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LIFE AND GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
LIFE AND GENIUS
OF
ARIOSTO
BY
J. SHIELD NICHOLSON
Sc.D., LL.D., F.B.A.
PRorEssoR or political iconomy in the university or Edinburgh
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1914
COPYRIGHT
M53
PREFACE
The present volume was originally intended to
accompany my adaptations of Tales from Ariosto^ and
the primary object in view was to do something to
revive the interest of the ordinary English reader
in the Orlando Furioso and its author.
It was remarked recently by a writer in The Times,
h propos of the centenary of fVaverley, that a book
might rank as a classic if it had retained popular
favour a hundred years. The Orlando Furioso has
stood this test for four times that period. Although
from about the middle of the nineteenth century"]
Ariosto has fallen into comparative neglect in English-
speaking countries, in Italy, on the other hand,
there has been in the same period a great accession
to Ariostean literature. Critical editions have been
published of Ariosto*s text, and every fact bearing
on his life and work has been examined with the
greatest care. Among the most prominent of these
latter-day critics was Carducci, who wrote a fascinating
study of the youth of Ariosto, and an enthusiastic
V
33S043
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
essay on the Orlando Furioso, and also supervised an
edition of that work. There can be no question
that both as a writer and as a man Ariosto has come
out all the stronger after the exposure to the fierce
light of modern criticism.
The comparative neglect of Ariosto in this country
in recent years is due in the first place to the con-
tinued falling off in reading Italian. It is probable
that the general knowledge of Italian by English
people is less now than at any period from the time
of Chaucer onwards.
This neglect of Italian has perhaps been more
prejudicial to Ariosto than to any other of the great
Italian writers, because though he is the most simple
to read in the original he seems to be the most
difficult to translate into English. Ariosto ought to
be read not with a furrowed brow and an intense
gaze, but with an easy mind and a careless eye.
Unfortunately there is no translation available for
the English reader which bears this test. Sir John
Harrington no doubt did his work in the right spirit,
and his loose paraphrase shows Elizabethan vigour.
But in spite of reprints his book was very rare even
in the eighteenth century. William Huggins (1757)
had not heard of it until his own translation was
well advanped, and then he had great difficulty in
seeing a copy ; and when he did see one he reviled
it. Huggins attempted the impossible task of a
vi
PREFACE
verbatim translation in the original octave stanza,
but as the Italian is printed in parallel columns the
work might be useful as a key. It is, however, very
scarce. John Hoole (1783) reviled Huggins and
tried his hand in Popish couplets. He certainly
avoided the dangers of literal accuracy, and in spite
of its leaden feet his version ran into a goodly number
of editions. But his inaccuracies aroused the wrath
of William Stewart Rose, who reviled him even as
Huggins had reviled the good Elizabethan. Rose
achieved a success of esteem even before his volumes
were published, being encouraged to complete the
work (1831) by his friend Sir Walter Scott. Rose
was an accomplished Italian scholar, but unluckily
like Huggins he tried a literal translation in the
original stanza, and unlike Huggins did not print
the Italian side by side. Rose effectually displaced
Hoole, but his own version was so cramped and
severe that it also displaced Ariosto, so far as any
ordinary reader was concerned.
It is strange that with all the enthusiasm displayed
for Latin and Latin culture so few Englishmen read
Italian. Any one who will take the trouble to learn
enough Italian to read Ariosto will certainly obtain
his reward not only directly, but indirectly, through
the central position occupied by Ariosto in Italian
literature.
In recent years it is true that there has been in
vii
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
this country a revival of interest in Dante, but un-
fortunately the Dantesque standard has been applied
to other writers and they have been found wanting.
In the same way for a time Mozart was decried
because he was not so severe as Wagner, but Mozart
has come into his own again and Ariosto is the
Mozart of the weavers of romance.
The failure to read Ariosto in the original has
led the English reader to rely on short summaries
of his work and its qualities, supplemented by com-
parison with other poets. But Ariosto is too many-
sided for treatment by such short methods. Very
early it became the fashion to search for allegories
in Ariosto. But the allegories are the inventions not
^\ of Ariosto but of his commentators. Ariosto is not
an allegorist but a story-teller. He is much nearer
akin to Chaucer than to Spenser, who indeed borrowed
largely from Ariosto but not allegories. Some of
the stories in Ariosto recall those of the Arabian
Nights^ though it may be noted that the latter were
not translated into a Western language for two
centuries after the publication of the Orlando Furioso,
In the former volume of Tales I tried to retell
some of Ariosto's chief stories in such a way as to
bring out the main plot and to get rid of some of
the popular misunderstandings about his work.
In the present volume the idea is to deal with
the man and the period in which he lived and again
viii
PREFACE
to get rid of some popular misconceptions that still
prevail in spite of the illuminating work of Mr.
Gardner. Ariosto was the representative writer of
the Italian Renaissance, and by a strange perversion
Renaissance has come to be translated decadence.
Decadent popes, decadent poets, decadent Ariosto, is
the sequence with this interpretation. But Renais-
sance does not mean decadence, and certainly there
was no decadence in Ariosto or in his work. " A
man of supreme genius, and at the same time an
essentially good and lovable character : he was good-
ness itself (such was the saying of a contemporary).
To adapt to him a phrase that has somewhere been
used of Shakespeare — he keeps the broad sunlit high-
way of Renaissance life." ^
The present study has been made as short
as possible consistently with the object in view.
The reader who wishes for a full and authoritative
history of the man and his surroundings has ready
to his hand the excellent works of Mr. Edmund
G. Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara (1904), and
the King of Court Poets ^ Ariosto (1906). For the
historical parts of the following pages I am under
very great obligations to Mr. Gardner. At the same
time the opinions on Ariosto as a man and on his
genius here given have been formed by independent
study. I have no doubt been influenced by the
* Gardner's Ariosto, p. 262.
ix
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
learning of Panizzi and Pio Rajna, and most of all
by the enthusiasm of Carducci, but the judgment such
as it is on the man and his genius is founded on the
impressions made by reading and re-reading Ariosto's
own works. A short bibliography is appended, and
the references in the book are to the editions there
named. A few passages from Chapter V. of the
present work were used in the introduction to the
volume of Tales.
J. S. N.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
[In the following Bibliography I have only inserted books
which I have found useful in writing the present short Life,
BarufFaldi in an appendix to his Life of Ariosto gives a
catalogue of the principal editions of the Furioso down to the
year 1788. There are cited one hundred and thirty of these
principal editions in Italian published in different countries,
or roughly one in every two years since the death of Ariosto.
Many of these editions have elaborate commentaries. There
have been many important editions since BarufFaldi published
his catalogue, and every aspect of Ariosto's life and work has
been subjected to minute investigation and criticism, especi-
ally under the stimulus of the celebrations (1875) in honour
of the fourth centenary of his birth. The extent of the
Ariostean literature is only alluded to here as indicating the
popularity of his work in the original Italian in different
periods in different countries.]
WORKS OF ARIOSTO
Panizzi, Antonio. Orlando Innamorato di Boiardo : Orlando Furioso
di Ariosto ; with an Essay on the Romantic Narrati. cit. p. lii :
Parva, sed apta mihi, sed nulH obnoxia, sed non
Sordida, porta MEO sed tamen AERE domus.
The " meo aere " was meant to tell to all men that the house was not the
gift of a patron.
72
DEATH AND CHARACTER
ate as fast as he could to get it finished. He was
inattentive in his feeding ; it is told that he once ate
up what had been placed for an unexpected guest.
One of the minor defects of Ariosto (alluded to in
Hudibras) as compared with Homer or Virgil, Scott
or Dumas, is the way he neglects to provide his
heroes and heroines with a proper allowance of
meals. His creatures, like their creator, were always
too intent on other things. It is noteworthy, how-
ever, that Ariosto does not forget the horses to the
same extent.
On the other hand, the poet*s love of gardens,
fine buildings, music, painting, sculpture, and
pageantry makes him surpassed by none in these
accessories of romance. He was intimately associated
with the best painters of his day : notably Dosso
Dossi and Raphael.
Ariosto's life in these last years at Ferrara was
not all of the simple kind. He wrote new comedies
and rewrote the old ones for fresh presentation.
Under his designs Duke Alfonso had a great hall in
the palace converted into a theatre. The permanent
scene (in those days in the comedies there was only
one scene) was magnificently painted by Dosso Dossi
and his pupils, all under the eye of the poet.
Ariosto, though a dreamer at times, was never a
recluse. He had a multitude of friends all over
Italy, and when his ship came home, after his long
voyage in the seas of fancy, he was welcomed by a
host of men and women, the best of the times : are
they not all set down, except Machiavelli, in the
73
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
opening stanzas of the last canto of the Furioso ?
If the praises in some instances were too generous,
so also was the voyager's own unselfish nature ;
like one of his modern admirers he was a bad
hater.
Except perhaps in his youth Ariosto was not a
great reader or student, though he is said to have
devoured a multitude of French and Spanish romances.
In the Orlando the narrative always flows so easily,
the words are so " inevitable," the verses are so
simple and musical, that at first reading, and even
after many readings, the poetry, like Garrick's
acting, seems too natural, as if rapidly and carelessly
improvised by a born story-teller. Yet in truth
Ariosto revised and revised, and was for ever revising
the Furioso^ and was never satisfied. He asked the
opinions of his most critical friends,^ and doubtless,
like Moli^re, the opinions of the less critical, as for
example Alessandra. But instead of improving the
life out of his poetry he only made the words more
and more fitted for the endless varieties of his fancy.
For the last edition he interpolated six new cantos,
and instead of spoiling the proportions he made the
original more symmetrical and set the old characters
on the quest of fresh adventures in new scenes with
unexpected revelations of their qualities. We know
that even the first edition was a work of infinite
pains ; all his life the poet showed a patience that
refused no labour,^ and the first manuscript was so
amended and rearranged, so written over with glosses
^ Panizzi, op. cit. p. cliii, n. ^ Barotti, p. 1 9.
