Cornell University Library PQ 4212.A5H94 1861 Italian poets translated in Englisi) pros 3 1924 027 439 201 a Cornell University f) Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027439201 J,RRic liAvL'^^^ f'(f.t,irs6j THE ITALIAN POETS TEANSLATBD INTO ENGLISH PEOSE. tJOSTAININS A SUMMARY IN PROSE OF THE POEMS OP S^ifjte, ?i|lci, ^oln'rh, BHogfo, ^nS J^^go. OOnZHTB, OCCASIONAI. PASSAGES TBRSIFIES, AMD ' CBITIOAL NOTICES 37 TBI LITISS AHD GBNIIIS OF THE ATITHOBS. LEIGH HUNT. NEW TOEK: H. W. DERBY, 625 BROADWAY. 1861. President White Library lO SIR PERCY SHELLEY, Baet. MT DEAR SIR PERCY. As I know no man who surpasses yourself in combining a love of the most romantic fiction with the coolest good sense, and, in passing from the dryest metaphysical questions to the heartiest en- joyment of humor, — I trust that even a modesty so true as yours will not grudge me the satisfaction of inscribing these volumes with your name. That you should possess such varieties of taste is no wonder, conr sidering what an abundance of intellectual honours you inherit; nor might the world have been the better for it, had they been tastes, and nothing more. But that you should inherit also that zeal for justice to mankind, which has become so Christian a feature in the character of the age, and that you should include in that zeal a special regard for the welfare of your Father's Friend, is a subject of constant pleasurable reflection to Tour obliged and affectionate LEIGH HUNT. PREFACE. The purpose of these volumes is, to add to the stock of tales from the Italian writers ; to retain at the same time as much of the poetry of the originals as it is in the power of the writer's prose to compass ; and to famish carefal bi- ographical notices of the authors. There have been several collections of stories 'from the novelists of Italy, but none from the poets ; and it struck me that prose versions from these, of the kind here offered to the public, might not be unwillingly received. The stories are selected from the five principal narrative poets, Dante, Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso ; they comprise the most popular of such as are fit for translation ; are reduced into one continuous narrative, when diffused and interrupted, as in the instances of those of An- gelica, and Armida ; are accompanied with critical and ex- planatory notes ; and, in the case of Dante, consist of an abstract of the poet's whole work. The volumes are fur- thermore interspersed with the most favourite morceaux of the originals, followed sometimes with attempts to versify them ; and in the Appendix, for the better satisfaction of the student, are given entire stories, also in the original, and occasionally rendered in like manner. The book is partic- ularly intended for such students or other lovers of the Ian- - guage as are pleased with any fresh endeavours to recom- viii PREFACE. mend it ; and, at the same time, for such purely English readers us wish to know something ahout Italian poetry, without having leisure to cultivate its acquaintance 1 did not intend in the first instance to depart from the plan of selection in the case of Dante ; but when I consid- ered what an extraordinary person he was, — ^how intense is every thiug which he says, — how widely he has re-attracted of late the attention of the world, — how williagly perhaps his poem might be regarded by the reader as being itself one contiaued story (which, in fact, it is), related personally of the writer, — and lastly, what a combination of dif&culties have prevented his best translators in verse from giving the public a just idea of his almost Scriptural simplicity — ^I be- gan to think that an abstract of his entire work might pos- sibly be looked upon as supplying something of a desidera- tum. I am aware that nothing but v&se can do perfect jus- tice to verse ; but besides the imperfections which are par- donable, because inevitable, in all such metrical endeavours, the desire to impress a grand and worshipful idea of Dante has been too apt to lead his translators into a tone and man- ner the reverse of his passionate, practical, and creative style — a style whieh may be said to write things instead of words ; and thus to render every word that is put out of its place, or brought in for help and filling up, a misrepresenta- tion. I do not mean to say, that he himself never does any thing of the sort, or does not occasionally assume too much of the oracle and the schoolmaster, in manner as well as matter ; but passion, and the absence of the superfluous, are the chief characteristics of his poetry. Fortunately, this sin- cerity of purpose and utterance in Dante, render him the least pervertible of poets in a sincere prose translation ; and, since I ventured on attempting one, I have had the pleasure PREFACE. a of meeting with an express recommendation of such a ver- sion" in an early number of the Edinburgh Review. The abstract of Dante, therefore, in these volumes (with every deprecation that becomes me of being supposed to pre- tend to give a thorough idea of any poetiy whatsoever, es- pecially without its metrical form) aspires to be regarded as, at all events, not exhibiting a false idea of the Dantesque spirit in point of feeling and expression. It is true, I have omitted long tedious lectures of scholastic divinity, and other learned absm'dities of the time, which are among the bars to the poem's being read through, even in Italy (which Foscolo tells us is never the case) ; and I have compressed the work in other passages not essentially necessary to the formation of a just idea of the author. But quite enough remains tc do so in every respect f and in no part of it have I made ad- ditions or alterations. There is warrant — I hope I may say letter — for every thing put down. Dante is the greatest poet for intensity that ever lived ; and he excites a correspond- ing emotion in his reader — I wish I could say, always on the poet's side ; but his ferocious hates and bigotries too oftei. tempt us to hate the bigot, and always compel us to taV part with the feUow-creatures whom he outrages. At leas' such is their effect on myself Such a man, however, is the last whom a reporter is inclined to misrepresent. We re- spect his sincerity too much, ferocious though it be ; and we hke to give him the full benefit of the recoil of his curses and maledictions. I hope I have not omitted one. On the other hand, as little have I closed my feehngs against tne lovely and enchanting sweetness which this great semi-bar bsrian sometimes so affectingly utters. On those occasion ' " It is probable that a prose translation would give a better idea of the g« Diiu and manner of this poet than any meHcal one." Vol. i. p. 310. 2 X •'REFACE. tie IS like an angel enclosed for penance in some furious gi- ant, and permitted to weep through the creature's eyes. The stories from goodnatured Pulci 1 have been obliged to compress for other reasons — chiefly their excessive diff use- ness. A paragraph of the version will sometimes comprise many pages. Those of Boiardo and Ariosto are more exact ; and the reader will be good enough to bear in mind, that no- thing is added to any of the poets, different as the case might seem here and there, on comparison with the originals. An equivalent for whatever is said is to be found in some part of the context — generally in letter, always in spirit. The least characteristically exact passages are, some in the love-scenea of Tasso ; for I have omitted the plays upon words and oth- er corruptions in style, in which that poet permitted himself to indulge. But I have noticed the circumstance in the com- ment. In other respects, I have endeavoured to make my version convey some idea of the different styles and genius of the writers, — of the severe passion of Dante, the overflow- ing gaiety and affecting sympathies of Pulci, several of whose passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles are masterpieces of pathos ; the romantic and inventive elegance of Boiardo ; the great cheerful universality of Ariosto, like a healthy anima mundi ; and the ambitious irritabiUty, the fairy imagination, and tender but somewhat effeminate voluptuousness of the poet of Armida and Rinaldo. I do not pretend that prose versions of passages from these writers can supersede the ne- cessity of metrical ones, supposing proper metrical ones at- tainable. They demand them more than Dante, the tone and manner in their case being of more importance to the effect. But with all due respect to such translators as Har- rington, Rose, and Wiffen, their books are not Ariosto and Tasso, even in manner. Harrington, the gay "godson" of PREFACE. xi Q,ueen Elizabeth, is not always unlike Ariosto ; but when not in good spirits he becomes as dull as if her majesty had frowned on him. Rose was a man of wit, and a scholar ; yet he has undoubtedly turned the ease and animation of his original into inversion and insipidity. And Wiffen, though elegant and even poetical, did an unfortunate thing for Tasso, when he gave an additional line and a number of paraphrastic thoughts to a stanza already tending to the superfluous. Fairfax himself, who upon the whole, and with regard to a work of any length, is the best metrical translator -^ur language has seen, and, like Chapman, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the sins of prettiness and conceit in his original, and added to them a love of tautology amount- ing to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below criticism ; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if 1 had no acquaintance with the Italian language, I confess I would rather get any friend who had to read to me a passage out of Dante, Tasso, or Ariosto, into the first simple prose that offered itself, than go to any of the above translators for a taste of it, Fairfax excepted ; and we have seen with how much allowance his sample would have to be taken. I have therefore, with some restrictions, only ventured to do for the public what I would have had a friend do for myself. The Critical and Biographical Notices I did not intend to make so long at first ; but the interest grew upon me ; and I hope the reader will regard some of them — Dante's and Tasso's in particular — as being "stories" themselves, after their kind, — " stories, alas, too true ;" " romances of real life." The extraordinary character of Dante, which ia personally mixed up with his writings beyond that of any other poet, has led me into references to his church and creed, unavoidable at any time in the endeavour to give a thorough kS preface. estimate of his genius, and singularly demanded by certain phenomena of the present day. I hold those phenomena to be alike absurd and fugitive ; but only so by reason of their being openly so proclaimed ; for mankind have a tendency to the absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed ; and one of the uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it to know its boundaries. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and the strange identi- fication of his knov^ledge with all that was knowable, would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was reversing the duty of a Christian and a great man ; and there happen to be existing reasons why it is salutary to shew that he had no right to do so, and must not have his barbarism confounded with his strength. Mach- iavelli was of opinion, that if Christianity had not reverted to its first principles, by means of the poverty and pious lives of St. Francis and St. Dominic,* the faith would have been lost. It may have been ; but such are not the secrets of its preservation in times of science and progression, when the spirit of inquiry has established itself among all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as it used to be. A few per- sons here and there, who confound a religious reaction in a corner with the reverse of the fact all over the rest of Eu- rope, may persuade themselves, if they please, that the world ♦ Discorsi sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio, lib. iii. cap. i. At p. 130 of lite present volume I have too hastily called St. Dominic " the founder of tha «oquisition." It is generally conceded, I believe, by candid Protestant in- quirers, that he was not, whatever zeal in the foundation and support of tlie wibunal may have been manifested by his order. But this does not acquit hire of the cruelty for which he has been praised by Dante : 1 e joined in tlie ma- gainary persecution of the Albigenses. PREFACE. lui has not advanced in knowledge for the last three centuries, and so get up and cry aloud to us out of obsolete horn-books ; but the community laugh at them. Every body else is in- quiring into first principles, while they are dogmatising on a forty-ninth proposition. The Irish themselves, as they ought to do, care more for their pastors than for the pope ; and if any body wishes to know what is thought of his holi- ness at head-quarters, let him consult the remarkable and admirable pamphlet which has lately issued from the pen of Mr. Mazzini.* I have the pleasure of knowing excellent Roman CathoUcs ; I have suffered in behalf of their eman- cipation, and would do so again to-morrow ; but I believe that if even their external form of Christianity has any chance of survival three hundred years hence, it wiU have been owing to the appearance meanwhile of some extraordi- nary man in power, who, in the teeth of worldly interests, or rather in charitable and sage inclusion of them, shall have proclaimed that the time had arrived for hving in the flower of Christian charity, instead of the husks and thorns which may have been necessary to guard it. If it were possible for some new and wonderful pope to make this change, and draw a hne between these two Christian epochs, like that between the Old and New Testaments; the world would feel inclined to prostrate itself again and for ever at the feet of Rome. In a catholic state of things Uke that, delighted should I be, for one, to be among the humblest of its com- municants. How beautiful would their organs be then ! how ascending to an unperplexing Heaven their incense ! * It is entitled, " Italy, Austria, and the Pope ;" and is fuU, not only of the eloquence of zeal, and of evidencss of intellectual power, but of the most curious and instructive information. rjT PREFACE. how unselfish their salvation ! how intelligible their talk about justice and love ! But if charity (and by charity I do not mean mere tolera- tion, or any other pretended right to permit others to have eyes like ourselves, but whatever the beautiful Greek word implies of good and lovely), if this truly and only divine con- summation of all Christian doctrine be not thought capable of taking a form of behef " strong" enough, Superstition must look out for some new mode of dictation altogether ; for the world is outgrowing the old. I cannot, in gratitude for the faciUties afforded to myself, as well as for a more obvious and public reason, dismiss thia Preface without congratulating men of letters on the estab- lishment and increasing prosperity of the London Library, an institution founded for the purpose of accommodating subscribers with such books, at their own homes, as could only be consulted hitherto at the British Museum. The sole objection to the Museum is thus done away, and the hterary world has a fair prospect of possessing two book-institutions instead of one, each with its distinct claims to regard, and pre- senting in combination all that the student can wish ; for while it is highly desirable that authors should be able to have standard works at their command, when sickness or other circumstances render it impossible for them to go to the Mu- seum, it is undoubtedly requisite that one great collection should exist in which they are sure to find the same works unremoved, in case of necessity, — not to mention curious vol- umes of all sorts, manuscripts, and a world f books of reference. CONTENTS. DANTE. n«i Criticai. Notice op Hia Life and Genids, . . .1 The Italian Pilgrim's Froqress, 45 Tlie Journey through Hell, ..•■•••• 47 The Journey through Purgatory, ...•«•< 89 The Journey through Heaven, ... • • . 131 PULCI. Critical Notice of his Life and Genius, . ... 167 Humours of Giants, 189 TseT Battle of Roncestalles, 207 BOIARDO. Critical Notice of his Life and GenidBi ..... 233 The Adventures of Angelica, . . .... 349 The Death of Agrican, 267 The Saracen Friends, 275 Seeing and Believing, 291 ARIOSTO. Critical Notice of his Life and Genius, . ... 299 The Adventures of Angelica, (continued,) . . . ■ 339 Part I.— Angelica and her Suitors, . ..... 339 II. — Angelica and Medoro* . . . 4 . . 350 ni.— The Jealousy of Orlando 360 Abtolfo's Journey to the Moon, 369 Ariodante and Oinevra 381 SusricioN, . . .' • 393 Isabella, ... 401 CONTENTS. TASSO. Critical No.tice jf his Life and Geniub, . Olindo and Sophronia, . . . • Tancbed and Clorinda, RiNALDO and ArMIDA, ETC., Part I.— Armida in the Christian Camp, II.— Armida's Wrath and Love with Rinaldo, III.— Tancred in the Enchanted Forest, IV.— The Loves of Rinaldo and Armida, V. — ^The Disenchantment of the Forest, and the taking of Jeriisalein, APPENDIX. No. I. — Story of Paulo and Franoesoa, II. ACCOHNTS GIVEN BY DIFFERENT WRITERS OF THE CIRCUMSTAN- CES RELATING TO PaULO AND FrANCESCA ; CONCLUDINO WITH THE ONLY FACTS ASCERTAINED, . . . . III. — Story of Ugolino, .... . . . IV. — PxcTURla OF Florence in the time of Dante's Asoestors, V. — ^The Death of Agric^n, ... VI. — Angelica and Medoro, ... . . VII. — The Jealousy of Orlando, ... VIII. — The Death of Ci5ai.«D.ij . . . > . IX. — Ta.ncred in the Enchanted ForisTi PAQB 409 461 471 483 483 490 494 498 501 519 523 526 533 535 543 552 559 561 DANTE: Critital IXotice of t]is fife and (3enia». CRITICAL NOTICE DANTE'S LIFE AND GENIUS.' Dante was a very great poet, a man of the strongest passions, a claimant of unbounded powers to lead and enlighten the world ; and he lived in a semi-barbarous age, as favourable to the inten- sity of his imagination, as it was otherwise to the rest of his pre- tensions. Party zeal, and the fluctuations of moral and critical opinion, have at different periods over-rated and depreciated his memory ; and if, in the following attempt to form its just estimate, I have found myself compelled, in some important respects, to differ with preceding writers, and to protest in particular against his being regarded as a proper teacher on any one point, poetry excepted, and as far as all such genius and energy cannot in some degree help being, I have not been the less sensible of the wonderful nature of that genius, while acting within the circle to which it belongs. Dante was indeed so great' a poet, and at the same time exhibited in his personal character such a mortifying exception to what we conceive to be the natural wisdom and tem- per of great poets ; in other words, he was such a bigoted and exasperated man, and sullied his imagination with so much that * As notices of Dante's life have often been little but repetitions of former ones, I think it due to the painstaking character of this volume to state, thai besides consulting various commentators and critics, from Boccaccio to Frati- celli and others, I have diligently perused the Vita di Dante, by Cesare Balbo, witli Rocco's annotations ; the Histoire Litteraire d' Italic, by Gingu^nfi ; ths Discorso sul Testo della Cmnmedia, by Foscolo ; the Amori e Rime di Dantt of Airivabene ; the Veltro Allegorico di Dante, by Troja ; and Ozanam'i Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au Treizieme Siecle. 2 8 DANTB. is contradictory to good feeling, in matters divine as well as hu- man ; that I should not have thought myself justified in assistinj;, however hun:ibly, to extend the influence of his writings, had 1 not believed a time to have arrived, when the community may profit both from the marvels of his power and the melancholy ab- surdity of i'.; contradictions. Dante Alighieri, who has always been known by his Christian rather than surname (partly owing to the Italian predilection for Christian names, and partly to the unsettled state of patronymics in his time), was the son of a lawyer of good family in Florence, and was born in that city on the 14th of May 1265 (sixty-three years before the birth of Chaucer). The stock is said to have been of Roman origin, of the race of the Frangipani ; but the only certain trace of it is to Caociaguida, a Florentine cavalier of the house of the Elisei, who died in the Crusades. Dante gives an account of him in his Paradiso* Caociaguida married a lady of the Alighieri family of the Valdipado ; and, giving the name to one of his children, they subsequently retained it as a patronymic in preference to their own. It would appear, from the same poem, not only that the Alighieri were the more impor. tant house, but that some blot had darkened the scutcheon of the Elisei ; perhaps their having been poor, and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from some disreputable district. Perhaps they were known to have been of ignoble origin ; for, in the course of one of his most philosophical treatises, he bursts into an extra- ordinary ebullition of ferocity against such as adduce a know- ledge of that kind as an argument against a family's acquired nobility ; affirming that such brutal stuff should be answered not with words, but w ith the dagger. f The Elisei, however, must have been of some standing ; for Macchiavelli, in his History of Florence^ mentions them in his list of the early Guelph and Ghi- » Canto XV. 8R t For the doubt apparently implied respecting the district, see canto xvi. 43, or the snmmary of it in the present volume. The following is the passage al- luded to in the philosophical treatise : " Risponder si vorrebbe, non coUe paiole, tna col coltello, a tanta bestialitii." — .Conviio, — Opere Minori, 12mo. Fir. 1834, vo\. ii. p. 432. ''«Beautiful mode" (says Pertioeri in a note) " of settling ques- tions.'' HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 3 belline parties, where the side whicli they take is different from that of the poet's immediate progenitors.* The arms of tiie Alighieri (probably occasioned by the change in that name, for it was previously written Aldighieri) are interesting on account of their poetical and aspiring character. They are a golden Ming on a field azure. f It is generally supposed that the name Dante is an abbreviation of Durante ; but this is not certain, though the poet had a nephew so called. Dante is the name he goes by in the gravest records, in law-proceedings, in his epitaph, in the mention of him put by himself into the mouth of a blessed spirit. Boccaccio in- timates that he was christened Dante, and derives the name from the ablative case of dans (giving) — a probable etymology, espe- cially for a Christian appellation. As an abbreviation of Du- rante, it would correspond in familiarity with the Ben of Ben Jonson — a diminutive that would assuredly not have been used by grave people on occasions like those mentioned, though a wit of the day gave the masons a shilling to carve " O rare Beii Jonson !" on his grave-stone. On the other hand, if gi/en at tlie font, the name of Ben would have acquired all the legal gravity of Benjamin. In the English Navy List, not long age, one of our gallant admirals used to figure as " Billy Douglas." Of the mother of Dante nothing is known except that she was * Istorie Fiorentine, ii. 43 (in Tuite le Opere, 4to., 1550). t The name has been varied into Allagheri, Aligieri, Alleghieii, Alligheri, Aligeriy with the accent generally on the third, but sometimes on the second syllable- See Foscolo, Discorso sul TesLo, p. 433. He says, that in Verona, whers descendants of the poet survive, they call it Aligeri. But names, lilie othey words, often wander so far from their source, that it is impossible to as- certain it. Who would suppose that Pomfret came from Pontefract, or wig frsm ■parrucca ? Coats of arms, unless in very special instances, prove nothing but the whims of the heralds. Those who like to hear of anything in connexion with Dante or his niiine, may find something to stir their fancies in the following grim significations of the word in the dictionaries : " Dante, a kind of great wild beast in Africa, that hath a very hard ssin." — Florio's Dictionary, edited by Torreggiano. " Dante, an animal called otherwise the Great Beast." Vocabolario della Crvsca, Com-pendiato, Ven. 172 '. 4 DANTE his father'a second wife, and that her Christian name was BeUti, or perhaps surname Bello. It might, however, be conjectured, from the remarkable and only opportunity which our author has aken of alluding to her, that he derived his disdainful character /ather from his mother than father.* The father appears to have died during the boyhood of his illustrious son. I'he future poet, before he had completed his ninth year, con- ceived a romantic attachment to a little lady who had just entered hers, and who has attained a celebrity of which she was destined to know nothing. This was the famous Beatrice Portinari, daughter of a rich Florentine who founded more than one char- itable institution. She married another man, and died in her youth ; but retained the Platonical homage of her young admirer, living and dead, and became the heroine of his great poem. It is unpleasant to reduce any portion of a romance to the events of ordinary life ; but with the exception of those who merely copy from one another, there has been such a conspiracy on the part of Dante's biographers to overlook at least one disen- chanting conclusion to be drawn to that eifect from the poet's own writings, that the probable truth of the matter must here for the first time be stated. The case, indeed, is clear enough from his account of it. The natural tendencies of a poetical tempera- ment (oftener evinced in a like manner than the world in general suppose) not only made the boy-poet fall in love, but, in the truly Elysian state of the heart at that innocent and adoring time of ife, made hirn fancy he had discovered a goddess in the object of his love ; and strength of purpose as well as imagination made him grow up in the fancy. He disclosed himself, as time advanced, only by his mannt-r — received complacent recognitions in company from the young lady — offended her by seeming to devote himself to another (see the poem in the Vita Nuova, begin, ning " Ballata io vo") — rendered himself the sport of her and her young friends by his adoring timidity (see the 5th and 6tli son- nets in the same work) — in short, constituted her a paragon of * See the passage in " Hell," where Virgil, to express his enthusiastic appro- bation of the scorn and cruelty which Dante shews to one of the condemned, embraces and kisses hira for a right "disdainful soul," and blesses the "mothet that bore him " HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 5 perfection, and enabled her, by so doing, to shew that she was none. He says, that finding himself unexpectedly near her one day in company, he trembled so, and underwent such change of countenance, that many of the ladies present began to laugh with her about him — "si gabbavano- di me." And he adds, in verse, " Con 1' altre donne mia vista gabbate, E lion pensate, doima, onde si mova Cli' io vi rassembri si figura nova, Qiiando riguardo la vostra beltate," &Le. — ^Soii. 5. " You laugh with the other ladies to see how I look (literally, you mock my appearance) ; and do not think, lady, what it is that renders me so strange a figure at sight of your beauty.'' And in the sonnet that follows, he accuses her of preventing pity of him in others, by such " killing mockery" as makes him wish for death (" la pieta, che 'I vostro gabbo recinde," &c.)* Now, it is to be admitted, that a young lady, if she is not very wise, may laughr at her lover with her companions, and yet re- turn his love, after her fashion ; but the fair Portinari laughs and marries another. Some less melancholy face, some more intel- ligible courtship, triumphed over the questionable flattery of the poet's gratuitous worship ; and the idol of Dante Alighieri be- came. the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi. Not a word does he say on that mortifying point. It transpired from a. clause in her father's will. And yet so bent are the poet's biographers on leaving a romantic doubt in one's mind, whether Beatrice may not have -returned his passion, that not' only do all of them (as far as I have observed) agree in taking no notice of these sonnets, but the author of the treatise entitled Dante and the Catholic Philosophy of the Thirteenth Century, " in spite" (as a critic says) " of the Beatrice, his daughter, wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi, of the paternal will," describes her as dying in " all the lustre of virginity."