Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
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So lived, and so died, and so desired humbly to be buried, one of the
delights of the world.
His son Virginio had erected a chapel in the garden of the house built by
his father, and he wished to have his body removed thither; but the
monks would not allow it. The tomb, at first a very humble one, was
subsequently altered and enriched several times; but remains, I
believe, as rebuilt at the beginning of the century before last by his
grand-nephew, Ludovico Ariosto, with a bust of the poet, and two statues
representing Poetry and Glory.
Ariosto was tall and stout, with a dark complexion, bright black eyes,
black and curling hair, aquiline nose, and shoulders broad but a little
stooping. His aspect was thoughtful, and his gestures deliberate. Titian,
besides painting his portrait, designed that which appeared in the
woodcut of the author's own third edition of his poem, which has been
copied into Mr. Panizzi's. It has all the look of truth of that great
artist's vital hand; but, though there is an expression of the, genial
character of the mouth, notwithstanding the exuberance of beard, it does
not suggest the sweetness observable in one of the medals of Ariosto,
a wax impression of which is now before me; nor has the nose so much
delicacy and grace.[28]
The poet's temperament inclined him to melancholy, but his intercourse
was always cheerful. One biographer says he was strong and
healthy--another, that he was neither. In all probability he was
naturally strong, but weakened by a life full of emotion. He talks of
growing old at forty four, and of leaving been bald for some time.[29] He
had a cough for many years before he died. His son says he cured it by
drinking good old wine. Ariosto says that "vin fumoso" did not agree with
him; but that might only mean wine of a heady sort. The chances, under
such circumstances, were probably against wine of any kind; and Panizzi
thinks the cough was never subdued. His physicians forbade him all sorts
of stimulants with his food.[30]
His temper and habits were those of a man wholly given up to love and
poetry. In his youth he was volatile, and at no time without what is
called some "affair of the heart." Every woman attracted him who had
modesty and agreeableness; and as, at the same time, he was very jealous,
one might imagine that his wife, who had a right to be equally so, would
have led no easy life. But it is evident he could practise very generous
self-denial; and probably the married portion of his existence, supposing
Alessandra's sweet countenance not to have belied her, was happy on both
sides. He was beloved by his family, which is never the case with the
unamiable. Among his friends were most Of the great names of the age,
including a world of ladies, and the whole graceful court of Guidobaldo
da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, for which Catiglione wrote his book of
the _Gentleman (Il Cortegiano)_. Raphael addressed him a sonnet, and
Titian painted his likeness. He knew Vittoria Colonna, and Veronica da
Gambera, and Giulia Gonzaga (whom the Turks would have run away with),
and Ippolita Sforza, the beautiful blue-stocking, who set Bandello on
writing his novels, and Bembo, and Flaminio, and Berni, and Molza, and
Sannazzaro, and the Medici family, and Vida, and Macchiavelli; and nobody
doubts that he might have shone at the court of Leo the brightest of the
bright. But he thought it "better to enjoy a little in peace, than seek
after much with trouble."[31] He cared for none of the pleasures of the
great, except building, and that he was content to satisfy in Cowley's
fashion, with "a small house in a large garden." He was plain in his
diet, disliked ceremony, and was frequently absorbed in thought. His
indignation was roused by mean and brutal vices; but he took a large and
liberal view of human nature in general; and, if he was somewhat free in
his life, must be pardoned for the custom of the times, for his charity
to others, and for the genial disposition which made him an enchanting
poet. Above all, he was an affectionate son; lived like a friend with his
children; and, in spite of his tendency to pleasure, supplied the place
of an anxious and careful father to his brothers and sisters, who
idolized him.
"Ornabat pietas et grata modestia vatem,"
wrote his brother Gabriel,
"Sancta fides, dictique memor, munitaque recto
Justitia, et nullo patientia victa labore,
Et constans virtus animi, et elementia mitis,
Ambitione procul pulsa fastusque tumore;
Credere uti posses natum felicibus horis,
Felici fulgente astro Jovis atque Diones."[32]
Devoted tenderness adorn'd the bard,
And grateful modesty, and grave regard
To his least word, and justice arm'd with right,
And patience counting every labour light,
And constancy of soul, and meekness too,
That neither pride nor worldly wishes knew.