74
DEATH AND CHARACTER
and erasures, that Ariosto said it was impossible for
any one but himself to read it.^
There is good evidence that Ariosto had intended
to make further changes in the last edition, not by
way of addition but of suppression : there were some
things which before dying he wished to blot.^
But death, though the approach was gradual, was
too speedy for the fulfilment of this good intention.
On the last night of 1532 a great fire broke out in v^
Ferrara. In spite of every effort to subdue it, it
lasted three days and caught the shops under the
grand hall, which had been made into the theatre of
which Ariosto was the designer and director. His
health had been failing for some time, and though
he lingered for some six months, the destruction of
his beautiful theatre and Dosso Dossi's scenery gave
him a shock from which he never recovered. He
died in the night of July 6, 1533.
It was in accord with the beliefs of the time to
suppose that the fire presaged his death. This belief
apparently was shared in by Harrington. *' Now if
fire (as one Artimedorus writeth) betokeneth fame
and greatness, then this unfortunate fire, fortuning
at such a time as it did, may yet serve as a means to
ennoble the more this famous man's death, and as
Comets are said to foreshew the death of Princes, so
this terrible fire, lasting so many days as it did, might
be thought to foretell his death, chiefly since it con-
* Letter to the Marchese di Mantova : Cappelli, op. cit. Letter X.
^ See Panizzi, op. cit. p. clix : " Consequently we are bound to believe that
Ariosto intended to take all the objectionable passages from his poem, and had
already made some alterations specifically pointed out by Ruscelli."
75
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
sumed that great worke that was built for his great
fame and honour." ^ According to his own wishes and
direction Ariosto was buried in the simplest possible
manner. From his little house in the street called
Mirasole he was carried, in the dead of night, by four
men, with two candles, to the old church of San
Benedetto, accompanied, however, by the monks of
their own accord, contrary to their custom ; and as
he had wished and prescribed, he was buried very
simply.^
His son Virginio wished to have the remains
removed to a chapel which he had built in the garden
that Ariosto loved, but the monks would not permit
it ; yet, as Panizzi says, his ashes were often dis-
turbed to enrich some handsome monument erected
to his memory by individuals. The record of these
sepulchral honours and of the motives of the indi-
viduals concerned (Mosti and others) may be passed
by ; Ariosto is too lovable a man to be so quarrelled
over. The controversy that arose and has lasted to
our own times on the religion of the poet may also
be put aside. The conduct of the monks showed
that this outward conformity to religion was at least
sufficient, and the will which he made on the eve of
his departure to the Garfagnana begins with the com-
mendation of his soul to God, and the hope that he
may find a place amongst the blessed.^
In the older lives which Harrington summarised
1 Harrington, op, cit. p. 422.
2 Barotti, p. 16 and note 40 in Appendix.
3 The will in Latin is quoted in full by BarufFaldi, Doc. XV. p. 284.
76
DEATH AND CHARACTER
it was written : " He tooke his sicknesse not only
patiently but cheerfully, affirming that he was willing
to die, and so much the rather because he heard that
the greatest divines were of opinion that after this
life We should know one another, affirming to his
friends that were by that many his friends were
departed whom he had a very great desire to visit,
and that every hour seemed to him a year till he
might see them." Ariosto, in the matter of religion,
was largely tolerant ; and he ascribed the heresy of
Friar Martin and others to the subtle study of the
metaphysics of theology, ** because when the intellect
soars up to see God it is no wonder if sometimes it
falls down blind and confused." ^
A detailed description of the personal appearance
of Ariosto based on contemporary evidence has been
Englished by Harrington.^ " He was tall of person,
of complexion melancholy, he was of colour like an
olive, somewhat tawnie in the face, but fair-skinned
otherwise, his hair was blacke, but he quickly grew
bald, his forehead was large, his eye-brows thinne, his
eye a little hollow but very full of life and very
blacke, his nose was large and hooked, as they say
the kings of Persia were, his teeth passing even and
white, his cheeks but leane, his beard very thinne, his
neckc well proportioned, his shoulders square and
well made, but somewhat stooping, as almost all that
looke much on bookes in their youth are inclined to
be, his hand somewhat drie, and a little bow-legged.
His counterfeit was taken by Titiano, that excellent
1 Satire VI. v. 43 sq. 2 Qp. cit. p. 421.
77
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
drawer so well to the life, that a man would think it
were yet alive." ^ This picture by Titian was called
by Byron '' the portrait of poetry and the poetry of
portraits." Besides the painting, Titian designed the
woodcut that was prefixed to the edition of 1532 of
the Orlando^ and has been generally repeated in sub-
sequent editions. The portrait ascribed to Dosso
Dossi ^ is evidently of Ariosto in the prime of life.
Baruffaldi, after giving an account of the various
portraits of Ariosto, says that of no poet have the
copies of his likeness been so multiplied. Four
medals were also struck in his honour.
Full accounts have also come down from con-
temporary observers of Ariosto's personal character.
His brother Gabriele, in the Latin poem written on
his death,^ may perhaps be suspected of exaggerating
the good qualities of the man he adored, but his
account is confirmed by other writers. He is praised
for his pleasant affability, his sincerity and loyalty,
his readiness in seeking favours for his friends, his
modesty on his own claims, his kindness and love of
justice. He had become prudent and sagacious by
his life in Courts and his knowledge of the world
and different sorts of people ; he was alert and ready
in conversation, but naturally a man of few words,
inclined to solitude and a life of contemplation ; most
devoted to his country, most loyal to his princes, and
most constant in his friendships.^ Better than any
^ The original from Pigna is quoted by Baruffaldi, op. cit. p, 256.
2 Reproduced in my volume of Tales from Ariosto.
3 Panizzi, Appendix I. to the Life.
^ Barotti, p. xx.
78
DEATH AND CHARACTER
summary is the revelation of the man himself in his
own letters and poetry, in the preludes to the cantos
of the Orlando^ as well as in the satires and the minor
poems. Just as the more often the Orlando is read
so much greater seems the charm, so with the life of
the poet the more we read the frank utterances, and
the more we realise the unselfish and many-sided life
of the man, so much the more do we admire his
personality.
"And now/' as Harrington says, "to close up
this whole discourse of his life with the greatest
praise he was a most charitable and honest man . . .
his learning, his good behaviour, his honesty made
him both beloved of all good men in his life and
bewailed of all honest men in his death, for as
methinks reading over his life I could find in my
heart to wish (saving for some very few things) to
live and to die in the same way :
Sic mihi contingat vivere sicque mori."
And if the reader of Ariosto should think some part
may do him harm, if at such part he will not turn
the leaf, as the poet advises, then, again, to quote
Harrington, " the best physicke I can prescribe you
is to take a leafe or two of S, Matthew's Gospell or
S. PauTs Epistles, and it shal restore you to your
perfect health."
But if the reader is too modern to listen to
the little sermon of the Elizabethan let him hear a
story told by the greatest poet of modern Italy. It
begins with a quotation from one of the fragmentary
79
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
notes intended by Virginio Ariosto to be expanded
into a life of his father. " He was never satisfied
with his verses, and changed and rechanged them ;
and for this reason not a verse would stick in his
mind. And of the things he lost in this way none
grieved him so much as an epigram he made for
a marble column, which was broken whilst being
brought to Ferrara. This was that column the
companion to ... " and here Virginio stopped
short, and three centuries later Carducci^ takes up
the tale : " The two columns were meant to support
an equestrian statue of Ercole the first. But in the
transportation one of them was broken and fell into
the river and for this Ariosto wrote his epigram ;
the other was left and lay for many years unused in
the piazza now called after Ariosto until in 1659 it
was raised up and a statue of Pope Alexander VII.
put on it. In 1796 the republicans of the Cispadana
threw down the statue of the Pope, and in its stead,
in the presence of General Napoleon Bonaparte, put
up a statue of Liberty in plaster. In 1799 the
Austrians pulled down the plaster statue of Liberty,
and for their part put none in its place. But in
1 8 10 these ci-devant republicans of the Cispadana
put on the column a marble statue of the Emperor
Napoleon, who as a republican general and a founder
of republics, had already been present at the elevation
of the plaster statue of Liberty ; but he too stayed
on the pillar only a short time, and was debased in
1 8 14. From 1833 onwards, upon the column which
1 op. cit. p. 246.
80
DEATH AND CHARACTER
Ariosto saw brought to Ferrara to support the statue
of the Estensian Duke, in whose reign the poet was
born, upon this column, which in turn had supported
a Pope, a Republic, and an Emperor, there now
stands the effigy of Ariosto, sculptured by Francesco
Vidoni. And neither Popes nor Emperors nor
Liberty itself shall pull you down, divine poet, who
wrote the Orlando and delighted your heart in watch-
ing the elder shoots which you fancied were the
capers you had sown.'*
8i
CHAPTER VI
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
When Ariosto was Governor of Garfagnana and shut
up in Castelnuovo in the Apennines, he felt as if he
were physically in prison. He never found the
spirit of liberty in mountains ; like an ancient Roman
he looked on them as horrid and savage and desolate.
He was crushed by the weight of the hills, and cramped
by the narrow outlook of the valleys. He was a lover
of the plains, and like an old astrologer he needed
for his art a large sky and wide horizon where earth
and heaven seem to shade into one another. The
first characteristic of the genius of Ariosto is its
breadth. The extent of his range is seen by the
simplest measurements in time and space.
In time the Orlando Furioso goes back to the
siege of Troy and the origins of the Latin race.