! The assumption appears to be thusglo- * Opere Minori, vol. iii. 12, Flor. 1839, pp. 292, &.c. t " Beatrix quitta la terre dans tout I'^clat de la jeunesse et de la virginitiS." See the work as above entitled, Paris, 1840, p. 60. The words in Latin, as quoted from the will by the critic alluded to in the Foreign Quarterly Review (No. G5, art. Dante Allighieri), are, " Bici filias suae et uxori D. (Domini; E OAJMTE. riously stated, as a counterpart to the notoriety of its untruth. It must b i acknowledged that Dante himself gave the cue to it by more than silence ; for he not only vaunts her acquaintance in the next viforld, but assumes that she returns his love in that re- gion, as if no such person as her husband could have existed, or as if he himself had not been married also. This life-long per. tinacity of will is illustrative of his whole career. Meantime, though the young poet's father had died, nothin;,' was wanting on the part of his guardians, or perhaps his mother, to famish him with an excellent education. It was so complete, as to enable him to become master of all the knowledge of his time ; and he added to this learning more than a taste for draw- ing and music. He speaks of himself as drawing an angel in his tablets on the first anniversary of Beatrice's death.* One of his instructors was Brunetto Latini, the most famous scholar then living ; and he studied both at the universities of Padua and Bo- logna. At eighteen, perhaps sooner, he had shewn such a genius for poetry as to attract the friendship of Guide Cavalcante, a young noble of a- philosophical as well as poetical turn of mind, who has retained a reputation with posterity : and it was probably at the same time he became acquainted with Giotto, who drew his likeness, and with Casella, the musician, whom he greets with so much tenderness in the other world. Nor were his duties as a citizen forgotten. The year before Beatrice's death, he was at the battle of Campaldino, which his countrymen gained against the people of Arezzo ; and the year after it he was present at the taking of Caprona from the Pisans. It has been supposed that he once studied medicine with a view to it as a profession ; but the conjecture probably originated in nothing more than his having entered himself of one of the city- companies (which happened to be the medical) for the purpose of S''monis de Bardis." " Bici" is the Latin dative case of Bice, the abbreviation of Beatrice. This employment, by the way, of an abbreviated name in a will, may seem to go counter to the deductions respecting the name of Dante. And it may really do so. Yet a will is not an epitaph, nor the address of a beatified spirit ; neither is equal familiarity perhaps implied, as a matter of course, in the abbreviated names of male and female. * Vita Nuova, ut sup. p. 343. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 1 qualifying himself to accept office ; a condition exacted of the gentry by the then democratic tendencies of the republic. It ia asserted also, by an early commentator, that he entered the Fran- ciscan order of friars, but quitted it before he was professed ; and, indeed, the circumstance is not unlikely, considering his agitated and impatient turn of mind. Perhaps he fancied that he had done with the world when it lost the wife of Simone de' Bardi. Weddings that might have taken place, but do not, are like the reigns of deceased heirs-apparent ; every thing is assumable in their favour, checked only by the histories of husbands and kings. Would the great but splenetic poet have made an angel and a saint of Beatrice, had he married her ? He never utters the name of the woman whom he did marry. Gemma Donati was a kinswoman of the powerful family of that name. It seems not improbable, from some passages in his works, that she was the young lady whom he speaks of as taking pity on him ok account of his passion for Beatrice ;* and in com- mon justice to his feelings as a man and a gentleman, it is surely to be concluded, that he felt some sort of passion for his bride, if not of a very spiritual sort ; though he afterwards did not scruple to intimate that he was ashamed of it, and Beatrice is made to rebuke him in the other world for thinking of any body after her- self, f At an}^ rate, he probably roused what was excitable in * Vita Nuova, p. 345. t In the article on Dante, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, (ut supra), the exordium of which made me hope that the eloquent and assumption-de- nouncing writer was going to supply a good final account of his author, equally satisfactory for its feeling and its facts, but which ended in little better than the customary gratuitousness of wholesale panegyric, I was surprised to find the union with Gemma Donati characterised as " calm and cold, — rather the ac- complishment of a social duty tlian the result of an irresistible impulse of the heart," p. 15. The accomplishment of the "social duty" is an assumption, not very probable with regard to any body, and much less so in a fiery Italian of twenty-six ; but the addition of the epithets, " calm and cold," gives it a sort of horror. A reader of this article, evidently the production of a man of ability but of great wilfulness, is tempted to express the disappointment it ha« given him in plainer terms than might be wished, in consequence of the extra- ordinary license which its writer does not scruple to allow to his own fancier, in expressing his opinion of what he is pipasfid to think the fancies of others. i DANTE, his wile's temper, with provocations from his own ; for the nature of the latter is not to be doubted, whereas there is nothing but tradition to shew for the bitterness of hers. Foscolo is of opinion that the tradition itself arose simply from a rhetorical flourish of Boccaccio's, in his Life of Dante, against the marriages of men Df letters ; though Boccaccio himself expressly adds, that he knows nothing to the disadvantage of the poet's wife, except that ler husband, after quitting Florence, would never either come vvhere she was, or suffer her to come to him, mother as she was jy him of so many children ; — a statement, it must be confessed, lot a little encouraging to the tradition.* Be this as it may, Oante married in his twenty-sixth year ; wrote an adoring ac- iount of his first love (the Vita Nuova) in his twenty-eighth ; ind among the six children which Gemma brought him, had a laughter whom he named Beatrice, in honour, it is understood, f the fair Portinari ; which surely was either a very great oom- •liment, or no mean trial to the temper of the mother. We shall ee presently how their domestic intercourse was interrupted, and ■'hat absolute uncertainty there is respecting it, except as far as ■molusions may be drawn from his own temper and history. Italy, in those days, was divided into the parties of Guelphs .Lid Ghibellines ; the former, the advocates of general church- i.-cendancy and local government; the latter, of the pretensions < the Emperor of Germany, who claimed to be the Roman o fisar, and paramount over the Pope. In Florence, the Guelphs Tuid for a long time been so triumphant as to keep the Ghibellines '! a state of banishment. Dante was born and bred a Guelph : 'I''- had twice borne arms for his coimtry against Ghibelline i-'ighbours ; and now, at the age of thirty-five, in the ninth of ' " Le inyettive contr' ossa per tanti secoli originarono dalla enumerazlone .» torica del Boccaccio di tutti gli inconvenieiiti del matrimonio, e dove per al- M J ei dichiara, — ' Certo io noti affermo queste cose a Dante essere awenute, oti'3 non lo so ; comechfe vero sia, che o a gimlli cose a queste, o ad altro clie ue fusse cagione, egU una volta da lei partitosi, che per consolaziop'^ de' suoi aflmni gli era stata data, mai nfe dove ella fusse voile venire, nfe soiferse che •i" 'e egU fusse ella venisse giammai, con tutto che di pid figliuoli egli insieme •/III lei fusse parente.' " — Discorso sul Testo, ut sup. Londra, Pickering Sl5, p. 184. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 'J his marriage, and last of his residence with his wife, he was ap. pointed chief of the temporary administrators of affairs, called Priors ; — functionaries who held office only for two months. Unfortunately, at that moment, his party had become subdivi- ded into the factions of the Whites and Blacks, or adherents of two different sides in a dispute that took place in PiStoia. The consequences becoming serious, the Blacks proposed to bring in, as mediator, the French Prince, Charles of Valois, then in arms for the Pope against the Emperor ; but the Whites, of whom Dante was one, were hostile to the measure ; and in order to pre- vent it, he and his brother magistrates expelled for a time the heads of both factions, to the satisfaction of neither. The Whites accused them of secretly leaning to the Ghibellines, and the Blacks of openly favouring the Whites ; who being, indeed, al lowed to come back before their time, on the alleged ground of the unwholesomeness of their place of exile, which was fatal to Dante's friend Cavalcante, gave a colour to the charge. Dante answered it by saying, that he had then quitted office; but he could not show that he had lost his influence. Meantime, Ckirles was still urged to interfere, and Dante was sent ambassador to the Pope to obtain his disapprobation of the interfejenoe ; but the Pope (Boniface the Eighth), who had probably discovered that the Whites had ceased to care for any thing but their own dis- putes, and who, at all events, did not like their objection to his representative, beguiled the ambassador and encourageci the French prince ; the Blacks, in consequence, regained their as- cendancy ; and the luckless poet, during his absence, was de- nounced as a corrupt administrator of affairs, guilty of pecula- tion ; was severely mulcted ; banished from Tuscany for two years ; and subsequently, for contumaciousness, was sentenced to be burnt alive, in case he returned ever. He never did return. From that day forth, Dante never beheld again his home or his wife. Her relations obtained possession of power, but no use was made of it except to keep him in exile. He had not accord- ed with them ; and perhaps half the secret of his conjugal cHs- uomfon v/as owing to politics. It is the opinion of soroe, that the married ooujile were not sorry to part; others think that the wife emained behind, solely to scrape together what property sho 10 DANTE. could, and bring up the children. All that is known is, that she never lived vifith him more. Dante now certainly did what his enemies had accused him of wishing to do : he joined the old exiles whom he had helped tC' make such, the party of the Ghibellines. He alleges, that he never was really of any party but his own ; a naive confession probably true in one sense, considering his scorn of other people, his great intellectual superiority, and the large views he had for the whole Italian people. And, indeed, he soon quarrelled in private with the individuals composing his new party, however staunch he apparently remained to their cause. His former as- sociates he had learnt to hate for their differences with him and for their self-seeking ; he hated the Pope for deceiving him ; he hated the Pope's French allies for being his allies, and interfer- ing with Florence ; and he had come to love the Emperor for be- ing hated by them all, and for holding out (as he fancied) the only chance of reuniting Italy to their confusion, and making her the restorer of himself, and the mistress of the world. With these feelings in his heart, no money in his purse, and no place in which to lay his head, except such as chance-patrons af- forded him, he now began to wander over Italy, like some lonely lion of a man, "grudging in his great disdain." At one moment he was conspiring and hoping ; at another, despairing and en- deavouring to conciliate his beautiful Florence : now again catch- ing hope from some new movement of the Emperor's ; and then, not very handsomely threatening and re-abusing her ; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work. It is conjectured, that whenever anything particularly affected him, whether with joy or sorrow, he put it, hot with the impression, into his " sacred poem." Every body who jarred against his sense of right or his prejudices he sent to the infernal regions, friend or foe : the strangest people who sided with them (but certainly no personal foe) he exalted to heaven. He encouraged, if not personally as- sisted, iw's ineffectual attempts of the Ghibellines against Flor- ence ; wrote, besides his great work, a book of mixed prose and poetry on " Love and Virtue" (the Convito, or Banquet) • a Latin treatise on Monarchy {de Monarchia), recommending the HIS I,1FE AND GENIUS. IJ " divine right" of the Emperor ; another in two parts, and in the same language, on the Vernacular Tongue {de Vulgari Eloquio); and learnt to know meanwhile, as he afFeotingly tells us, " how hard it was to climb other people's stairs, and how salt the taste of bread is that is not our own." It is even thought not improb- able, from one awful passage of his. poem, that he may have " placed himself in some public way," and, " stripping his vis- age of all shame, and trembling in his very vitals," have stretched out his hand " for charity"* — an image of suffering, which, proud as he was, yet considering how great a man, is almost enough to make one's common nature stoop down for pardon at his feet ; and yet he should first prostrate himself at the feet of that nature for his outrages on God and man. Several of the princes and feudal chieftains of Italy enter- tained the poet for a while in their houses ; but genius and worldly power, unless for worldly purposes, find it difficult to ac cord, especially in tempers like his. There must be great wis- dom and amiableness on both sides to save them from jealousy of one another's pretensions. Dante was not the man to give and take in such matters on equal terms ; and hence he is at one time in a palace, and at another in a solitude. Now he is in Sienna, now in Arezzo, now in Bologna ; then probably in Verona with Can Grande's elder brother ; then (if we are to believe those who have tracked his steps) in Casentino ; then with the Marchese Moroello Malaspina in Lunigiana ; then with the great Ghibelline chief- tain Faggiuola in the mountains near Urbino ; then in Romagna, in Padua, in Paris (arguing with the churchmen), some say in Germany, and at Oxford ; then again in Italy ; in Lucca (where he is supposed to have relapsed from his fidelity to Beatrice in favour of a certain " Gentucca") ; then again in Verona with the new prince, the famous Gdn Grande (where his sarcasms ap- pear to have lost him a doubtful hospitality) ; then in a monas- tery in the mountains of Umbria ; in Udine ; in Ravenna ; and there at length he put up for the rest of his life with his last and best friend, Guide Novello da Pclenta, not the father, but tfaf lephew of the hapless Franoesca. * Foscolo, in the Edinburgh. Review, vol. xxx. p. 351. •■i DANTjl. It was probably in the middle period of his exile, that in one f the moments of his greatest longing for his native country, he /rote that affecting passage in the Convito, which was evidently L direct eflbrt at conciliation. Excusing himself for some harsh- less and obscurity in the style of that work, he exclaims, " Ah ! vould it had pleased the Dispenser of all things that this excuse lad never been needed ; that neither others had done me wrong, or myself undergone penalty undeservedly — the penalty, I say, f exile and of poverty. For it pleased the citizens of the fair- • 3t and most renowned daughter of Rome — Florence — to cast mf! It of her most sweet bosom, where I was born, and bred, anil issed half of the life of man, and in which, with her good leave, siill desire with all my heart to repose my weary spirit, antl ■ Qish the days allotted me ; and so I have wandered in almost 'ery place to which our language extends, a stranger, almost a ) 'ggar, exposing against my will the wounds given me by for- ne, too often unjustly imputed to the sufferer's fault. Truly I ■ ive been a vessel without sail and without rudder, driven about 3on different ports and shores by the dry wind that springs out • ■ dolorous poverty ; and hence have I appeared vile in the eyes :' many, who, perhaps, by some better report had conceived of .le a different impression, and in whose sight not only has my erson become thus debased, but an unworthy opinion created of very thing which I did, or which I had to do."* * " Ahi piaoiuto fosse al Dispensatore dell' universe, che la cagione della ja scusa mai non fosse stata ; che nfe altri contro a me avria fallato, nfe io >fFerto avrel pena ingiustamente ; pena, dico, d' esilio e di povertii. Poichi II piacere de' cittadini della bellissimae famosissima figlla di Roma, Fiorenza, i gettarmi fuori del suo dolcissimo seno (nel quale nato e nudrito fui sino al olmo della mia vita, e nel quale, con buona pace di qnella, desidero con tutto il ore di riposare 1' animo stance, e terminare il tempo che m' fe date ) ; per le arti quasi tutte, alle quail questa lingua si stcnde, peregrino, quasi mendican- u, sono andato, mostrando contro a miavoglia la piaga della fortuna, che suoie igiustamente al piagato molte volte essere imputata. Veramente io souo ".ato legno sanza vela e sanza governo, portato a diversi porti e foci e liti dal ento secco che vapora la dolorosa poverty ; e sono vile apparito agli occhi a lolti, che forse per alcuna fama in altra forma mi aveano immaginato * nel ospetto de' quali non solamente mia persona invili6,ma di minor pregio si feee gni opera, si gia. fatta, come qnella che fosse a fare." — Opere Minori, ut dp. vol. ii. p. 20. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 13 How simply and strongly written ! How full of the touching yet undegrading commiseration which adversity has a right to take upon itself, when aooompanied with the consciousness of manly endeavour and a good motive ! How could such a man condescend at other times to rage with abuse, and to delight him- self in images of infernal torment ! The dates of these fluctuations of feeling towards his native city are not known ; but it is supposed to have been not very long before his abode with Can Grande that he received permission to return to Florence, on conditions which he justly refused and re- sented in the following noble letter to a kinsman. The old spell- ing of the original (in the note) is retained as given by Foscolo in the article on " Dante " in the Edinburgh Review (vol. xxx. no. 60) ; and I have retained also, with little difference, the trans- lation which accompanies it : " From your letter, which I received with due respect and af- fection, I observe how much you have at heart my restoration to my country. I am bound to you the more gratefully, inasmuch as an exile rarely finds a friend. But after mature consideration, [ must, by my answer, disappoint the wishes of some little minds ; and I confide in the judgment to which your impartiality and prudence will lead you. Your nephew and mine has written to me, what indeed had been mentioned by many other friends, thai by a decree concerning the exiles, I am allowed to return to Florence, provided I pay a certain sum of money, and submit to the humiliation of asking and receiving absolution : wherein, my father, I see two propositions that are ridiculous and impertinent. I speak of the impertinence of those who mention such conditions to me ; for in your letter, dictated by judgment and discretion, there is no such thing. Is such an invitation, then, to return to his country glorious to d.. all. (Dante AUighieri), after sutfering in exile almost fifteen years ? Is it thus they would recompense innocence which all the world knows, and the labour and fatigue of unremitting study ? Far from the man who is familiar with philosophy be the senseless baseness of a heart of ea/th, that could act like a little sciolist, and imitate the infamy of some others, by offering himself up as it were in chains : far fi-om the man who cries aloud for justice, this compromise by his money 14 DANTE. with his peiseoutors. No, my father, this is not the way that shall lead me back to my country. I will return with hasty steps, if you or any other can open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame and honour of d. (Dante) ; but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I shall never enter. What ! shall I not every where enjoy the light of the sun and stars ? and may I not seek and contemplate, in every corner of the earth, under the canopy of heaven, consoling and delightful truth, without first rendering myself inglorious, nay in- famous, to the people and republic of Florence ? Bread, I hope, will not fail me."* Had Dante's pride and indignation always vented themselves in this truly exalted manner, never could the admirers of his ge- nius have refused him their sympathy ; and never, I conceive, need he either have brought his exile upon him, or closed it as he did. To that close we have now come, and it is truly melan- * " In licteris vestris et reverentia debita et aifectione receptis, quam repa- triatio mea cures it vobis ex animo grata mente ac diligenti animaversione concepi, eteuim tanto me districtius obligastis, quanto rarius exules invenire amicos con- tingit. ad illam vero significata respondeo : et si non eatenus qualitur forsam piisillanimitas appeteret aliquorum, ut sub examine vestri consilii ante judicium, aiFectuose deposco. ecce igitur quod per licteras vestri mei : que nepotis, necnon aliorum quamplurium amicorum signiiicatum est mihi. per ordinamentum nu- per factum Florentie super absolutione bannitorum. quod si solvere vellem cer- tam pecunie quantitatem, vellemque pati notam oblationis et absolvi possem et redire ut presens. in quo quidern duo ridenda et male perconciliata sunt. Pater, dico male perconciliata per illos qui tali expresserunt : nam vestre litere discretius et consultius clausulate nicil de talibus continebant. estne ista revo- catio gloriosa qua d. all. (i. e. Dantes AlUgherius) revocatur ad patriam pel trilustrium fere perpessus exilium 1 hecne meruit conscientia manifesta quibus. libet ? hec sudor et labor continuatus in studiis ? absit a viro pliilosophie domes- tica temeraria terreni cordis humilitas, ut more cujusdam cioli et aliorum in- famiam quasi vinctus ipse se patiatur ofFerri. absit a viro predicante justitiam, ut perpessus injuriam inferentibus. velud benemerentibus, pecuniara suam sol- vat, non est hec via redeundi ad patriam, Pater mi, sed si alia per vos, &ut deinde per alios invenietur que fame d. (Dantis) que onori non deroget, illam non lentis passibus acceptabo. quod si per nullam talem Florentia introitur nunquam Florentiam introibo. quidni? nonne solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam? nonno dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique sub celo ni orius inglorium, imo ignominiosum populo, Florentineque civitati me reddam I quippe panis non deficiet." HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 15 choly and mortifying. Failure in a negotiation with the Vene- tians for his patron, Guide Novello, is supposed to have been the last bitter drop which made the cup of his endurance run over. He returned from Venice to Ravenna, worn out, and there died, after fifteen years' absence from his country, in the year 1231, aged tifty-seven. His life had been so agitated, that it probably would not have lasted so long, but for the solace of his poetry and the glory which he knew it must produce him. Guide gave him a sumptuous funeral, and intended to give him a monument ; Dut such was the state of Italy in those times, that he himself died in exile the year after. The monument, however, and one of a noble sort, was subsequently bestowed by the father of Cardi- nal Bembo, in 1483 ; and another, still nobler, as late as 1780, by Cardinal Gonzaga. His countrymen, in after years, made two solemn applications for the removal of his dust to Florence ; but the just pride of the Ravennese refused them. Of the exile's family, three sons died young ; the dau^ter went into a nunnery ; and the two remaining brothers, who ulti- mately joined their father in his banishment, became respectable men of letters, and left families in Ravenna ; where the race, though extinct in the male line, still survives through a daughter n the noble house of Serego Alighieri. No direct descent of the other kind from poets of former times is, I believe, known to exist. The manners and general appearance of Dante have been mi- nutely recorded, and are in striking agreement with his charac- ter. Boccaccio and other novelists are the chief relaters ; and their accounts will be received accordingly with the greater or less trust, as the reader considers them probable ; but the author of the Decameron personally knew some of his friends and rela- tions, and he intermingles his least favourable reports with ex- pressions of undoubted reverence. The poet was of middle height, of slow and serious deportment, had a long dark visage, large piercing eyes, large jaws, an aquiline nose, a projecting under-lip, and thick curling hair — an aspect announcing deter- mination and melancholy. There is a sketch of his counte- nance, in his 3 ounger days, from the immature but sweet pencil of Giotto ; and it is a refreshment to look at it, though pride and dis 16 DANTE. content, I think, are discernible in its lineaments. It is idle, and no true compliment to his nature, to pretend, as his mere wor- shippers do, that his face owes all its subsequent gloom and exa- cerbation to external causes, and that he was in every respect the poor victim of events — ^the infant changed at nurse by the wicked. What came out of him, he must have had in him, at least in the germ ; and so inconsistent was his nature altogether, or, at any rate, such an epitome of all the graver passions that are capable of co-existing, both sweet and bitter, thoughtful and outrageous, that one is sometimes tempted to think he must have had an angel for one parent, and — I shall leave his own tolera- tion to say what — for the other. To continue the account of his manners and inclinations : He dressed with a becoming gravity ; was temperate in his diet ; a great student ; seldom spoke, unless spoken to, but always to the purpose; and almost all 'the anecdotes recorded of him, except by nimself, are full of pride and sarcasm. He was so swarthy, that a woman, as he was going by a door in Verona, is said to have pointed him out to another, with a remark which made the saturnine poet smile — " That is the man who goes to hell when- ever he pleases, and brings back news of the people there." On which her companion observed — " Very likely ; don't you see what a curly beard he has, and what a dark face ? owing, I dare say, to the heat and smoke." He was evidently a passionate lover of painting and music — is thought to have been less strict in his conduct with regard to the sex than might be supposed from his platonical aspirations — (Boccaccio says, that even a goitre did not repel him from the pretty face of a mountaineer) — could be very social when he was young, as may be gathered from the sonnet addressed to his friend Cavalcante about a party for a boat — and though his poetry was so intense and weighty, the lauda- ble minuteness of a biographer has informed us, that his hand- writing, besides being neat and precise, was of a long and partic- ularly thin character : " meagre" is his word. There is a letter, said to be nearly coeval with his time, and to be written by the prior of a monastery to a celebrated Ghibelline leader, a friend of Dante's, which, though hitherto accounted apocryphal by most, has such an air of truth, and contains an HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 17 image of the poet in his exile so exceedingly like what we con- ceive of the man, that it is difficult not to believe it genuine, especially as the handwriting has lately been discovered to be that of Boccaccio.