Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
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And what a creature is this Angelica! what effect has she not had upon
the world in spite of all her faults, nay, probably by very reason of
them! I know not whether it has been remarked before, but it appears to
me, that the charm which every body has felt in the story of Angelica
consists mainly in that very fact of her being nothing but a beauty and
a woman, dashed even with coquetry, which renders her so inferior in
character to most heroines of romance. Her interest is founded on nothing
exclusive or prejudiced. It is not addressed to any special class. She
might or might not have been liked by this person or that; but the world
in general will adore her, because nature has made them to adore beauty
and the sex, apart from prejudices right or wrong. Youth will attribute
virtues to her, whether she has them or not; middle-age be unable to help
gazing on her; old-age dote on her. She is womankind itself, in form and
substance; and that is a stronger thing, for the most part, than all our
figments about it. Two musical names, "Angelica and Medoro," have become
identified in the minds of poetical readers with the honeymoon of
youthful passion.
The only false acid insipid fiction I can call to mind in the _Orlando
Furioso_ is that of the "swans" who rescue "medals" from the river of
oblivion (canto xxxv.). It betrays a singular forgetfulness of the poet's
wonted verisimilitude; for what metaphor can reconcile us to swans taking
an interest in medals? Popular belief had made them singers; but it was
not a wise step to convert them into antiquaries.
Ariosto's animal spirits, and the brilliant hurry and abundance of his
incidents, blind a careless reader to his endless particular beauties,
which, though he may too often "describe instead of paint" (on account,
as Foscolo says, of his writing to the many), spew that no man could
paint better when he chose. The bosoms of his females "come and go, like
the waves on the sea-coast in summer airs."[47] His witches draw the fish
out of the water
"With simple words and a pure warbled spell."[48]
He borrows the word "painting" itself,--like a true Italian and friend
of Raphael and Titian, to express the commiseration in the faces of the
blest for the sufferings of mortality
"Dipinte di pietade il viso pio."[49]
Their pious looks painted with tenderness.
Jesus is very finely called, in the same passage, "il sempiterno Amante,"
the eternal Lover. The female sex are the
"Schiera gentil the pur adorna il mondo."[50]
The gentle bevy that adorns the world.
He paints cabinet-pictures like Spenser, in isolated stanzas, with a
pencil at once solid and light; as in the instance of the charming one
that tells the story of Mercury and his net; how he watched the Goddess
of Flowers as she issued forth at dawn with her lap full of roses and
violets, and so threw the net over her "one day," and "took her;"
"un di lo prese[51]."
But he does not confine himself to these gentle pictures. He has many
as strong as Michael Angelo, some as intense as Dante. He paints the
conquest of America in five words
"Veggio da diece cacciar mille."[52]
I see thousands
Hunted by tens.
He compares the noise of a tremendous battle heard in the neighbourhood
to the sound of the cataracts of the Nile:
"un alto suon ch' a quel s' accorda
Con che i vicin' cadendo il Nil assorda."[53]
He "scourges" ships at sea with tempests--say rather the "miserable
seamen;" while night-time grows blacker and blacker on the "exasperated
waters."[54]
When Rodomont has plunged into the thick of Paris, and is carrying every
thing before him ("like a serpent that has newly cast his skin, and
goes shaking his three tongues under his eyes of fire"), he makes this
tremendous hero break the middle of the palace-gate into a huge "window,"
and look through it with a countenance which is suddenly beheld by a
crowd of faces as pale as death:
"E dentro fatto l' ha tanta finestra,
Che ben vedere e veduto esser puote
Dai visi impressi di color di morte[55]."
The whole description of Orlando's jealousy and growing madness is
Shakspearian for passion and circumstance, as the reader may see even
in the prose abstract of it in this volume; and his sublimation of a
suspicious king into suspicion itself (which it also contains) is as
grandly and felicitously audacious as any thing ever invented by poet.
