on. 
 
 All ways from Tusculum by them are threaded, 
 With trochees furnished for the coming years, 
 
 Metres with capitals no longer headed, 
 And masterpieces masked as Elzevirs. 
 
 With shafts of scorn for pedants narrow-hearted, 
 Skulls, misbirths, subjects for the surgeon's ward — 
 
 Worms to devour their lady-loves departed, 
 And owls to strike the gruesome funeral chord. 
 
 With formulas for English misses hectic, 
 
 Death-doomed by doctors— of consumption sick — 
 
 With Heine's woes and keen French dialectic, 
 To the next world to send them double-quick. 
 
 Then to myself I say : " O latest fashion 
 
 Of poesy — if this thy stock-in-trade, 
 Well have I done to leave the heights Parnassian, 
 
 Blest be my pension and retirement's shade ! " 
 
 And thou, Vittoria, who in tones so various, 
 Wilt hear thy name to-day the ear beguile, 
 
 Forgive my silence if no verse hilarious 
 Of mine, salute thee in the modern style. 
 
 Reactionaries we, and bards pedantic, 
 
 Whose homely thought in homespun garb appears, 
 Bare of exotic quips and graces antic, 
 
 Of owls, and skulls, and worms, and Elzevirs. 
 
Epilogue 259 
 
 Reactionaries we, and pedants loaded 
 With metres out of date and out of time, 
 
 Who wear Parini's robe of cut exploded, 
 And modes of Ugo's and Manzoni's prime. 
 
 But thou . . . Ideal of the ages olden, 
 
 Until this tempest past and over be, 
 While yet the carnival of bards is holden, 
 
 Come to my refuge and abide with me. 
 
 No time is this to trail our skirts obtruded 
 
 In bygone fashion on the gazing town, 
 I know a haven placid and secluded, 
 ' Where we in peace can live the present down. 
 
 Fanned by the breezes from Verbano wafted, 
 
 A cottage in a lonely vale doth hide, 
 There wine we'll quaff on the fair hillside grafted, 
 
 And munch our chestnuts at our own fireside. 
 
 And thou wilt give the secret to my keeping, 
 Which the blind Smyrniote immortal made, 
 
 And that which wrought the laurel wreath that, weeping, 
 On Foscolo's dark bier our fathers laid. 
 
 Wilt show the veils wherewith Love zoned and cinctured 
 The forms Praxiteles in dreams designed, 
 
 Rhymes that fair Galatea's soul so tinctured 
 That she for a misshapen shepherd pined. 
 
 And as 'twixt sip and sip, with fingers plying 
 The tongs, we stir to life the glowing brands, 
 
 Thou wilt impart the Exile's song undying 
 That scourged the youth of the Italic lands. 
 
 To measure just wilt set the lines and strophes, 
 And dictate rhymes that jeer and scoff shall curb, 
 
 Not cemeteries haunting, the sad trophies 
 And urns of the departed to disturb. 
 
260 Fable and Song in Italy- 
 
 Then, since some photographs I have secreted, 
 
 Which once a vagrant stroller gave to me, 
 We, when our melodies we have completed, 
 
 Art in its latest phases there will see. 
 
 Afar thus from the modern noise and riot, 
 
 Antique Ideal, we two there alone 
 Will pass the hours in holy peace and quiet, 
 
 Until this storm be past and over blown. 
 
 The day Cavallotti looked for has yet to dawn, and 
 while the changed order has moved farther and farther 
 away from the Old Ideal, the New Ideal still hides behind 
 the horizon. 
 
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