It is an essential part of the scheme of the poem
that Charlemagne and Roger o should be Trojan by
descent. The arms of Hector are necessary for the
final overthrow of the Saracens. Ariosto reverts to
the mythology of the Greeks and to the theology
of the Hebrews for ideas and for characters. He
82
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
recalls to life the harpies and the nymphs ; Saint
John drives the fiery chariot of Elias, and the start-
ing point of the journey is the earthly paradise of
Adam and Eve. Ariosto brings down the history
of Italy and Christendom to his own times and pro-
jects it into the future. He records the discovery of
America, and of the sea route to India, and he fore-
tells the birth of a new world-empire greater than
that dreamed of by Dante. The far-off past and the
dim future are both made one with the present, as if
time itself were a form of living thought, and not
the matrix of dead fossils.
In the same way the range in space is of enormous
extent. The scene shifts from India to Ireland, and
from Iceland to Central Africa. When Astolpho
has the good fortune to get in his possession the
flying horse, his first thought is to make a survey of
all the earth, apparently for the mere love of dis-
covery, though the journey in the air from France to
Aethiopia is a necessary part of the story, and is not a
geographical interlude. In the great contest between
Christian and Saracens both sides draw levies from
the most distant countries. Rinaldo is sent to
Scotland to summon help for Charlemagne ; and in
aid of Agranjant, the leader of the Saracens, Mandri-
cardo comes from Tartary, and Gradasso from
Sericane beyond India. All the great characters are
wanderers, and we are always made to feel that the
stage is the world ; a world that includes heaven
and hell as well as earth. Angelica in the opening
of the poem has just arrived from Cathay, and the
83
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
last we see of her is taking ship from Spain to go
back to her own kingdom. The island of Alcina,
where Rogero is enamoured of the enchantress, is in
the far East ; the island of sorrows where Angelica is
rescued by Rogero from the sea-monster is on the
west of Ireland.
Both the history and the geography are handled
with the lightest touch of romance. The journeys
are made with incredible rapidity ; if the reader
begins to think whether they are physically possible
they seem as incredible as Dante's descent into hell.
But the very rapidity secures the realism ; the
eye is taken from one place to another and the
picture is formed before there is time to think. In
the picture-house of Ariosto we look at the pictures
and never think how the moving is done. As with
the geography so with the history ; we never pause
to consider how the prophecies of Merlin could have
been made, and, if made, how they could have been
delivered to Ariosto in Ferrara. The beauty of the
history of Ariosto is that one can never tell how
the true and the false are mingled — all we know is
that the history makes the romance real, and the
romance makes the history alive.
The breadth of the genius of Ariosto is also shown
by the diversity of the characters and of the incidents,
and by the complexity and the texture of the plot.
Out of Shakespeare there is no such diversity of
womankind to be found, and Shakespeare wrote
thirty-seven plays, whilst Ariosto joined his forty-six
cantos into one continuous poem. The women of
84
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
Ariosto range from licence and murder to perfect
chastity and self-sacrifice. Angelica, " the fairest of
her sex,'* and sought after by the pro west knights,
both paynim and Christian, passes on unscathed till
she marries her peasant lover. Fiordespina is as
shameless as Venus. Gabrina is a murderess of two
husbands. Flordelis dies of grief for the loss of
her Brandimarte. Origille is a harlot. Isabella, a
girl of fifteen, is as pure and passionate as Juliet,
and her love is too great for any ending but
tragedy. Marfisa is the incarnation of the woman
militant. Doralis almost faints at the sight of a
bloody lance, and in an hour is in love with its
bearer, the warrior who has slaughtered her escort.
No one ever dreamed of making love to Marfisa ;
but Bradamant was a perfect lover as well as a perfect
knight ; and the love of Bradamant and Rogero,
which began on a battlefield, is the centre of the
whole poem. Similar diversity of characterisation is
shown in the men ; perhaps there is no greater con-
trast in literature than between Orlando sane and
Orlando mad. Rodomont is only partly the sayer
of " rodomontades " ; he is besides as proud, and as
scornful of God, as Satan ; yet loyal of the loyal to
• his suzerain ; a lover of women, and yet in his mouth
are put the most bitter curses ever uttered against
woman ; fearless and cruel, he slays and burns like a
destroying angel, and yet on occasion he curbs the
anger of others, and shows the true courtesy of chivalry.
More wonderful than the diversity of character
is the weaving of the main plot and the subordinate
85
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
by-plots and incidents. The Orlando Furioso is so
complex in construction that the full effect can only
be realised after intimate familiarity has been attained
with the characters and episodes. On a first perusal
the reader is bewildered by the wonderful interlacing
of the different stories and the sudden intervention
of new characters. In no other writer are the transi-
tions so abrupt and the intervals of suspended interest
so prolonged. The Orlando seems at first sight a con-
glomeration of stories of all kinds, from the broadest
humour to the most delicate and ideal romance. But
closer familiarity shows that the stories are not held
together, as in the Arabian Nights or in most of the
mediaeval romances, by a connective tissue that is
purely formal. The main plot of Ariosto is de-
veloped in telling the stories, and the more we read
the more we are astonished at his constructive art.
A story is left at the most interesting point and is
not taken up again until other incomplete stories
have been interwoven with the main plot. There is
no preliminary description of the characters or of the
scene of action. This is no doubt partly due to the
fact that, throughout, Ariosto takes it for granted
that his readers are familiar with Boiardo and with
the chief characters of romance or history. The
Furioso is a continuation of the Innamorato. But the
modern reader who does not start with this previous
knowledge is at first bewildered. It seems as if
Ariosto had woven together a mass of stories in a
kind of patchwork, and that the only interest in the
way of plot was in the disentanglement of the puzzle
86
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
and the postponement of the solution. It is as if
Shakespeare had put into one great play his thirty-
seven tragedies and histories and comedies and inter-
spersed the scenes at random. It is only after
repeated readings that the method in the madness
of Ariosto is seen and appreciated. The difficulty
in reading is increased by the fact that the stories are
in themselves so vivid and interesting that the main
plot is lost sight of or forgotten ; just as in a great
battle the main strategy is lost in the particular inci-
dents. The complexity of the whole poem and also
the interest of the particular stories may be shown
by a simple typographical fact. It has been the
practice of successive editors to give footnotes with
references for the continuation of the story in hand.
By the aid of these guide-posts the reader may finish
one story at a time, but he will not see the full bearing
until the intervening stories have been read, and very
often he will find that he is drawn off on another
trail. Once the true perspective has been realised
this intermingling of stories has a peculiar fascina-
tion, and, as Charles Fox is reported to have said,
there is not an incident out of harmony or super-
fluous. And certainly the intermingling is one of the
reasons why the interest grows with the familiarity.
The saying of Bernardo Tasso has often been verified,
that no writer is re-read so many times as Ariosto.
Walter Scott used to read him (and Boiardo) at least
once a year all his life.
The breadth and the diversity of the genius of
Ariosto are also shown by the style which is the
87
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
despair of the translator and the despair of the critic
who seeks to describe it in some accepted formula.
Much has been written by Italian critics on the
correctness or purity of Ariosto's style from the
linguistic point of view. Suffice it to say that in the
final edition the Lombardisms are so few and the
Tuscan is so correct, according to the commentators,
that some have made the supposition that Ariosto must
have stayed a long time in Florence simply to perfect
himself in the Tuscan style, and others have supposed
that the influence of Alessandra was the effective
force in the development. The better opinion, how-
ever, seems to be that Ariosto never stayed for any
length of time in Florence, and the letters that
survive written by Alessandra do not reveal any
nicety of linguistic appreciation.^
It is now agreed, however, that Ariosto enriched
the Italian language in several distinct ways. He
adapted some words directly from the Latin, he
adapted others from dialect, and he gave new and
enduring life to words that had gone out of use.
He seems to have taken a special pleasure, says a
recent editor,^ in this kind of exhumation, and
deserves for it special commendation. Just as Ariosto
had a " prodigious aptitude " for gathering materials
for his imagination from all sorts of sources, so he
had a similar capacity for the acquisition of language.
" His special genius, guided by the finest taste and
calHng up at need all these varied memories of the
spoken and written word, created a language fresh
^ BarufFaldi, p. 155. ^ Papini, p. xiv.
88
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
and spontaneous, a style absolutely new and indi-
vidual, which can only be resolved into its original
elements by the most minute study."
When we pass from the purely linguistic to the
more general characteristics of Ariosto's style, we are
struck by its simplicity and clarity and apparent ease.
We should suppose the ease was the readiness of the
improvisatore if we did not know (from sure evi-
dence)^ that by no writer had the file been more
industriously applied. Probably it never occurred to"
any one to compare Ariosto to Wordsworth, and yet
in style there are striking resemblances. There are
stanzas in Ariosto which might be fitly translated
into the very simplest Wordsworthian, and there are
stanzas that equal in dignity the finest of Words-
worth's sonnets. Like Wordsworth, Ariosto on
occasion uses the most familiar images and com-
parisons. The reader who is expecting something
epic or romantic is startled by the introduction of
the most common humanities expressed in the most
common of language. In this respect Ariosto may
plead the example of Dante himself, and in some of
the most common of the images there is direct imi-
tation of Dante, as in the green stick burning and
sputtering in the fire, or the liquor gurgling from the
overturned cask.^ To such simplicity Tasso never
condescends, and perhaps this is one of the many
* See Papini, p. vi.
^ This simile is derived from Pliny. In his comment Panizzi says that the
last line of the stanza (Canto XXIII. st. 113) " Ch' a goccia a goccia fuore esce
a fatica " is as fine a specimen of imitative harmony as can be found in the
writings of any age or country.
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LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
reasons why the old controversy on the relative
greatness of the two poets has been decided
altogether in favour of Ariosto.