Spenser thought so; and has imitated and emulated it in one of his own
finest passages. Ariosto has not the spleen and gall of Dante, and
therefore his satire is not so tremendous; yet it is very exquisite, as
all the world have acknowledged in the instances of the lost things found
in the moon, and the angel who finds Discord in a convent. He does not
take things so much to heart as Chaucer. He has nothing so profoundly
pathetic as our great poet's _Griselda_. Yet many a gentle eye has
moistened at the conclusion of the story of Isabella; and to recur once
more to Orlando's jealousy, all who have experienced that passion will
feel it shake them. I have read somewhere of a visit paid to Voltaire by
an Italian gentleman, who recited it to him, and who (being moved perhaps
by the recollection of some passage in his own history) had the tears all
the while pouring down his cheeks.
Such is the poem which the gracious and good Cardinal Ippolito designated
as a "parcel of trumpery." It had, indeed, to contend with more slights
than his. Like all originals, it was obliged to wait for the death of
the envious and the self-loving, before it acquired a popularity which
surpassed all precedent. Foscolo says, that Macchiavelli and Ariosto,
"the two writers of that age who really possessed most excellence, were
the least praised during their lives. Bembo was approached in a posture
of adoration and fear; the infamous Aretino extorted a fulsome letter of
praises from the great and the learned[56]." He might have added, that
the writer most in request "in the circles" was a gentleman of the name
of Bernardo Accolti, then called the _Unique_, now never heard of.
Ariosto himself eulogised him among a shoal of writers, half of whose
names have perished; and who most likely included in that half the men
who thought he did not praise them enough. For such was the fact! I
allude to the charming invention in his last canto, in which he supposes
himself welcomed home after a long voyage. Gay imitated it very
pleasantly in an address to Pope on the conclusion of his Homer. Some of
the persons thus honoured by Ariosto were vexed, it is said, at not being
praised highly enough; others at seeing so many praised in their company;
some at being left out of the list; and some others at being mentioned at
all! These silly people thought it taking too great a liberty! The poor
flies of a day did not know that a god had taken them in hand to give
them wings for eternity. Happily for them the names of most of these
mighty personages are not known. One or two, however, took care to make
posterity laugh. Trissino, a very great man in his day, and the would-be
restorer of the ancient epic, had the face, in return for the poet's
too honourable mention of him, to speak, in his own absurd verses, of
"Ariosto, with that _Furioso_ of his, which pleases the vulgar:"
"L' Ariosto
Con quel _Furioso_ suo the piace al volgo."
"_His_ poem," adds Panizzi, "has the merit of not having pleased any
body[57]." A sullen critic, Sperone (the same that afterwards plagued
Tasso), was so disappointed at being left out, that he became the poet's
bitter enemy. He talked of Ariosto taking himself for a swan and "dying
like a goose" (the allusion was to the fragment he left called the _Five
Cantos_). What has become of the swan Sperone? Bernardo Tasso, Torquato's
father, made a more reasonable (but which turned out to be an unfounded)
complaint, that Ariosto had established a precedent which poets would
find inconvenient. And Macchiavelli, like the true genius he was,
expressed a good-natured and flattering regret that his friend Ariosto
had left him out of his list of congratulators, in a work which was "fine
throughout," and in some places "wonderful[58]."
The great Galileo knew Ariosto nearly by heart[59].
He is a poet whom it may require a certain amount of animal spirits to
relish thoroughly. The _air_ of his verse must agree with you before you
can perceive all its freshness and vitality. But if read with any thing
like Italian sympathy, with allowance for times and manners, and with a
_sense_ as well as _admittance_ of the different kinds of the beautiful
in poetry (two very different things), you will be almost as much charmed
with the "divine Ariosto" as his countrymen have been for ages.
