Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24
[Footnote 1: The main point of this story, the personation of Ginevra by
one of her ladies, has been repeated by many writers--among others by
Shakspeare, in _Much Ado about Nothing_. The circumstance is said to have
actually occurred in Ferrara, and in Ariosto's own time. Was Ariosto
himself a party? "Ariodante" almost includes his name; and it is certain
that he was once in love with a lady of the name of Ginevra.]
[Footnote 2: Rinaldo is an ambassador, and one upon very urgent business;
yet he halts by the way in search of adventures. This has been said to be
in the true taste of knight-errantry; and in one respect it is so. We
may imagine, however, that the ship is wind-bound, and that he meant to
return to it on change of weather. The Caledonian Forest, it is to be
observed, is close at hand.]
[Footnote 3: All honour and glory to the manly and loving poet!
"Lavezzuola," says Panizzi, "doubts the conjugal concord of beasts, more
particularly of bears. 'Ho letto presso degno autore un orso aver cavato
un occhio ad un orsa con la zampa.' (I have read in an author worthy of
credit, that a bear once deprived a she-bear of an eye with a blow of his
paw.) The reader may choose between Ariosto and this nameless author,
which of them is to be believed. I, of course, am for my poet."--Vol. i.
p. 84. I am afraid, however, that Lavezzuola is right. Even turtle-doves
are said not to be always the models of tenderness they are supposed
to be. Brutes have even devoured their offspring. The violence is most
probably owing (at least in excessive cases) to some unnatural condition
of circumstances.]
[Footnote 4: This is quite in Ariosto's high and bold taste for truth
under all circumstances. A less great and unmisgiving poet would have had
the lover picked up by a fisherman.]
SUSPICION [1]
It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the world than a just
prince--a thoroughly good man, who shuns no part of the burden of his
duty, though it bend him double; who loves and cares for his people as a
father does for his children, and who is almost incessantly occupied in
their welfare, very seldom for his own.
Such a man puts himself in front of dangers and difficulties in order
that he may be a shield to others; for he is not a mercenary, taking care
of none but himself when he sees the wolf coming; he is the right good
shepherd, staking his own life in that of his flock, and knowing the
faces of every one of them, just as they do his own.
Such princes, in times of old, were Saturn, Hercules, Jupiter, and
others--men who reigned gently, yet firmly, equal to all chances that
came, and worthy of the divine honours that awaited them. For mankind
could not believe that they quitted the world in the same way as other
men. They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of
demigods.
When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate
their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height
of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and,
at all events, public decency is observed. Oh, blessed kingdoms that are
governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the
mercy of a man without justice--a fellow-creature without feelings!
Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of
posterity. Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and
Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might.
I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the
dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse
under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of
the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains
by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were
sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.
But they are not without torments of their own. At the core of their own
hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies. There he stands
every day and every moment--one who was born of the same mother with
Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his
infant brethren before they saw the light. His name is Suspicion.[2]
Yes, Suspicion;--the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest
that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being.
This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and
lowly. He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune
has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures. Well may the man hug
himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants
are in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge
taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret. The fear
which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch
afraid of every soul among them.
Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of
it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon
the hearts of his race. He was one of the first who took to the custom
of wearing beards, for, great as he was, he had a fear of the race of
barbers! He built a tower in his palace, guarded by deep ditches and
thick walls. It had but one drawbridge and one bay-window. There was no
other opening; so that the very light of day had scarcely admittance, or
the inmates a place to breathe at. In this tower he slept; and it was his
wife's business to put a ladder down for him when he came in. A dog kept
watch at the drawbridge; and except the dog and the wife, not a soul was
to be discerned about the place. Yet he had such little trust in her,
that he always sent spies to look about the room before he withdrew for
the night.
Of what use was it all? The woman herself killed him with his own sword,
and his soul went straight to hell.
Rhadamanthus, the judge there, thrust him under the boiling lake, but was
astonished to find that he betrayed no symptoms of anguish. He did not
weep and howl as the rest did, or cry out, "I burn, I burn!" He evinced
so little suffering, that Rhadamanthus said, "I must put this fellow into
other quarters." Accordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the
torments are beyond all others.
Nevertheless, even here he seemed to be under no distress. At length they
asked him the reason. The wretch then candidly acknowledged, that hell
itself had no torments for him, compared with those which suspicion had
given him on earth.
The sages of hell laid their heads together at this news. Amelioration of
his lot on the part of a sinner was not to be thought of in a place of
eternal punishment; so they called a parliament together, the result of
which was an unanimous conclusion, that the man should be sent back to
earth, and consigned to the torments of suspicion for ever.