The footnotes of Hoole are sprinkled with
apologies and lamentations, not for the poverty of
his own translation but for the extravagances in the
style of his original, which refused to be put into
any imitation of Pope*s Homer. In truth, the style
of Ariosto is as varied as that of Chaucer or Shake-
speare. The heroic not only verges on but passes
into the mock-heroic, and there is no gradual modu-
lation. Ariosto delights in abrupt transitions, not
merely from grave to gay but from tragedy to
grotesque extravagance. And between the extremes
there are variations of all kinds. This diversity of
style, which is as variable as the subject-matter,
accounts for the very different labels that have been
appended to his work by distracted critics in search
of brevity. Some have been so much impressed by
the "irony" of Ariosto that they have discovered in
the Orlando a more subtle Don Quixote. They
have supposed his main intention was to ridicule and
vulgarise mediaeval chivalry. They seem to think
that the appearance of tragedy is only introduced to
heighten the effect of the comedy. A book that
once had a reputation was entitled Funny Deaths^ and
from the point of view of the supporters of the irony
of Ariosto his deaths are presumably to be regarded
as funny. But to say that the deaths of Zerbino, of
Brandimarte, of Rodomont — to take the names that
first occur — are put in to ridicule chivalry, or raise
90
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
a laugh at the expense of the reader, is only possible
to a laughing philosopher who has lost all sense of
sympathy. It is true that Ariosto indulges in violent
contrasts, and that tragedy and comedy appear on
the same scene at the same time. But the comedy
cannot destroy the tragedy, just as the grave-diggers
in Hamlet do not make the play a comedy, and the
prince of Denmark is not only a jester and a sayer
of ironies.
In forming a true judgment on the irony of
Ariosto regard must be paid to the development of
mediaeval romance, of which the Orlando Furioso
was the climax. In the romantic tales which were /
sung or recited by the wandering minstrels {giularre, /^^^
jujar) there was always an element of extravagant
burlesque. In process of time this element became
more and more dominant with the degradation of
sentiment into coarse animalism. The humour or
irony of the romantic narrative poems of Italy is
derived from the tradition of the vagabond story-
tellers, who were obliged to please and amuse their
audiences. In the same way the invocation and the
farewell address to the audience in every canto, which
are generally of a religious or moral turn, are due to
the fact that the ballads and stories were approved by
the clergy with the pious fiction that there was a
moral in them.^
It is not only in the case of Ariosto that
the question has been debated whether the main
* Panizzi, Romantic Poetry of the Italians^ p. 203 ; Carducci, Ca-valUria e
umanesimo, passim j Rajna, op. cit. p. 25.
91
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
object of the poet is to throw ridicule on mediaeval
romance and chivalry. The Morgan te Maggiore of
Pulci has been written down as mock-heroic, but in
his celebrated article in the Quarterly Foscolo said
that those who considered it a mock poem did not
know anything of Pulci or his age or this kind of
poetry. Any reader of the second part of the
Morgante, in which the main theme is the defeat at
Roncesvalles, must see the justice of this view. The
vein of irony is also rich in Boiardo, and constantly
comes to the surface even in the most tragic incidents,
as for example in the death of Agrican. Some writers,
in order to magnify the serious side of Boiardo in
comparison with Ariosto, have placed the humorous
elements of the Innamorato too much in the back-
ground. In truth, in the mixture of comedy and
tragedy the same tradition is followed by both poets.
In some notable instances Ariosto is the more serious
of the two, and has certainly intensified the heroic
side of characters common to both poems. In the
portrayal, for example, of Charlemagne, Ariosto
never lets the great Roman Emperor altogether lose
his dignity as does Boiardo on more than one occasion.
Astolpho is also drawn on far more serious lines in
the Furioso, and the peculiar English madness of the
English Duke which was most prominent in the
Innamorato is transformed by Ariosto into the fancy
of an exalted knight-errant.
The humour of Ariosto as shown in the Furioso
is often of the kind that does not bear translation or
even paraphrase ; and this for very different reasons.
92
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
Sometimes the exaggeration seems to the modern too
gross, sometimes the subtlety is too elusive, and often,
strangely enough, the two kinds are found together.
Of the three kinds in one there is the notable case
where Rodomont meets with Isabella in the care of
the hermit. They are taking the dead body of
Zerbino to the convent where Isabella means to
immure herself for ever with her dead. Rodomont,
full of rage against God and man, and most of all
against woman, is nursing his wrath in gloomy
solitude. The setting is all tragedy — the whole story
of Isabella and Zerbino is of the most moving.^ The
tragedy is deepened by the sudden love of Rodomont
for the mourning girl, and in the midst of it all
Ariosto brings in the comedy which has baffled the
commentators. The hermit feels it his duty to try
to convert Rodomont on the spot, and in the end the
raging Saracen takes him by the neck and hurls him
three miles into the sea ; that (says the poet re-
flectively) is one report ; another has it that the
godly man was broken on the rocks, and yet another
that he was saved in mid air by his patron saint ; but
in any case he vanished from the story. It is the
same Rodomont who in Boiardo has threatened the
old soothsayer, the king of Garaminta, that he will
take him by the neck and hurl him from Africa over
to Spain. But the humour or irony of Ariosto is
never such as to jar upon the reader who takes it in
the original setting. The exaggeration is never of
the simple kind of the modern American, nor is it
^ See my volume of TaUifrom Ariosto^ VIII. IX.
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LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
mere burlesque. Rather it is the recognition of the
fact that life itself is made up of contrasts. The irony
of Ariosto is the irony of all the greatest of writers —
philosophers, historians, poets : witness Plato, Gibbon,
and Dante. In some cases the humour of Ariosto,
if humour it is to be called, is more like that of
Aristophanes when he gives free rein to his fancy.
Astolpho's journey to the earthly paradise and his
visit to the moon in the company of St. John show
the fanciful irony of Ariosto at its best. But it is
not capable of condensation in a summary description ;
it cannot be isolated like a microbe for microscopic
examination. The irony of Ariosto is rather like
the bouquet of a rare vintage ; and his humour is as
unmeaning to the over-serious reader as the most
exquisite wine to the life-long teetotaller.
Whilst some critics have misunderstood or over-
emphasised the irony, others have been so much
impressed with the great ideas and motives of the
Orlando that they have labelled it an epic, and have
looked on the irony and the comedy as unfortunate
lapses, or as ingenious devices by which Ariosto tried
to conceal his own ideal of chivalry. But this one-
sided labelling is no better than the other. Ariosto
is, in truth, a master of comedy and a master of epic
tragedy, and on occasions he descends to burlesque
and extravaganza of the wildest disorder. It is surely
better to take the author in his varying moods as we
find him, and not to try to persuade ourselves he is
laughing at us when we feel a moving story, or that
he is ignorant of the first principles of constructive
94
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
art and spoils his epic theme and grandeur by vulgarity
or want of ''elevation."
The variegated style of Ariosto might at first sight
be supposed to be the result of pure carelessness in
composition and total disregard of the combined
effect of the parts of his work, and to show that he
flitted from scene to scene and from style to style
as the spirit moved him. But one thing at least is
certain, that the variety is not the result of careless-
ness or ignorance or want of revision. The Orlando
occupied him the greater part of the best part of his
life, and was the subject of constant revision. If the
variety is a fault, whether in form or substance, it was
certainly intentional. The marvel is that the constant
filing did not smooth away all the freshness. But
the most notable characteristic of the Furioso is its
irrepressible vitality. The people are all real and
living, and their actions are the actions of the living.
Even the magicians and the nymphs, the giants and
the monsters, are all alive. The giant, for example,
who, however much he is cut to pieces, comes together
again like the drops of mercury, is a living creature.
We can see him picking up his head and putting it
on again, and we can feel the weariness of the paladins
who find all their cutting and carving of him quite
useless. It is all quite mad, as mad as bits of the
Tempest or of the Inferno^ but it is quite lively. We
only wonder how the final dissolution of the giant is
to be accomplished.
The vitality of the characters of Ariosto is also
shown by the emotions they arouse in his most learned
95
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
and solemn commentators. They pass moral judg-
ments on the personages of the poem just as if they
were real and not imaginary beings. " I cannot
admire this prince," so says Panizzi of Leo, **when
I think that he murdered Ruggiero's keeper. Ail
his good qualities are forgotten when that crime is
brought to mind."
Some of the critics have been so much impressed
by the morals (good and bad) of the characters, that
they have tried to make the Orlando a series of
allegories, written for the encouragement of virtue
and the suppression of vice. Even Sir John Har-
rington appends to every canto, along with his quaint
references to sources and histories, what he calls the
allegory, and it is only very rarely (and with regret)
that he fails to discover some moral. And no doubt
there are to be extracted from the Orlando morals
and ideals and allegories, but after all they are only
such as are to be extracted from the lives of men and
women. In this respect there could be no greater
contrast than between Ariosto and our own Spenser.
With the Italian the moral, when there is one, must
be discovered by the reader himself, and the moral
will vary with the reader just as the morals drawn
from the book of life. With the English imitator
the allegory is dominant and persistent ; the characters
are not persons but ideas, and ideas they remain to
the end of the story.
The atmosphere of the Orlando cannot be de-
scribed shortly. It is different from that of other
great poets. There are outbursts of indignation
96
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
against the spoilers of Italy and the corrupters
of Christianity that are worthy of Dante, but in
general the attitude of Ariosto is one of large-minded
toleration to humanity of all kinds. He is always
a writer of romance ; but he is real, though not
realistic, even in his moralising. He is not immoral
in the negative sense ; he sets in movement the
chords of sympathy that vibrate to the common
moralities of mankind. When we read Ariosto we
do not think that nothing matters, or that one kind
of feeling is as good as another so long as it is
feeling.
Ariosto- is a great artist, perhaps the greatest of
literary artists, but he has not the negative immorality
that is often implied in the expression " Art for art's
sake.'* Still less is Ariosto immoral in the ordinary
positive sense. There are na doubt passages and
scenes and whole stories in Ariosto, as in Chaucer
and Shakespeare, which may seem too natural for our
prevailing conventions, and Ariosto has been styled
licentious and indelicate just as he used to be styled
blasphemous. And with equal unreason. The tone
of a writer must be judged not merely by the negative
test of reticence, but by the vital spirit that pervades
his work. And the spirit of Ariosto is the spirit of
health and vigour, and is ruled by courage and truth
and courtesy. As it happens, the positive morality of
Ariosto lays most stress on the virtues that in our
days most need emphasis. Our philanthropy is so
diffuse that we are inclined to look on the mere
friendship of man to man as narrow and even selfish.