* At all events, I am sure the reader will not be sorry to have the substance of it. The writer says, that he perceived one day a man coming into the monastery, whom none of its inmates knew. He asked him what he wanted ; but the stranger saying nothing, and continuing to gaze on the building as though contemplating its architecture, the question was put a second time ; upon which, looking round on his interrogators, he answered, " Peace !" The prior, whose curiosity was strongly excited, took the stranger apart, and discovering who he was, shewed him all the attention becoming his fame ; and then Dante took a little book out of his bosom, and observing that perhaps the prior had not seen it, expressed a wish to leave it with his new friend as a memorial. It was " a portion," he said, " of his work." The prior received the volume with respect ; and politely opening it at once, and fixing his eyes on the contents, in order, it would seem, to shew the interest he took in it, appeared suddenly to check some observation which they suggested. Dante found that his reader was surprised at seeing the work written in the vulgar tongue instead of Latin. He explained, that he wished to address himself to readers of all classes ; and concluded with requesting the prior to add some notes, with the spirit of which he furnished him, and then forward it (transcri- bed, I presume, by the monks) to their common friend, the Ghib- elline chieftain — a commission, which, knowing the prior's inti- macy with that personage, appears to have been the main object of his coming to the place.f This letter has been adduced as an evidence of Dante's poem having transpired during his lifetime : a thing which, in the teeth of Boccaccio's statement to that effect, and indeed the poet's own testimony,:]; Foscolo holds to be so impossible, that he turns * Opere Minori, ut sup. vol. ili. p. 186. t Veltro Allegorico di Dante, ut sup. p. 208, where the Appendix coatahia the Latin original. X See Fraticelli's Dissertation on the Convito, m Opere Minori, ut sup. vol il. p. 560. • 3 18 DANTE. the evidence against the letter. He thinks, that if-suoh bitter in- vectives had been circulated, a hundred daggers would have been sheathed in the bosom of the exasperating poet.* But I cannot help being of opinion, with some writer whom I am unable at present to call to mind (Schlegel, I think), that the strong critical reaction of modern times in favour of Dante's genius has tended to exaggerate the idea conceived of him in relation to his own. That he was of importance, and bitterly hated in his native city, was a distinction he shared with other partisans who have ob- tained no celebrity, though his poetry, no doubt, must have in- creased the bitterness ; that his genius also became more and more felt out of the city, by the few individuals capable of esti- mating a man of letters in those semi-barbarous times, may he regarded as certain ; but that busy politicians in general, war- making statesmen, and princes constantly occupied in fighting for their existence with one another, were at all alive either to his merits or his invectives, or would have regarded him as any thing but a poor wandering scholar, solacing his foolish interference in the politics of this world with the old clerical threats against his enemies in another, will hardly, I think, be doubted by any one who reflects on the difference between a fame accumulated by ages, and the living poverty that is obliged to seek its bread. A writer on a monkish subject may have acquired fame with monks, and even with a few distinguished persons, and yet have been little known, and less cared for, out of the pale of that very private literary public, which was almost exclusively their own. When we read, now-a-days, of tne great poet's being so politely received by Can Grande, lord of Verona, and sitting at his princely table, we are apt to fancy that nothing but his great poetry procured him the reception, and that nobody present competed with him in the eyes of his host. But, to say nothing of the different kinds of retainers, that could sit at a prince's table in those days. Can, who was more ostentatious than delicate in his munificence, kept a sort of caravansera for clever exiles, whoi . he distributed into lodgings classified according to their pursuits ;f and Dante only shared his bounty with the rest, till the more delicate poet could » Discorso sul Testo, p. 54. t Balbo, Naples edition, p. 132 HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 19 no longer endure either the bufToonery of his companions, or the amusement derived from it by the master. On one occasion, his platter is slily heaped with their bones, which provokes him to call them dogs, as having none to shew for their own. Another time, Can Grande asks him how it is that his companions give more pleasure at court than himself; to which he answers, " Be- cause like loves like." He then leaves the court, and his dis- gusted superiority is no doubt regarded as a pedantic assumption. He stopped long nowhere, except with Guido Novello ; and when that prince, whose downfall was at hand, sent him on the lourney above mentioned to Venice, the senate (whom the poet had never offended) were so little aware of his being of conse- quence, that they declined giving him an audience. He went back, and broke his heart. Boccaccio says, that he would get into such passions with the very boys and girls in the street, who plagued him with party-words, as to throw stones at them — a thing tiiat would be incredible, if persons acquainted with his great but ultra-sensitive nation did not know what Italians could do in all ages, fi'oift Dante's own age down to the times of Alfieri and Foscolo. It would be as difficult, from the evidence of his own works and of the exasperation he created, to doubt the ex- tremest reports of his irascible temper, as it would be not to give implicit faith to his honesty. The charge of peculation which his enemies brought against this great poet, the world has universally scouted with an indignation that does it honour. He himself seems never to have condescended to allude to it ; and a biogra- pher would feel bound to copy his silence, had not the accusation been so atrociously recorded. But, on the qther hand, who can believe that a man so capable of doing his fellow-citizens good and honour, would have experienced such excessive enmity, had he not carried to excess the provocations of his pride and scorn ? His whole history goes to prove it, not omitting the confession he makes of pride as his chief sin, and the eulogies he bestows on the favourite vice of the age — revenge. His Christianity (at least as shewn in his poem) was not that of Christ, but of a furious polemic. His motives for changing his party, though probably of a mixed nature, like those of most human beings, may reason. Ably be supposed to have originated in something better than in 20 DANTE. terest or indignation. He had most likely not agreed thoroughly with any party, and had become hopeless of seeing dispute brought to an end, except by the representative of the Ctesars. The inconsistency of the personal characters of the Popes with the sacred claims of the chair of St. Peter, was also calculated greatly to disgust him ; but still his own infirmities of pride and vindictiveness spoiled all ; and when he loaded every body else with reproach for the misfortunes of his country, he should have recollected that, had his own faults been kept in subjection to his imderstanding, he might possibly have been its saviour. Dante's modesty hss been asserted on the ground of his humbling him- self to the fame of Virgil, and at the feet of blessed spirits ; but this kind of exalted humility does not repay a man's fellow-citi- zens for lording it over them with scorn and derision. We learn from Boccaccio, that when he was asked to go ambassador from his party to the pope, he put to them the following useless and mortifying queries — " H' I go, who is to stay ? — and if I stay, who is to go ?"* Neither did his pride make him tolerant of pride in others. A neighbour applying for hfc intercession vith * " Di se stesso presunse maravigliosamente taiito, che essendo egli glorioso nel colmo del reggimento della republica, e ragionandosi trS. maggiori cittadini di maiidare, per alcuna gran bisogna, ambasciata a Bouifazio Papa VIII., e che principe della ambasciata fosse Dante, ed egli in cii) in presenzia di tutti 4uegli che cib consigliavano richiesto, avvenne, che soprastando egli alia ris- posta, alcun disse, che pensi ? alle quali parole egli rispose : penso, se io yo, chi rimane ; e s' io rimango, chi va : quasi esso solo fosse colui che fra tutti valesse e per cui tutti gli altri valessero." And he goes on to say, respecting the stone- throwing — " Appresso, come che il nostro poeta nolle sua avversitk paziente o no si fosse, in una fu impazientissimo : ed egli infino al cominciamento del suo esilio stato guelfissimo, non essendogli aperta la via del ritornare in casa sua, si fuor di modo diventf) ghibellino, che ogni femminella, ogni picciol fan- ciuUo, e quante volte avesse voluto, ragionando di parte, e la guelfa proponendo alia ghibellina, Tavrebbe non solamente fatto tm'bare, ma a tanta insania coni- mosso, che se taciuto non fosse, a gittar le pietre I'avrebbe condotto." ( Vita di Dante, prefixed to the Paris edition of the Commedia, 1844, p. xxv.) And then the " buon Boccaccio," with his accustomed sweetness of nature, begs pardon of so great a man, for being obliged to relate such things of him, and doubts whether his spirit may not be looking down on him that moment dis- dainfully from heaven ! Such an association of ideas had Dante produced between the celestial and the scornful .' HTS LIFE AND GENIUS. SI a magistrate, who liad summoned him for some offence, Dante, wlio disliked the man for riding in an overbearing manner along the streets (stretching out his legs as wide as he could, and hin- dering people from going by), did intercede with the magistrate, but it was in behalf of doubling the fine in consideration of the horsemanship. The neighbour, who was a man of family, was so exasperated, that Sacchetti the novelist says it was the princi- pal cause of Dante's expatriation. This will be considered the less improbable, if, as some suppose, the delinquent obtained pos- session of his derider's confiscated property ; but, at all events, nothing is more likely to have injured him. The bitterest ani- mosities are generally of a personal nature ; and bitter indeed must have been those which condemned a man of official dignity and of genius to such a penalty as the stake.* That the Florentines of old, like other half-Christianised peo- ple, were capable of any extremity against an opponent, burning included, was proved by the fates of Savonarola and others ; and that Dante himself could admire the burners is evident from his eulogies and beatification of such men as Folco and St. Dominic. The tragical as well as " fantastic tricks" which " Man, proud man, Drest in a little brief autliority," plays with his energy and bad passions under the guise of duty, is among the most perplexing of those spectacles, which, accord- ing to a greater understanding than Dante's, " make the an- gels weep." (Dante, by the way, has introduced in his heaven no such angels as those ; though he has plenty that scorn and de- nounce.) Lope de Vega, though a poet, was an officer of the In- quisition, and joined the famous Armada that was coming to thumbscrew and roast us into his views of Christian meekness. Whether the author of the story of Fauh and Francesca could have carrifed the Dominican theories into practice, had he been the banisher instead of the banished, is a point that may happily be doubted ; but at all events he revenged himself on his enemies » Novelle di Franco Sacchetti, Milan edition, 1804, vol. ii. p. 148. It forms the setting, or frame-work, of an inferior story, and is not mentioned in the heading. Sa DANTE. after their own fashion ; for he answered their decree of the Btake by putting them into hell. Dante entitled the saddest poem in the world a Comedy, be- cause it was written in a middle style; though some, by a strange confusion of ideas, think the reason must have been because it " ended happily !" that is, because, beginning with hell (to some), it teriTiinated with " heaven" (to others). As well might they have said, that a morning's work in the Inquisition ended happily, because, while people were being racked in the dungeons, the of- ficers were making merry in the drawing-room. For the much- injured epithet of " Divine," Dante's memory is not responsible. He entitled his poem arrogantly enough, yet still not with that impiety of arrogance, " The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Flor- entine by nation but not by habits." The word " divine" was added by some transcriber ; and it heaped absurdity on absur- dity, too much of it, alas ! being literally infernal tragedy. I am not speaking in mockery, any further than the fact itself can- not help so speaking. I respect what is to be respected in Dante ; I admire in him what is admirable ; would love (if his infernali- ties would k me) what is loveable ; but this must not hinder one of the human race from protesting against what is erroneous in his fame, when it jars against every best feeling, human and divine. Mr. Gary thinks that Dante had as much right to avail himself of " the popular creed in all its extravagance" as Homer had of his gods, or Shakspeare of his fairies. But the distinc- tion is obvious. Homer did nut personally identify himself with a creed, or do his utmost to perpetuate the worst parts of it in behalf of a ferocious inquisitorial church, and to the risk of en- dangering the peace of millions of gentle minds. The great poem thus misnomei-ed is partly a system of theol- ogy, partly an abstract of the knowledge of the day, but chiefly a series of passionate and imaginative pictures, altogether form- ing an account of the aathor's times, his friends, his enemies, and himself, written to vent the spleen of his exile, and the rest of his feelings, good and bad, and to reform church and state by a spirit of resentment and 'obloquy, which highly needed reform itself. It has also a design strictly self-referential. The author feigns, that the beatified spirit of his mistress has obtained leave HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 23 to warn and purify his soul by shewing him the state of things in the next world. She deputes the soul of his master Virgil tc conduct him through hell and purgatory, and then takes him her- self through the spheres of heaven, where St. Peter catechise? and confirms him, and where he is finally honoured with sights of the Virgin Mary, of Christ, and even a glimpse of the Su- preme Being ! His hell, considered as a place, is, to speak geologically, a most fantastical formation. It descends from beneath Jerusalem to the centre of the earth, and is a funnel graduated in circles, each circle being a separate place of torment for a different vice or its co-ordinates, and the point of the funnel terminating with Satan stuck into ice. Purgatory is a corresponding mountain on the other side of the globe, commencing with the antipodes of Jeru- salem, and divided into exterior circles of expiation, which end in a table-land forming the terrestrial paradise. From this the hero and his mistress ascend by a flight, exquisitely conceived, to the stars ; where the sun and the planets of the Ptolemaic sys- tem (for the true one was unknown in Dante's time) form a se- ries of heavens for different virtues, the whole terminating in the empyrean, or region of pure "light, and the presence of the Be- atific Vision. The boundaries of old and new, strange as it may now seem to us, were so confused in those days, and bo&I^s were so rare, and the Latin poets held in such invincible reverence, that Dante, in one and the same poem, speaks of the false gods of Pa- ganism, and yet retains much of its lower mythology ; nay, in- vokes Apollo himself at the door of paradise. There was, per- haps, some mystical and even philosophical inclusion of the past in this medley, as recognising the constant superintendence of Providence ; but that Dante partook of wjiat may be called the literary superstition of the time, even for want of better know, ledge, is clear from the grave historical use he makes of poetic fables in his treatise on Monarchy, and in the very arguments which he puts into the mouths of saints and apostles. There are lingering feelings to this effect even now among the peasantry of [taly ; where, the reader need not be told. Pagan customs of all sorts, including rel'gious and most reverend ones, are existing 24 DANTE. under the sanction of other names ; — heathenisms christened. A Tuscan postilion, once enumerating to me some of the native poets, concluded his list with Apollo; and a plaster-cast man over here, in London, appeared much puzzled, when conversing on the subject with a friend of mine, how to discrepate Samson from Hercules. Dante accordingly, while, with the frightful bigotry of the schools, he puts the whole Pagan world into hell-borders (with the exception of two or three, whose solvation adds to the absur- dity), mingles the hell of Virgil with that of Tertullian and St. Dominic ; sets Minos at the door as judge ; retains Charon in his old office of boatman over the Stygian lake ; puts fabulous peo- ple with real among the damned, Dido, and Cacus, and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope Nicholas the Fifth ; and associates the Centaurs and the Furies with the agents of diabolical torture. It has pleased him also to elevate Cato of Utica to the office of warder of purgatory, though the censor's poor good wife, Marcia, is detained in the regions below. By these and other far greater inconsistencies, the whole place of punishment becomes a reduc- tio ab absurdum, as ridiculous as it is melancholy ; so that one is astonished how so great a man, and especially a man who thought himself so far advanced beyond his age, and who pos- sessed such powers of discerning the good and beautiful, could endure to let his mind live in so foul and foolish a region for any length of time, and there wreak and harden the un worthiest of his passions. Genius, nevertheless, is so commensurate with absur- dity throughout the book, and there are even such sweet and balmy as well as sublime pictures in it occasionally, nay often, that not only will the poem ever be worthy of admiration, but when those increasing purifications of Christianity which our blessed refor- mers began, shall finally precipitate the whole dregs of the au- thor into the mythology to which they belong, the world will de- rive a pleasure from it to an amount not to be conceived till the arrival of that day. Dante, meantinie, with an impartiality which has been admired by those who can approve the assumption of a theological tyranny at the expense of common feeling and de- cency, has put friends as well as foes into hell : tutors of his child, hood, kinsmen of those who treated him hospitably, even the father HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 25 of his beloved friend, Guido Cavaloante — the last for not believ- ing in a God ! tl:?-ein doirg the worst thing possible in behalf of the belief, and toT.?,lly difteriug both with the pious heathen Plu- laroh, and the grea.' Christian philosopher Bacon, who were of opinion that a comuinelious belief is worse than none, and that it is far better and more piouH to believe in " no God at all," than :n a God who would " eat his children as soon as they were born." And Dante malces him do worse ; for the whole unbap- sised infant world, Christian as well as Pagan, is in his Tartarus. Milton has spoken of the " milder shades of Pui-gatory ;" and truly they possess great beauties. Even in a theological point of view they are something like a bit of Christian refreshment after the horrors of the Iiiferim. Tlie first emerging from the hideous gulf to the sight of the blue serenity of heaven, is paint- ed in a manner inexpressibly charming. So is the sea-shore with the coming of the angel ; the valley, with the angels in green ; tlie repose at night on the rocks ; and twenty other pic- tures of gentleness and love. And yet, special and great has been the escape of the Protestant world from this part of Roman Catholic belief; for Purgatory ij the heaviest stone that hangs about the neck of the old and feeble in that communion. Hell is avoidable by repentance ; but Purgatory, what modest con- science shall escape ? Mr. Cary, in a note on a passage in which Dante recommends his readers to think on what follows this ex- piatory state, rather than what is suffered there,* looks upon the poet's injunction as an " unanswerable objection to the doctrine of purgatoiy," it being difficult to conceive " how the best can meet death without horror, if they believe it must be followed by immediate and intense suffering." Luckily, assent is not belief; and mankind's feelings are for the most part superior to their opinions ; otherwise the world would have been in a bad way in- deed, and nature not been vindicated of her children. But lei us watch and be on our guard against all resuscitations of su- perstition. As to our Florentine's Heaven, it is full of beauties alsO; * The Vision ; or. Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante Ali^hieri, ^i. Smith's edition, 1844, p. 90. 86 DANTE. though sometimes of a more questionable and pantomimical sort than is to be found in either of the other books. I shall speak of some of them presently ; but the general impression of the place is, that it is no heaven at all. He says it is, and talks much of its smiles and its beatitude ; but always excepting the poetry — especially the similes brought from the more heavenly earth — we realise little but a fantastical assemblage of doctors and doubtful characters, far more angry and theological than celestial ; giddy raptures of monks and inquisitors dancing in circles, and saints denouncing popes and Florentines ; in short, a heaven libelling itself with invectives against eai-th, and terminating in a great presumption. Many of the people put there, a Calvinistic Dante would have consigned to the " other place j" and some, if now living, would not be admitted into decent society. At the begin- ning of one of the cantos, the poet congratulates himself, with a complacent superiority, on his being in heaven and occupied with celestial matters, while his poor fellow-creatures are wandering and blundering on earth. But he had never got there ! A di- vine — worthy of that name — of the Church of England (Dr. Whichcote), has beautifully said, that " heaven is first a temper, and then a place." According to this truly celestial topography, the implacable Florentine had not reached its outermost court. Again, his heavenly mistress, Beatrice, besides being far too di- dactic to sustain the womanly part of her character properly, al- ternates her smiles and her sarcasms in a way that jars horribly against the occasional enchantment of her aspect. She does not scruple to burst into taunts of the Florentines in the presence of Jesus himself ; and the spirit of his ancestor, Cacciaguida, in the very bosom of Christian bliss, promises him revenge on his ene- mies ! Is this the kind of zeal that is to be exempt from objec- tion in a man who objected to all the world ? or will it be thought a profaneness agpinst such profanity, to remind the reader of the philosopher in Swift, who " while gazing on the stars, was betray- ed bj' his lower parts into a ditch !" The reader's time need not be wasted with the allegorical and other mystical significations given to the poem ; still less on the question whether Beatrice is theology, or a young lady, or both ; ttnd least of all on the discovery of the ingenious Signor Rossetti, HIS LIIE AND GENIUS. 23 that Dante and all the other great old Italian writers meant no. thing, either, by their mistresses or their mythology, but attacks on the court of Rome. Suffice it, that besides all other possible meanings, Dante himself has told us that his poem has its obvi- ous and literal meaning ; that he means a spade by a spade, pur- gatory by purgatory, and truly and unaffectedly to devote his friends to the infernal regions whenever he does so. I confess I think it is a great pity that Guide Cavalcante did not live to read the poem, especially the passage about his father. The under- standing of Guide, wiio had not the admiration for Virgil that Dante had (very likely for reasons that have been thought sound in modern times), was in all probability as good as that of his friend in many respects, and perhaps more so in one or two ; and modern criticism might have been saved some of its pains of objection by the poet's contemporary. The author did not live to publish, in any formal manner, his extraordinary poem, probably did not intend to do so, except un- der those circumstances of political triumph which he was al- ways looking for ; but as he shewed portions of it to his friends, it was no doubt talked of to a certain extent, and must have ex- asperated such of his enemies as considered him worth their hos- tility. No wonder, they did all they could to keep him out of Florence. What would they have said of him, could they have written a counter poem ? What would even his friends have said of him ? for we see in what manner he has treated even those ; and yet how could he possibly know, with respect either to friends or enemies, what passed between them and their con- sciences ? or who was it that gave him Ms right to generate the boasted distinction between an author's feelings as a man and his assumed office as a theologian, and parade the latter at the for- mer's expense ? His own spleen, hatred, and avowed sentiments' of vengeance, are manifest throughout the poem ; and there is this, indeed, tc be said for the moral and religious inconsistencies both of tlte man and his verse, that in those violent times the spirit of Christian charity, and even the sentiment of personal shame, were so little. understood, that the author in one part of ii is made to blush by a friend for not having avenged him ; and it is said to have been thought a compliment to put a lady herself 9S DANTE into nell, that she might be talked of, provided it was for some- thing not odious. An admirer of this infernal kind of celebrity, even in later times, declared that he vi^ould have given a sum of money (I forget to what amount) if Dante had but done as much for one of his ancestors. It has been argued, that in all the par ties concerned in these curious ethics there is a generous love of distinction, and a strong craving after life, action, and sympathy of some kind or other. Granted ; there are all sorts of half-good, half-barbarous feelings in Dante's poem. Let justice be done to the good half ; but do not let us take the ferocity for wisdom and piety ; or pretend, in the complacency of our own freedom from superstition, to see no danger of harm to the less fortunate among our fellow-creatures in the support it receives from a man of ge- nius. Bedlams have been filled with such horrors ; thousands, nay millions .of feeble minds are suffering by them or from them, at this minute, all over the world. Dante's best critic, Foscolo, has said much of the heroical nature of the age in which the poet lived ; but he adds, that its mixture of knowledge and ab- surdity is almost inexplicable. The truth is, that like everything else which- appears harsh and unaccountable in nature, it was an excess of the materials for good, working in an over-active and inexperienced manner ; but knowing this, we are bound, for the sake of the good, not to retard its improvement by ignoring exist- ing impieties, or blind ourselves to the perpetuating tendencies of the bigotries of great men. Oh ! had the first indoctrinators of Christian feeling, while enlisting the " divine Plato" into the ser- vice of diviner charity, only kept the latter just enough in mind to discern the beautiful difference between the philosopher's un- malignant and improvable evil, and their own malignant and eternal one, what a world of folly and misery they might have saved us ! But as the evil has happened, let us hope that even this form of it has had its uses. If Dante thought it salutary to the world to maintain a system of religious terror, the same char- ity which can hope that it may once have been so, has tauo-ht us how to commence a better. But did he, after all, or did he not think it salutary ? Did he think so, believing the creed himself? or did he think it from an unwilling sense of its necessity ? Or, lastly, did he write only as a mythologist, and care for nothing HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 99 but tlie exercise of his spleen and genius ? If he had no other object than that, his conscientiousness would be reduced to a low pitch indeed. Foscolo is of opinion he was not only in earnest, but that he was very near taking himself for an apostle, and would have done so had his prophecies succeeded, perhaps with success to the pretension.