He went; and the earthly fiend re-entered his being anew with a subtlety
so incorporate, that their two natures were identified, and he became
SUSPICION ITSELF. Fruits are thus engrafted on wild stocks. One colour
thus becomes the parent of many, when the painter takes a portion of this
and of that from his palette in order to imitate flesh.
The new being took up his abode on a rock by the sea-shore, a thousand
feet high, girt all about with mouldering crags, which threatened every
instant to fall. It had a fortress on the top, the approach to which was
by seven drawbridges, and seven gates, each locked up more strongly than
the other; and here, now this moment, constantly thinking Death is upon
him, Suspicion lives in everlasting terror. He is alone. He is ever
watching. He cries out from the battlements, to see that the guards are
awake below, and never does he sleep day or night. He wears mail upon
mail, and mail again, and feels the less safe the more he puts on; and is
always altering and strengthening everything on gate, and on barricado,
and on ditch, and on wall. And do whatever he will, he never seems to
have done enough.
* * * * *
Great poet, and good man, Ariosto! your terrors are better than Dante's;
for they warn, as far as warning can do good, and they neither afflict
humanity nor degrade God.
Spenser has imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry; for, by a curious
intermixture of all which the mind can experience from such a fiction,
pleasant it is in the midst of its sublimity,--laughable with satirical
archness, as well as grand and terrible in the climax. The transformation
in Spenser is from a jealous man into Jealousy. His wife has gone to live
with the Satyrs, and a villain has stolen his money. The husband, in
order to persuade his wife to return, steals into the horde of the
Satyrs, by mixing with their flock of goats,--as Norandino does in a
passage imitated from Homer by Ariosto. The wife flatly refuses to do any
such thing, and the poor wretch is obliged to steal out again.
"So soon as he the prison door did pass,
He ran as fast as both his feet could bear,
And never looked who behind him was,
Nor scarcely who before. Like as a bear
That creeping close among the hives, to rear
An honeycomb, the wakeful dogs espy,
And him assailing, sore his carcass tear,
That hardly he away with life does fly,
Nor stays till safe himself he see from jeopardy.
Nor stay'd he till be came unto the place
Where late his treasure he entombed had;
Where, when he found it not (for Trompart base
Had it purloined for his master bad),
With extreme fury he became quite mad,
And ran away--ran with himself away;
That who so strangely had him seen bestad,
With upstart hair and staring eyes' dismay,
From Limbo-lake him late escaped sure would say.
High over hills and over dales he fled,
As if the wind him on his wings had borne;
Nor bank nor bush could stay him, when he sped
His nimble feet, as treading still on thorn;
Grief, and Despite, and Jealousy, and Scorn,
Did all the way him follow hard behind;
And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn,
So shamefully forlorn of womankind,
That, as a snake, still lurked in his wounded mind.
Still fled he forward, looking backward still;
Nor stay'd his flight nor fearful agony
Till that he came unto a rocky hill
Over the sea suspended dreadfully,
That living creature it would terrify
To look a-down, or upward to the height
From thence he threw himself dispiteously,
All desperate of his fore-damned spright,
That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight.
But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought,
He was so wasted and forpined quite,
That all his substance was consumed to nought,
And nothing left but like an airy sprite;
That on the rocks he fell so flit and light,
That he thereby received no hurt at all;
But chanced on a craggy cliff to light;
Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl,
That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.
Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there
Resolved to build his baleful mansion,
In dreary darkness, and continual fear
Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon
Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon,
That he dare never sleep, but that one eye
Still ope he keeps for that occasion;
Nor ever rests he in tranquillity,
The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.
Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed
But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous,
Which in his cold complexion do breed
A filthy blood, or humour rancorous,
Matter of doubt and dread suspicious,
That doth with cureless care consume the heart,
Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious,
Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart,
And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.
Yet can he never die, but dying lives,
And doth himself with sorrow new sustain,
That death and life at once unto him gives,
And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain;
There dwells he ever, miserable swain,
Hateful both to himself and every wight;
Where he, through privy grief and horror vain,
Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite
Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight."
Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's;
but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special
circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of
hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But
nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us
as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts
on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to
the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.
[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the _Furioso_, but
in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name
of the _Five Cantos_. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of
correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious
one, especially as it seems to have been written after the _Furioso_;
for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and
politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,--a
whale _inhabited_ by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that
his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in
his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on
the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.
Did Ariosto, by the way, omit Macchiavelli in his list of the friends who
hailed the close of his great poem, from not knowing what to make of his
book entitled the _Prince?_ It has perplexed all the world to this day,
and is not unlikely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on
a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's.]
[Footnote 2: A tremendous fancy this last!