97 H
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
Even the ties of family and blood relationship are
loosened in our relaxing sentimentality for the masses.
Our charity is partly done by taxation, and partly by
some organisation society, and partly by fashion.
The very soul of chivalry was loyalty of man to
man ; to lay down one's life for one's friend was the
greatest of all charities and the most natural. The
devotion of friendship, such as still survives in the
best schoolboys and the best students, is of the kind
that Ariosto idealised in his paladins. A modern
critic (Rajna) finds Bradamant's respect for her
mother old-fashioned and even silly. Why should a
young woman who had earned a reputation second
to none in battle and in venturous quests, and who
had fallen passionately in love with a paragon of
knighthood, ask leave of her mother to get married ^
*' Art for art's sake" seems all at sea. We seem to
have a relapse into the conventions of the schoolgirl.
Why should the militant Bradamant honour her
father and her mother when they were of the most
commonplace unromantic type ? With us the old
commandment has become old-fashioned : instead of
this fetish we have set up old-age pensions and
insurances. Ariosto honoured father and mother
alike in his life and in his poetry. Courtesy has
been for so long a time a receding virtue that
we have almost lost sight of it. Ariosto makes
" courtesies " the burden of his song just as much as
loves and deeds of daring, as is shown in the first
couplet of the Orlando^ which he is said to have
written over and over again. *' The casting and the
98
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
recasting of these two lines was famous in Italy in
the sixteenth century " : ^
Le donne, i cavalieri, V arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, V audaci imprese io canto.
Englished by Harrington :
Of dames, of knights, of armes, of love's delight,
Of courtesies, of high attempts I speake.
And the original of the lines is in Dante ; ** who,
upbraiding with noble indignation the state of the
degenerate inhabitants of Romagna, remembers with
exquisite pathos *' :
Le donne, i cavalien|| gli affanni e gli agi,
Che inspiravano amore c coftcsia.'
And the same Dante in the Fiia Nuova concludes
with a prayer to Him who is the Lord of courtesy
(Colui che h sire della cortesia) that his soul might
have leave to go and behold the glory of his lady.
In the days of chivalry God was not only the Lord
of all power and might but the Lord of courtesy.
The main story of the last two cantos of the
Orlando is the contest in courtesy of Leo and Rogero.
Even Rodomont, the awful blasphemer, on occasion
will not continue a fight because he has already been
conquered by the courtesy of his opponent. Closely
allied to courtesy and to loyalty is the knightly word
of honour. This part of the soul of chivalry still
survives where it might be least expected, namely, in
the most modern of modern business.
^ Panizzi, p. cxxi, n. 2 Purgat. xiv. 109, IIO.
99
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
Gigantic trusts are carried on with no stronger
sanction than is found in " gentlemen's agreements."
Modern business of all kinds is impossible without reli-
ance on the word of honour. The portrayal of good
faith (in the introduction to the twenty-first canto of
the Furioso) is one of the most often quoted of the
preludes. Good faith binds the good soul more
firmly than the nail fastens the board, or the hempen
cord ties up the burden ; the knot of good faith is so
holding that it cannot be loosened ; the word of
honour must be kept whether passed to one or to a
thousand ; if it is given in the depth of the forest
or in a cave far from the haunts of man it is as sure
as if given before a public tribunal and a cloud of
witnesses ; once the promise has been made, without
oath or any sign of the force of law, it must be kept.
The same idea appears in the 1 1 th Capitolo with
the addition of a notable contrast : For the vile
plebeian the oath is made — but between noble spirits
the simple promise is an oath.^
Another of the moralities that go to make up the
gentleman of chivalry is the scrupulous sense of
fairness. Much of the guile on which Ulysses prided
himself would have been unpardonable in a knight.
In the heat of a mortal combat the knight who has
unhorsed his adversary will himself dismount to
continue the struggle ; it was in this way Rinaldo
lost his Baiardo in the great battle with which the
Furioso opens. To try to wound the horse instead
of the man even in real war was dastardly. Lapses
1 Rime (edition Molini), p. 287.
100
THE GENIUS OF ARICSTO"- " ''"'
of this sort only happen to Saracens, and even to
Saracens very rarely. Orlando's cruelty to horses in
his madness is one of its most significant traits.
Orlando sane would not have wounded a horse with
intention to save his own life. Fairness is the very
soul of chivalry ; and the very meaning of chivalry
is the honour of the horseman. The fairness of
chivalry is based on fairness to horses as much as to
men. The great horses of the romances : Rabican,
Baiardo, Brigliadoro, Frontino and the rest are as
famous as the paladins.
The genius of Ariosto is like that of Shakespeare
in giving reality to airy nothings. He cared no
more than Shakespeare himself for accuracy in geo-
graphy or history/ and yet his places and people
seem real, just as the wood near Athens, and Duke
Theseus and the rude mechanicals seem real.
In the same way Ariosto may be compared with
Shakespeare in the use of the supernatural. Scott
himself could not handle the supernatural with effect,
and his power over magic never got beyond the
glorified art of the chemist or physician. In the use
of " machines " and in bringing the gods out of the
machines Ariosto was a master craftsman.^ In the
^ E.g. he puts Belgrade on the wrong side of the river, and his English heraldry
is largely of his own creation.
' See note by Panizzi to Orl. Fur. Canto XIV. st. 78. He quotes Dryden
(from Notes to the Georgics, iv. 660) : " The only beautiful machine which I
remember in the modern poets is in Ariosto, where God commanded St. Michael
to take care that Paris, then besieged by the Saracens, should be succoured by
Rinaldo." The archangel is to find Silence and Discord : Silence to cover the
approach of the relieving army of the Christians, Discord to throw into confusion
the camp of the Saracens.
lOI
"^ •" '' 'Ofe of lodovico ariosto
Orlando the magical, and even the supernatural in
the more narrow sense, play an essential part. To
begin with, there are the more simple forms of magic
such as abound in the Arabian Nights. There is the
celebrated flying horse, one of the most fascinating
horses in fiction, half-horse and half-griffin, a living
animal and not a bit like a legendary aeroplane.
This creature has been tamed by a magician, and the
magician has the command of a good deal of magic
that serves to make the beholder believe in delusions.
Under the spell of the magician (Atlante) people
see things and act as if they were real. But when
Ariosto introduces the flying horse he is careful to
explain that there is nothing magical about it ; it is a
cross between a mare and a griffin ; it is a very rare
hybrid but as natural as a mule. And such is the
setting that this natural history seems quite natural.
There is the famous golden lance that with a touch
dismounts the strongest rider ; and the use of it is
not accidental but essential to the main plot. With
this lance Bradamant (who does not know its powers)
unhorses Rodomont, and in consequence Rodomont
loses his dragon-skin armour and again in consequence
is killed by Rogero. There is the ring which wards ofi^
other magic and makes its holder invisible at pleasure.
And the ring is again of the essence of the plot. On
occasions nothing but the ring will suffice. By the
ring Rogero escapes from Alcina, and by the ring
Angelica escapes from Rogero. There is the horn
of Astolpho which terrifies the boldest, including the
Amazons and Marfisa herself. There is the enchanted
I02
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
shield which must be kept hidden with a thick silken
cover because its splendour dazzles the beholder into
senselessness. Incidentally the loss of this shield to
the world is one of the best examples of the fairness
of chivalry. Rogero, for whose protection the shield
had been made, only used it in case of the utmost
need : once to subdue the monsters of Alcina and
once to save Angelica from the ore. It happened,
however, that in fighting with four knights one of
them by accident tore the silken cover with his lance,
and forthwith all in sight of the splendour fell to the
ground senseless. Rogero was so utterly disgusted
with this unintentional breach of fairness that he cast
the shield into a deep well, and though it was long
sought after by many knights it was never again found.
There are sorcerers and sorceresses and fairies and
nymphs and devils and angels and monstrosities of
divers kinds, and all these forms of the magical and
the supernatural are as necessary to the story as the
paynims and the paladins. So far, however, there is
not much difficulty if the reader will take the magical
of Ariosto as he does that of the Arabian Nights^ and
does not weary his imagination in the search for
allegories. And though there is abundance of this
kind of the supernatural it is used by Ariosto with
great economy. But beyond the magical, and the
supernatural of poetical fancy, there is in Ariosto the
supernatural in the religious sense. There is beneath
all the fantasy the idea of divine justice.
The main action of the Orlando is the conflict
between Saracens and Christians for the possession of
103
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
Europe ; the fate of Christendom is in the balance.
The greatest of the paladins is Orlando, and he has
been gifted by God with an invulnerable body and
perfection in all the virtues and graces of chivalry.
But he forgets his duties to his God and his king,
and becomes enslaved to the love of Angelica, the
fairest of her sex, but a pagan. It is for this sin that
madness comes upon Orlando, and the madness of
Orlando is the title of the poem. To object that
the madness of Orlando cannot be reconciled with
our ideas of divine justice whilst we admit Dante's
inscription over helFs gate, is surely to strain at the
gnat and swallow the camel. But although the
supreme power is fundamental in the great contest
for Christendom it is not obtruded or forced on the
attention. The madness of Orlando seems simply
the outcome of his despair on the loss of Angelica.
The intervention of the Deity, and of the spirits
of good and evil, is more prominent in the scenes in
which Discord is sent into the ranks of the Saracens,
the *' machine " so much admired by Dryden.^ But
the human interest is never suppressed by the over-
whelming powers of the superhuman. The contrast
with Milton is as marked as that with Spenser. The
treatment of the religious elements by Ariosto is so
frankly artistic or classical that he has been censured
by some of the older commentators for blasphemy.