* Thank heaven, his " Hell" has not embittered the mild reading-desks of the Church of England. If King George the Third himself, with all his arbitrary notions, and willing religious acquiescence, could not endure the creed of St. Athanasius with its damnatory enjoimnents of the impossible, what would have been said to the inscription over Dante's hell- gate, or the account of TJgolino eating an archbishop, in the gen- tie chapels of Queen Victoria ? May those chapels have every beauty in them, and every air of heaven, that painting and music can bestow — divine gifts, not unworthy to be set befoi-e their Di- ■viue Bestower ; but far from them be kept the foul fiends of in- humanity and superstition ! It is certainly impossible to get at a thorough knowledge of the opinions of Dante even in theology ; and his morals, if judged according to the received standard, are not seldom puz- zling. He rarely thinks as the popes do ; sometimes not as the Church does ; he is lax, for instance, on the subject of absolutior by the priest at death.f All you can be sure of is, the predomi- nance of his will, the most wonderful poetry, and the notions he entertained of the degrees of vice and virtue. Towards the errors of love he is inclined to be so lenient (some think because he had indulged in them himself), that it is pretty clear he would not have put Paulo and Franoesca into hell, if their story had not been too recent, and their death too sudden, to allow him to assume their repentance in the teeth of the evidence required. He avails himself of orthodox license to put " the harlot Rahab" into heaven (" cette bonne fille de Jericho," as Ginguene calls her) ; nay, he puts her into the planet Venus, as if to compli. ment her on her profession ; and one of her companions there is * Viscorso sul Testo, pp. 64, 77-90, 335-338. t PuTgatorio, canto iii. 118, 138; referred to by Foscolo, ic the Discorm sul Testo, p. 383. W DANTE. A fair Ghibelline, sister of the tyrant Ezzelino, a lady famoub for her gallantries, of whom the poet good-naturedly says, that she " was overcome by her star" — ^to wit, the said planet Venus ; and yet he makes her the organ of the most unfeminine triumphs over the Guelphs. But both these ladies, it is to be understood, repented — for they had time for repentance ; their good fortune saved them. Poor murdered Francesca had no time to repent ; therefore her mischance was her damnation ! Such are the com- pliments theology pays to the Creator. In fact, nothing is really punished in Dante's Catholic hell but impenitence, deliberate or accidental. No delay of repentance, however dangerous, hin- ders the most hard-hearted villain from reaching his heaven. The oest man goes to hell for ever, if he does not think he has sinned as Dante thinks ; the worst is beatified, if he agrees with him : the only thing which every body is sure of, is some dreadful du- ration of agony in purgatory — the great horror of Catholic death- beds. Protestantism may well hug itself on having escaped it. O Luther ! vast was the good you did us. O gentle Church of England ! let nothing persuade you that it is better to preach frightful and foolish ideas of God from your pulpits, than loving- kindness to all men, and peace above all things. If Dante had erred only on the side of indulgence, humanity could easily have forgiven him — for the excesses of charity are the extensions of hope ; but, unfortunately, where he is sweet- natured once, he is bitter a hundred times. -This is the impres- sion he makes on universalists of all creeds and parties ; that is to say, on men who having run the whole round of sympathy with their fellow-creatures, become the only final judges of sove- reign pretension. It is very well for individuals to make a god of Dante for some encouragement of their own position or pre- tension ; but a god for the world at large he never was, or can be ; and I doubt if an impression to this effect was not always, from the very dawn of our literature, the one entertained of him by the genius of our native country, which could never long endure any kind of unwarrantable dictation. Chaucer evidently thought him a man who would spare no unnecessary probe to the feelings (see the close of his version of Ugolino). Spenser says not a word of him, though he copied Tasso, and eulogised Ariosto. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 3] Shakspeare would assuredly have put him into the list of those presumptuous lookers into eternity who " take upon themselves tc know" {Cynibeline, act v. so. 4). Milton, in his sonnet to Henry Lawes, calls him " that sad Florentine" — a lamenting epithet, by which we do not designate a man whom we desire to resemble. The historian of English poetry, admirably applying to him a passage out of Milton, says that " Hell grows darker at his frown."* Walter Scott could not read him, at least not with pleasure. He tells Miss Seward that the " plan" of the poem appeared to him " unhappy ; the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and uninteresting."! Uninteresting, I think, it ib impossible to consider it. The known world is there, and Ihe unknown pretends to be there ; and both are surely interesting to most people. Landor, in his delightful book the Pentameron — a book full of ine profoundest as well as sweetest humanity — makes Petrarch follow up Boceacoio'.s ■ ; ogies of the episode of Paulo and Fran- cesca with ebullitions of- surprise and horror : "Petrarca. Perfection of poetry ! The greater is my won- der at discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole section of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca, ' And he who fell as a dead body falls,' would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy ! What execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, Genoa ! what hatred against the whole human race ! what exultation and merriment at eternal and immitigable sufferings ! Seeing this, 1 cannot but consider the Inferno as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written. Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged forward to excellence, I would * Warton's History of English Poetry, edition of 1840, vol. iii. p. 214. t Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. vol. ii. p. 122. 32 DANTE. nave dissuaded Dante from cancelling it, if this had been his in- tention."* Most happily is the distinction here intimated between the un- desirableness of Dante'.s boolc in a moral and religious point of view, and the greater desirableness of it, nevertheless, as a pat- tern of poetry ; for absurdity, however potent, wears itself out in the end, and leaves what is good and beautiful to vindicate even so foul an origin. Again, Petrarch says, " What an object of sadness and of con- .sternation, he who rises up from hell like a giant refreshed ! "Boccaccio. Strange perversion ! A pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night, to guide no one. Paradise had fewer wants for him to satisfy than hell had, all which he fed to repletion ; but let us rather look to his poetry than his temper." See also what is said in that adinirable book further on (p. 50), respecting the most impious and absurd passage in all Dante's poem, the assumption about Divine Love in the inscription over hell-gate — one of those monstrosities of conception which none ever had the effrontery to pretend to vindicate, except theologians who profess to be superior to the priests of Moloch, and who yet defy every feeling of decency and humanity for the purpose of explaining their own worldly, frightened, or hard-hearted sub- mission to the mistakes of the most wretched understandings. Ugo Foscolo, an excellent critic where his own temper and vi- olence did not interfere, sees nothing but jealousy in Petrarch's dislike of Dante, and nothing but Jesuitism in similar feelings en- tertained by such men as Tiraboschi. But all gentle and con- siderate hearts must dislike the rage and bigotry in Dante, even were it true (as the Dantesque Foscolo thinks) that Italy will never be regenerated till one-half of it is baptised in the blood of the other !"j" Such men, with all their acuteness, are incapable of seeing what can be effected by nobler and serener times, and the progress of civilisation. They fancy, no doubt, that they are vin- dicating the energies of Nature herself, and the inevitable neces- sity of " doing evil that good may come." But Dante in so do- * Pentameron and Pentalogia, pp. 44-50. t Discorso sul Testo, p. 226. The whole passage (sect, ex.) is very elo- iiuent, horrible, and self-betraying. ing violated the Scripture he professed to revere ; and men must not assume to themselvgs that final knovi'ledge of I'esults, which is the only warrant of the privilege, and the possession of which is to be arrogated by no earthly wisdom. One calm discovery of science may do away with all the boasted eternal necessities of the angry and the self-idolatrous. The passions that may be necessary to savages are not bound to remain so to civilised men, any more than the eating of man's flesh or the worship of Jug- ghernaut. When we think of the wonderful things lately done by science for the intercourse of the world, and the beautiful and tranquil books of philosophy written by men of equal energy and benevolence, and opening the peacefulest hopes for mankind, and views of creation to which Dante's universe was a nutshell, — such a vision as that of his poem (in a theological point of view) seems no better than the dream of an hypochondriacl savage, and his nutshell a rottenness to be spit out of the mouth. Heaven send that the great poet's want of charity has not made myself presumptuous and uncharitable ! But it is in the name of society I speak ; and words, at all events, now-a-days are not the terrible, stake-preceding things they were in his. Readers in general, however — even those of the literary world — have little conception of the extent to which Dante carries either his cruelty or his abuse. The former (of which I shall give some examples presently) shews appalling habits of personal resentment ; the latter is outrageous to a pitch of the ludicrous — positively scream- ing. I will give some specimens of it out of Foscolo himself, who collects them for a different purpose ; though, with all his idolatry of Dante, he was far from being insensible to his mis- takes. " The people of Sienna," according to this national and Chris- tian poet, were " a parcel of coxcombs j those of Arezzo, dogs ; and of Casentino, hogs. Lucca made a trade of perjury. Pis- toia was a den of beasts, and ought to be reduced to ashes ; and the river Arno should overflow and drown every soul in Pisa. Almost all the women in Florence walked half-naked in public, and were abandoned in private. Every brother, husband, son, and father, in Bologna, set their women to sale. In all Lombardy were not to be found three men who were not rascals ; and in 3 JJAi^ i. Mlj. Genoa and Romagna people went about pretending to be men, but in reality were bodies inhabited by devik, their souls having gone to the ' lowest pit of hell' to join the betrayers of their friends and kinsmen."* So much for his beloved countrymen. As for foreigners, par- tioularly kings, " Edward the First of England, and Robert of Scotland, were a couple of grasping fools ; the Emperor Albert was an usurper ; Alphonso the Second, of Spain, a debauchee ; the King of Bohemia a coward ; Frederick of Arragon a coward and miser ; the Kings of Portugal and Norway forgers ; the King of Naples a man whose virtues were expressed by a unit, and his vices by a million ; and the King of France, the de- scendant of a Paris butcher, and of progenitors who poisoned St. Thomas Aquinas, their descendants conquering with the arms of Judas rather than of soldiers, and selling the flesh of their daugh- ters to old men, in order to extricate themselves from a danger.""!' When we add to these invectives, damnations of friends as well as foes, of companions, lawyers, men of lettei's, princes, philosophers, popes, pagans, innocent people as well as guilty, fools and wise, capable and incapable, men, women, and chil- dren,— it is really no better than a kind of diabolical sublimation of Lord Thurlow's anathemas in the Eolliad, which begins with " Damnation seize ye all ;" and ends with " Damn them beyond what mortal tongue can tell, Confound, sink, plunge them all to deepest, blackest hell."t In the gross, indeed, this is ridiculous enough. No burlesque can beat it. But in the particular, one is astonished and sad- dened at the cruelties in which the poet allows his imagination to riot : horrors generally described with too intense a verisimili- tude not to excite our admiration, with too astounding a perse verance not to amaze our humanity, and sometimes with an amount of positive joy and delight that makes us ready to shut * Discorso, as above, p. 101. t Discnrso, p 103. ; Crilicisms on the Rolliad, and Probationary Odes for the Lavrcateship Third edit. 1785, p. 317, HIS Litu A!su liii-iMus. 3a the book with disgust and indignation. Thus, in a circle in hell, where traitors are stuck up to their chins in ice (canto xxxii.), the visitor, in walking about, happens to give one of their faoe^ a kick ; the sufferer weeps, and then curses him — with such in- fernal truth does the writer combine the malignant with the pa- thetic ! Dante replies to the curse by asking the man his name. -He is refused it. He then seizes the miserable wretch by the hair, in order to force him to the disclosure ; and Virgil is rep- resented as commending the barbarity !* But he does worse. To barbarity he adds treachery of his own. He tells another poor wretch, whose face is iced up with his tears, as if he had worn a crystal vizor, that if he will disclose his name and offence, he will relieve his eyes awhile, that he may weep. The man does so ; and the ferocious poet then refuses to perform his promise, adding mockery to falsehood, and observing that ill manners are the only courtesy proper towards such a fellow If It has been conjectured that Macchiavelli apparently encouraged the enormi- ties of the princes of his time, with a design to expose them to indignation. It might have been thought of Dante, if he had not taken a part in the cruelty, that he detailed the horrors of his hell out of a wish to disgust the world with its frightful notions of God. This is certainly the effect of the worse part of his de- scriptions in an age like the present. Black burning gulfs, full of outcries and blasphemy, feet red-hot with fire, men eternally eating their fellow-creatures, frozen wretches malignantly dash- ing their iced heads against one another, other adversaries mu- tually exchanging shapes by force of an attraction at once irre- sistible and loathing, and spitting with hate and disgust when it is done — Enough, enough, for God's sake ! Take the disgust out of one's senses, O flower of true Christian wisdom and charity, now beginning to fill the air with fragrance ! But it will be said that Dante did all this out of his hate of * The writer of the article on Dante in the Foreign Quarterly Review (as above) concedes that his hero in this passage becomes " almost cruel." Almost ! Tormenting a man further, who is up to his chii. in everlasting ice, and whoB8 ace he has kicked .' t " Cortesia fu lui esser villano." Inferno, canto xxxiii. 150 UAl\ 1 Sh. cruelty itself, and of treachery itself. Partly no doubt he did ; and entirely he thought he did. But see how the notions of such retribution react upon the judge, and produce in him the bad pas- sions he punishes. It is true the punishments are imaginary. Were a human being actually to see such things, he must be de- humanised or he would cry out against them with horror and de- testation. But the poem draws them as truths ; the writer's creed threatened them ; he himself contributed to maintain the belief; and however we may suppose such a belief to have had its use in giving alarm to ruffian passions and barbarously igno- rant times, an age arrives when a beneficent Providence permits itself to be better understood, and dissipates the superfluous horror. Many, indeed, of the absurdities of Dante's poem are too ob- , vious now-a-days to need remark. Even the composition of the poem, egotistically said to be faultless by such critics as Alfieri, who thought they resembled him, partakes, as every body's style does, of the faults as well as good qualities of the man. It is nervous, concise, full almost as it can hold, picturesque, mighty, primeval ; but it is often obscure, often harsh, and forced in its constructions, defective in melody, and wilful and superfluous in the rhyme. Sometimes, also, the writer is inconsistent in cir- cumstance (probably from not having corrected the poem) ; and he is not above being filthy. Even in the episode of Paulo and Franoesca, which has so often been pronounced faultless, and which is unquestionably one of the most beautiful pieces of wri- ting in the world, some of these faults are observable, particular- ly in the obscurity of the passage about tolta forma, the cessation of the incessant tempest, and the non-adjuration of the two lovers in the manner that Virgil prescribes. But truly it is said, that when Dante is great, nobody surpass- es him. I doubt if anybody equals him, as to the constant inten- sity and incessant variety of his pictures ; and whatever he paints he throws, as it were, upon its own powers ; as though an artist should draw figures that started into life, and proceeded to acition for themselves, frightening their creator. Every motion, word, and look of these creatures becomes full of sensibility and suggestions. The invisible is at the back of the visible ; dark. 51,-..., \ecomes palpable ; silence de'scribes a character, nay, forms tll& Ijlrili n.rtLr ijriji^ i^jij. 37 the most striking part of a story ; a word acts as a flash of light- ning, which displays some gloomy neighbourhood, where a tower is standing, with dreadful faces at the window'; or where, at your feet, full of eternal voices, one abyss is beheld dropping out of another in the lurid light of torment. In the present volume a story will be found which tells a long tragedy in half-a-dozen lines. Dante has the minute probabilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest and mo^t generalising poetry ; and this feel- ing of matter-of-fact is impressed by fictions the most improbaljle, nay, the most ridiculous and revolting. You laugh at the ab- surdity ; you are shocked at the detestable cruelty ; yet, for the moment, the thing almost seems as if it must be -true. You feel as you do in a dream, and after it ; — you wake and laugh, but the absurdity seemed true at the time ; and while you laugh you shudder. Enough of this crueller part of his genius has been exhibited ; but it is seldom you can have the genius without sadness. In the circle of hell, soothsayers walk along weeping, with their faces turned the wrong way, so that their tears fall between their shoulders. The picture is still more dreadful. Warton thinks It ridiculous. But I cannot help feeling with the poet, that it is dreadfully pathetic. It is the last mortifying insult to human pretension. Warton, who has a grudge against Dante natural to a man of happier piety, thinks him ridiculous also in describing the monster Geryon lying upon the edge of one of the gulfs of hell " like a beaver" (canto xvii.). He is of opinion that the writer only does it to show his knowledge of natural history. But surely the idea of so strange and awful a creature (a huge mild-faced man ending in a dragon's body) lying familiarly on the edge of the gulf, as a beaver does by the water, combines the supernatural with the familiar in a very impressive manner. It is this combination of extremes which is the life and soul of the whole poem ; you have this world in the next ; the same persons, passions, remembrances, intensified by superhuman despairs or beatitudes ; the speechless entrancements of bliss, the purgatorial trials of hope and patience ; the supports of hate and anger (such as they are) in hell itself j nay, of loving despairs, and a self- pity made unboundedly pathetic by endless suffering. Hence SB DAJNTJi. there is no love-story so afTecting as that of Paulo and Francesca thus told and perpetuated in another world ; no father's misery so enforced upon as Ugolino's, who, for hundreds of years, has not grown tired of the revenge to which it wrought him. Dante even puts this weight and continuity of feeling into passages of mere transient emotion or illustration, unconnected with the next world ; as in the famous instance of the verses about evening, and many others which the reader will meet with in this volume. Indeed, if pathos and the most impressive simplicity, and grace- ful beauty of all kinds, and abundant grandeur, can pay (as the reader, I believe, will think it does even in a prose abstract), for the pangs of moral discord and absurdity inflicted by the perusal of Dante's poem, it may challenge competition with any in point of interest. His Heaven, it is true, though containing both sub- lime and lovely passages, is not so good as his Earth. The more unearthly he tried to make it, the less heavenly it became. When he is content with earth in heaven itself, — when he literal- ises a metaphor, and with exquisite felicity finds himself arrived there in consequence of fixing his eyes on the eyes of Beatrice, then he is most celestial. But his endeavours to express degrees of beatitude and holiness by varieties of flame and light, — of dancing lights, revolving lights, lights of smiles, of stars, of star- ry crosses, of didactic letters and sentences, of animal figures made up of stars full of blessed souls, with saints forming an eagle's leak and David in its eye ! — such superhuman attempts become for the most part tricks of theatrical machinery, on which we gaze with little curiosity and no respect. His angels, however, are another matter. Belief was prepared for those winged human forms, and they furnished him with some of his most beautiful combinations of the natural with the super- natural. Ginguene has remarked the singular variety as well as beauty of Dante's angels. Milton's, indeed, are commonplace in the comparison. In the eighth canto of the Inferno, the devils in- solently refuse the poet and his guide an entrance into the city of I-)i= • — an angel comes sweeping over the Stygian lake to enforce it ; the noise of his wings makes the shores tremble, and is like a crashing whirlwind such as beats down the trees and sends the peasants and their herds flying before it. The heavenly messen- HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 39 ger, wfter rebuking the devils, touches the portals of the city with his wand ; they fly open ; and he returns the way he came with- out uttering a word to the two companions. His face was that of one occupied with other thoughts. This angel is announced by a tempest. Another, who brings the souls of ihe departed to Purgatory, is first discovered at a distance, gradually disclosing white splendours, which are his wings and garments. He comes in a boat, of which his wings are the sails ; and as he approaches, it is impossible to look him in the face for its brightness. Two other angels have green wings and green garments, and the dra- pery is kept in motion like a flag by the vehement action of the wings. A fifth has a face like the morning star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth is of a lustre so oppressive, that the poet feels a weight on his eyes before he knows what is coming. Another's presence affects the senses like the fragrance of a May- morning ; and another is in garments dark as cinders, but has a sword in his hand too sparkling to be gazed at. Dante's occa- sional pictures of the beauties of external nature are worthy of these angelic creations, and to the last degree fresh and lovely. You long to bathe your eyes, smarting with the fumes of hell, in his dews. You gaze enchanted on his green fields and his celes- tial blue skies, the more so from the pain and sorrow in midst of which the visions are created. Dante's grandeur of every kind is proportionate to that of his angels, almost to his ferocity ; and that is saying every thing. It is not always the spiritual grandeur of Milton, the subjection of the material impression to the moral ; but it is equally such when he chooses, and far more abundant. His infernal precipices — his black whirlwinds — his innumerable cries and claspings of hands — his very odours of huge loathsomeness — his giants at twi- light standing up to the middle in pits, like towers, and causing earthquakes when they move — his earthquake of the mountain in Purgatory, when a spirit is set free for heaven — his dignified Mantuan Sordello, silently regarding him and his guide aS they go by, " like a lion on his watch" — his blasphemer, Capaneus, lying in unconquered rage and sullenness under an eternal rain of flakes of fire (human precursor of Milton's Satan) — his aspect of Paradise, " as if the universe had smiled" — his inhabitants of 40 DANTE. the whole planet Saturn crying out so loud, in accordance with the anti-papal indignation of Saint Pietro Damiano, that the poet, though among them, could not hear what they said — and the blush ing eclipse, like red clouds at sunset, which takes place at the apostle Peter's denunciation of the sanguinary filth of the court of Rome — all these sublimities, and many more, make us not know whether to be more astonished at the greatness of the poet or the raging littleness of the man. Grievous is it to be forced to bring two such opposites together ; and I wish, for the honour and glory of poetry, I did not feel compelled to do so. But the swarthy Florentine had not the healthy temperament of his brethren, and he fell upon evil times. Compared with Homer and Shakspeare, his very intensity seems only superior to theirs from an excess of the morbid ; and he is inferior to both in other sovereign qualities of poetry — to the one, in giving you the health- iest general impression of nature itself — ^to Shakspeare, in bound- less universality — ^to most great poets, in thorough harmony and delightfulness. He wanted (generally speaking) the music of a happy and a happy-making disposition. Homer, from his large vital bosom, breathes like a broad fresh air over the world, amidst alternate storm and sunshine, making you aware that there is rough work to be faced, but also activity and beauty to be en- joyed. The feeling of health and strength is predominant. Life laughs at death itself, or meets it with a noble confidence — is not taught to dread it as a malignant goblin. Shakspeare has all the smOes as well as tears of nature, and discerns the " soul of goorl ness in things evil." He is comedy as well as tragedy — ^the en- tire man in all his qualities, moods, and experiences ; and he beautifies all. Ana both those truly divine poets make nature their subject through her own inspiriting medium — ^not through the darkened glass of one man's spleen and resentment. Dante, in constituting himself the hero of his poem, not only renders her, in the general impression, as dreary as himself, in spite of the occasional beautiful pictures he draws of her, but narrows her very immensity into his pettiness. He fancied, alas, that he could build her universe over again out of the politics of old Rome and the divinity of the schools ! Dante, besides his great poem, and a few Latin eclogues, of va HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 41 great value, wrote lyrics full of Platonioal sentiment, some of which anticipated the loveliest of Petrarch's ; and he was th<5 author of various prose works, political and philosophical, all more or less masterly for the time in which he lived, and all co- adjutors of his poetry in fixing his native tongue. His account of his Early Life (the Vita Nuovd) is a most engaging history of a boyish passion, evidently as real and true on his own side as love and truth can be, whatever might be its mistake as to its ob- ject. The treatise on the Vernacular Tongue {de Vulgari Elo- quio) shews how critically he considered his materials for im- pressing the world, and what a reader he was of every production of his contemporaries. The Banquet (Convito) is but an abstruse commentary on some of his minor poems , but the book on Mon- archy (^de Monarchia) is a compound of ability and absurdity, in which his great genius is fairly overborne by the barbarous ped- antry of the age. It is an argument to prove that the world must all be governed by one man ; that this one man must be the suc- cessor of the Roman Emperor — God having manifestly designed the world to be subject for ever to the Roman empire ; and last- . ly, that this Emperor is equally designed by God to be indepen- dent of the Pope — spiritually subject to him, indeed, but so far only as a good son is subject to the religious advice of his father; and thus making Church and State happy for ever in the two di- vided supremacies. And all this assumption of the obsolete and impossible the author gravely proves in all the forms of logic, by arguments drawn from the histoi-y of jEneas, and the providential cackle of the Roman geese ! How can the patriots of modern Italy, justified as they are in extolling the poet to the skies, see him plunge into such depths of bigotry in his verse and childishness in his prose, and consent to perplex the friends of advancement with making a type of their success out of so erring though so great a man ? Such slavish- ness, even to such greatness, is a, poor and unpromising thing, compared with an altogether unprejudiced and forward-looking self-reliance. To have no faith in names has been announced as one of their principles ; and " God and Humanity " is their motto. What, therefore, has Dante's name to do with their principles ? or what have the semi-barbarisms of the thirteenth century to do 12 DANTE. with the final triumph of " God and Humanity ?" Dante's lauded wish for that union of the Italian States, which his fame has led them so fondly to identify with their own, was but a portion of his greater and prouder wish to see the whole world at the feet of his boasted ancestress, Rome. Not, of course, that he had iw view to what he considered good and just government (for what sane despot purposes to rule without that ?) ; but his good and just government was always to be founded on the sine qua nan principle of -ir.iveisal Italian domination.