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  STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS:

  WITH

  LIVES OF THE WRITERS.


  BY LEIGH HUNT.


  IN TWO VOLUMES.

  VOL. II.



  MDCCCXLVI.


  CONTENTS

  OF

  THE SECOND VOLUME.


  BOIARDO.

  CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS

  THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA

  THE DEATH OF AGRICAN

  THE SARACEN FRIENDS
  Part the Second

  SEEING AND BELIEVING


  ARIOSTO.

  CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS

  THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA Part
    I. Angelica and her Suitors
    II. Angelica and Medoro
    III. The Jealousy of Orlando

  ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON

  ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA

  SUSPICION

  ISABELLA


  TASSO.

  CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS

  OLINDO AND SOPHRONIA

  TANCRED AND CLORINDA

  RINALDO AND ARMIDA;

  WITH THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENCHANTED FOREST:
    Part I. Armida in the Christian Camp
           II. Armida's Hate and Love
           III. The Terrors of the Enchanted Forest
           IV. The Loves of Rinaldo and Armida
           V. The Disenchantment of the Forest, and the Taking of
              Jerusalem, &c.


  APPENDIX.

  I. The Death of Agrican
  II. Angelica and Medoro Translation
  III. The Jealousy of Orlando
  IV. The Death of Clorinda
  V. Tancred in the Enchanted Forest



BOIARDO:

Critical Notice of his Life and Genius.

Critical Notice

OF BOIARDO'S LIFE AND GENIUS.[1]

While Pulci in Florence was elevating romance out of the street-ballads,
and laying the foundation of the chivalrous epic, a poet appeared in
Lombardy (whether inspired by his example is uncertain) who was destined
to carry it to a graver though still cheerful height, and prepare the way
for the crowning glories of Ariosto. In some respects he even excelled
Ariosto: in all, with the exception of style, shewed himself a genuine
though immature master.

Little is known of his life, but that little is very pleasant. It
exhibits him in the rare light of a poet who was at once rich, romantic,
an Arcadian and a man of the world, a feudal lord and an indulgent
philosopher, a courtier equally beloved by prince and people.

Matteo Maria Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, Lord of Arceto, Casalgrande,
&c., Governor of Reggio, and Captain of the citadel of Modena (it is
pleasant to repeat such titles when so adorned), is understood to have
been born about the year 1434, at Scandiano, a castle at the foot of the
Apennines, not far from Reggio, and famous for its vines.

He was of an ancient family, once lords of Rubiera, and son of Giovanni,
second count of Scandiano, and Lucia, a lady of a branch of the Strozzi
family in Florence, and sister and aunt of Tito and Erole Strozzi,
celebrated Latin poets. His parents appear to have been wise people, for
they gave him an education that fitted him equally for public and private
life. He was even taught, or acquired, more Greek than was common to the
men of letters of that age. His whole life seems, accordingly, to have
been divided, with equal success, between his duties as a servant of the
dukes of Modena, both military and civil, and the prosecution of his
beloved art of poetry,--a combination of pursuits which have been idly
supposed incompatible. Milton's poetry did not hinder him from being
secretary to Cromwell, and an active partisan. Even the sequestered
Spenser was a statesman; and poets and writers of fiction abound in
the political histories of all the great nations of Europe. When a
man possesses a thorough insight into any one intellectual department
(except, perhaps, in certain corners of science), it only sharpens his
powers of perception for the others, if he chooses to apply them.

In the year 1469, Boiardo was one of the noblemen who went to meet the
Emperor Frederick the Third on his way to Ferrara, when Duke Borso of
Modena entertained him in that city. Two years afterwards, Borso, who had
been only Marquis of Ferrara, received its ducal title from the Pope; and
on going to Rome to be invested with his new honours, the name of our
poet is again found among the adorners of his state. A few days after his
return home this prince died; and Boiardo, favoured as he had been by
him, appears to have succeeded to a double portion of regard in the
friendship of the new duke, Ercole, who was more of his own age.

During all this period, from his youth to his prime, our author varied
his occupations with Italian and Latin poetry; some of it addressed to a
lady of the name of Antonia Caprara, and some to another, whose name is
thought to have been Rosa; but whether these ladies died, or his love was
diverted elsewhere, he took to wife, in the year 1472, Taddea Gonzaga, of
the noble house of that name, daughter of the Count of Novellara. In the
course of the same year he is supposed to have begun his great poem. A
popular court-favourite, in the prime of life, marrying and commencing
a great poem nearly at one and the same time, presents an image of
prosperity singularly delightful. By this lady Boiardo had two sons and
four daughters. The younger son, Francesco Maria, died in his childhood;
but the elder, Camillo, succeeded to his father's title, and left an heir
to it,--the last, I believe, of the name. The reception given to the
poet's bride, when he took her to Scandiano, is said to have been very
splendid.