You might have thought him born when there concur
The sweet star and the strong, Venus and Jupiter.
His son Virginio, and others, have left a variety of anecdotes
corroborating points in his character. I shall give them all, for they
put us into his company. It is recorded, as an instance of his reputation
for honesty, that an old kinsman, a clergyman, who was afraid of being
poisoned for his possessions, would trust himself in no other hands; but
the clergyman was his own grand-uncle and namesake, probably godfather;
so that the compliment is not so very great.
In his youth he underwent a long rebuke one day from his father without
saying a word, though a satisfactory answer was in his power; on which
his brother Gabriel expressing his surprise, he said that he was thinking
all the time of a scene in a comedy he was writing, for which the
paternal lecture afforded an excellent study.
He loved gardening better than he understood it; was always shifting
his plants, and destroying the seeds, out of impatience to see them
germinate. He was rejoicing once on the coming up of some "capers," which
he had been visiting every day to see how they got on, when it turned out
that his capers were elder-trees!
He was perpetually altering his verses. His manuscripts are full of
corrections. He wrote the exordium of the _Orlando_ over and over again;
and at last could only be satisfied with it in proportion as it was not
his own; that is to say, in proportion as it came nearer to the beautiful
passage in Dante from which his ear and his feelings had caught it.[33]
He, however, discovered that correction was not always improvement. He
used to say, it was with verses as with trees. A plant naturally well
growing might be made perfect by a little delicate treatment; but
over-cultivation destroyed its native grace. In like manner, you might
perfect a happily-inspired verse by taking away any little fault of
expression; but too great a polish deprived it of the charm of the first
conception. It was like over-training a naturally graceful child. If it
be wondered how he who corrected so much should succeed so well, even to
an appearance of happy negligence, it is to be considered that the most
impulsive writers often put down their thoughts too hastily, then correct
and re-correct them in the same impatient manner; and so have to bring
them round, by as many steps, to the feeling which they really had at
first, though they were too hasty to do it justice.
Ariosto would have altered his house as often as his verses, but did not
find it so convenient. Somebody wondering that he contented himself with
so small an abode, when he built such magnificent mansions in his poetry,
he said it was easier to put words together than blocks of stone.[34]
He liked Virgil; commended the style of Tibullus; did not care for
Propertius; but expressed high approbation of Catullus and Horace. I
suspect his favourite to have been Ovid. His son says he did not study
much, nor look after books; but this may have been in his decline, or
when Virginio first took to observing him. A different conclusion as to
study is to be drawn from the corrected state of his manuscripts, and the
variety of his knowledge; and with regard to books, he not only mentions
the library of the Vatican as one of his greatest temptations to visit
Rome, but describes himself, with all the gusto of a book-worm, as
enjoying them in his chimney-corner.[35]
To intimate his secrecy in love-matters, he had an inkstand with a
Cupid on it, holding a finger on his lips. I believe it is still in
existence.[36] He did not disclose his mistresses' names, as Dante did,
for the purpose of treating them with contempt; nor, on the other hand,
does he appear to have been so indiscriminately gallant as to be fond of
goitres.[37] The only mistress of whom he complained he concealed in a
Latin appellation; and of her he did not complain with scorn. He had
loved, besides Alessandra Benucci, a lady of the name of Ginevra; the
mother of one of his children is recorded as a certain Orsolina; and that
of the other was named Maria, and is understood to have been a governess
in his father's family.[38]
He ate fast, and of whatever was next him, often beginning with the bread
on the table before the dishes came; and he would finish his dinner with
another bit of bread. "Appetiva le rape," says his good son; videlicet,
he was fond of turnips. In his fourth Satire, he mentions as a favourite
dish, turnips seasoned with vinegar and boiled _must_ (sapa), which
seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi.[39] He cared so little
for good eating, that he said of himself, he should have done very well
in the days when people lived on acorns.
A stranger coming in one day at the dinner-hour, he ate up what was
provided for both; saying afterwards, when told of it, that the gentleman
should have taken care of himself. This does not look very polite; but of
course it was said in jest. His son attributed this carelessness at table
to absorption in his studies.
He carried this absence of mind so far, and was at the same time so good
a pedestrian, that Virginio tells us he once walked all the way from
Carpi to Ferrara in his slippers, owing to his having strolled out of
doors in that direction.