* All that Dante said or did has its interest for us in spite of his errors, because he was an earnest and suffering man and a great geniu'' ■ but hie iHme must ever continue to lie where his greatest blamfi uoes, m his principal work. He was a gratuitous logician, a prepostei'ous politician, a cruel theologian ; but his wonderful imagLiatkir^ and (considering the bitterness that was in him) still more wonc'erful sweetness, have gone into the hearts of his fel- low-creatures, and will remain there in spite of the moral and religious absurdities with which they are mingled, and of the in- ability which the best-natured readers feel to associate his entire memory, as a poet, with their usual personal delight in a poet and his name. * Every body sees this who is not wilfully blind. " Passionate," says the editor of the Opere Minori, " for the ancient Italian glories, and the greatness of the Koman name, he was of opinion that it was only by means of combined strength, and one common government, that Italy could be finally secured from discord in its own bosom and enemies from without, and recover its ancient empire over the whole world." " Amantissimo delle antiche glorie Italiane, e della grandezza del nome romano, ei considerava, che soltanto pel mezzo d' una gen- eral forza ed autoriti poteva 1' Italia dalle interne contese e dalle straniere iu- vasioni restarsi sicura, e recuperare V antico imperio sopra tutte le genii." — Ul Bup. Tol. iii. p. 8. THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS L THE JOURNEY THROU&H HELL Th£ infernal regions, according to Dante, are situate in tlie globe we inhabit, directly beneath Jerusalem, and consist of a succession of gulfs or circles, nar- rowing as they descend, and terminating in the centre ; so that the general shape is that of a funnel. Commentators have diiFered as to their magnitude ; but the latest calculation gives 315 miles for the diameter of the mouth or cra- ter, and a quarter of a mile for that of its terminating point. In the middle is tba abyss, pervading the whole depth, "tid 245 miles in diameter at the open- ing ; which reduces the different plattorms, or territories that surround it, to a size comparatively small. These territories are more or less varied with land and water, lakes, precipices, &c. A precipice, fourteen miles high, divides the first of them from the second. The passages from the upper world to the en- trance are various ; and the descents from one circle to another are effected by the poet and his guide in different manners — sometimes on foot t'irougn ly- ways, sometimes by the conveyance of supernatural leiiij^s. Tfl >j urc: ' - ne finds to be the abode of those who have done neither good no»' •■.v;!, c: . ■• g for nothing but themselves. In the first circle are the whole unbuptised world — heathens and infants — melancholy, though not tormented. Here also is found the Elysium of Virgil, whose Charon and other infernal beings are among the agents of torment In the second circle the torments commence with the sin of incontinence ; and the punishment goes deepening with the crime from cir- cle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath, sullenness, or unwil- lingness to bo pleased with the creation, disbelief in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences), usuiy, murder, suicide, blas- phemy, seduction and other carnal enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft, trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery (on the great Italian scalej, sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the Church, heresy, false apostleship, alchemy, forgery, coining (all these, from se- duction downwards, in one circle) ; then, in the frozen 0{ lowest circle of all. 46 ARGUMENT. treachery ; and at the bottom of this is Satan, stuck into the centre of the eanh. With the centre of the globe commences the antipodean attraction of its opposite side, together with a rooky ascent out of it, through a huge ravine. The poet and his guide, on their arrival at this spot, accordingly find their po- sition reversed ; and so conclude their downward journey upwards, till they issue forth to light on the borders of tb? %ea which contains the island o! Vur- gatory. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. Dante says, that when he was half-way on his pilgrimage through this life, he one day found himself, towards nightfall, in a wood where he could no longer discern the right path. It was a place so gloomy and terrible, every thing in it growing in such a strange and savage manner, that the horror he felt returned on him whenever he thought of it. The pass of death could hardly be more bitter. Travelling through it all night with a beating heart, he at length came to the foot of a hill, and looking up, as he began to ascend it, he perceived the shoulders of the hill clad in the beams of morning ; a sight which gave him some little comfort. He felt like a man who has buffeted his way to land out of a shipwreck, and who, though still anxious to get farther from his peril, cannot help turning round to gaze on the wide wa- ters. So did he stand looking back on the pass that contained that dreadful wood. After resting a while, he again betook him up the hill ; but had not gone far when he beheld a leopard bounding in front of him, and hindering his progress. After the leopard came a lion, with his head aloft, mad with hunger, and seeming to frighten the very air •* and after the lion, more eager still, a she- wolf, so lean that she appeared to be sharpened with every wolfish want. The pilgrim fled back in terror to the wood, where he again found himself in a darkness to which the light never penetrated. In that place, he said, the sun never spoke word.f But the ^xolf was still close upon him.:]: * " Parea che 1' aer ne temesse." T " La. dove '1 sol taoe." *' The sun to me is dark, And silent is the moon, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave." — Millon + There is great diiTerence among the commentators respectmg the meBB- (8 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. While thus flying, he beheld coming towards him a man, who spoke something, but he knew not what. The voice sounded strange and feeble, as if from disuse. Dante loudly called out to him to save him, whether he was a man or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight the wild beasts disappeared, said that he was no longer man, though man he had been in the time of the false gods, and sung the history of the offspring of Anchises. "And art thou, then, that Virgil," said Dante, " who has filled the world with such floods of eloquence 1 O glory and light of all poets, thou art my master, and thou mine author ; thou alone the book from which I have gathered beauties that huve gained me praise. Behold the peril I am in, and help me, for I tremble in every vein and pulse." Virgil cornforted Dante. He told him that he must quit the wood by another road, and that he himself would be his guide, leading him first to behold the regions of woe underground, and then the spirits that lived content in fire because it purified them for heaven ; and then that he would consign him to other hands worthier than his own, which should raise him to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of whom he was one, had been rebels to the law of him that reigns there, nobody could arrive at Par- adise by their means.* ing of the three beasts ; some supposing them passions, others political troubles,- otliers peraonal enemies, &c. The point is not of much iir.poKCBce, especially as a mystery was intended ; but nobody, as Mr. Gary says, can doubt that the passage was suggested by one in the prophet Jeremiah, v. 6 : " Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them ; a leopard shall watch over their cities." * " Che quello 'mperador che \b. su regna Perch' i' fu' ribellante a la sua legge, Non vuol che 'n sua citt^ per me si vegna.'' The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at defiance, — retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins ; " which is odd," as the poet Bays ; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued, much more so, they " kad at least an equal claim on the submission of the reason ; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological triumph. THE JOU2NEY THROUGH HELL. 40 So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and Uante closely fol- lowed. He expressed a fear, however, as they went, lest being " neither jEneas nor St. Paul," his journey could not be worthily undertaken, or end in wisdom. But Virgil, after sharply rebu- king him for his faintheartedness, told him, that the spirit of her whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down from heaven, on pur- pose to commend her lover to his care ; ui)on which the drooping courage of the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confidence ; as flowers that have been closed and bowed down by frosty nights, rise all up on their stems in the morning sun.* " Through me is the road to the dolorous city ; Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows ; Through me is the road to the lost people. Justice was the motive of my exalted maker ; I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom, and by primal love ; Before me was no created thing, if not eternal ; and eternal am I also. Abandon hope, all ye who enter." Such were the words which Dante beheld written in dark characters over a portal. " Master," said he to Virgil, " T find their meaning hard." " A man," answered Virgil, " must conduct himself at this door like one prepared. Hither must he bring no mistrust. Hither can come and live no cowardice. We have arrived at the place I told thee of. Here thou art to behold the dolorous people who havj lost all intellectual good."f * " Quale i fioretti dal nottumo gelo Chinati e chiusi, poi che '1 sol gl' imbianca, Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo." Lii'O as the flowers that with the frosty night Arc bowed and closed, soon as the sun returns, ■Rise on their stems, all open and upright, t This loss of intellectual good, and the confession of the poet that he finds the inscription over hell-portal hard to understand (il senso lor m' e duro), are among the passages in Dante which lead some critics to suppose that his hel! is nothing but an allegory, intended at once to imply his own disbelief in it as understood by the vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it, neverthe- less, as a salutary check both to the foolish and the reflecting; — to the foolish. as an alarm : and to the reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the teeth pf many appearances to the contrary, that such may have been the case ; biii M THE ITALIAN PILGKIM'S PROGRErfS. So saying, Virgil placed his hand on Llante's, looking on him with a cheerful countenance ; and the Florentine passed with him through the dreadful gate. They entered upon a sightless gulf, in which was a black air without stars ; and immediately heard a hubbub of groans, and wailings, and terrible things said in many languages, words of wretchedness, outcries of rage, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of the smitings of hands one against another. Dante began to, weep. The sound was as if the sand in a whirlwind were turned into noises, and filled the blind air with incessant conflict. Yet these were not the souls of the wicked. They were those only who had lived without praise or blame, thinking of nothing but themselves. These miserable creatures were mixed with the angels who stood neutral in the war with Satan. Heaven would not dull its brightness with those angels, nor would lower hell receive them, lest the bad ones should triumph in their company. " And what is it," said Dante, " which makes them so griev- ously suffer ?" " Hopelessness of death," said Virgil. " Their blind existence here, and immemorable former life, make them so wretched, that they envy every other lot. Mercy and justice alike disdain them. Let us speak of them no more. Look, and pass." The companions went on till they came to a great river with a multitude waiting on the banks. A hoary old man appeared crossing the river towards them in a boat ; and as he came, he oaid, " Woe to the wicked. Never expect to see heaven. I come to bear you across to the dark regions of everlasting fire and ice." Then looking at Dante, he said, " Get thee away from the dead, thou who standest there, live spirit." " Torment thyself not, Charon," said Virgil. " He has a passport beyond thy power to question." The shaggy cheeks of the boatman of the livid lake, who had in the doubt that it affects tither the foolish or the wise to any gooa purpose, and in the certainty that puoh doctrines do a world of mischief to tender con- sciences and the cause of sound piety, such monstrous contradictions, in tennsi of every sense of justice and charity which God has implanted in the hf^art of man, are not to be passed over without indignant comment. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 5i wheels of fire about his eyes, fell at these words ; and he was silent. But the 'naked multitude of souls whom he had spoken to changed colour, and gnashed their teeth, blaspheming God, and their parents, and the human species, and the place, and the hour, and the seed of the sowing of their birth ; and all the while they felt themselves driven onwards, by a fear which became a desire, towards the cruel river-side, which awaits every one destitute of the fear of God. The demon Charon, beckoning to them with eyes like brasiers, collected them as they came, giving blows to those that lingered, with his oar. One by one they dropped into the boat like leaves from a bough in autumn, till the bough ia- left bare ; or as birds drop into the decoy at the sound of the bird-call. There was then an earthquake, so terrible that the recollection of it made the poet burst into a sweat at every pore. A whirl- wind issued from the lamenting ground, attended by vermilion flashes ; and he lost his senses, and fell like a man stupified. A crash of thunder through his brain woke up the pilgrim so hastily, that he shook himself like a person roused by force. He found that he was on the brink of a gulf, from which ascended a thunderous sound of innumerable groanings. He could see nothing down it. It was too dark with sooty clouds. Virgil himself turned pale, but said, " We are to go down here. I will lead the way." " O master," said Dante, " if even thou fearest, what is to be- come of myself?" " It is pity, not fear," replied Virgil, " that makes me change colour." With these words his guide led him into the first circle of hell, surrounding the abyss. The great noise gradually ceased to be heard, as they journeyed inwards, till at last they became aware of a world of sighs, which produced a trembling in the air. They were breathed by the souls of such as had died without baptism, men, women, and infants ; no matter how good ; no mat- ter if they worshipped God before the coming of Christ, for they worshipped him not " properly." Virgil himself was one of them. They were all lost for no other reason ; and their " on y Bufiering" consisted in " hopeless desire !" 52 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard tliis, know ing how many good men must be in that place. He inquired if no one had ever been taken out of it into heaven. Virgil told him there had, and he named them ; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for whom Jacob did so much, — and " many more ;" adding, however, that there was no instance of salvation before theirs. Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante per- ceived a lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evi- dently of great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the rest. Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their renown on earth. A voice was then heard exclaiming, " Honour and glory to the lofty poet ! Lo, his shade returns." Dante then saw four other noble figures coming to- wards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful. " Observe him with the sword in his hand," said Virgil, as they were advancing. " That is Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him comes Horace the satirist j then Ovid ; and the last is Lucan." " And thus I beheld," says Dante, " the bright school of the loftiest of poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle." For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled : and " further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, " for they admitted me of their tribe ; so that to a band of that high account I added a sixth."* The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived, talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a mag- nificent castle, girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority^ their voices sweet, * It is seldom tliat a boast of this kind — ^not, it must be owned, basbfnl hal been allowed by posterity to be just ; nay in four out of the five instances, be* low its claims. THE JOURNEY THROl. GH HELL. 53 and their speech seldom.* Dante was taken apart to an eleva- tion in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly ; and there, on the " enamelled green,"| were pointed out to him the great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem. He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and jEneas, and Caesar in armour with his hawk's eyes ; and on another side he beheld old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled Tarquin, and Lu- cretia, and Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin. He then raised his eyes a little, and beheld the " master of those who know"! (Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured by them all. Socrates and Plato were at his side. Among the rest was Demooritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus, &;c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he saw, and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too nume- rous to mention. The company of six became diminished to two, and Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air for a stormy one ; and so they descended again into darkness. It was the second circle into which they now came — a sphere narrower than the first, and by so much more the wrelcheder. Minos sat at the entrance, gnarling — ^he that gives sentence on every one that comes, and intimates the cii'cle into which each is to be plunged by the number of folds into which he casts his tail round about him. Minos admonished Dante to beware how he entered unbidden, and warned him against his conductor ; but Virgil sharply rebuked the judge, and bade him not set his will against the will that was power. * " Genti v' eran, con occhi tardi e gravi, Di grande autoritS, ne' lor sembianti : Parlavan rado, con voci soavi." t " Sopra '1 verde smalto." Mr. Gary has noticed the appearanfo, fortbt firet time, of thia beautiful but now commonplace image. t " II maestro ii color che sanno." 54 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. The pilgrims then descended ihrough hell-mouth, till they cama to a place dark as pitch, that bellowed with furious cross-winds, like a sea in a tempest. It was the first place of torment, and the habitation of carnal sinners. The winds, full of stifled voices, buffeted the souls for ever, whirling them away to and fro, and dashing them against one another. Whenever it seized them for that purpose, the wailing and the shrieking was loudest, crying out against this Divine Power. Sometimes a whole mul- titude came driven in a body like starlings before the wind, now hither and thither, now up, now down ; sometimes they went in a line like cranes, when a company of those birds is beheld sailing along in the air, uttering its dolorous clangs. Dante, seeing a group of them advancing, inquired of Virgil who they were. " Who are these," said he, " coming hither, scourged in the blackest part of the hurricane ?" " She at the head of them," said Virgil, " was empress over many nations. So foul grew her heart with lust, that she or- dained license to be law, to the end that herself might be held blameless. She is Semiramis, of whom it is said that she gave suck to Ninus, and espoused him. Leading the multitude next to her is Dido, she that slew herself for love, and broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus ; and she that follows with the next is th ' luxurious woman, Cleopatra." Dante then saw Helen, who produced such a world of misery ; and the great Achilles, who fought for love till it slew him ; and Paris ; and Tristan ; and a thousand more whom his guide pointed at, naming their names, every one of whom was lost through love. The poet stood for a while speechless for pity, and like one bereft of his wits. He then besought leave to speak to a particu- lar couple who went side by side, and who appeared to be borne before the wind with speed lighter than the rest. His conduc- tor bade him wait till they came nigher, and then to entreat them gently by the love which bore them in that manner, and they would stop and speak with him. Dante waited his time, and then lifted up his voice between the gusts of wind, and adjured the two " weary souls" to halt and have speech with him, if none THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 55 forbade their doing so ; upon which they came to him, like doves to the nest.* There was a lull in the tempest, as if on purpose to let them speak ; and the female addressed Dante, saying, that as he shew- ed such pity for their state, they would have prayed heaven 'to give peace and repose to his life, had they possessed the friend- ship of heaven.f " Love," she said, " which is soon kindled in a gentle heart, seized this my companion for the fair body I once inhabited — how deprived of it, my spirit is bowed to recollect. Love, which compels the beloved person upon thoughts of love, seized me in turn with a delight in his passion so strong, that, as thou seest, even here it forsakes me not. Love brought us both to one end. The punishment of Cain awaits him that slew us." The poet was struck dumb by this story. He hung down his head, and stood looking on the ground so long, that his guide * This is the famous episode of Paulo and Francesca. She was daughtei to Count Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, and wife to Giovanni Malatesta one of the sons of the lord of Rimini. Paulo was her brother-in-law. They were surprised togetlier by the husband, and slain on the spot. Particulars of their history will be found in the Appendix, together with the whole original " Quali colombe, dal disio chiamate, Con r all aperte e ferme, al dolce nido Volan per 1' aer dal voler portate : Cotali uscir de la schiera ov' fe Dido, A noi venendo per 1' aer maligno, SI forte fu 1' aifettuoso grido." As doves, drawn home from where they circled still, Set firm their open wings, and through the air Come sweeping, wafted by their pure good-will : So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair. Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign. Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer. t Francesca is to be conceived telling her story in anxious intermitting sen- tences — now all tenderness for her lover, now angry at their slayer ; watching the poet's face, to see what he thinks, and at times averting her own. I take this excellent direction from Ugo Foacolo. 56 THE ITALIAN PIDjlRIM'S PROGRESS asked him what was in his mind. *' Alas !" answered he, " such then was this love, so full of sweet thoughts ; and such the pass to which it brought them ! Oh, Franoesca !" he cried, turning again to the sad couple, " thy sufferings make me weep. But tell me, I pray thee, what was it that first made thee know, for a certainty, that his love was returned ? — that thou couldst refuse him thine no longer ?" " There is not a greater sorro^> ," answered she, " than calling to mind happy moments in the midst of wretchedness.* But since thy desire is so great to know our story to the root, hear me tell it as well as I may for tears. It chanced, one day, that we sat reading the tale of Sir Launcelot, how love took him in thrall. We were alone, and had no suspicion. Often, as we read, our eyes became suspended,']' and we changed colour ; but one pas- sage alone it was that overcame us. When we read how Gene- vra smiled, and how the lover, out of the depth of his love, could not help kissing that smile, he that is never more to be parted from me kissed me himself on the mouth, all in a tremble. Never had we go-between but that book. The writer was the betrayer. That day we read no more." While these words were being uttered by o"3 of the spirits, the other wailed so bitterly, that the poet thought he should have * " Nessun niaggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Ne la miseria." t " Per piti fiate gli occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura." " To look at one another," says Boccaccio ; and his interpretation has been fol- lowed by Gary and Foscojfa ; but, with deference to such authorities, I beg leave to think that the poet meant no more than he says, namely, that their eyes were simply " suspended" — hung, as it were, over the book, without be- ing able to read on ; which is what I intended to express (if I may allude to a production of which both those critics were pleased to speak well), when, in mj youthful attempt to enlarge this story, I wrote " And o'er the book they hung, and nothing said. And every lingering page grew longer as thej' read." ^iM-y qi Rimini THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 57 died for pity. His senses forsook him, and he fell flat on the ground, as a dead body falls.