[Footnote 1: The materials for this notice have been chiefly collected
from the poet's own writings (rich in autobiographical intimation)
and from his latest editor Panizzi. I was unable to see this writer's
principal authority, Baruffaldi, till I corrected the proofs and the
press was waiting; otherwise I might have added two or three more
particulars, not, however, of any great consequence. Panizzi is, as
usual, copious and to the purpose; and has, for the first time I believe,
critically proved the regularity and connectedness of Ariosto's plots,
as well as the hollowness of the pretensions of the house of Este to be
considered patrons of literature. It is only a pity that his _Life
of Ariosto is_ not better arranged. I have, of course, drawn my own
conclusions respecting particulars, and sometimes have thought I had
reason to differ with those who have preceded me; but not, I hope, with a
presumption unbecoming a foreigner.]
[Footnote 2: See in his Latin poems the lines beginning, "Haec me
verbosas suasit perdiscere leges."
_De Diversis Amoribus._]
[Footnote 3:
"Mio padre mi caccio con spiedi e lancie," &c.
_Satira_ vi.
There is some appearance of contradiction in this passage and the one
referred to in the preceding note; but I think the conclusion in the test
the probable one, and that he was not compelled to study the law in the
first instance. He speaks more than once of his father's memory with
great tenderness, particularly in the lines on his death, entitled _De
Nicolao Areosto_.]
[Footnote 4: His brother Gabriel expressly mentions it in his prologue to
the _Scholastica_.]
[Footnote 5:
"Gia mi fur dolci inviti," &c.
_Satira_ v.]
[Footnote 6: See, in the present volume, the beginning of _Astolfo's
Journey to the Moon_.]
[Footnote 7:
"Me potius fugiat, nullis mollita querelis,
Dum simulet reliquos Lydia dura procos.
Parte carere omni malo, quam admittere quemquam
In partem. Cupiat Juppiter ipse, negem."
_Ad Petrum Bembum._]
[Footnote 8: Panizzi, on the authority of Guicciardini and others. Giulio
and another brother (Ferrante) afterwards conspired against Alfonso and
Ippolito, and, on the failure of their enterprise, were sentenced to be
imprisoned for life. Ferrante died in confinement at the expiration of
thirty-four years; Giulio, at the end of fifty-three, was pardoned. He
came out of prison on horseback, dressed according to the fashion of the
time when he was arrested, and "greatly excited the curiosity of the
people."--_Idem_, vol. i. p xii.]
[Footnote 9:
"Che debbo fare io qui?
Agli usatti, agli spron (perch'io son grande)
Non mi posso adattar, per porne o trarne."
_Satira_ ii.]
[Footnote 10: "Per la lettera de la S.V. Reverendiss. et a bocha da Ms.
Ludovico Ariosto ho inteso quanta leticia ha conceputa del felice parto
mio: il che mi e stato summamente grato, cussi lo ringrazio de la
visitazione, et particolarmente di havermi mandato il dicto Ms. Ludovico,
per che ultra che mi sia stato acetto, representando la persona de
la S.V. Reverendiss. lui anche per conto suo mi ha addutta gran
satisfazione, havendomi cum la narratione de l'opera the compone facto
passar questi due giorni non solum senza fastidio, ma cum piacer
grandissimo."--Tiraboschi, _Storia della Poesia Italiana_, Matthias'
edition, vol. iii. p. 197.]
[Footnote 11: _Orlando Furioso_, canto xxix, st. 29.]
[Footnote 12: See the horrible account of the suffocated Vicentine
Grottoes, in Sismondi, _Histoire des Republiques Italiennes_, &c vol. iv.
p. 48.]
[Footnote 13:
"Piegossi a me dalla beata sede;
La mano e poi le gote ambe mi prese,
E il santo bacio in amendue mi diede.
Di mezza quella bolla anco cortese
Mi fu, della quale ora il mio Bibbiena
Espedito m'ha il resto alle mie spese.
Indi col seno e con la falda piena
Di speme, ma di pioggia molle e brutto,
La notte andai sin al Montone a cena." _Sat_. iv.]
[Footnote 14: See _canzone_ the first, "Non so s'io potro," &c. and the
_copitolo_ beginning "Della mia negra penna in fregio d'oro."]
[Footnote 15: _Histoire Litteraire_, &c. vol. iv. p. 335.]