The reader familiar with mediaeval art and religion
will see at once that the charge of blasphemy is simply
incongruous. It was quite in accord with the spirit
^ See above, p. loi, n. 2.
104
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
of Ariosto's works, as of his life, that he should have
been buried in a church, lamented, as even Hoole says,
by every good man, though Hoole more than any
one bewails in his notes the " indefensible blasphemies"
of his author. It is curious that one of the blas-
phemies that so shocked Hoole is singled out by
Harrington for special praise, namely, the immediate
reception of the soul of Isabella into heaven in spite
of the self-slaughter she had so skilfully designed.
Ariosto argues that this deed of Isabella (which was
to save herself from Rodomont so that she might die
as she had lived for Zerbino) was so approved in
heaven that any one who thereafter should bear the
name of Isabella would be blessed. And the good
Elizabethan records that his own mother was named
Isabella and bore out the prophecy. Which of his
commentators was nearer the true Ariosto needs no
showing.
Some readers, perhaps, are more likely to be afraid
that a poet who introduces the powers and dominions
of heaven will be not blasphemous, but simply dull
and sermonic. Let any one who fears to be enticed
into a kind of less lofty Paradise Regained read, to
begin with, the description of the journey of Astolpho
to the moon, under the guidance of Saint John, for
the recovery of the lost senses of Orlando, from which
Milton has borrowed the idea of the limbo of
vanities.
Are there, then, no faults to be found with the
poetry of the divine Ariosto .? The answer is —
abundance. He carries some of his virtues to excess.
105
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
His fancy runs riot in exaggeration. The English
reader who has been dulled by the easy realism of
modern fiction, will be breathless at the calls made on
his imagination by the prowess of the heroes and the
gorgeousness of the palaces and festivals. It may be
said that romance without extravagance (according
to our ordinary standards) is not romance, and that
the only true test is that of internal harmony, not
harmony with ordinary human nature. But even
according to this test the divine poet sometimes errs
in excess or fails in economy. The palace in the
Earthly Paradise visited by Astolpho is made out of
one precious stone that glows like fire ; the building
is as superb as the red towers of the city of Dis.
But the internal harmony becomes more discordant
than ultra-modern music when we are asked to
imagine that the palace is thirty miles in extent ;
though it is true that in the vision of Coleridge,
Kubla Khan decreed that for his stately pleasure
dome twice Rvq miles of fertile ground should be
girdled with walls and towers. The extravagant
power of Rodomont is so extended that he has given
his name in all languages to the extremes of boastful
daring and impossible feats of arms. It is true that
just as Quixotism gives a very false idea of the
Don Quixote of Cervantes, so does ^' rodomontade "
suggest a very false idea of the Rodomont of Ariosto.
But the great scene in which Rodomont rages through
Paris, drunk with blood and fire, has its discords
that seem hideous noises to the lover of simple
harmonies. We all know that the gentle Shelley
io6
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
could not read Ariosto, because he found the slaughter
of the Saracens so unreasonable and appalling. And
even if it be replied that a knight in armour in the
midst of a horde of Pagans is like a Spaniard in Peru
or a Dreadnought in a fleet of herring-boats, or that
the slaughter of the Saracens by the poet has been
surpassed by the actual battles of history, very often
the excessive bloodshed seems beyond the limit not
only of humanity but of credibility. Even in lines
and phrases and images we are often startled by the
exaggeration. Tears flow in rivers, and lovers sigh
like volcanoes, and hearts of stone are melted. In
brief, the extravagances of Ariosto form one of the
great obstacles to any literal translation- His first
readers were already steeped in romance, and the
expectation of the super-heroic had become second
nature. But the modern reader has been trained in
romance of a difl^erent order, quite as impossible
and inharmonious on analysis, but in a difl^srent
way.
The faults of Ariosto are best seen in some of
the minor poems,^ but it should be remembered
that they were not published in his lifetime, and
were not subjected to his final revision. In the
Furioso the reader is carried away by the realism
of the narrative and the realism of the emotion.
In the minor poems the exaggeration, both of
incident and language, is not relieved by the rare
atmosphere of the Furioso. The Cinque Canti^
^ The references are to the Rime Ji Lodo-vko Ariosto. Florence, Molini,
l8z2.
107
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
the Five Cantos^ which are supposed to have been in-
tended by Ariosto to form the beginning of a second
part to the Furioso^ are altogether inferior in interest
to any five cantos that might be taken at random
in the longer poem. The characters seem artificial ;
the narrative does not run ; the style is often pure
rhetoric. The consequence is that the exaggeration
seems altogether unreal. An excellent example of
the difference is furnished by the whale which was
used by Alcina for the capture of her lovers. In
the Furioso the monster is mistaken for an island (as
in the Arabian Nights\ and when Astolpho has
landed on it with Alcina it sails away to her en-
chanted kingdom. The story as told is not only
real but exciting. But in the Five Cantos the whale
of Alcina is so unreal that it fails to arouse even the
curiosity of the reader. The exaggeration seems
simply silly. In this case the interior of the monster
is fitted out with all the comforts of a modern
steamer. Astolpho and Rogero and the other lovers
whom Alcina wished to punish are swallowed by the
whale, and they are supposed to live in its inside
until they die of old age. The hotel comforts are
provided by the wrecks of suitable ships, which are
also swallowed by the monster. Again in these
cantos the evil spirit which Alcina puts at the service
of Gano is a very poor piece of pantomime, with
none of the ingenuity of a Belphegor or even of a
great wizard. He is made to forge letters and to
delude all the chief paladins by similar easy wiles.
Here, though the exaggeration is really far less than
io8
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
that which abounds in the Furioso, it never rises to
reality.
Yet there are in these cantos parts which, taken
in themselves, are equal in fancy and in presentation
to the best of the Furioso. There is, for example,
the story of Suspicion and the Tyrant^ which brings
out most effectively the irony as well as the fancy
of Ariosto. The story also has a moral, one of the
simple, strong, everlasting morals that appeal to
people of all times and countries, namely, that a
tyrant is always afraid ; all the other people in his
dominion are afraid only of one man, but he is
afraid of everybody. This particular tyrant built
for himself a castle, and he slept in a room at the
top to which there was no access except by a ladder
in charge of his wife. Yet he did not trust his wife,
but set others to watch her. In spite of being
watched the lady killed the tyrant with his own
sword. When the tyrant descended to hell he was
put with the other tyrants in the boiling river, which
Dante has made so familiar to all men. To the
surprise of the chief judge in hell this tyrant made
no complaint and uttered no cry, never said /' mi
cuoco like the rest of his companions, and indeed
seemed quite cheerful. The chief judge consulted
with his brethren. They all said it would never
do to have a cheerful spirit in hell — that such would
be against all the inner meaning of divine justice.
Therefore they put the tyrant into worse torments
— so bad that they are not even named. The tyrant
^ Canto II. 8t. 7 iq.
109
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
still seemed quite cheerful, and apparently im-
pervious to pain. In the last resort the chief
judge asked the tyrant why he was so cheerful and
so impervious. The tyrant replied, ** When I was
above I was always in such fear of death that I never
had one moment's peace. After such a life hell
itself is a relief ; at least I know the worst, and I am
no longer afraid." After another consultation the
judges sent him back again to the world : made
immortal but always in dread of death ; with his old
suspicions intensified to such a degree that the tyrant
was transformed into Suspicion itself, just as in
Dante the man is transformed into the serpent.
This creation of Suspicion shows Ariosto at his
best, but when Suspicion is called upon to take part
in the story so as to aid the treachery of Gano the
vitality disappears ; altogether unlike Discord and
Silence in the FuriosOy Suspicion becomes a mere
abstraction.
The Five Cantos also show by contrast the mighty
power in the Furioso of the irony of Ariosto. In the
Five Cantos the irony has vanished, and its place is
taken by literary artifices and similes in the style of
Tasso. Even in the interior of the whale the captured
lovers of Alcina talk theology and religion as solemnly
as Puritans in a meeting-house, though with none of
their enthusiasm ; they are simply dull.
In two other points the minor poems throw
light on the wonderful vitality of the Furioso.
First, in some passages we have the sketches which
were afterwards remodelled, and so to speak welded
no
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
into the Furioso. There is, for example, the famous
lament of Bradamant ^ on the loss of Rogero which
in the CapitoW^ is essentially the same but in a
different dress (the terza rima instead of the ottava).
Other passages also in these poems show the way in
which Ariosto worked up his material, and the care
he took in the construction of the Furioso^ which
seems at first reading the most careless poem ever
written.
The second point that is made more clear by the
minor poems is the influence of Petrarca. When
Ariosto wrote the influence of Petrarca was still the
dominant influence in literary Italian. The Sonnets
of Ariosto are for the most part imitations, and it
must be said very feeble imitations, of the great
master of sonnets. His influence is also apparent in
most of the other shorter poems, except the Satires.
But again the contrast with the Furioso is very
marked. In the Furioso there are many expressions
and sometimes whole stanzas written with the full
swing of Petrarchese exaggeration. The most
notable case is the oncoming of the madness of
Orlando (Canto XXIII. st. 126-129). ^^^^ the
exaggeration is so marked that many critics have
sought to explain it as another example of Ariosto's
irony, and have actually supposed that in the central
tragic incident of the whole work Ariosto is chiefly
concerned to make a parody of Petrarca. But taken
in its setting this poetical exaggeration put in the
mouth of Orlando gives a vivid idea of the approach
1 Orl. Fur. Canto XLIV. st. 6i sq. 2 Capitolo IX. op. cit. p. 282.
Ill
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
of madness, for Orlando had always been celebrated
for his wisdom and prudence as compared with the
other paladins. Indeed, the main idea of the poem
as seen in the beginning is to show how the wise
Orlando becomes mad with love.-^ To make the
reasonable Orlando talk to himself in the most
exalted manner of Petrarca is far more effective and
more in harmony with the whole long narrative
than if the madness had been made to come with a
sudden shock. Following on this outburst of poetry
Orlando wanders all night through the forest. His
melancholy is turned to fury when he finds the
grotto where Medoro and Angelica had intertwined
their names ; and then again lapsing into melancholy
he falls on the earth, and for three days and nights
stares with open eyes up at the sky. Instead of
saying that Ariosto in such a scene wished to show
his irony, we ought rather to admit that he chose
the very best style available for his purpose.