* On regaining his senses, the poet found himself in the third circle of hell, a place of everlasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush of hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. Tli« triple-headed dog Cerberus, with red eyes and 'greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with claws, barked above the heads of the wretches who floundered in the mud, tearing, skiiming, and dismembering them, as they turned their, sore and soddened bodies from side to side. When he saw the two living men, he shewed his fangs, and shook in every limb for desire of their flesh. Virgil threw lumps of dirt into his mouth, and so they passed him. It was the place of Gluttons. The travellers passed over them, as if they had been ground to walk upon. But one of them sat up, and addressed the Florentine as his acquaintance. Dante did not known him, for the agony in his countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog (Ciacco), and by no other name does the poet, or any one else, mention him. His countiyman addressed him by it, though declaring at the same time that he wept to see him. Hog prophesied evil to his discordant native city, adding that there * " Mentre che 1' uno spirto questo disse, L' altro piangeva si, che di pietade I' venni men cosi com' io morisse, E caddi come corpo morto cade." This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deaduess of its expression. While thus one spoke, the other spirit moum'd With wail so woful, that at his remorse I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd Stone-stifF; and to the ground, fell like a corse. The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think) because he had sinned in the same way ; and if Foscolo's opinion could be established — that the incident of the book is invention — their conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough to have occurred to Dante. But the same probability applies in the ease of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their own times ; and nothing is more likely \han the volume's having been found in the room where they perished. 58 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. were but two just men in it — all the rest being given up to ava- rice, envy, and pride. Dante inquired by name respecting the fate of five other Florentines, who had done good, and was in. formed that they were all, for various offences, in lower gulfs of hell. Hog then begged that he would mention having seen him when he returned to the sweet world ; and so, looking at him a little, bent his head, and disappeared among his blinded compan- ions. " Satan ! hoa, Satan !" roared the demon Plutus, as the poets were descending into the fourth circle. " Peace !" cried Virgil, " with thy swollen lip, thou accursed wolf. No one can hinder his coming down. God wills it."* Flat fell Plutus, collapsed, like the sails of a vessel when the mast is split. This circle was the most populous one they had yet come to. The sufferers, gifled with supernatural might, kept eternally roll- ing round it, one against another, with terrific violence, and so dashing apart, and returning. " Why grasp V cried the one — " Wh}' throw away?" cried the other; and thus exclaiming, they dash furiously together. They wore the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Multitudes of them were churchmen, including cardinals and popes. Not al the gold beneath the moon could have purchased them a mo- ment's rest. Dante asked if none of them were to be recognised by their countenances. Virgil said, "No;" for the stupid and sullied lives which they led on earth swept their faces away from all distinction for ever. In discoursing of fortune, they descend by the side of a tor- rent, black as ink, into the fifth circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the Sullen, and the Proud. Here they first beheld a filthy marsh, full of dirty naked bodies, that in everlasting rage * Plutus's exclamation about Satan is a great choke-pear to tlie commenta- tors. The line in the original is " Pape Sat.in, pape Satan aleppe." The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not the business of this ab- stract to dlFcuss such points ; and therefore I content myself with believing that the conlcxl implies a call of alarm on the Prince of Hell at the sight of tjiie living cr? ftlafe and his guide. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 53 tore one another to pieces. In a quieter division of the pool were seen nothing but bubbles, carried by the ascent, from its slimy bottom, of the stifled words of the sullen. They were always saying, " We were sad and dark within us in the midst of the sweet sunshine, and now we live sadly in the dark bogs." The poets walked on till they came to the foot of a tower, which hung out two blazing signals to another just discernible in the distance. A boat came rapidly towards them, ferried by the wrathful Phlegyas ■* who cried out, " Aha, felon ! and so thou hast comu at last !" " Thou errest," said Vii^il. " We come for no longer time than it will take thee to ferry us across thy pool." Phlegyas looked like one defrauded of his right ; but proceeded to convey them. During their course a spirit rose out of the mire, looking Dante in the face, and said, " Who art thou, that com.est before thy time ?" " Who art thou V said Dante. " Thou seest who I am," answered the other ; " one among the mourners." " Then mourn still, and howl, accursed spirit," returned the Florentine. "I know thee, — all over filth as thou art." The wretch in fury laid hold of the boat, but Virgil thrust him back, exclaiming, " Down with thee ! down among the other dogs !" Then turning to Dante, he embraced and kissed him, saying, " O soul, that knows how to disdain, blessed be she that bore thee ! Arrogant, truly, upon earth was this sinner, nor is his memory graced by a single virtue. Hence the furiousness of his spirit now. How many kings are there at this moment lord- ing it as gods, who shall wallow here, as he does, like swine in the mud, and be thought no better of by the world !" * Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo for setting the god'a temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false. Jugghanaut is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle, involving very nice questions ; but at any rate, bad our poet been a Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have wrU- teu about it in Sanscrit. tiO THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. " I should like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, " be- lore we go." " A right wish," said Virgil, " and thou shall, to thy heart's content." On a sudden the wretch's muddy companions seized and drenched him so horribly that (exclaims Dante) " I laud and diank God for it now at this moment." " Have at him !" cried they ; " have at Filippo Argenti ;" and the wild fool of a Florentine dashed his teeth for rage into his own flesh.* The poet's attention was now drawn off by a noise of lamenta- tion, and he perceived that he was approaching the city of Dis.f The turrets glowed vermilion with the fire within it, the walls appeared to be of iron, and moats were round about them. The boat circuited the walls till the travellers came to a gate, which Phlegyas, with a loud voice, told them to quit the boat and enter. But a thousand fallen angels crowded over the top of the gate, refusing to open it, and making furious gestures. At length they agreed to let Virgil speak with them inside ; and he lefl Jlante for a while, standing in terror without. The parley was * Filippo Argenti (Philip Silver, — so called from his shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Florentine remarkable for bod'iy strength and ex- treme irascibility. What a barbarous strength and confusion of ideas is there in this whole passage about him ! Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed, passion arguing in a circle ! Filippo himself might liave written it. Dante says, " Con piangere e con lutto Spirito maladetto, ti rimani. — Via costs, con gli altri cani," &e. Then Virgil, kissing and embracing him, " Alma sdegnosa Benedetta oolei che 'n te s' inoinse," ?tu. And Dante again, " Maestro, molto sarei vago Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," &,c. t Dia, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for dalan. Within th« uvalls of the city of Dis commence the pnnialiments by fire. riiE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 61 in vain. They would not let them pass. Virgil, however, bade his companion bo of good cheer, and then stood listening and talking to himself; disclosing by his words his expectation of some extraordinary assistance, and at the same time his anxiety for its arrival. On a sudden, three raging figures arose over the gate, coloured with gore. Green hydras twisted about them ; and their fierce temples had snakes instead of hair. " Look," said Virgil. " The Furies ! The one on the left is Megaera ; Alecto is she that is wailing on the right ; and in the middle is Tisiphone." Virgil then hushed. The Furies stood elawing their breasts, smiting their hands together, and raising such hideous cries, that Dante clung to his friend. " Bring the Gorgon's head !" cried the Furies, looking down ; " turn him to adamant !" " Turn round," said Virgil, " and hide thy face ; for if thou bfiholdest the Gorgon, never again wilt thou see the light of day." And with these words he seized Dante and turned him round him- self, clapping his hands over his companion's eyes. And now was heard coming over the water a terrible crashing aoise, that made the banks on either side of it tremble. It was like a hurricane which comes roaring through the vain shelter of the woods, splitting and hurling away the boughs, sweeping along proudly in a huge cloud of dust, and making herds and herdsmen fly before it. " Now stretch your eyesight across the water," said Virgil, letting loose his hands ; — " there, where the smoke Df the foam is thickest." Dante looked ; and saw a thousand of the rebel angels, like frogs before a serpent, swept away into a h^ap before the coming of a single spirit, who flew over the tops Df the billows with unwet feet. The spirit frequently pushed Ihe gross air from before his face, as if tired of the base obstacle ; and as he came nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messenger from neaven, looked anxiously at Virgil. Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow down. The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon as he arrived at '.he n-ate, touched it with a wand that he had in his hand, and it 3ew open. " Outcasts of heaven," said he ; " despicable race ! whence this fantastinal arrogance ? Do ye forget that your torments aTd fcJ THE ITALIAM PILGRIiM'S PROGRESS. laid on thicker every time ye kick against the Fates ? Do ye forget how yoL.r Cerberus was bound and chained till he lost the hair ofT his neck like a common dog /" So saying he turned swiftly anc. departed the way he came, not addressing a word to the travellei's. His countenance had suddenly a look of some other business, totally different from the one he had terminated. The companions passed in, and beheld a place full of tombs red-hot. It was the region of Arch-heretics and their followers. Dante and his guide passed round betwixt the walls and the sep- ulchres as in a churchyard, and came to the quarter which held Epicurus and his sect, who denied the existence of spirit apart from matter. The lids of the tombs remaining unclosed till the day of judgment, the soul of a noble Florentine, Farinata degli Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as a countryman, asking him to stop.* Dante, alarmed, beheld him rise half out of his sepuluhi'e, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell itself. Finding who Dante was, he boasted of having three times ex- pelled the Guelphs. '^ Perhaps so," said the poet ; " but they came back again each time ; an art which their enemies have not yet acquired." A visage then appeared from out another tomb, looking ea- gerly, as if it expected to see some one else. Being disappointed, the tears came into its eyes, and the sufferer said, " If it is thy genius that conducts thee hither, where is my son, and why is he not with thee ?" " It is not ray genius that conducts me," said Dante, " but that of one, whom perhaps thy son held in contempt." " How sayest thou ?" cried the shade ; — " held in contempt ? He is dead then ? He beholds no longer the sweet light ?" And with these words he dropped into his tomb, and was seen no more. It was Cavalcante Cavalcanti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido.f * F irinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of Dante, and had van quished the poet's connexions at the battle of Montaperto. + What would Guido have said to this? More, I suspect, than Dante would have liked to hear, or known how to answer. But he died before the verses transpired ; probably before they were written ; for Dante, in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and seasons he linds most convenient. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 63 'I'he shade of Farinata, who had meantime been looking on, now replied to the taunt of Dante, prophesying that he should soon have good reason to know that the art he spoke of had been acquired ; upon which Dante, speaking with more considerate- ness to the lofty sufferer, requested to know how the gift of pro- phecy could belong to spirits who were ignorant of the time pres- ent. Farinata answered that so it was ; just as there was a kind of eyesight which could discern things at a distance though not at hand. Dante then expressed his remorse at not having in- formed Cavalcante that his son was alive. He said it was owing to his being overwhelmed with thought on the subject he had just mentioned, and entreated Farinata to tell him so. Quitting this part of the cemetery, Virgil led him through the midst of it towards a descent into a valley, from which there as- cended a loathsome odour. They stood behind one of the tombs for a while, to accustom themselves to the breath of it ; and then began to descend a wild fissure in a rook, near the mouth of which lay the infamy of Crete, the Minotaur. The monster be- holding them gnawed himself for rage ; and on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness to run at them ; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of boil- ing blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep accord- ing to the amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of the Inflicters of Violence ; and if any of them emerged from it higher than he had a right to do, the Centaurs drove him down with their arrows. Nessus, the one that be- queathed Hercules the poisoned garment, came galloping towards th(! pilgrims, bending his bow, a>id calling out from a distance to know who they were ; but Virgil, disdaining his hasty charac- ter, would explain himself only to Chiron, the Centaur who in- structed Achilles. Chiron, in consequence, bade Nessus accom- pany them along the river ; and there they saw tyrants immersed up to the eyebrows ; — Alexander the Great among them, Diony- sius of Syracuse, and Ezzelino the Paduan. There was one of the Pazzi of Florence, and Rinieri of Corneto (infestors of the 64 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. public ways), now shedding bloody tears, and Attila the Scourge; and Pyrrlius king of Epirus. Further on, among those immersed up to the throat, was Guy de Montfort, the Englishman, who slew his father's slayer, Prince Henry, during divine service, in the bosom of God ; and then by degrees the river became shallower and shallower till it covered only the feet ; and here the Centaui quitted the pilgrims, and they crossed over into a forest. The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest — ^the leaves no< green, but black — the boughs not freely growing, but knotted and twisted — the fruit no fruit, but thorny poison. The Harpies wail- ed among the trees, occasionally shewing their human faces ; and on every side of him Dante heard lamenting human voices, but could see no one from whom they came. " Pluck one of the boughs," said Virgil. Dante did so ; and blood and a cry fol- lowed it. " Why pluckest thou me ?" said the trunk. " Men have we been, like thyself; but thou couldst not use us worse, had we been serpents." The blood and words came out together, as a green bough hisses and spits in the fire. The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the good chancellor of the Emperor Frederick the Second. Just though he had been to others, he was thus tormented for having been unjust to him- self; for, envy having wronged him to his sovereign, who sen- tenced him to lose his eyes, he dashed his brains out against a wall. Piero entreated Dante to vindicate his memory. The poet could not speak for pity ; so Virgil made the promise for him, inquiring at the same time in what manner it was that Sui- cides became thus identified with trees, and how their souls were to rejoin their bodies at the day of judgment. Piero said, that the moment the fierce self-murderer's spirit tore itself from the body, and passed before Charon, it fell, like a grain of corn, into that wood, and so grew into a tree. The Harpies then fed on its leaves, causing both pain and a vent for lamentation. The body it would never again enter, having thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag the body down to it bj a violent attraction ; and every suicide's carcass will be hung upon the thorn of its wretched shade. The naked souls of tvio men, whose profusion had brougnl THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 65 them to a violent end, here came running through the wooq from the fangs of black female mastiffs — leaving that of a suicide to mourn the havoc which their passage had made of his tree. He begged his countryman to gather his leaves up, and lay them at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so ; and then he and Virgil proceeded on their journey. They issued from the wood on a barren sand, flaming hot, on which multitudes of naked souls lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly walked about, trying to throw from them incessant flakes of fire, -which came down like a fall of snow. They were the souls of the Impious. Among them was a great spirit, who lay scornfully submitting himself to the fiery shower, as though it had not yet ripened him.* Overhearing Dante ask his guide who he was, he answered for himself, and said, " The same dead as living. Jove will tire his flames out before they conquer me." " Capaneus," exclaimed Virgil, " thy pride is thy punishment. No martyrdom were sufficient for thee, equal to thine own rage." The besieger of Thebes made no reply. In another quarter of the fiery shower the pilgrims met a crowd of Florentines, mostly churchmen, whose offence is not to be named ; after which they beheld Usurers ; and then arrived at a huge waterfall, which fell into the eighth circle, or that of the Fraudulent. Here Virgil, by way of bait to the monster Geryon, or Fraud, let down over the side of the waterfall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore about his waist,f and pres- ently the dreadful creature came up, and sate on the margin of the fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him in the air, af- ter the manner of a beaver ; but the point of the tail was occa- * " S'l cho la pioggia uon par che '1 maturi." This is oue of the grandest passages in Dante. It was probably (as English commentators have observed) in Milton's recollection when he conceived the character of Satan. t The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery. Tile monster Geryon, sen of Chrysuor (Golden-sword), and the Oooan-nymph Callirhoe (Fair-flowing), was rich in the possession of sheep. His wealth. and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this instrument of satire. The mon- strosity, the mild face, the glancing point of venom, and the beautiful skiu, make it as fine as can be. c 6G THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PRO(;RESS. sionally seen glancing upwards. He was a gigantic reptile, with the face of a just man, very mild. He had shaggy claws fot arms, and a body variegated all over with colours that ran in knots and circles, each within the other, richer than any Eastern drapery. Virgil spoke apart to him, and then mounted on his back, bidding his companion, who was speechless for terror, do the same. Geryon pushed back with them from the edge of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbour ; and then, turning about, wheeled, like a sullen successless falcon, slowly down through the air in many a circuit. Dante would not have known that he was going downward, but for the air that struck upwards on his face. Presently they heard the crash of the waterfall on the cir- cle below, and then distinguished flaming fires and the noises of suffering. The monster Geryon, ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his riders from off his back to the water's side, and then shot away like an arrow. This eighth circle of hell is called Evil-Budget,* and consists of ten compartments, or gulfs of torment, crossed and connected with one another by bridges of flint. In the first were beheld Pimps and Seducers, scourged like children by horned devils ; m the second, Flatterers, begrimed with ordure ; in the third, Simonists, who were stuck like plugs into circular apertures, with their heads downwards, and their legs only discernible, the soles of their feet glowing with a fire which made them incessantly quiver. Dante, going down the side of the gulf with Virgil, was allowed to address one of them who seemed in greater agony than the rest ; and doing so, the sufferer cried out in a malignant * " MaUbolge" literally Evil-Budget. Bolgia is an old form of the modem haule, the common term for a valise or portmanteau. *' Bolgia" (says the Vocaholayio della Crusca, compcndiats Ven. 1792), " a valise ; Latin, bulga, hippopera ; Greek, In-jroTr^pa. In refereiice to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the word to signify those compartments which he feigna in his Hell." (Per similitudine di quelle valigie, che s' aprouo per lo lungo, a guisa di cassa, signilica qnegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.) The reader vvill think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part if well considered, of their grandeur. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. C7 rapture, " Aha, is it thou that standest there, Boniface ?* Thou hast come sooner than it was prophesied." It was the soul of Pope Nicholas the Third that spoke. Dante undeceived and then sternly rebuked him for his avarice and depravity, telling him that nothing but reverence for the keys of St. Peter hindered him from using harsher words, and that it was such as he that the Evangelist beheld in the vision, when he saw the woman with seven heads and ten horns, who committed whoredom with the kings of the earth. " O Constantine !" exclaimed the poet, " of what a world of evil was that dowry the mother, which first converted the pastor of the church into a rich man !"f The feet of the guilty pope spun with fiercer agony at these words ; and Virgil, look- ing pleased on Dante, returned with him the way he came, till they found themselves on the margin of the fourth gulf, the hab- itation of the souls of False Prophets. It was a valley, in which the souls came walking along, silent and weeping, at the pace of choristers who chant litanies. Their faces were turned the ■.vi'ong way, so that the backs of their heads came foremost, and their tears fell on their loins. Dante was so overcome at the sight, that he leant against a rock and wept ; but Virgil rebuked him, telling him that no pity at all was the only pity fit for that place.:}: There was Amphiaraus, whom the earth opened and swallowed up at Thebes ; and Tiresias, who was transformed from sex to sex ; and Aruns, who lived in * Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his enemies in hell before their time. t An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and others. t A truly infernal sentiment. The original is, " Qui vive la pieti quand' b ben morta." Here pity lives when it is quite dead. " Chi fe piti scellerato," continues the poet, " di colui, Ch' al giudicio divin passion porta." That is: " Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings against the judgments of God ?" The answer is : He that attributes judgments to v»od which are to render humanity pitiless. «8 THB ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. a cavern on the side of the marble mountains of Carrara, looking out on the stars and ocean ; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias (her hind tresses over her bosom), who wandered through the world till she came and lived in the solitary fen, whence after, wards arose the city of Mantua ; and Michael Scot, the magician, with his slender loins ;* and Eurypylus, the Grecian augur, who gave the signal with Calchas at Troy when to cut away the ca- bles for home. He came stooping along, projecting his face over his swarthy shoulders. Guido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of Forli ; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to his last ; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff tO wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind them, and walked the reverse way of their looking. The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, constantly heaving and subsiding throughout, and bubbling with the breath of those within it. They were Public Peculators. Winged black devils were busy about the lake, pronging the sinners when they occa- sionally darted up their backs for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their jaws like frogs. Dante at first looked eagerly down into the gulf, like one who feels that he shall turn away instantly out of the very horror that attracts him. " See — ^look behind thee !" said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from the place where he stood, to a covert behind a crag. Dante looked round, and beheld a devil coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across his shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and then dashed down after him, like a mastifi" let loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca, where every soul was a false dealer except Bonturcj" * Ne' fianchi cosi poco. Michael Scot had been in Florence ; to which cir- cumstance we are most probably indebted for this curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the Tulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice, considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to swallow. t " Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a hearer of !h;s passage. No : — the exception is an irony ! There was not one honest man in all Lucca '. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. (19 The deMl called out to other devils, and a heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks as he rose to the surface ; telling him, that he must practise there in secret, if he practised at all ; and thrusting him back into the boiling pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot. The devils were of the lowest and most re- volting habits, of which they made disgusting jest and parade. Some of them, on a sudden, perceived Dante and his guide, and were going to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a while they let him alone ; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter. The rest then fell upon him and flayed him. It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service of the good- Thie- bault, king of Navarre. One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita, governor of Gallura ; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian. Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils, who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims ; but Virgil, catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction intr the borders of gulf the sixth, the region of Hypocrites. The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked about in a weari- some and exhausted manner, as if ready to faint. They wore huge cowls, which hung over their eyes, and the outsides of which were gilded, but the insides of lead. Two of them had been rulers of Florence ; and L^ante was listening to their story, when his attention was called off by the sight of a cross, or which Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breathing hard all the while through his beard with sighs. It was his office to see that every soul which passed him, on its arrival in the place, was oppressed with the due weight. His father-in-law, Annas, and all his council, were stuck in like manner on crosses round the borders of the gulf. The pilgrims beheld little else in this region of weariness, and soon passed into the borders of one of the most terrible portions of Evil-budget, the land of the transformation of Robbers. * The place was thronged with serpents of the most appalling and unwonted description, among which ran tormented the nalte-d 70 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. spirits of ths robbers, agonised with fear. Their hands were bound behind them with serpents — their bodies pierced and en- folded with serpents. Dante saw one of the monsters leap up and transfix a man through the nape of the neck ; when, lo ! sooner than a pen could write o or i, the suflerer burst into flames, burnt up, fell to the earth a heap of ashes — was again brought together, and again became a man, aghast with his agony, and staring about him, sighing.* Virgil asked him who he was. " I was but lately rained down into this dire gullet," said the man, " amidst a shower of Tuscans. The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led a brutal life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pistoia." " Compel him to stop," said Dante, '-' and relate what brought him hither. I knew the bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive." The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to these words, turned round to the speaker with the most painful shame in his face, and said, " I feel more bitterly at being caught here by thee in this condition, than when I first arrived. A power which I cannot resist compels me to let thee know, that I am here because I committed sacrilege and charged another with the crime ; but now, mark me, that thou mayest hear something not to render this encounter so pleasant : Pistoia hates thy party of the Whites, and longs for the Blacks back again. It will have them, and so will Florence ; and there will be a bloody cloud shall burst over the battle-field of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the earth. I tell thee this to make thee miserable." So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of contemjt with his thumb and finger towards heaven, and said, " Take it, God — a fig for thee .'"f * " Intorno si mira Tutto smari'ito da la grande angoscia Ch' egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira." This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised astonishment ever painted. t I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by extreme superstition ; for \heir first causa THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 7j "From that instant," said Dante, "the serpents and I were friends ; for one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands into a knot behind his back. O Pistoia ! Pis- toia ! why art not thou thyself turned into ashes, and swept from the face of the earth, since thy race has surpassed in evil thine ancestors ? Never, through the whole darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire as this — not even Capaneus himself." The Pistoian fled away with the serpents upon him, followed by a Centaur, who came madly galloping up, crying, " Where is the caitiff'?" It was the monster-thief Cacus, whose den upon earth often had a pond of blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in his rage, when he slev/ him, gave a whole hundred blows with his club, though the wretch perceived nothing after the ninth. He was all over adders up to the mouth ; and upon his shoulders ley a dragon with its wings open, breathing tire on whomsoever it met. The Centaur tore away ; and Dante and Virgil were gazing after him, when they heard voices beneath the bank on which they stood, crying, "Who are ye?" The pilgrims turned their eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits, one- of whom, looking about him, said, " Where's Cianfa ?" Dante made a sign to Virgil to say nothing. Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a serpent with six feet.* " If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I am about to tell thee," says the poet, " be so ; it is no marvel ; for I myself, eve'i now, scarcely credit what I beheld." is the degradation of the Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impul- eive vehemence of the South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour, from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in England, by people not out of their senses, for '< whole year. Yet the words, after all, were mere words ; for the man was a good-natured fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it best to run ! * Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort, and robber, on « large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati family, connexions of the poet by marriage. 72 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front, clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster grappled with every limb of that pinioned man. The two forms then gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white in a piece of burning paper re- cedes before the brown, till it all becomes black. The othci two human shapes looked on, exclaiming, "Oh, how thou changest, Agnello ! See, thou art neither two nor yet one." And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained two countenances in the face. The four arms then became but two, and such also became the legs and thighs ; and the two trunks became such a body as was never beheld ; and the hideous two-fold monster walked slowly away.* A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or fever ; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one volume. And now, let Lucan never speak more of the wretched Sabel- lus or Nisidius, but listen and be silent ; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor speak again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his fountain that was Arethusa ; for, says the Tuscan poet, I envy him not. Never did he change the natures of two creatures face to face, so that each received the form of the other. With corresponding impulse, the serpent split his train into a fork, while the man drew his legs together into a train ; the skin of the serpent grew soft, while the man's hardened ; the serpent acquired tresses of hair, the man grew hairless ; the. claws of the one projected into legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into * This, and tho transformation that follows, may well excite the pride of uch a poet as Dante ; tliough it is curious to see iiow he selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency. They are the most appalling ever yet produced. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 73 /lis shoulders ; the face of the serpent, as it rose from the ground, retreated towards the temples, pushing out human ears ; that of the man, as he fell to the ground, thrust itself forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same time its ears into its head, as the slug does its horns ; and each creature kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed ; and the serpent, which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, " Let Buoso now take to his crawl, as I have done." The two then hastened away together, leaving Dante in a state of bewildered amazement, yet not so confused but that he recog- nised the unchanged one for another of his countrymen, Puccio the Lame. " Joy to thee, Florence !" cried the poet ; " not con- tent with having thy name bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell." The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies. " In those flames," said Virgil, " are souls, each tormented with the fire that swathes it." " I observe one," said Dante, " divided at the summit. Are the Theban brothers in it ?" " No," replied Virgil ; " in that flame are Diomed and Ulys- ses." The sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors ; and those two were the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse. Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures, not to be found in books : how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth again into the wide ocean ; and how he sailed so far that he came into a region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever saw ; when, unfortunately, a hurii- cane fell upon them from the shore, thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads. .4 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. " Enough," said Virgil j " I trouble thee no more."' The soul of Guido di Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mant jan speak in a Lombard dialect, asked him news of the state of things in Romagna ; and then told him how he had lost his chance of para, dise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes.* He was going to liea- ven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his ab- solved, indeed, but unrepented victim. " To repent evil, and to will to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel, " impossible : therefore wrong me not." " Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "-when he laid his hands upon me !" And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for agony, and so took its way. The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the sins of those whom they seduce. The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels, and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law, Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin ; and the di- visions in the church were punished in like manner upon all the schismatics in the place. They all walked round the circle, their gashes closing as they Went ; and on their reaching a cer- tain point, a fiend hewed them open again with a sword. The , Arabian prophet, ere he passed on, bade the pilgrims warn Friar Dolcino how he suffered himself to be surprised in his mountain- hold by the starvations of winter-time, if he did not wish speedily to follow him.f * Guido, Conte di MontSfeltro, a celebrated soldier of that day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins ; but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family, and being promised absolution for his sins in the [ump, including the opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to " promise much, and perform nothing" (molto promettere, e nulla attendere) t Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a commnnity of goods, including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming the church. He appears to •lave made a considerable impression, having thousands of followers, but was THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL 75 Among other mangled wretches, they beheld Piero of Medicina, a sower of dissension, exhibiting to them his face and throat all over wounds ; and Curio, compelled to shew his tongue cut out for advising Caesar tj cross the Rubicon j and Mosca de' Lam- berti, an adviser of assassination, and one of the authors of the Guelf and Ghibelline miseries, holding up the bleeding stumps of his arms, which dripped on his face. " Remember Mosca," cried he ; " remember him, alas ! who said, ' A deed done is a thing ended.' A bad saying of mine was that for the Tuscan nation." " And death to thy family," cried Dante. The assassin hurried away like a man driven mad with grief upon grief; and Dante now beheld a sight, which, if it were not, he says, for the testimony of a good conscience — that best of friends, which gives a man assurance of himself under the breast- plate of a spotless innocence* — he should be afraid to relate without further proof. He saw — and while he was writing the account of it he still appeared to see — ^a headless trunk about to come past him with the others. It held its severed head by the hair, like a lantern ; and the head looked up at the two pil- grims, and said, " Woe is me !" The head was, in fact, a lantern to the paths of the trunk ; and thus there were two separated things in one, and one in two ; and how that could be, he only ultimately seized in the mountains where they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many others. Landino says he was very eloqueijt, and that " both he and Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause." Probably his real liistory is not known, for want of somebody in such times bold enough to write it. * Literally, " under the breastplate of knowing himself to be pure :" *' Sotto 1' osbergo del sentirsi pura." The expression is deservedly admired ; but it is not allowable in English, and it is the only one admitting no eouivalent which I have met with in the whole poem. It Itiight be argued, perhaps, against the perfection of the passage, that a good " conscience," and a man's " knowing himself to be pure," are a tau- tology ; for Dante himself has already used that word ; " Cpnscienzia m' assicura ; La buona compagnia die 1' uom francheggia Sotto r osbergo," &o. But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase ; and I wish I could have kept it re THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. can tell who ordained it. As the figure came nearer, it lifted the head aloft, that the pilgrims might hear better what it said. " Behold," it said, " behold, thou that walkest living among the dead, and say if there be any punishment like this. I am Ber- trand de Born, he that incited John of England to rebel against his father. Father and son I set at variance — closest affections I set at variance — and hence do I bear my brain severed from the body on which it grew. In me behold the work of retribution."* The eyes of Dante were so inebriate with all that diversity of bleeding wounds, that they longed to stay and weep ere his guide proceeded further. Something also struck them on the sudden which added to his desire to stop.- But Vi)'gil asked what ailed him, and why he stood gazing still on the wretched multitude. " Thou hast not done so," continued he, " in any other portion of Jiis circle ; and the valley is twenty -two miles further about, and the moon already below us. Thou hast more yet to see than 1hou wettest of, and the time is short." Dante, excusing himself for the delay, and proceeding to follow liis leader, said he thought he had seen, in the cavern at which he was gazing so hard, a spirit that was one of his own family — and it was so. It was the soul of Geri del Bello, a cousin of the poet's. Virgil said that he had observed him, while Dante was occupied with Bertrand de Born, pointing at his kinsman in a threatening manner. " Waste not a thought on him," concluded the Roman, " but leave him as he is." " O honoured guide !" said Dante, " he died a violent death, which his kinsmen have not yet avenged ; and hence it is that he disdained to speak to me ; and I must needs feel for him the more on that account.""]" They came now to the last partition of the circle of Evil-budg- et, and their ears were assailed with juch a burst of sharp wail- ings, that Dante was fain to close his with his hands. The misery there, accompanied by a horrible odour, was as if all the hospitals in the sultry marshes of Valdichiana had brought their * This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of physical horror with the truest pathos. t The reader will not fail t) notice this characteristic instance of the ferocity ol the time. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 77 maladies together into one infernal dituh. It was the place ol punishment for pretended Alchemists, Coiners, Personators ot other people, False Accusers, and Impostors of all such descrip- tions. They lay on one another in heaps, or attempted to crawl about — some itching madly with leprosies — some swollen and gasping with dropsies — some wetly reeking, like hands washed in winter-time. One was an alchemist of Sienna, a nation vainer than the French j another a Florentine, who tricked a man into making a wrong will ; another, Sinon of Troy ; another, Myrrha ; another, the wife of Potiphar. Their miseries did not hinder them from giving one another malignant blows ; and Dante was listening eagerly to an abusive conversation between Sinon and a Brescian coiner, when Virgil rebuked him for the disgraceful con- descension, and said it was a pleasure fit only for vulf^ar minds.* The blushing poet felt the reproof so deeply, that he could not speak for shame, though he manifested by his demeanour that he longed to do so, and thus obtained the pardon he despaired of. He says he felt like a man that, during an unhappy dream , wish- es himself dreaming while he is so, and does not know it. Virgil understood his emotion, and, as Achilles did with his spear, healed the wound with the tongue that inflicted it. A silence now ensued between the companions ; for they had quitted Evil-budget, and arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the mound :i' which they passed along, looking quietly and steadily before them. Daylight had given place to twilight ; and Dante was advancing his head a little, and endeavouring to dis- cern objects in the distance, when his whole attention was called to one particular spot, by a blast of a horn so loud, that a thunder, clap was a whisper in comparison. Orlando himself blew no such terrific blast, after the dolorous rout, when Charlemagne was defeated in his holy enterprise.f The poet raised his head, * This is admirable sentiment ; and it must Iiave been no ordinary conscious- nnss of dignity in general which could have made Dante allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into the unworthiness. T By the Saracens in Roncesvalles ; afterwards so favourite a topic with th« poets. The circumstance of the horn is '.aken from the Chroniclo of the pre tended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv 78 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. thinking he perceived a multitude of lofty towers. He asked Virgil to what region they belonged ; but Virgil said, " Those are no towers : they are giants, standing each up to his middle in the pit that goes round this circle." Dante looked harder ; and as objects clear up by little and little in the departing mist, he baw, with alarm, the tremendous giants that warred against Jove, standing half in and half out of the pit, like the towers that crowned the citadel of Monteseggione. The one whom he saw plainest, and who stood with his arms hanging down on each side, appeared to him to have a face as huge as the pinnacle of St. Peter's, and limbs throughout in proportion. The monster, as the pilgrims were going by, opened his dreadful mouth, fit for no sweeter psalmody, and called after them, in the words of some unknown t >ngue, Rafel, maee a mech zaiee almee.* " Dull wretch!" exclaimed Virgil, "keep to thine horn, and so vent better whatsoever frenzy or other passion stuff thee. Feel the chain round thy throat, thou confusion ! See, what a clenching hoop is about thy gorge !" Then he said to Dante, " His howl is its own mockery. This is Nimrod, he through whose evil am- bition it was that mankind ceased to speak one langijage. Pass him, and say nothing ; for every other tongue is to him as his is to thee." The companions went on for about the length of a sling's throw, when they passed the second giant, who was much fiercer and huger than Nimrod. He was fettered round and round with chains, that fixed one arm before him and the other behind hirn — Ephialtes his name, the same that would needs make trial of his strength against Jove himself. The hands which he then wielded were now motionless, but he shook with passion ; and Dante thought he should have died for terror, the efiect on the ground about him was so fearful. It surpassed that of a tower shaken by an earthquake. The poet expressed a wish to look at Briareus, but he was too far off. He saw, however, Antseus, who, not having fought against heaven, was neither tongue-con- founded nor shackled ; and Virgil requested the " taker of a * The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel a, is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is like a babble of ths gigantic infancy of the world. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 79 thousand lioijs," by the fame which the living poet had it in his oower to give him, to bear the travellers in his arms dovfn the steep descent into this deeper portion of hell, which was the re- gion of tormenting cold. Antseus, stooping, like the leaning tower of Bologna, to take them up, gathered them in his arms, a,nd, de- positing them in the gulf below, raised himself to depart like the mast of a ship.* ^ Had I hoarse and rugged words equal to my subject, says the poet, I would now make them fuller of expression, to suit the rocky horror of this hole of anguish ; but I have not, and there- fore approach it with fear, since it is no jesting enterprise to de- scribe the depths of the universe, nor fit for a tongue that babbles of father and mother.f Let such of the Muses assist me as turned the words of Amphion into Theban walls ; so shall the speech be not too far different from the matter. Oh, ill-starred creatures ! wretched beyond all others, to in habit a place so hard to speak of — better had ye been sheep oi goats. The poet was beginning to walk v/ith his guide along the place in which the giant had set them down, and was still looking up at the height from which he had descended, when a voice close to him said, " Have a care where thou treadest. Hurt not with thy feet the heads of thy unhappy brethren." Dante looked down and before him, and saw that he was walk- ing on a lake of ice, in which were Murderous Traitors up to their chins, their teeth chattering, their faces held down, their eyes locked up frozen with tears. Dante saw two at his feet so closely stuck together, that the very hairs of their heads were mingled. He asked them who they were, and as they lifted up * " Nfe si chinato li fece dimora, E come albero in nave si lev6." A magnificent image ! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the original raised himself, instead of s&ym^rose, because it seemed to me to give the more grand and deliberate image. t Of " mamma" and " bdbbo," says the primitive poet. We have corres- ponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in some respects, more so- phisticate than they suspect, compared with the " artful" Italians. so THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. their heads for astonishment, and felt the cold doubly congeal them, they dashed their heads against one another for hate and fury. They were two brothers who had murdered each other." Near them were other Tuscans, one of whom ihe cold had de- prived of his ears ; and thousands more were seen grinning like dogs, for the pain. Dante, as he went along, kicked the face of one of them, whether by chance, or fate, or wiU,'\ he could not say. The sufferer burst into tears, and cried out, " Wherefore dost thou torment me ? Art thou come to revenge the defeat at Monta- perto ?" The pilgrim at this question felt eager to know who he was ; but the unhappy wretch would not tell. His countryman seized him by the hair to force him ; but still he said he would not tell, were he to be scalped a thousand times. Dante, upon this, began plucking up his hairs by the roots, the man barking,j^ with his eyes squeezed up, at every pull ; when another soul ex- claimed, " Why, Bocca, what the devil ails thee ? Must thou needs bark for cold as well as chatter ?"§ " Now, accursed traitor, betrayer of thy country's standard," said Dante, " be dumb if thou wilt ; for I shall tell thy name to the world." " Tell and begone !" said Bocca ; " but carry the name of this babbler with thee ; 'tis Buoso, who left the pass open to the en- emy between Piedmont and Parma ; and near him is the traitor for the pope, Beccaria ; and Ganellone, who betrayed Charle- * Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto, lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a mortal quarrel. The name of Napo- leon used to be so rare till of late years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting surprise to meet with it. t " Se voler fu, o destino o fortuna, Non so." What does the Christian reader think of that? t Latrando. § Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog, occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by treacherously cutting oiF th« hand of the standard-bearel. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 81 magne ; and Tribaldello, who opened Paenza to the enemy al night-time." The pilgrims went on, and beheld two other spirits so closely locked up together in one hole of the ice, that the head of one was right over the other's like a cowl ; and Dante, to his horror, saw that the upper head was devouring the lower with all the eagerness of a man who is famished. The poet asked what could possibly make him shew a hate so brutal ; adding, that if there were any ground for it, he would tell the story to the world.* The sinner raised his head from the dire repast, and after wi- ping his jaws with the hair of it, said, "You ask a thing which it shakes me to the heart to think of. It is a story to renew all my misery. But since it will produce this wretch his due in- famy, hear it, and you shall see me speak and weep at the same time. How thou earnest hither I know not ; but I perceive by thy speech that thou art Florentine. " Learn, then, that I was the Count Ugolino, and thi^ man was Ruggieri the Archbishop. How I trusted him, and was betrayed into prison, there is no need to relate ; but of his treatment of me there, and how cruel a death I underwent, hear ; and then judge if he has offended me. " I had been imprisoned with my children a long time in the tower which has since been called from me the Tower of Fam- ine ; and many a new moon had I seen through the hole that served us for a window, when I dreamt a dream that foreshadow- ed to me what was coming. Methought that this man headed a great chase against the wolf, in the mountains between Pisa and Lucca. Among the foremost in his party were Gualandi, Sis- mondi, and Lanfranchi, and the hounds were thin and eager, and high-bred ; and in a little while I saw the hounds fasten on the flanks of the wolf and the wolfs children, and tear them. At that moment I awoke with the voices of my own children in my ears, asking for bread. Truly cruel must thou be, if thy heart does not ache to think of what I thought then. If thou feel not for a pang like that, what is it for which thou art accustomed to * This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in the Tower of Famine. "7 83 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. feel ? We were now all awake ; and the time was at hand when they brought us bread, and we had all dreamt dreams which made us anxious. At that moment I heard the key of the horri- ble tower turn in the look of the door below, and fasten it. I looked at my children, and said not a word. I did not weep. I made a strong effort upon the soul within me. But my little Anselm said, ' Father, why do you look so ? Is any thing the matter V Nevertheless I did not weep, nor say a word all the day, nor the night that followed In the morning a ray of light fell upon us through the window of our sad prison, and I beheld in those four little faces the likeness of my own face, and then I began to gnaw my hands for misery. My children, thinking I did it for hunger, raised themselves on the floor, and said, ' Fa- ..her, we should be less miserable if you would eat our own flesh, [t was you that gave it us. Take it again.' Then I sat still, in order not to make them unhappier : and that day and the next we all remained without speaking. On the fourth da/, Gaddo stretched himself at my feet, and said, ' Father, why won't you help me V and there he died. And as surely as thou lookest on me, so surely I beheld the whole three die in the same manner. So I began in my misery to grope about in the dark for them, for I had become blind ; and three days 1 kept calling on them by name, though they were dead ; till fam- ine did for me what grief had been unable to do." With these words, the miserable man, his eyes starting from his head, seized that other wretch again with his teeth, and ground them against the skull as a dog does with a bone. O Pisa ! scandal of the nations ! since thy neighbours are so slow to punish thee, may the very islands tear themselves up from their roots in the sea, and come and block up the mouth of thy river, and drown every soul within thee. What if this Count Ugolino did, as report says he did, betray thy castles to the enemy ? his children had not betrayed them ; nor ought they to have been put to an agony like this. Their age was their inno- cence ; and their deaths have given thee the infamy of a second Thebes.