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Index | pg. 68 |Previous Page - Next Page The whole description of ...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]. Index | pg. 68 |Previous Page - Next Page Italy Hotels - Italy Hostels - Italy Sights ................................................................ Other popular Italy book pages: Mythology: Apollo and Daphne Mythology: Prometheus and Pandora Mythology: Callisto Mythology: Venus and Adonis Mythology: Apollo and Hyacinthus Mythology: Cupid and Psyche Mythology: Nisus, Scylla, Echo Mythology: Sphinx Mythology: Pegasus,Chimera Mythology: Centaurs Online Italy Books Italian Renaissance Italian Recipes Italian Poetry Roman Mythology |
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Italy Travel Guide A good starting point for researching Italy for travel or reference. Venice - Piazza St. Marco (St. Mark's Square) Venice - Gondola along the Grand Canal Venice - Walking around Venice Streets Venice - Pictures from the Venice canals Venice - From the Train Station to St. Mark's 1 Venice - From the Train Station to St. Mark's 2 Ceasar's European Discovery Pictures. Italy Pg.1 Breathtaking Italy and France Ceasar's European Discovery Pictures. Italy Pg. 2 Florence and Venice Arno River in Florence Campania |