"Sta for la pena, de la qual dicea
Che nacque quando la brutt'Ira nacque,
La Crudeltade, e la Rapina rea;
E quantunque in un ventre con for giacque,
Di tormentarle mai non rimanea."]
ISABELLA.[1]
Rodomont, King of Algiers, was the fiercest of all the enemies of
Christendom, not out of love for his own faith (for he had no piety), but
out of hatred to those that opposed him. He had now quarrelled, however,
with his friends too. He had been rejected by a lady, in favour of the
Tartar king, Mandricardo, and mortified by the publicity of the rejection
before his own lord paramount, Agramante, the leader of the infidel
armies. He could not bear the rejection; he could not bear the sanction
of it by his liege lord; he resolved to quit the scene of warfare and
return to Africa; and, in the course of his journey thither, he had come
into the south of France, where, observing a sequestered spot that suited
his humour, be changed his mind as to going home, and persuaded himself
he could live in it for the rest of his life. He accordingly took up his
abode with his attendants in a chapel, which had been deserted by its
clergy during the rage of war.
This vehement personage was standing one morning at the door of the
chapel in a state of unusual thoughtfulness, when he beheld coming
towards him, through a path in the green meadow before it, a lady of
a lovely aspect, accompanied by a bearded monk. They were followed by
something covered with black, which they were bringing along on a great
horse.
Alas! the lady was the widow of Zerbino, the Scottish prince, who spared
the life of Medoro, and who now himself lay dead under that pall. He
had expired in her arms from wounds inflicted during a combat with
Mandricardo; and she had been thrown by the loss into such anguish of
mind that she would have died on his sword but for the intervention of
the hermit now with her, who persuaded her to devote the rest of her days
to God in a nunnery. She had now come into Provence with the good man for
that purpose, and to bury the corpse of her husband in the chapel which
they were approaching.
Though the lady seemed lost in grief, and was very pale, and had her hair
all about the ears, and though she did nothing but weep and lament, and
looked in all respects quite borne down with her misery, nevertheless she
was still so beautiful that love and grace appeared to be indestructible
in her aspect. The moment the Saracen beheld her, he dismissed from his
mind all the determinations he had made to hate and detest
The gentle bevy, that adorns the world.
He was bent solely on obtaining the new angel before him. She seemed
precisely the sort of person to make him forget the one that had rejected
him. Advancing, therefore, to meet her without delay, he begged, in as
gentle a manner as he could assume, to know the cause of her sorrow.
The lady, with all the candour of wretchedness, explained who she was,
and how precious a burden she was conveying to its last home, and the
resolution she had taken to withdraw from a vain world into the service
of God. The proud pagan, who had no belief in a God, much less any
respect for restraints or fidelities of what kind soever, forgot his
assumed gravity when he heard this determination, and laughed outright at
the simplicity of such a proceeding. He pronounced it, in his peremptory
way, to be foolish and frivolous; compared it with the miser who, in
burying a treasure, does good neither to himself nor any one else; and
said, that lions and serpents might indeed be shut up in cages, but not
things lovely and innocent.
The monk, overhearing these observations, thought it his duty to
interfere. He calmly opposed all which the other asserted, and then
proceeded to set forth a repast of spiritual consolation not at all to
the Saracen's taste. The fierce warrior interrupted the preacher several
times; told him that he had nothing to do with the lady, and that the
sooner he returned to his cell the better; but the hermit, nothing
daunted, went on with his advice till his antagonist lost all patience.
He laid hands on his sacred person; seized him by the beard; tore away
as much of it as he grasped; and at length worked himself up into such a
pitch of fury, that he griped the good man's throat with all the force of
a pair of pincers, and, swinging him twice or thrice round, as one might
a dog, flung him off the headland into the sea.
What became of the poor creature I cannot say. Reports are various. Some
tell us that he was found on the rocks, dashed all to pieces, so that you
could not distinguish foot from head; others, that he fell into the
sea at the distance of three miles, and perished in consequence of not
knowing how to swim, in spite of the prayers and tears that he addressed
to Heaven; others again affirm, that a saint came and assisted him, and
drew him to shore before people's eyes. I must leave the reader to adopt
which of these accounts he looks upon as the most probable.
The Pagan, as soon as he had thus disposed of the garrulous hermit,
turned towards Isabella (for that was the lady's name), and with a face
some what less disturbed, began to talk to her in the common language of
gallantry, protesting that she was his life and soul, and that he should
not know what to do without her; for the sweetness of her appearance
mollified even him; and indeed, with all his violence, he would rather
have possessed her by fair means than by foul. He therefore flattered
himself that, by a little hypocritical attention, he should dispose her
to return his inclinations.