In the ensuing year the duke his master took a wife himself. She was
Eleonora, daughter of the King of Naples; and the newly-married poet was
among the noblemen who were sent to escort her to Ferrara. For several
years afterwards, his time was probably filled up with the composition
of the _Orlando Innamorato_, and the entertainments given by a splendid
court. He was appointed Governor of Reggio, probably in 1478. At the
expiration of two or three years he was made Captain of the citadel of
Modena; and in 1482 a war broke out, with the Venetians, in which he took
part, for it interrupted the progress of his poem. In 1484 he returned
to it; but ten years afterwards was again and finally interrupted by the
unprincipled descent of the French on Italy under Charles the Eighth; and
in the December following he died. The _Orlando Innamorato_ was thus left
unfinished. Eight years before his decease the author published what he
had written of it up to that time, but the first complete edition was
posthumous. The poet was writing when the French came: he breaks off with
an anxious and bitter notice of the interruption, though still unable to
deny himself a last word on the episode which he was relating, and a hope
that he should conclude it another time.

  "Mentre che io canto, o Dio redentore,
    Vedo l'Italia tutta a fiamma e foco,
  Per questi Galli, che con gran valore
    Vengon, per disertar non so che loco:
  Pero vi lascio in questo vano amore
    Di Fiordespina ardente poco a poco
  Un' altra volta, se mi fia concesso,
  Racconterovvi il tutto per espresso."

  But while I sing, mine eyes, great God! behold
    A flaming fire light all the Italian sky,
  Brought by these French, who, with their myriads bold,
    Come to lay waste, I know not where or why.
  Therefore, at present, I must leave untold
    How love misled poor Fiordespina's eye.[2]
  Another time, Fate willing, I shall tell,
  From first to last, how every thing befell.

Besides the _Orlando Innamorato_, Boiardo wrote a variety of prose works,
a comedy in verse on the subject of Timon, lyrics of great elegance, with
a vein of natural feeling running through them, and Latin poetry of a
like sort, not, indeed, as classical in its style as that of Politian and
the other subsequent revivers of the ancient manner, but perhaps not
the less interesting on that account; for it is difficult to conceive
a thorough copyist in style expressing his own thorough feelings. Mr.
Panizzi, if I am not mistaken, promised the world a collection of the
miscellaneous poems of Boiardo; but we have not yet had the pleasure
of seeing them. In his life of the poet, however, he has given several
specimens, both Latin and Italian, which are extremely agreeable. The
Latin poems consist of ten eclogues and a few epigrams; but the epigrams,
this critic tells us, are neither good nor on a fitting subject, being
satirical sallies against Nicolo of Este, who had attempted to seize on
Ferrara, and been beheaded. Boiardo was not of a nature qualified to
indulge in bitterness. A man of his chivalrous disposition probably
misgave himself while he was writing these epigrams. Perhaps he suffered
them to escape his pen out of friendship for the reigning branch of the
family. But it must be confessed, that some of the best-natured men have
too often lost sight of their higher feelings during the pleasure and
pride of composition.

With respect to the comedy of _Timon_, if the whole of it is written as
well as the concluding address of the misanthrope (which Mr. Panizzi has
extracted into his pages), it must be very pleasant. Timon conceals a
treasure in a tomb, and thinks he has baffled some knaves who had a
design upon it. He therefore takes leave of his audience with the
following benedictions

          "Pur ho scacciate queste due formiche,
  Che raspavano l' oro alla mia buca,
  Or vadan pur, che Dio le malediche.

     Cotal fortuna a casa li conduca,
  Che lor fiacchi le gambe al primo passo,
  E nel secondo l'osso della nuca.

    Voi altri, che ascoltate giuso al basso,
  Chiedete, se volete alcuna cosa,
  Prima ch' io parta, perche mo vi lasso.

    Benche abbia l'alma irata e disdegnosa,
  Da ingiusti oltraggi combattuta e vinta,
  A voi gia non l'avro tanto ritrosa.

    In me non e pietade al tutto estinta
  Faccia di voi la prova chi gli pare,
  Sino alla corda, the mi trovo cinta;

  Gli prestero, volendosi impiccare."