[Footnote 16:
"Singularis tua et pervetus erga nos familiamque nostrum observantia,
egregiaque bonarum artium et litterarum doctrina, atque in studiis
mitioribus, praesertimque poetices elegans et praeclarum ingenium, jure
prope suo a nobis exposcere videntur, ut quae tibi usui futurae sint,
justa praesertim et honesta petenti, ea tibi liberaliter et gratiose
concedamus. Quamobrem," &c. . "On the same page," says Panizzi, "are
mentioned the privileges granted by the king of France, by the republic
of Venice, and other potentates;" so that authors, in those days, appear
to have been thought worthy of profiting by their labours, wherever they
contributed to the enjoyment of mankind.
Leo's privilege is the one that so long underwent the singular obloquy of
being a bull of excommunication against all who objected to the poem! a
misconception on the part of some ignorant man, or misrepresentation by
some malignant one, which affords a remarkable warning against taking
things on trust from one writer after another. Even Bayle (see the
article "Leo X." in his Dictionary) suffered his inclinations to blind
his vigilance.]
[Footnote 17:
"Apollo, tua merce, tua merce, santo
Collegio delle Muse, io non mi trovo
Tanto per voi, ch'io possa farmi un manto
E se 'l signor m'ha dato onde far novo
Ogni anno mi potrei piu d'un mantello,
Che mi abbia per voi dato, non approve.
Egli l' ha detto."
_Satira_ ii.]
[Footnote 18:
"Se avermi dato onde ogni quattro mesi
Ho venticinque scudi, ne si fermi,
Che molte volte non mi sien contesi,
Mi debbe incatenar, schiavo tenermi,
Obbligarmi ch'io sudi e tremi senza
Rispetto alcun, ch'io muoja o ch'io m'infermi,
Non gli lasciate aver questa credenza
Ditegli, che piu tosto ch'esser servo,
Torro la povertade in pazienza"
_Satira_ ii.]
[Footnote 19: Panizzi, vol. i. p. 29. The agreement itself is in
Baruffaldi.]
[Footnote 20: See the lines before quoted, beginning" Apollo, tua
merce."]
[Footnote 21: _Bibliographical Notices of Editions of
Ariosto_, prefixed to his first vol. p. 51.]
[Footnote 22:
"La novita del loco e stata tanta,
C' ho fatto come augel che muta gabbia,
Che molti giorni resta the non canta."
For the rest of the above particulars see the fifth satire, beginning
"Il vigesimo giorno di Febbraio." I quote the exordium, because these
compositions are differently numbered in different editions. The one I
generally use is that of Molini--_Poesie Varie di Lodovico Ariosto, con
Annotazioni_. Firenze, 12mo, 1824.]
[Footnote 23: _Italian Library_, p. 52. I quote Baretti, because he
speaks with a corresponding enthusiasm. He calls the incident "a very
rare proof of the irresistible powers of poetry, and a noble comment on
the fables of Orpheus and Amphion," &c. The words "noble comment" might
lead us to fancy that Johnson had made some such remark to him while
relating the story in Bolt Court. Nor is the former part of the sentence
unlike him: "A very rare proof, _sir_, of the irresistible powers of
poetry, and a noble comment," &c. Johnson, notwithstanding his classical
predilections, was likely to take much interest in Ariosto on account
of his universality and the heartiness of his passions. He had a secret
regard for "wildness" of all sorts, provided it came within any pale
of the sympathetic. He was also fond of romances of chivalry. On one
occasion he selected the history of Felixmarte of Hyrcania as his course
of reading during a visit.]
[Footnote 24: The deed of gift sets forth the interest which it becomes
princes and commanders to take in men of letters, particularly poets,
as heralds of their fame, and consequently the special fitness of the
illustrious and superexcellent poet Lodovico Ariosto for receiving from
Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto, the irrevocable sum of, &c. &c.
Panizzi has copied the substance of it from Baruffaldi, vol. i. p. 67.]
[Footnote 25: _Orlando Furioso_ canto xxxiii. st. 28.]