With regard to the Petrarchese phrases that con-
stantly recur in depicting the exaggeration of the
passions they had for the most part become proverbial,
and even in English we speak of floods of tears and
hearts of stone without thinking of the absurdity of
the literal exaggeration.
But when we take the minor poems in isolation
for the most part the unreality of the exaggeration
1 Cf. Canto I. St. 2 :
Diro d' Orlando in un medcsmo tratto
Cosa non detta in prosa mai, nh in rima j
Che per amor venne in furore e matto,
D' un uom che si saggio era stimato prima.
112
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
destroys the sentiment ; and until he came under
the influence of Alessandra the vein of Ariosto was
not the vein of Petrarca but the vein of Ovid. The
difl^erence between the literary imitator and the real
lover is shown in the poems written plainly under
the influence of his great passion, as for example the
canzone describing the first meeting in Florence and
the lines describing the journey to the wilds of the
Garfagnana.^ Even in the case of Petrarca himself
particular sonnets cannot be appreciated unless taken
as parts of a long series, and the beauties of the
Furioso also need their original setting for the full
efl^ect.
On the whole, the study of the minor poems
serves to show how well in the Furioso Ariosto had
succeeded in the rare combination of imitative and
creative power.
The real man is revealed in the Satires y and surely
the name was never applied to productions so genial
and unselfish. And this reminds me, that though at
this part I meant to indicate the abundance of the
faults of Ariosto, I have again, through the love of
the man and his work, been drawn into eulogy.
Ariosto has been called by Mr. Gardner the king
of Court poets, but the present-day Englishman who
thinks of a Court poet as a poet-laureate, and perhaps
also thinks that his ofiice should be abolished, is not
attracted by the title. And yet to be in truth the
king of Court poets is to be the king of a very
ancient and noble race of bards. There were Court
^ Sec above, p. 66.
113 I
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
poets amongst the ancient Teutons, and still earlier
amongst the ancient Gauls. " Encomiastic verse of
a highly rhetorical character bulks very largely in the
poetic literature of Wales. . . . Of all the lands in
the west of Europe the panegyric was most extensively
practised in Ireland . . . and in Ireland the Court
poetry [in the vernacular] continues down to the
first half of the seventeenth century." ^
Court poetry was part of the tradition of mediaeval
romance, and even in the time of Ariosto himself the
Court poets recited their panegyrics.^ And Ariosto
might also plead in excuse for his encomiastic verses
the example of his Latins. But when all is said
most of the Court poetry in the Orlando is excessive
in quantity and inferior in quality ; some of it, to the
modern reader who is familiar with the history of the
House of Este, and in particular with the life of
Cardinal Ippolito, is repellent. Harrington wisely
omitted most of it from his translation, though he
was himself a Court poet, and dedicated his book to
Queen Elizabeth, his godmother. Even in Ariosto's
own times his Court poetry was held to be exaggerated,
though no doubt for the moment his reference to
living people of importance added to the realism of
the romance. The long lists of historical personages
with their living representatives can be of little interest
to the modern reader unless he has made a special
and minute study of contemporary history, such as
^ Prolegomena to the Study of the later Irish Eards (1200- 1500), by E. C.
Qiiiggin. Published by the Britisli Academy.
^ In La Spagna, one of the oldest, the forms of recitation are strongly marked ;
in Tasso they disappear.
114
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
is offered in the exhaustive works of Mr. Gardner.
But Cardinal Ippolito and his ancestry are so
much in evidence that they cannot be passed over
altogether. Rogero the hero, who, next to Orlando,
and in some ways more than Orlando, is the princi-
pal personage, is introduced as the ancestor of this
Ippolito, and the culmination of the story is his
marriage with Bradamant, with this far-off event —
the birth of Ippolito — as the final cause. It would
be pleasing to think that Ariosto was indulging
in irony and satire in his fulsome eulogies of the
Cardinal, but this simple solution does not accord
with the life or the times of the king of Court
poets.^
A fault commonly attributed to Ariosto is
plagiarism, and in particular he is accused of taking
wholesale from Boiardo without even mentioning
his name. One modern critic has even supposed
that Ariosto deliberately designed to dethrone Boiardo
and take his place in popular esteem. Such insidious
baseness is not only utterly opposed to the character
of Ariosto, but he stated publicly when he began his
work that he intended to continue the work of
Boiardo, and to take up Boiardo*s main plot and his
subsidiary stories where he had left them. Though
the name of Boiardo is not mentioned in the Orlando
it is constantly taken for granted that the reader is
familiar with the older poem.^ But apart from this
particular evidence, the accusation of plagiarism
^ Canto III. 8t. 50 may probably be so interpreted. Tortoli, p. xlii, «.
2 See above, p. 4.
115
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
shows a want of appreciation of the literary morality
or custom of the times. Most of the characters in
Boiardo arc taken from the general store of romantic
legend with which the people of the age were familiar,
and which indeed had become a part of popular
tradition. Orlando or Roland (to give the more
familiar name in English) was as well known and as
real a personage as Charlemagne himself, or we might
say that Charlemagne was as legendary as Roland ;
and this legendary history was familiar to all the men
and women of the time from their youth up. The
art of the poet lay more in the setting of the old
than in the invention of new characters. The
originality of Boiardo, as he himself states, lay in his
making Orlando madly in love ; the originality of
Ariosto lay in turning the love of Orlando into
real madness. Boiardo also no doubt invented new
characters and new names ; he was said to have
taken some of his names from places in his own
lordship. Ariosto took over from Boiardo the new
as well as the old names and characters, but he also
made his own discoveries (or inventions) in the
possibilities of their qualities in action. Angelica,
Marfisa, Astolpho, Flordelis, and even Rodomont
are very different in the two poets ; and yet they
might be the same real people under different
circumstances. But in truth in the age of Ariosto,
and for long after, plagiarism, as we esteem it, was
not a vice but a virtue. Spenser in the Faery Qjieen
introduced literal translations of stanzas from Ariosto,
just as Ariosto had incorporated famous passages
ii6
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
from his Latins. In the same way there are in the
Orlando imitations or suggestions from Dante and
other Italian writers. Both Boiardo and Ariosto
were poets in the front rank, but it is very doubtful
if their originality would have been greater,* or their
poetry would have attained such quality, if they had
attempted from the first to achieve the strained
originaHty of the present-day romanticist. And,
after all, the greatest of modern romanticists, Scott
and Dumas, have used historical foundations and
historical characters. Shakespeare himself for the
most part took his personages and his plots from
real or legendary history.
The originality of really great writers is best tested
by their appreciation by different ages for different
reasons. Successive ages as they pass point to what
they call the modernity of the great writers. The
reader of this age also will find a good deal of the
modern in Ariosto. There are in the Orlando ideas
which just now are exciting a very lively interest.
The poet has created in Bradamant the ideal of the
woman militant, and Bradamant is the central heroine
of the whole poem. In battle or in single combat
she is the equal of the greatest knights, and yet she
never loses her woman's character. Her love for
Rogero is love at first sight, and becomes the ruling
passion in all her thoughts and deeds. She is by
turns fearful and jealous, self-effacing and wholly
exacting, forgiving and unforgiving, variable as the
wind and yet constant as the fixed star, just as if
she had never donned armour or panted like a leopard
117
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
to spring on the enemy in battle. Even Marfisa,
who in some ways is the counterpart of Rodomont,
is never brutally masculine ; she shows her saving
graces on occasions with delightful unexpectedness, as
when she forbears to hang Brunello. The Amazons
themselves are quite reasonable even in their savage
laws against men — granted the provocation. The
devotion of Ariosto to women, and the honour he
paid to woman in his invocations,^ are plainly genuine
and sincere, and in marked contrast to the flattery
bestowed on his contemptible patron. And although
the woman militant plays a great part in Ariosto
perhaps his greatest triumph is Angelica, who never
even wore a dagger. Another modern point in
Ariosto is his dealing with the supernatural, for
there is now a reaction against the narrow materialism
of nineteenth-century science. The new psychology
is favourable to the supernatural, or at least to
the possibilities of supercerebral consciousness. Men
and women may now say they believe in pantheism,
or even in magic without being set down as feeble-
minded or imperfectly educated. With the extension
of the possibilities of ignorance we have enlarged
the possibilities of knowledge. The supernatural
of Ariosto is of the modern type, or rather of the
modern types.
It would perhaps be more just to say that
the moderns are reverting to Renaissance modes
of belief in the supernatural, as the Renaissance
people reverted to classical paganism and Platonic
1 Cantos XX., XXXVII.
ii8
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
philosophy.^ Our most fashionable philosopher,
M. Bergson, finds it convenient to begin his modern-
ism with the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, who taught in
Alexandria and in Rome sixteen centuries ago.
Ordinary mortals have not gone back quite so far,
but they have gone or are going back to the Re-
naissance. Now as then credulity driven out in
one form comes back to life stronger than ever.
Machiavelli firmly believed that the air was full of
spirits, who took pity on mortals and warned
them by sinister auguries of impending calamities.