     So! I've got rid of these two creeping things,
  That fain would have scratched up my buried gold.
  They're gone; and may the curse of God go with them!
  May they reach home dust in good time enough
  To break their legs at the first step in doors,
  And necks i' the second!--And now then, as to you,
  Good audience,--groundlings,--folks who love low places,
  You too perhaps would fain get something of me,
  Ere I take leave.--Well;--angered though I be,
  Scornful and torn with rage at being ground
  Into the dust with wrong, I'm not so lost
  To all concern and charity for others
  As not to be still kind enough to part
  With something near to me-something that's wound
  About my very self. Here, sirs; mark this;--
                                 _[Untying the cord round his waist_.
  Let any that would put me to the test,
  Take it with all my heart, and hang themselves.

The comedy of _Timon_, which was chiefly taken from Lucian, and one,
if not more, of Boiardo's prose translations from other ancients, were
written at the request of Duke Ercole, who was a great lover of dramatic
versions of this kind, and built a theatre for their exhibition at an
enormous expense. These prose translations consist of Apuleius's
_Golden Ass_, Herodotus (the Duke's order), the _Golden Ass_ of Lucian,
Xenophon's _Cyropaedia_ (not printed), Emilius Probus (also not printed,
and supposed to be Cornelius Nepos), and Riccobaldo's credulous _Historia
Universalis_, with additions. It seems not improbable, that he also
translated Homer and Diodorus; and Doni the bookmaker asserts, that he
wrote a work called the _Testamento dell' Anima_ (the Soul's Testament)
but Mr. Panizzi calls Doni "a barefaced impostor;" and says, that as
the work is mentioned by nobody else, we may be "certain that it never
existed," and that the title was "a forgery of the impudent priest."

Nothing else of Boiardo's writing is known to exist, but a collection
of official letters in the archives of Modena, which, according to
Tiraboschi, are of no great importance. It is difficult to suppose,
however, that they would not be worth looking at. The author of the
_Orlando Innamorato_ could hardly write, even upon the driest matters
of government, with the aridity of a common clerk. Some little lurking
well-head of character or circumstance, interesting to readers of a later
age, would probably break through the barren ground. Perhaps the letters
went counter to some of the good Jesuit's theology.

Boiardo's prose translations from the authors of antiquity are so scarce,
that Mr. Panizzi himself, a learned and miscellaneous reader, says he
never saw them. I am willing to get the only advantage in my power
over an Italian critic, by saying that I have had some of them in my
hands,--brought there by the pleasant chances of the bookstalls; but I
can give no account of them. A modern critic, quoted by this gentleman
(Gamba, _Testi di Lingua_), calls the version of Apuleius "rude and
curious;"[3] but adds, that it contains "expressions full of liveliness
and propriety." By "rude" is probably meant obsolete, and comparatively
unlearned. Correctness of interpretation and classical nicety of style
(as Mr. Panizzi observes) were the growths of a later age.

Nothing is told us by his biographers of the person of Boiardo: and it is
not safe to determine a man's _physique_ from his writings, unless
perhaps with respect to the greater or less amount of his animal spirits;
for the able-bodied may write effeminately, and the feeblest supply the
defect of corporal stamina with spiritual. Portraits, however, seem to be
extant. Mazzuchelli discovered that a medal had been struck in the
poet's honour; and in the castle of Scandiano (though "the halls where
knights and ladies listened to the adventures of the Paladin are now
turned into granaries," and Orlando himself has nearly disappeared
from the outside, where he was painted in huge dimensions as
if "entrusted with the wardenship") there was a likeness of Boiardo
executed by Niccolo dell' Abate, together with the principal events of
the _Orlando Innamorato_ and the _AEneid_.But part of these
paintings (Mr. Panizzi tells us) were destroyed, and part removed from
the castle to Modena" to save them from certain loss;" and he does not
add whether the portrait was among the latter.