[Footnote 26:
"Inveni portum: spes et fortuna valete;
Sat me lusistis; Indite nune alios."
My port is found: adieu, ye freaks of chance;
The dance ye led me, now let others dance.]
[Footnote 27:
"The great Emathian conqueror bade spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
went to the ground," &c.]
[Footnote 28: This medal is inscribed "Ludovicus Ariost. Poet." and has
the bee-hive on the reverse, with the motto "Pro bono malum." Ariosto was
so fond of this device, that in his fragment called the _Five Cantos_ (c.
v. st. 26), the Paladin Rinaldo wears it embroidered on his mantle.]
[Footnote 29:
"Io son de' dieci il primo, e vecchio fatto
Di quaranta quattro anni, e il capo calvo
Da un tempo in qua sotto il cuffiotto appiatto."
_Satira_ ii.]
[Footnote 30:
"Il vin fumoso, a me vie piu interdetto
Che 'l tosco, costi a inviti si tracanna,
E sacrilegio e non ber molto, e schietto.
(He is speaking of the wines of Hungary, and of the hard drinking
expected of strangers in that country.)
Tutti li cibi son con pope e canna,
Di amomo e d' altri aromati, che tutti
Come nocivi il medico mi danna."
_Satira_ ii.]
[Footnote 31: Pigna, _I Romanzi_, p. 119.]
[Footnote 32: _Epicedium_ on his brother's death. It is reprinted
(perhaps for the first time since 1582) in Mr. Panizzi's Appendix to the
Life, in his first volume, p. clxi.]
[Footnote 33:
"Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, le audaci imprese, io canto,"
is Ariosto's commencement;
Ladies, and cavaliers, and loves, and arms,
And courtesies, and daring deeds, I sing.
In Dante's _Purgatory_ (canto xiv.), a noble Romagnese, lamenting the
degeneracy of his country, calls to mind with graceful and touching
regret,
"Le donne, i cavalier, gli affanni e gli agi,
Che inspiravano amore e cortesia."
The ladies and the knights, the cares and leisures,
Breathing around them love and courtesy.]
[Footnote 34: The original is much pithier, but I cannot find equivalents
for the alliteration. He said, "Porvi le pietre e porvi le parole non e
il medesimo."--_Pigna_, p. 119. According to his son, however, his remark
was, that "palaces could be made in poems without money." He probably
expressed the same thing in different ways to different people.]
[Footnote 35: Vide Sat. iii. "Mi sia un tempo," &c. and the passage in
Sat. vii. beginning "Di libri antiqui."]
[Footnote 36: The inkstand which Shelley saw at Ferrara (_Essays and
Letters_, p. 149) could not have been this; probably his eye was caught
by a wrong one. Doubts also, after what we know of the tricks practised
upon visitors of Stratford-upon-Avon, may unfortunately be entertained
of the "plain old wooden piece of furniture," the arm-chair. Shelley
describes the handwriting of Ariosto as "a small, firm, and pointed
character, expressing, as he should say, a strong and keen, but
circumscribed energy of mind." Every one of Shelley s words is always
worth consideration; but handwritings are surely equivocal testimonies
of character; they depend so much on education, on times and seasons and
moods, conscious and unconscious wills, &c. What would be said by an
autographist to the strange old, ungraceful, slovenly handwriting of
Shakspeare?]
[Footnote 37: See vol. i. of the present work, pp. 30, 202, and 216.]
[Footnote 38: Baruffaldi, 1807; p. 105.]
[Footnote 39:
"In casa mia mi sa meglio una rapa
Ch'io cuoca, e cotta s' un stecco m' inforco,
E mondo, e spargo poi di aceto e sapa,
Che all'altrui mensa tordo, starno, o porco
Selvaggio."]
[Footnote 40: "Chi vuole andare," &c. _Satira_ iv.]
[Footnote 41:
"Se Nicoletto o Fra Martin fan segno
D' infedele o d' cretico, ne accuso
Il saper troppo, e men con lor mi sdegno:
Perche salendo lo intelletto in suso
Per veder Dio, non de' parerci strano
Se talor cade giu cieco e confuso."
