Sll 



ARIOSTO, LDDOVICO. 



AUIOSTO, LUDOVICO. 



HI 



Ulcr in life. On the death of his f.tl.cr, about the year 1500. he found 

 himself charged with UM guardianship of liu younger brothers ami 

 Barters, and the manafwnent of a very moderate patrimony a tank 

 which be entered on with brotherly affection, and which he fulfilled 

 with integrity. Some lyric compositions, written at this time, attracted 

 the notice of Cardinal Ippolito d'E.te. younger con of Heroulw I., and 

 brother to Alfonso, the heir to the ducal crown of Ferrara. The 

 cardinal in 1503 appointed Arioeto one of the gentlemen of his retinue, 

 and employed him in important affitira and mission, both for himself 

 and for hU brother Alfoneo, whole father had died in 1505. Alfonso 

 baring joined in IfiM the famous league of Cambray againat the 

 Venetian rrpublie. Cardinal Ippolito took the command of hi. brother's 

 troops, and Arionto was present at the campaign of that year on the 

 banks of the Lower Po, the atrocities of which, perpetrated chiefly by 

 the Slaronian mercenaries in the eerrice of Venice, he feelingly 

 describee at the beginning of the thirty sixth canto of his great poem. 

 In December of the same year he was sent on a mission to Rome to 

 request the assistance of Julius II. againut the Venetians, but the Pope 

 had already changed his mind, and become jealous of his French and 

 German allies. Cardinal Ippolito however in the meantime defeated 

 the Venetian', and destroyed their flotilla on the Po, and the object of 

 Ariosto's miion of course ceased. 



' Rnggiero, a young Saracen knight born of Christian parents, and 

 rtdamante, a ChrUlian Amazon, and Umaldo's sister. After nume- 

 rous adventures, crosses, and narrow escapes, he makes them marry in 

 le last or forty-sixth canto of the poem ; and from their union he 

 erives the genealogy of the house of Este. 



Intermixed with these three subjects, or tales, are numerous and 



some long episodes of knights and damsels, of their fights and loves, 



f their strange adventures, some heroic, some ludicrous, and others 



tathetic ; there are magicians and giants, enchanted palaces and 



ardena, flying horses and harpies, and other monsters ; and the reader 



Indi himself in the midst of a new world, created as it were by the 



From a bronte Italian medal in the British Museum. 



The following year, 1510, Pope Julius, having openly joined the 

 Venetians against his former allies, excommunicated the Duke of 

 Kerrara for refusing to follow his example, and assembled an army in 

 the Komagna to attack Alfonso's territories. Arioeto was now sent 

 again to deprecate the wrath of the pontiff, but the reception he met 

 with induced him to make a hasty escape from Rome. The war con- 

 tinued till the death of Julius, in the beginning of 1513, delivered 

 Alfonso from his bitterest enemy. Cardinal Giovanni do' Medici being 

 raised to the pontifical throne by the name of Leo X., Ariosto went to 

 Borne to congratulate the new pope, whom he had known at Florence 

 and at Urbino. He was received most graciously by the pope ; but 

 becoming tired of waiting for some more substantial mark of friend 

 ship, Ariorto left Borne, and returned to Ferrara to resume his studies. 

 He had long before this begun a poem, in ottava rima, on the fabulous 

 adventures of the knighU and paladins, Moors and Christiana, o 

 Charlemagne's age an inexhaustible theme, which had occupied the 

 pens of many Spanuh, French, and Italian ballad and romance 

 writers. 