From anecdotes, however, and from the poet's writings, we gather the
nature of the man; and this appears to have been very amiable. There is
an aristocratic tone in his poem, when speaking of the sort of people of
whom the mass of soldiers is wont to consist; and Foscolo says, that the
Count of Scandiano writes like a feudal lord. But common soldiers are not
apt to be the _elite_ of mankind; neither do we know with how goodnatured
a smile the mention of them may have been accompanied. People often give
a tone to what they read, more belonging to their own minds than the
author's. All the accounts left us of Boiardo, hostile as well as
friendly, prove him to have been an indulgent and popular man. According
to one, he was fond of making personal inquiries among its inhabitants
into the history of his native place; and he requited them so generously
for their information, that it was customary with them to say, when they
wished good fortune to one another, "Heaven send Boiardo to your house!"
There is said to have been a tradition at Scandiano, that having tried in
vain one day, as he was riding out, to discover a name for one of his
heroes, expressive of his lofty character, and the word _Rodamonte_
coming into his head, he galloped back with a pleasant ostentation to his
castle, crying it out aloud, and ordering the bells of the place to be
rung in its holiour; to the astonishment of the good people, who took
"Rodamonte" for some newly-discovered saint. His friend Paganelli of
Modena, who wrote a Latin poem on the _Empire of Cupid_, extolled
the Governor of Reggio for ranking among the deity's most generous
vassals,--one who, in spite of his office of magistrate, looked with
an indulgent eye on errors to which himself was liable, and who was
accustomed to prefer the study of love-verses to that of the law. The
learned lawyer, his countryman Panciroli, probably in resentment, as
Panizzi says, of this preference, accused him of an excess of benignity,
and of being fitter for writing poems than punishing ill deeds; and in
truth, as the same critic observes, "he must have been considered crazy
by the whole tribe of lawyers of that age," if it be true that he
anticipated the opinion of Beccaria, in thinking that no crime ought to
be punished with death.

The great work of this interesting and accomplished person, the _Orlando
Innamorato_, is an epic romance, founded on the love of the great Paladin
for the peerless beauty Angelica, whose name has enamoured the ears of
posterity. The poem introduces us to the pleasantest paths in that track
of reading in which Milton has told us that his "young feet delighted to
wander." Nor did he forsake it in his age.

  "Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,
  When Agrican with all his northern powers
  Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,
  The city of Gallaphrone, from whence to win
  The fairest of her sex, Angelica."

                                            _Paradise Regained._

The _Orlando Innamorato_ may be divided into three principal
portions:-the search for Angelica by Orlando and her other lovers; the
siege of her father's city Albracca by the Tartars; and that of Paris
and Charlemagne by the Moors. These, however, are all more or less
intermingled, and with the greatest art; and there are numerous episodes
of a like intertexture. The fairies and fairy-gardens of British romance,
and the fabulous glories of the house of Este, now proclaimed for the
first time, were added by the author to the enchantments of Pulci,
together with a pervading elegance; and had the poem been completed, we
were to have heard again of the traitor Gan of Maganza, for the purpose
of exalting the imaginary founder of that house, Ruggero.

This resuscitation of the Helen of antiquity, under a more seducing form,
was an invention of Boiardo's; so was the subjection of Charles's hero
Orlando to the passion of love; so, besides the heroine and her name,
was that of other interesting characters with beautiful names, which
afterwards figured in Ariosto. This inventive faculty is indeed so
conspicuous in every part of the work, on small as well as great
occasions, in fairy-adventures and those of flesh and blood, that
although the author appears to have had both his loves and his fairies
suggested to him by our romances of Arthur and the Round Table, it
constitutes, next to the pervading elegance above mentioned, his chief
claim to our admiration. Another of his merits is a certain tender
gallantry, or rather an honest admixture of animal passion with
spiritual, also the precursor of the like ingenuous emotions in Ariosto;
and he furthermore set his follower the example, not only of good
breeding, but of a constant heroical cheerfulness, looking with faith on
nature. Pulci has a constant cheerfulness, but not with so much grace and
dignity. Foscolo has remarked, that Boiardo's characters even surpass
those of Ariosto in truth and variety, and that his Angelica more engages
our feelings;[4] to which I will venture to add, that if his style is
less strong and complete, it never gives us a sense of elaboration. I
should take Boiardo to have been the healthier man, though of a less
determined will than Ariosto, and perhaps, on the whole, less robust.
You find in Boiardo almost which Ariosto perfected,--chivalry, battles,
combats, loves and graces, passions, enchantments, classical and romantic
fable, eulogy, satire, mirth, pathos, philosophy. It is like the first
sketch of a great picture, not the worse in some respects for being a
sketch; free and light, though not so grandly. It is the morning
before the sun is up, and when the dew is on the grass. Take the stories
which are translated in the present volume, and you might fancy them all
written by Ariosto, with a difference; the _Death of Agrican_ perhaps
with minuter touches of nature, but certainly not with greater simplicity
and earnestness. In the _Saracen Friends_ there is just Ariosto's balance
of passion and levity; and in the story which I have entitled _Seeing and
Believing_, his exhibition of triumphant cunning. During the lives of
Pulci and Boiardo, the fierce passions and severe ethics of Dante had
been gradually giving way to a gentler