_Satira_ vi.
This satire was addressed to Bembo. The cardinal is said to have asked
a visitor from Germany whether Brother Martin really believed what he
preached; and to have expressed the greatest astonishment when told
that he did. Cardinals were then what augurs were in the time of
Cicero--wondering that they did not burst out a-laughing in one another's
faces. This was bad; but inquisitors are a million times worse. By the
Nicoletto here mentioned by Ariosto in company with Luther, we are to
understand (according to the conjecture of Molini) a Paduan professor of
the name of Niccolo Vernia, who was accused of holding the Pantheistic
opinions of Averroes.]
[Footnote 42: Take a specimen of this leap-frog versification from the
prologue to the _Cassaria_:--
"Questa commedia, ch'oggi _recitatavi_
Sara, se nol sapete, e la _Cassaria_,
Ch'un altra volta, gia vent'anni _passano_,
Veder si fece sopra questi _pulpiti_,
Ed allora assai piacque a tutto il _popolo_,
Ma non ne riposto gia degno _premio_,
Che data in preda a gl'importuni ed _avidi_
Stampator fu," &c.
This through five comedies in five acts!]
[Footnote 43: In the verses entitled _Bacchi Statua_.]
[Footnote 44: Essays and Letters, _ut sup._ vol. ii. p. 125.]
[Footnote 45:
"Le lacrime scendean tra gigli e rose,
La dove avvien ch' alcune se n' inghiozzi."
Canto xii. st. 94.
Which has been well translated by Mr. Rose
And between rose and lily, from her eyes
Tears fall so fast, she needs must swallow some."]
[Footnote 46: Essay on the _Narrative and Romantic Poems of the
Italians_, in the _Quarterly Review_, vol. xxi.]
[Footnote 47:
"Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte."
Canto vii. st. 14.]
[Footnote 48:
"Con semplici parole e puri incanti."
Canto vi. st. 38.]
[Footnote 49: Canto xiv. st. 79.]
[Footnote 50: Canto xxviii. st. 98.]
[Footnote 51: Canto XV. st. 57.]
[Footnote 52: _Id_. st. 23.]
[Footnote 53: Canto xvi. st. 56.]
[Footnote 54: Canto xviii. st. 142.]
[Footnote 55: Canto XVII. st. 12.]
[Footnote 56: _Essay_, as above, p.534.]
[Footnote 57: _Boiardo and Ariosto_, vol. iv. p. 318.]
[Footnote 58: _Life_, in Panizzi p. ix.]
[Footnote 59: _Opere di Galileo_, Padova, 1744, vol. i. p. lxxii.]
THE
ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA.
Argument.
PART I.--Angelica flies from the camp of Charlemagne into a wood, where
she meets with a number of her suitors. Description of a beautiful
natural bower. She claims the protection of Sacripant, who is overthrown,
in passing, by an unknown warrior that turns out to be a damsel. Rinaldo
comes up, and Angelica flies from both. She meets a pretended hermit, who
takes her to some rocks in the sea, and casts her asleep by magic. They
are seized and carried off by some mariners from the isle of Ebuda, where
she is exposed to be devoured by an orc, but is rescued by a knight on a
winged horse. He descends with her into a beautiful spot on the coast of
Brittany, but suddenly misses both horse and lady. He is lured, with the
other knights, into an enchanted palace, whither Angelica comes too. She
quits it, and again eludes her suitors.
PART II.--Cloridan and Medoro, two Moorish youths, after a battle with
the Christians, resolve to find the dead body of their master, King
Dardinel, and bury it. They kill many sleepers as they pass through the
enemy's camp, and then discover the body; but are surprised, and left for
dead themselves. Medoro, however, survives his friend, and is cured of
his wounds by Angelica, who happens to come up. She falls in love with
and marries him. Account of their honeymoon in the woods. They quit them
to set out for Cathay, and see a madman on the road.