The same biographers who describe him as a brave soldier, add, that he
was a timid horseman and seaman; and indeed he appears to have eschewed
every kind of unnecessary danger. It was a maxim of his, to be the last
in going out of a boat. I know not what Orlando would have said to this;
but there is no doubt that the good son and brother avoided no pain in
pursuit of his duty. He more than once risked his life in the service of
government from the perils of travelling among war-makers and banditti.
Imagination finds something worthy of itself on great occasions, but is
apt to discover the absurdity of staking existence on small ones. Ariosto
did not care to travel out of Italy. He preferred, he says, going round
the earth in a map; visiting countries without having to pay innkeepers,
and ploughing harmless seas without thunder and lightning[40].
His outward religion, like the one he ascribed to his friend Cardinal
Bembo, was "that of other people." He did not think it of use to disturb
their belief; yet excused rather than blamed Luther, attributing his
heresy to the necessary consequences of mooting points too subtle for
human apprehension[41]. He found it impossible, however, to restrain his
contempt of bigotry; and, like most great writers in Catholic countries,
was a derider of the pretensions of devotees, and the discords and
hypocrisies of the convent. He evidently laughed at Dante's figments
about the other world; not at the poetry of them, for that he admired,
and sometimes imitated, but at the superstition and presumption. He
turned the Florentine's moon into a depository of non-sense; and found no
hell so bad as the hearts of tyrants. The only other people he put into
the infernal regions are ladies who were cruel to their lovers! He had
a noble confidence in the intentions of his Creator; and died ill the
expectation of meeting his friends again in a higher state of existence.
Of Ariosto's four brothers, one became a courtier at Naples, another a
clergyman, another an envoy to the Emperor Charles the Fifth; and the
fourth, who was a cripple and a scholar, lived with Lodovico, and
celebrated his memory. His two sons, whose names were Virginio and
Gianbattista, and who were illegitimate (the reader is always to bear
in mind the more indulgent customs of Italy in matters of this nature,
especially in the poet's time), became, the first a canon in the
cathedral of Ferrara, and the other an officer in the army. It does not
appear that he had any other children.
Ariosto's renown is wholly founded on the _Orlando Furioso_, though he
wrote satires, comedies, and a good deal of miscellaneous poetry, all
occasionally exhibiting a master-hand. The comedies, however, were
unfortunately modelled on those of the ancients; and the constant
termination of the verse with trisyllables contributes to render them
tedious. What comedies might he not have written, had he given himself up
to existing times and manners[42]!
The satires are rather good-natured epistles to his friends, written with
a charming ease and straightforwardness, and containing much exquisite
sense and interesting autobiography.
On his lyrical poetry he set little value; and his Latin verse is not of
the best order. Critics have expressed their surprise at its inferiority
to that of contemporaries inferior to him in genius; but the reason lay
in the very circumstance. I mean, that his large and liberal inspiration
could only find its proper vent in his own language; he could not be
content with potting up little delicacies in old-fashioned vessels.
The _Orlando Furioso_ is, literally, a continuation of the _Orlando
Innamorato_; so much so, that the story is not thoroughly intelligible
without it. This was probably the reason of a circumstance that would be
otherwise unaccountable, and that was ridiculously charged against him as
a proof of despairing envy by the despairing envy of Sperone; namely, his
never having once mentioned the name of his predecessor. If Ariosto had
despaired of equalling Boiardo, he must have been hopeless of reaching
posterity, in which case his silence must have been useless; and, in
any case, it is clear that he looked on himself as the continuator of
another's narration. But Boiardo was so popular when he wrote, that
the very silence shews he must have thought the mention of his name
superfluous. Still it is curious that he never should have alluded to it
in the course of the poem. It could not have been from any dislike to the
name itself, or the family; for in his Latin poems he has eulogised the
hospitality of the house of Boiardo[43].
The _Furioso_ continued not only what Boiardo did, but what he intended
to do; for as its subject is Orlando's love, and knight-errantry in
general, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it from
its fabulous ancestor Ruggiero. Orlando is the open, Ruggiero the covert
hero; and almost all the incidents of this supposed irregular poem,
which, as Panizzi has shewn, is one of the most regular in the world, go
to crown with triumph and wedlock the originator of that unworthy race.