On the other hand, the poor disconsolate creature, who, in a country
unknown to her, and a place so remote from help, felt like a mouse in the
cat's claws, began casting in her mind by what possible contrivance she
could escape from such a wretch with honour. She had made up her mind to
perish by her own hand, rather than be faithless, however unwillingly, to
the dear husband that had died in her arms: but the question was, how she
could protect herself from the pagan's violence, before she had secured
the means of so doing; for his manner was becoming very impatient, and
his speeches every moment less and less civil.
At length an expedient occurred to her. She told him, that if he would
promise to respect her virtue, she would put him in possession of a
secret that would redound far more to his honour and glory, than any
wrong which he could inflict on the innocent. She conjured him not to
throw away the satisfaction he would experience all the rest of his life
from the consciousness of having done right, for the sake of injuring one
unhappy creature. "There were thousands of her sex," she observed, "with
cheerful as well as beautiful faces, who might rejoice in his affection;
whereas the secret she spoke of was known to scarcely a soul on earth but
herself."
She then told him the secret; which consisted in the preparation of a
certain herb boiled with ivy and rue over a fire of cypress-wood, and
squeezed into a cup by hands that had never done harm. The juice thus
obtained, if applied fresh every month, had the virtue of rendering
bodies invulnerable. Isabella said she had seen the herb in the
neighbourhood, as she came along, and that she would not only make the
preparation forth-with, but let its effects be proved on her own person.
She only stipulated, that the receiver of the gift should swear not to
offend her purity in deed or word.
The fierce infidel took the oath immediately. It delighted him to think
that he should be enabled to have his fill of war and slaughter for
nothing; and the oath was the more easy to him, inasmuch as he had no
intention of keeping it.
The poor Isabella went into the fields to look for her miraculous herb,
still, however, attended by the Saracen, who would not let her go out of
his sight. She soon found it; and then going with him into his house,
passed the rest of the day and the whole night in preparing the mixture
with busy solemnity,--Rodomont always remaining with her.
The room became so hot and close with the fire of cypress-wood, that the
Saracen, contrary to his law and indeed to his habits, indulged himself
in drinking; and the consequence was, that, as soon as it was morning,
Isabella lost no time in proving to him the success of her operations.
"Now," she said, "you shall be convinced how much in earnest I have been.
You shall see all the virtue of this blessed preparation. I have only to
bathe myself thus, over the head and neck, and if you then strike me with
all your force, as though you intended to cut off my head,--which you
must do in good earnest,--you will see the wonderful result."
With a glad and rejoicing countenance the paragon of virtue held forth
her neck to the sword; and the bestial pagan, giving way to his natural
violence, and heated perhaps beyond all thought of a suspicion with his
wine, dealt it so fierce a blow, that the head leaped from the shoulders.
Thrice it bounded on the ground where it fell, and a clear voice was
heard to come out of it, calling the name of "Zerbino," doubtless in joy
of the rare way which its owner had found of escaping from the Saracen.
O blessed soul, that heldest thy virtue and thy fidelity dearer to thee
than life and youth! go in peace, then soul blessed and beautiful. If any
words of mine could have force in them sufficient to endure so long, hard
would I labour to give them all the worthiness that art can bestow, so
that the world might rejoice in thy name for thousands and thousands of
years. Go in peace, and take thy seat in the skies, and be an example to
womankind of faith beyond all weakness.
[Footnote 1: The ingenious martyrdom in this story, which has been told
by other writers of fiction, is taken from an alleged fact related in
Barbaro's treatise _De Re Uxoria_.It is said, indeed, to have been
actually resorted to more than once; and possibly may have been so, even
from a knowledge of it; for what is more natural with heroical minds than
that the like outrages should produce the like virtues? But the colouring
of Ariosto's narration is peculiarly his own; and his apostrophe at the
close beautiful.]
TASSO:
Critical Notice of his Life and Genius.
Critical Notice
OF
TASSO'S LIFE AND GENIUS. [1]
The romantic poetry of Italy having risen to its highest and apparently
its most lawless pitch in the _Orlando Furioso_, a reaction took place in
the next age in the _Jerusalem Delivered_.It did not hurt, however, the
popularity of Ariosto. It only increased the number of poetic readers;
and under the auspices, or rather the control, of a Luther-fearing
Church, produced, if not as classical a work as it claimed to be, or
one, in the true sense of the word, as catholic as its predecessor, yet
certainly a far more Roman Catholic, and at the same time very delightful
fiction. The circle of fabulous narrative was thus completed, and a link
formed, though in a very gentle and qualified manner, both with Dante's
theocracy and the obvious regularity of the _Aeneid_, the oldest romance
of Italy.