In Italy, Pulci, Bojardo, and Bello had each written a poem on tin 

 wars between Charlemagne and the Saracens, which tradition had con 

 founded with the previous wars of Charles Mattel i>nd Pepin, and in 

 which Orlando, or Koland, appeared as a prominent character, and the 

 champion of the Christiana, Bojardo took Orlando for the hero of his 

 poem, and made him fall in love with Angelica, an infidel princess, o 

 exquisite beauty and of consummate coquetry, who had come all the 

 way from Asia for the purpose of sowing dissension among the Chris- 

 tian knights. Bojardo introduced numerous episodes into his narrative 

 in the midst of which he broke off the story of Angelica, in the fiftieth 

 canto of bis ' Orlando Innamorato,' and never resumed it, although h 

 had carried his poem to the sixty-ninth canto at the time of his 

 death. Ariosto took up the thread of Angelica's story where Bojardo 

 had left it, and making the jilt fall in love herself with Medoro, an 

 obscure youthful squire, be represents Orlando as driven mad b 

 jealousy and indignation : he continues in this state during the greate 

 part of the poem, committing a thousand absurdities, until he is 

 restored to reason by Astolfo, who brings back his wite in a phial from 

 the moon. Orlando's madness however is rather terrific and lamen< 

 able than ludicrous ; for the poet, often jovial and humorous in hi 

 episodes, never loses) sight of the dignity of bis narrative, nor descend 

 to the low buriesqur. But the madness of Orlando is not the prin 

 eipal subject of the poem, although it has furnished the name for it 

 the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens is continued through 

 out the narrative, of which it forms a most important and consecutiv 

 action, ending with the expulsion of the Moors from France, and th 

 subsequent death of their king Agramante and their other chief 

 The poet has interwoven with these a third subject, which som 

 critic*, wbo are determined to find a unity of action in a poem whic 

 it nut an epic, have assumed to be the principal one, namely, the loves 



wand of an enchanter. The poet has the art of sketching and parti- 

 ularisiug every creature of his fancy with features and attributes so 

 pparenuy appropriate and consistent with their supposed nature, as 

 o remove the feeling of their improbability. He appears himself 

 eeply interested in his fantastic creation, and at times so entangled 

 in bis own labyrinth, that he loses himself, as he ingenuously confesses, 

 and is obliged to break off in the midst of a most interesting story, to 

 run after some other personages, whom he left in a desert island, or 

 n a dangerous voyage, or on the eve of a mortal combat, and-to bring 

 Item again to the view of his readers. Yet he contrives to wind off 

 11 bis threads at last with admirable skill. It is not always an easy 

 hing to follow such a guide ; but we wander along from tale to tale, 

 rom description to description, delighted with the present and uncon- 

 scious of the ultimate object of our journey. Such is the ' Orlando 

 "urioso ' (as far as an idea of it can be given in a few words), the first 

 if all the poems of chivalry and romance. A knowledge of Bojardo's 

 Innamorato ' is however required for the proper understanding of 

 he ' Furioso.' 



Ariosto, after spending ten years in writing his poem, published it 

 n one volume quarto, at Ferrara, in April, 1516, in forty cantos, which 

 le afterwards increased to forty-six. He sold a hundred copies of it 

 to the bookseller Oigli of Ferrara for twenty-eight scudi, about fifteen 

 >cuce per copy, lie dedicated it to Cardinal Ippolito, who however 

 lad no taste for poetry ; he was a busy man of the world, and he told 

 Ariosto that " he would have felt better satisfied if, instead of praising 

 urn in idle verse, he had been more assiduous in his service." 

 Ariosto, ' Satira,' ii.) 



In 1517 the cardinal, being about to set off for Gran in Hungary, of 

 which he was archbishop, asked Arioeto to follow him there ; but the 

 poet excused himself on the plea of his health, which was very delicate. 

 His brother Aleesandro however accompanied the cardinal. Ariosto'H 

 refusal offended his patron, and gome time after his departure a small 

 [tension which he had allowed him was stopped. Cardinal Ippolito 

 :iad however proved himself a friend to Ariosto by many substantial 

 benefits. After the cardinal's death his brother the duke called Ariosto 

 to his own service, and through his munificence the poet was enabled 

 to build himself a house, surrounded by a pleasant garden, opposite 

 the church of San Benedetto, at Ferrara. In other respects also the 

 duke behaved to him with great kindness and liberality. In February 

 lii'^l Ariosto published a second edition of his poems with many cor- 

 rections, but still in forty cantos only; this edition is now extremely 

 rare, and even more so than the first. 



In 1522 Ariosto was appointed governor of the mountain district of 

 Qarfagnana, a dependency of Modena, situated on the western slope 

 of the Apennines, and bordering upon Lucca. Here he remained nearly 

 three years, during which he seems to have conciliated the minds of 

 the rude population, and to have restored order among them. Bring 

 once stopped in the mountains by a baud of robbers, his name and 

 reputation proved his protection ; the outlaws, on learning who he 

 was, showed him much respect, and offered to escort him wherever he 

 chose. In 1524 he returned from his government to Kerrara, where 

 it appears he remained ever after, nominally in the duke's service, but 

 enjoying leisure for his studies. He now wrote his comedies, which 

 were performed with great splendour before the court, in a theatre 

 which the duke built for the purpose. In October 1532 Ariosto, after 

 correcting and revising his poem for sixteen years, published the third 

 edition in forty-six cantos, which, in spite of some misprints of which 

 Ariosto bitterly complains, remains the legitimate text of the ' Orlando 

 Kurioso.' The apparent ease of Arioato's verse is the result of much 

 labour. Scarcely had Ariosto completed his third edition, when he 

 found himself grievously ill with a painful internal complaint; and 

 after lingering several months he died on the tith of June, I.IM, in 

 his fifty-ninth year. He was buried in the old church of San Bene- 

 detto, attended by the monks. Forty years later, alter the church had 

 been rebuilt, Agostino Mosti of Kerrara, who had studied uuder Ariosto, 

 r.iised a handsome monument to him in the chapel, which is to the 

 right of the great altar, to which spot the poet's bonus were transferred 

 with great solemnity. In 1012 Lodovico Ariosto, grand-nephew of the 

 poet, raised another monument to bis memory more magnificent than 

 the first, in the chapel to the left of the great altar, to which place 

 Ariosto's remains were finally removed. 



Besides the three Ferrara editions above-mentioned, printed nndi r 

 Arioato's superintendence, several reprints of his poem were published 

 in various parts of Italy in his lifetime. Numerous editions followed 

 after his death ; all however more or legs incorrect, aud some of them 

 purposely alterated and mutilated. The Aldi of 1 545, is 



one of the bnt of that age. The best modern edition of the ' Orlando 