This is done on the old groundwork of Charlemagne and his Paladins, of
the treacheries of the house of Gan of Maganza, and of the wars of the
Saracens against Christendom. Bradamante, the Amazonian _intended_ of
Ruggiero, is of the same race as Orlando, and a great overthrower of
infidels. Ruggiero begins with being an infidel himself, and is kept from
the wars, like a second Achilles, by the devices of an anxious guardian,
but ultimately fights, is converted, and marries; and Orlando all the
while slays his thousands, as of old, loves, goes mad for jealousy, is
the foolishest and wisest of mankind (somewhat like the poet himself);
and crowns the glory of Ruggiero, not only by being present at his
marriage, but putting on his spurs with his own hand when he goes forth
to conclude the war by the death of the king of Algiers.
The great charm, however, of the _Orlando Furioso_ is not in its
knight-errantry, or its main plot, or the cunning interweavement of its
minor ones, but in its endless variety, truth, force, and animal spirits;
in its fidelity to actual nature while it keeps within the bounds of the
probable, and its no less enchanting verisimilitude during its wildest
sallies of imagination. At one moment we are in the midst of flesh and
blood like ourselves; at the next with fairies and goblins; at the next
in a tremendous battle or tempest; then in one of the loveliest of
solitudes; then hearing a tragedy, then a comedy; then mystified in some
enchanted palace; then riding, dancing, dining, looking at pictures; then
again descending to the depths of the earth, or soaring to the moon, or
seeing lovers in a glade, or witnessing the extravagances of the great
jealous hero Orlando; and the music of an enchanting style perpetually
attends us, and the sweet face of Angelica glances here and there like
a bud: and there are gallantries of all kinds, and stories endless, and
honest tears, and joyous bursts of laughter, and beardings for all base
opinions, and no bigotry, and reverence for whatsoever is venerable,
and candour exquisite, and the happy interwoven names of "Angelica and
Medoro," young for ever.
But so great a work is not to be dismissed with a mere rhapsody of
panegyric. Ariosto is inferior, in some remarkable respects, to his
predecessors Pulci and Boiardo. His characters, for the most part, do not
interest us as much as theirs by their variety and good fellowship; he
invented none as Boiardo did, with the exception, indeed, of Orlando's,
as modified by jealousy; and he has no passage, I thick, equal in pathos
to that of the struggle at Roncesvalles; for though Orlando's jealousy
is pathetic, as well as appalling, the effects of it are confined to one
person, and disputed by his excessive strength. Ariosto has taken all
tenderness out of Angelica, except that of a kind of boarding-school
first love (which, however, as here-after intimated, may have simplified
and improved her general effect), and he has omitted all that was amusing
in the character of Astolfo. Knight-errantry has fallen off a little
in his hands from its first youthful and trusting freshness; more
sophisticate times are opening upon us; and satire more frequently and
bitterly interferes. The licentious passages (though never gross in
words, like those of his contemporaries,) are not redeemed by sentiment
as in Boiardo; and it seems to me, that Ariosto hardly improved so much
as he might have done Upon his predecessor's imitations of the classics.
I cannot help thinking that, upon the whole, he had better have left them
alone, and depended entirely on himself. Shelley says, he has too much
fighting and "revenge,"[44]--which is true; but the revenge was only
among his knights. He was himself (like my admirable friend) one of the
most forgiving of men; and the fighting was the taste of the age, in
which chivalry was still flourishing in the shape of such men as Bayard,
and ferocity in men like Gaston de Foix. Ariosto certainly did not
anticipate, any more than Shakspeare did, that spirit of human
amelioration which has ennobled the present age. He thought only of
reflecting nature as he found it. He is sometimes even as uninteresting
as he found other people; but the tiresome passages, thank God, all
belong to the house of Este! His panegyrics of Ippolito and his ancestors
recoiled on the poet with a retributive dulness.
But in all the rest there is a wonderful invigoration and enlargement.
The genius of romance has increased to an extraordinary degree in power,
if not in simplicity. Its shoulders have grown broader, its voice louder
and more sustained; and if it has lost a little on the sentimental side,
it has gained prodigiously, not only in animal vigour, but, above all, in
knowledge of human nature, and a brave and joyous candour in shewing it.