Guicciardini, a forerunner of psychical research,
also believed in aerial spirits, who communicated
with mortals, for the very excellent reason that he
himself had an experience which he considered most
certain proof. Both of these men were contem-
poraries of Ariosto, and like him men of genius
and also men of affairs. But although Ariosto takes
for granted in the Furioso the supernatural and the
possibilities of magic he was quite aware of the
abuses to which such beliefs are subject. In one
of his comedies (// Negromante) the principal aim
is to expose and satirise the necromancy of his
own day. From this point of view he is as sane
as a London police magistrate. He scourges the
corruption of the papal court and the abuses of
the Church, but in one of his finest outbursts he
shows that he was a crusader in spirit, as he was
a descendant of crusaders in race.^ Four centuries
^ Cf, Villari, La storia di G. Sa-vonarola, lib. i. c. 4, "On Ficino and the
Platonic Academy in Florence." ^ See above, p. 6.
119
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
ago he called on the great powers of the day to
leave their internecine quarrels and to drive the Turk
from Europe.
Finally, in these days there is a reaction against
realism of all kinds in favour of romance ; and the
father of modern romance- is Ariosto. The ordinary
reader of romance may be repelled at once when he
is told that Ariosto was a poet ; he may be wiUing
to read a novel a day all the year round, but since
he left school perhaps he has never read any verse
except, if he happens to be a church-goer, in a hymn-
book. His brain reels at the idea of amusing himself
by reading any poet, let alone an ItaUan poet. The
extraordinary modern reader no doubt still reads
poetry, but he takes his poetry sadly ; if he reads an
Italian poet it will be Dante, and he will read him
with the same kind of feeling with which he reads
the book of Job, the delight in the poetry being
darkened with the awe of the divine justice.
Ariosto was certainly a poet, and his greatest work
is one of the longest poems ever written. But the
ordinary reader may be assured that in plot and in
by-plot, in diversity of character and of incident,
above all, in the sudden introduction of the altogether
unexpected, Ariosto is not surpassed by any writer
of prose romance. The romances of chivalry had a
curious history ; they began as ballads sung for the
most part by gentleman beggars ; they were turned
into prose and expanded and strung together in
lengthy narratives which formed the sole reading (or
hearing) of the mediaeval nobility and clergy. Then,
1 20
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
again, there was a reversion to poetry, and the greatest
of the romances of chivalry are the romances by
Boiardo and Ariosto. Both might have written in
prose without detriment to the stones they had to
tell. In fact, very soon after its first appearance the
Furioso was translated into French prose,^ and found
a wide and grateful public. The ordinary modern
reader must not be deceived by the limitations of the
modern ideas of poetry and poets. In the mediaeval
period every kind of learning, as well as of amuse-
ment, was served up in verses. History, geography,
theology, philosophy, astronomy were all done into
verse. Even treatises on agriculture and on trade
policy were in form poems.' The mediaeval encyclo-
paedia was itself a poem.^ In the course of time the
poetical form was abandoned in the case of the more
technical sciences, but even in the eighteenth century
there were survivals of the scientific uses of poetry.*
In philosophy and theology the usage of poetical
presentation still survives.
It was, however, specially in works of fiction and
of imagination that the poetical form endured the
longest and showed the greatest vigour. In diversity
* The title of the French version reads as follows : Roland Furieux, compost
premierement en ryme Tuscane par messire Loys Arioste, noble Ferraroys, &
maintenant traduict en prose Fran9oyse : partie suyuant la phrase de I'Autheur,
partie aussi le stile de ceste nostre langue. The letters patent granting the privilege
of publication for six years are dated March 17, 1543. It was printed at Lyons.
2 Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, by Thomas Tusser, is a poem with a very
practical object in view ; so also is the Libelle of English Polycye (reproduced in
the Political Songs of the Rolls Series). This poem gives all the points of the
mediaeval tariff reformers, and surprisingly modern they are done into prose.
' The Image of the World. See above, p. 52, «. i.
* The Botanic Garden, a poem by Erasmus Darwin, was published in 1781.
121
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
of subject-matter, as already observed, Ariosto may
be compared with Shakespeare, and the poetical plays
of Shakespeare are still as popular as his prose
comedies. Ariosto was from his youth up a writer
of comedies, and of some of the comedies, written
in his youth in prose, he made poetical versions in
mid-life. He might equally well have turned some
of his stories in the Orlando into prose. The
" Ariosto of the North '* began writing his romances
in poetry. The people who devoured Marmion and
the Lady of the Lake did not think they were read-
ing poetry, and still less did they know that the Scot
had derived his method and his inspiration largely
from the Italian.
The judgment expressed in this brief survey of
the genius of Ariosto may be supplemented by
retelling the story of Byron's naming Scott the
Ariosto of the North, in his Childe Harold :
. . . first rose
The Tuscan father's comedy divine ;
Then not unequal to the Florentine,
The southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth
A new creation with his magic line,
And, like the Ariosto of the North,
Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth.
Childe HaroWs Pilgrimage, Canto IV. st. 40,
In writing to Murray ^ about this stanza Byron
said : " I do not know whether Scott will like it but
I have called him the Ariosto of the North in my
text. If he should not say so in timer Apparently
Murray made some objection, and Byron replied :
^ Moore, Letters of Lord Byron, vol. iv. pp. 51, 65.
122
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
'* With regard to the Ariosto of the North surely
their themes, chivalry, war, and love were as like as
can be ; and as to the compHment, if you knew what
the Italians think of Ariosto you would not hesitate
about that. If you think Scott will dislike it say so
and I will expunge. I do not call him the Scotch
Ariosto, which would be sad provincial eulogy, but
the Ariosto of the North, meaning all countries that
are not South." Byron apparently did not know
that Scott learned Italian, as a boy, to read Ariosto.
The following extract from Scott*s Diary also serves
to show that he would appreciate the compliment.
*' I have a long letter from Baron von Goethe, which
I must have read to me ; for though I know German
I have forgotten their written hand. I make it a
rule seldom to read and never to answer foreign
letters from literary folk. . . . But Goethe is different
and a wonderful fellow — the Ariosto and almost the
Voltaire of Germany.*' ^
Goethe's own appreciation of Ariosto is shown in
the scene in Torquato Tasso^ in which are placed
busts of Virgil and Ariosto. Virgil has been crowned
with a laurel wreath, and on the brow of Ariosto has
been placed a wreath of varied flowers.
Antonio. But tell me, who on Ariosto's brow
Hath placed this wreath ?
Leo?iora. This hand.
Antonio. It hath done well.
It more becomes him than a laurel crown.
As o'er her fruitful bosom Nature throws
* Lockhart, Life of Scott ^ vol. v, p. loo.
* Torquato Tasso, Act i. Sc. iv. Anna Swanwick's translation.
123
LIFE OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO
Her variegated robe of beauteous green,
So he enshrouds in Fable's flowery garb,
Whatever can conspire to render man
Worthy of love and honour. Power and taste,
Experience, understanding, and content,
And a pure feeling for the good and true.
Pervade the spirit of his every song.
Half-hid in verdure, Folly slily lurks ;
At times, resounding from a golden cloud,
The voice of Wisdom utters lofty truth,
While Madness, from a wild harmonious lute
Scatters forth bursts of fitful harmony.
Yet all the while the justest measure holds.
He who aspires to emulate this man
E'en for his boldness well deserves a crown.
There can be little doubt that the immense
popularity of Ariosto throughout Europe was in
the main due to his merit as a story-teller and
as a painter of character and of scenes in which
the actors moved. There are, however, magnificent
passages in the original which would conform to the
most narrow or most exalted definition of poetry,
and, above all, there is throughout the atmosphere
that only the great poets ^ can create. And the atmo-
sphere that is breathed by any who will take the
^ The reader of modern Italian poetry may be reminded of Carducci's lines
written at Scandiano, the birthplace of Boiardo :
... a tergo mi lasciai la grama
Che il mondo dice poesia, lasciai
I deliri a cui par che dietro agogni
L' et^ malata. lo sento che mi chiama
De' secoli la voce, e risognai
La veriti dei grandi antichi sogni.
Rime e ritm't^ p. 263.
124
THE GENIUS OF ARIOSTO
trouble to voyage through the world of Ariosto is
pure delight after the atmosphere of the modern
problem moralities.
Pro bono malum is the motto appended by Ariosto
to the good work on which he had spent the best
years of his life and the concentration of a rare
genius. He knew that he had done well, and he
knew the evil he had received from his patron
Ippolito in return. After more than three centuries
of approval in the great world it would be strange if
with a new century a wider interpretation has to be
given to Ariosto's motto, and the good he has done
is to be requited by the evil of neglect.
THE END
Printed hy R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.
By Professor J. SHIELD NICHOLSON
TALES FROM ARIOSTO
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s.
MORNING POST. — " Dr. Nicholson is able to convey by means o
his adaptations a sense not only of Ariosto's virtuosity in story-telling, but
of his marvellous skill in construction. The book, it is hardly necessary
to say, is fascinating throughout."
CAMBRIDGE RE VIE JV.—'* The selection is cleverly made, and
the stories are very well and clearly told. The book is excellent reading."
GUARDIAN. — "We give a hearty welcome to Tales from Ariosto.
. . . Dr. Nicholson is a scholar, and treats his subjects in a scholar's spirit ;
he tells his tales delightfully, and gives us a capital Introduction besides."
CONTEMPORARY RE VIE H^.-'' The Introduction to the book
illustrates not only the breadth and depth of Professor Nicholson's reading,
but his whole-hearted appreciation of romance and of * the mighty line ' in
literature. ... In the virile lucidity of his prose there is not lacking that
haunting touch of mysticism which lends to these fruits of the Renaissance
the glamour of six centuries of mediaeval tradition. ... A book of this
kind is of immense value to-day when we are in a period not incomparable
with that when Ariosto issued his immortal poem almost exactly four
centuries ago. The Renaissance spirit is once more abroad."
SPECTATOR. — "Professor Nicholson is everywhere inspired by
love of the extravagant, adorable romance of Saracens and nymphs and
courteous gentlemen ; and his writing is light and vivid enough to convey
much of the charm and infinite variety of the Italian."
ATHENAiUM.—^'\n-10,'65
(F77638l0)476B
General Library ^
University of California
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 1