The poet takes a universal, an acute, and, upon the whole, a cheerful
view, like the sun itself, of all which the sun looks on; and readers are
charmed to see a knowledge at once so keen and so happy. Herein lies the
secret of Ariosto's greatness; which is great, not because it has the
intensity of Dante, or the incessant thought and passion of Shakspeare,
or the dignified imagination of Milton, to all of whom he is far inferior
in sustained excellence,--but because he is like very Nature herself.
Whether great, small, serious, pleasureable, or even indifferent, he
still has the life, ease, and beauty of the operations of the daily
planet. Even where he seems dull and common-place, his brightness and
originality at other times make it look like a good-natured condescension
to our own common habits of thought and discourse; as though he did it
but on purpose to leave nothing unsaid that could bring him within the
category of ourselves. His charming manner intimates that, instead of
taking thought, he chooses to take pleasure with us, and compare old
notes; and we are delighted that he does us so much honour, and makes, as
it were, Ariostos of us all. He is Shakspearian in going all lengths with
Nature as he found her, not blinking the fact of evil, yet finding a
"soul of goodness" in it, and, at the same time, never compromising the
worth of noble and generous qualities. His young and handsome Medoro is a
pitiless slayer of his enemies; but they were his master's enemies, and
he would have lost his life, even to preserve his dead body. His Orlando,
for all his wisdom and greatness, runs mad for love of a coquette, who
triumphs over warriors and kings, only to fall in love herself with an
obscure lad. His kings laugh with all their hearts, like common people;
his mourners weep like such unaffected children of sorrow, that they must
needs "swallow some of their tears."[45] His heroes, on the arrival of
intelligence that excites them, leap out of bed and write letters before
they dress, from natural impatience, thinking nothing of their "dignity."
When Astolfo blows the magic horn which drives every body out of the
castle of Atlantes, "not a mouse" stays behind;--not, as Hoole and such
critics think, because the poet is here writing ludicrously, but because
he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as
Shakspeare in _Hamlet_ does to give that of silence, when "not a mouse is
stirring." Instead of being mere comic writing, such incidents are in the
highest epic taste of the meeting of extremes,--of the impartial eye with
which Nature regards high and low. So, give Ariosto his hippogriff, and
other marvels with which he has enriched the stock of romance, and Nature
takes as much care of the verisimilitude of their actions, as if she had
made them herself. His hippogriff returns, like a common horse, to the
stable to which he has been accustomed. His enchanter, who is gifted with
the power of surviving decapitation and pursuing the decapitator so long
as a fated hair remains on his head, turns deadly pale in the face when
it is scalped, and falls lifeless from his horse. His truth, indeed, is
so genuine, and at the same time his style is so unaffected, sometimes so
familiar in its grace, and sets us so much at ease in his company, that
the familiarity is in danger of bringing him into contempt with the
inexperienced, and the truth of being considered old and obvious, because
the mode of its introduction makes it seem an old acquaintance. When
Voltaire was a young man, and (to Anglicise a favourite Gallic phrase)
fancied he had _profounded_ every thing deep and knowing, he thought
nothing of Ariosto. Some years afterwards he took him for the first of
grotesque writers, but nothing more. At last he pronounced him equally
"entertaining and sublime, and humbly apologised for his error." Foscolo
quotes this passage from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; and adds
another from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which the painter speaks of a
similar inability on his own part, when young, to enjoy the perfect
nature of Raphael, and the admiration and astonishment which, in his
riper years, he grew to feel for it.[46]
The excessive "wildness" attributed to Ariosto is not wilder than
many things in Homer, or even than some things in Virgil (such as the
transformation of ships into sea-nymphs). The reason why it has been
thought so is, that he rendered them more popular by mixing them with
satire, and thus brought them more universally into notice. One main
secret of the delight they give us is their being poetical comments,
as it were, on fancies and metaphors of our own. Thus, we say of
a suspicious man, that he is suspicion itself; Ariosto turns him
accordingly into an actual being of that name. We speak of the flights of
the poets; Ariosto makes them literally flights--flights on a hippogriff,
and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he
accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty;
therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient
defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and
Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive
bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; so Angelica,
queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and
marries a common soldier.