* * I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too hasty in giving credit to THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL. 83 The pilgrims passed on, and beheld other traitors frozen up in swathes of ice, with their heads upside down. Their very tears had hindered them from shedding more ; for their eyes were en- crusted with the first they shod, so as to be enclosed with them as in a crystal visor, which forced back the others into an accumula- tion of anguish. One of the sufferers begged Dante to relieve him of this ice, in order that he might vent a little of the burden which it repressed. The poet said he would do so, provided he would disclose who he was. The man said he was the friar Al- berigo, who invited some of his brotherhood to a banquet in order to slay them. " What !" exclaimed Dante, " art thou no longer, then, among the living ?" " Perhaps I appear to be," answered the friar ; " for the mo- ment any one commits a treachery like mine, his soul gives up his body to a demon, who thenceforward inhabits it in the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca Doria, who murdered his father- in-law, Zanche ? He seems to be walking the earth still, and yet he has been in this place many years."* " Impossible !" cried Dante ; " Branca Doria is still alive ; he eats, drinkp, and sleeps, like any other man." " I tell thee," returned the friar, " that the soul of the man he slew had not reached that lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him, ere the soul of his slayer was in this place, and his body occupied by a demon in its stead. But now stretch forth thy hand, and relieve mine eyes." Dante relieved them not. Ill manners, he said, were the only courtesy fit for such a wretch.f parte of it, particularly the ages of some of his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop. See the Appendix to this volume. * This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware, in the whole circle of Uterature. t " Cortesia fu lui esser villano.'" This is the foulest blot which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to God)- It is argued that he is cruel and false, out of hatred to cru- elty and falsehood. Bat why !hen add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be sufFering eternally? It is idle to discern in such bar- barous iMjonsistencies any thins; but the writer's own contributions to the sttpk S4 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. O ye Genoese ! he exclaims, — men that are perversity al. over, and full of every corruption to the core, why are ye not swept from the face of the earth ? There is one of you whom you fancy to be walking about like other men, and he is all the while in the lowest pit of hell ! " Look before thee," said Virgil, as they advanced : " behold the banners of the King of Hell." Dante looked, and beheld something which appeared like a windmill in motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable sharpness came from it. The souls of those who had been traitors to their benefactors were here frozen up in depths of pellucid ice, where they were seen in a variety of attitudes, motionless ; some upright, some downward, some bent double, head to foot. At length they came to where the being stood who was once eminent for all fair seeming.* This was the figure that seemed tossing its arms at a distance like a windmill. " Satan," whispered Virgil ; and put himself in front of Dante to re-assure him, halting him at the same time, and bidding him summon all his fortitude. Dante stood benumbed, though con. scibus ; as if he himself had been turned to ice. He felt neither alive Bor dead. The lord of the dolorous empire, each of his arms as big as a giant, stood in the ice half-way up his breast. He had one head, of them. The utmost credit for right feeling is not to be given on every occa- sion to a man who refuses it to every one else. * " La creatura ch' ebbe il bel sembiante." This is touching ; but the reader may as well be prepared for a total failure in Dante's conception of Satan, especially the English reader, accustomed to the sublimity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman Catholic poet intended to honour the fallen angel with no sublimity, but to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has overdone and degraded the picture into caricature. A great stupid being, stuck up in ice, with three faces, one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each eating a sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus, — is dn object for derision ; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting bonnes-houches, divides derision with disgust. The passage must be given, jtherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete ; but I cannot nrip fh'^yng it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a great poet. THE JOURNEY ""HROUGH HELI . 85 but three faces ; the middle, vermilion ; the one over the right shoulder a pale yellow ; the other black. His sails of wings, huger than ever were beheld at sea, were in shape and texture those of a bat ; and with these he constantly flapped, so as to send forth the wind that froze the depths of Tartarus. From his six eyes the tears ran down, mingling at his three chins with bloody foam ; for at every mouth he crushed a sinner with his teeth, as substances are broken up by an engine. The middle sinner was the worst punished, for he was at once broken and flayed, and his head and trunk were inside the mouth. It was Judas Iscariot. Of the other two, whose heads were hanging out, one was Brutus, and the other Cassius. Cassius was very large-limbed. Brutus writhed with agony, but uttered not a word.* " Night has returned," said Virgil, " and all has been seen. It is time to depart onward." Dante men, at his bidding, clasped, as Virgil did, the huge in- attentive being round the neck ; and watching their opportunity, as the wings opened and shut, they slipped round it, and so down his shaggy and frozen sides, from pile to pile, clutching it as they went ; till suddenly, with the greatest labour and pain, they were compelled to turn themselves upside down, as it seemed, but in reality to regain their proper footing ; for they had passed the centiie of gravity, and become Antipodes. Then looking down at what lately was upward, they saw Lucifer with his feet towards them ; and so taking their departure, ascended a gloomy vault, * This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus, especially from a man like Dante, and the more because it is extorted. Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, particularly treachery to the leader of his beloved Roman em- perors ; forgetting three things ; first, that Caesar was guilty of treachery him- self to the Roman people ; second, that he, Dante, has put Curio in hell for ad- vising CtBsar to cross the Rubicon, though he has put the crosser among the good Pagans ; and third, that Brutus was educated in the belief that the pun- ishment of such treachery as Caesar's by assassination was one of the first of duties. How difierently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of assassins in gt-oeral, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic philosopher ! 86 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS till at a distance, through an opening above their heads, they bsi held the loveliness of the stars.* * At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absurdity, sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossible for any reflecting heart to avoid asking, Cui bono? What is the good of itto the poor wretches, if we are to suppose it true 7 and what to the world — except, indeed, as a poetic study and a warning against degrading notions of God — if we are to take it simply as a fiction ? Theology disdaining both questions, has an answer confessedly incomprehensible. Hu- manity replies : Assume not premises for which you have worse than no proofs. IL THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. Qlrgument. Purgatory, in the system of Dante, h a mountain at the Ant'podes, on the top of which is the Terrestrial Paradise, once the seat of Adam and Eye. It forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and possesses a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two exceptions of redeemed Pagans, is occupied by Excommunicated Peniients and by Delayers of Penitence, all of whom are compelled to lose time before their atonement commences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is divided into circles or plains, in which are expi- ated the Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet ascends from circle to circle with Virgil and Statins, and is met in a forest on the top by the spirit of Beatrice- who transports him to Heaven. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. When the pilgrims emerged from the opening through which they beheld the stars, they found themselves in a scene which en- chanted them with hope and joy.* It was dawn : a sweet pure air came on their faces ; and they beheld a sky of the loveliest oriental sapphire, whose colour seemed to pervade the whole serene hollow from earth to heaven. The beautiful planet which encourages loving thoughts made all the orient laugh, obscuring by its very radiance the stars in its train ; and among those which were still lingering and sparkling in the southern horizon, Dante saw four in the shape of a cross, never beheld by man since they gladdened the eyes of our first parents. Heaven seem- ed to rejoice in their possession. O widowed northern pole ! be- reaved art thou, indeed, since thou canst not gaze upon them !* * '* Dolce color d* oriental zaffiro Che s' accoglieva nel sereno aspetto De 1' aer puro infiiio al primo giro, A gli occhi miei ricomiuciO diletto, Tosto ch' io usci' I'uor de 1' aura morta Che m' avea contristati gli occhi e '1 petto. Lo be! pianeta, ch' ad amar conforta, Faeeva tutto rider 1' oriente, Velando i Pesci, ch' erano in sua scorta. Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente Air altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle Non viste mai, fuor ch' a la prima gente ; Goder pareva '1 ciel di lor fiammelle. O settentrional vedovo eito, Poi che private eci di mirar quelle '." 90 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. The poet turned to look at the north where he haa been accus- tomed to see stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who struck his beholder with a veneration like that of a son for his father. He had grey hairs, and a long beard which parted in two down his bosom ; and the four southern stars The sweetest oriental sapphire blue, Which the whole air in its pure bosoir had, Greeted mine eyes, far as the heavens withdrew ; So that again they felt assured and glad, Soon as they issued forth from the dead air, Where every sight and thought had made them sad. The beauteous star, which lets no love despair, Made all the orient laugh with loveliness. Veiling the Fish that glimmered in its hair. I turned me to the right to gaze and bless. And saw four more, never of living wight Beheld, since Adam brought us our distress ; Heaven seemed rejoicing in their happy light. O widowed northern pole, bereaved indeed. Since thou hast had no power to see that sight ! Readers who may have gone thus far with the " Italian Pilgrim's Progress,' will allow me to congratulate them on arriving at this lovely scene, one of the most admired in the poem. This is one of the passages which make the religious admirers of Dante in- clined to pronounce him divinely inspired ; for how could he otherwise have seen stars, they ask us, which were not discovered till after his time, and which compose the constellation of the Cross ? But other commentators are of opinion, that the Cross, though not so named till subsequently (and Dante, we see, gives no prophetic hint about the name), had been seen probably by stray navigators. An Arabian globe is even mentioned by M. Artaud (see Gary), in which the Southern Cross is set down. Mr. Gary, in his note on the passage, refers to Seneca's prediction of the discovery of America ; most likely suggested by similar information. " But whatever," he adds, " may be thought of this, it is certain that the four stars are here symbolical of the four cardinal virtues ;" and he refers to canto xxxi., where those virtues are retrospectively associated with these stars. The symbol, however, is not necessary. Dante was a very curious inquirer on all subjects, and evidently acquainted with ships and seamen as well as geography ; and his imagination would eagerly have seized a magnificent novelty like this, and used it the first opportunity. Co- lumbus's discovery, as the reader will see, was anticipated by Pulci- THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 91 beamed on his face with such lustre, that his aspect was as radi. ant as if he had stood in the sur.. " Who aie ye ?" said the old man " that have escaped from the dreadful prison-house ? Can the laws of the abyss be viola- ted ? Or has heaven changed its mind, that thus ye are allowed to come from the regions of condemnation into mine ?" It was the spirit ofCato of Utica, the warder of the ascent of purgatory. The Roman poet explained to his countryman who they were, and how Dante was under heavenly protection ; and then he prayed leave of passage of him by the love he bore to the chaste eyes of his Marcia, who sent him a message from the Pagan cir- cle, hoping that he would still own her. Cato replied, that although he was so fond of Marcia while on earth that he could deny her nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new laws, to have any affection for her, now that she dwelt be- yond the evil river ; but as the pilgrim, his companion, was un- dei heavenly protection, he would of course do what he desired.* He then desired him to gird his companion with one of the sim- plest and completest rushes he would see by the water's side, and to wash the stain of the lower world out of his face, and so take their journey up the mountain before them, by a path which the rising sun would disclose. And with these words he disap- peared.! The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of one who thinks every step in vain till he finds the path he has lost. The full dawn by this time had arisen, and they saw the trembling of the * Generous and disinterested ! — Cato, the republican enemy of Coesar, and committer of suicide, is not luckily chosen for his present office by the poet, who has put Brutus into the devil's mouth in spite of his agreeing with Cato, and the suicide Piero delle Vigne into hell in spite of his virtues. But Dante thought Cato's austere manners like his own. t The girding Trith the rush (giunco schietto) is supposed by the commen tators to be an injunction of sunplicity and patience. Perhaps it is to enjoin sincerity ; especially as the region of expiation has now been entered, and sin- cerity is the first stjip to repentance. It will be recollected that Dante's for- mer girdle, the cord of the Franciscan fria-rs. has been left in the hands of Fraud. 9J THb ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. sea in the distance.* Virgil then dipped his hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun had least alFected it, and with ihe moisture bathed the face of Dante, who held it out to him, suffused with tears jf and then they went on till they came to a solitary shore, whence no voyager had ever returned, and there the loins of the Florentine were girt with the rush. On this shore they were standing in doubt how to proceed, — moving onward, as it were, in mind, while yet their feet were staying, — when they beheld a light over the water at a distance, rayless at first as the planet Mars when he looks redly out of the horizon through a fog, but speedily growing brighter and brighter with amazing swiftness. Dante had but turned for an instant to ask his guide what it was, when, on looking again, it had grown far brighter. Two splendid phenomena, he knew not what, then developed themselves from it on either side ; and, by degrees, another below it. The two splendours quickly turned out to be wings ; and Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in si- lence, cried out, " Down, down, — on thy knees ! It is God's angel. Clasp thine hands. Now thou shalt behold operancy indeed. Lo, how he needs neither sail nor oar, coming all this way with nothing but his wings ! Lo, how he holds them aloft, using the air with them at his will, and knowing they can never be weary.'' The " divine bird " grew brighter and brighter as he came, so that the eye at last could not sustain the lustre ; and Dante turned his to the ground. A boat then rushed to shore which the * " L' alba vinceva 1' ora mattutina Che fuggla 'nnanzi, si che di lontano Conobbi il treraolar de la marina." The lingering shadows now began to flee Before the whitening dawn, so that mine eyes Discerned far off the I'lembling of the sea. " Conobbi il tremolar de la marina" IS a beautiful verse, both for the picture and the sound. t This evidence of humility and gratitude on the part of Dante would be very affecting, if we could forget all the pride and passion he has been shew- ing elsewhere, and the torments in which he has left his fellow-creatures. With these recollections upon us, it looks like an dt erweening piece of self-congratu lation at other people's expense. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 93 angel had brought with him, so light that it drew not a drop of water. The celestial pilot stood at the helm, with bliss written in his face ; and a hundred spirits were seen within the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the psalm beginning " When Israel came out of Egypt." At the close of the psalm, the angel bless- ed them with the sign of the cross, and they all leaped to shore ; upon which he turned round, and departed as swiftly as he came. The new-comers, after gazing about them for a while, in the manner of those who are astonished to see new sights, inquired of Virgil and his companion the best way to the mountain. Virgil explained who they were ; and the spirits, pale with astonishment at beholding in Dante a living and breathing man, crowded about him, in spite of their anxiety to shorten the period of their trials. One of them came darting out of the press to embrace him, in a manner so affectionate as to move the poet to return his warmth ; but his arms again and again found themselves crossed on his own bosom, having encircled nothing. The shadow, smiling at the astonishment in the other's face, drew back ; and Dante hastened as much forward to shew his zeal in the greeting, when the spirit in a sweet voice recommended him to desist. The Flor- entine then knew who it was, — Casella, a musician, to whom he had been much attached. After mutual explanations as to their meeting, Dante requested his friend, if no ordinance opposed it to refresh his spirit awhile with one of the tender airs that used to charm away all his troubles on earth. Casella immediately begap one of his friend's own productions, commencing with the words, " Love, that delights to talk unto my soul Of all the wonders of my lady's nature." And he sang it so beautifully, that the sweetness rang within the poet's heart while recording the circumstance. The other spirits listened with such attention, that they seemed to have for- gotten the very purpose of their coming; when suddenly the voice of Cato was heard, sternly rebuking their delay ; and the whole party speeded in trepidation towards the mountain.* * " Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona De la mia donna disiosamente," .B the begionmg of the ode sung by Daate's friend. The incident is beautifully 94 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. The two pilgrims, who had at first hastened with the others, m a little while slackened their steps ; and Dante found that his body projected a shadow, while the form oi Virgil had none. When arrived at the foot of the mountain, they were joined by a second party of spirits, of whom Virgil inquired the way up it. One of the spirits, of a noble aspect, but with a gaping wound in his forehead, stepped forth, and asked Dante if he remembered him. The poet humbly answering in the negative, the stranger disclosed a second wound, that was in -his bosom ; and then, with a smile, announced himself as Manfredi, king of Naples, who was slain in battle against Charles of Anjou, and died excommuni- cated. Manfredi gave Dante a message to his daughter Co- stanza, queen of Arragon, begging her to shorten the consequen- ces of the excommunication by her prayers ; since he, like the rest of the party with him, though repenting of his contumacy against the church, would have to wander on the outskirts of Purgatory three times as long as the presumption had lasted, un- less relieved by such petitions from the living.* Dante went on, with his thoughts so full of this request, that he did not perceive he had arrived at the path which Virgil asked for, till the wandering spirits called out to them to say so. The introduced ; and Casella's being made to select a production from the pen of the man who asks him to sing, very delicately implies a graceful cordiality in the musician's character. Milton alludes to the passage in his sonnet to Henry Lawes " Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phcebus' quire. That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." * Manfredi was the natural son of the Emperor Frederick the Second. " He was lively and agreeable in his manners," observes Mr. Gary," and delighted in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious and ambitious, void of re- ligion, and in his philosophy an epicurean." Translation of Dante, Smith's edition, p. 77. Thus King Manfredi ought to have been in a red-hot tomb, roasting for ever with Epicurus himself, and with the father of the poet's be- loved friend, Guido Cavalcante ; but he was the son of an emperor, and a foe to the house of Anjou ; so Dante gives him a passport to heaven. There ii no ground whatever for the repentance assumed in the text THE JOURNEY THROUGH Pt'RGATORY. 95 pilgrims then, with great difficulty, began to ascend through an extremely narrow passage ; and Virgil, after explaining to Dante how it was that in this antipodal region his eastward face beheld the sun in the north instead of the south, was encouraging him to proceed manfully in the hope of finding the path easier by de- grees, and of reposing at the end of it, when they heard a voice observing, that they would most likely find it expedient to repose a little sooner. The pilgrims looked about them, and observed close at hand a crag of a rock, in the shade of which some spir- its were standing, as men stand idly at noon. Another was sit- ting down, as if tired out, with his arms about his knees, and his face bent down between them.* " Dearest master !" exclaimed Dante to his guide, " what thinkest thou of a croucher like this, for manful journeying ? Verily he seems to have been twin-born with Idleness herself." The croucher, lifting up his eyes at these words, looked hard at Dante, and said, "Since thou art so stout, push on." Dante then saw it was Belacqua, a pleasant acquaintance of his, famous for his indolence. " That was a good lesson," said Belacqua, " that was given thee just now in astronomy." The poet could not help smiling at the manner in which his acquaintance uttered these words, it was so like his ways of old. Belacqua pretended, even in another world, that it was of no use to make haste, since the angel had prohibited his going higher up the mountain. He and his companions had to walk round the foot of it as many years as they had delayed repenting ; unless, as in the case of Manfredi, their time was shortened by the pray, ers of good people. A little further on, the pilgrims encountered the spirits of such Delayers of Penitence as, having died violent deaths, repented at the last moment. One of them, Buonconte da Montefeltro, who died in battle, and whose body could not be found, described how the devil, having been hindered from seizing him by the shedding of a single tear, had raised in his fury a tremendous « * The unexpected bit of comedy here ensuing is very remarkable and pleas- ant. Belacqua, according to an old commentator, was a musician. 96 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. tempest, which sent the body down the river Arno, and buried, it in the mud.* Another spirit, a female, said to Dante, "Ah! when thou re. turnest to earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, re- member me, — Pia. Sienna gave me life ; the Marshes took it from me. This he knows, who put on my finger the wedding. ring."t * Buonconte was the son of that Guido da Montefeltro, whose soul we have seen carried off from St. Francis hy a devil, for having violated the conditions of penitence. It is curious that both father and son should have been contested for in this manner. t This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all brief stories. " Deh quando tu sarai tomato al mondo, E riposato de la luuga via, SeguitC) '1 terzo spirito al secondo, Ricorditi di me che son la Pia : Siena mi ib ; disfecemi Maremma ; Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma." Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth (Said then a female soul), remember me — Pia. Sienna was ray place of birth, The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he. Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring. " Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work entitled De V Amour, " oh tained in marriage the hand of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the Ptolomei, thf richest and most noble family of Sienna. Her beauty, which was the admira tion of all Tuscany, gave rise to a jealousy in the breast of her husband, that envenomed by wrong reports and suspicious continually reviving, led to a fright- ful catastrophe. It is not easy to determine at this day if his wife was altogether innocent ; but Dante has represented her as such. Her husband carried hei with him into the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as now, for tlie pestifer- ous effects of the air. Never would he tell his wife the reason of her banish- ment into so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a deserted tower, of which t have been to see the ruins on the sea-shore ; he never broke his disdainful si- lence, never replied to the questions of his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 97 The majority of this party were so importunate with the Flor- entine to procure them the prayers of their friends, that he had as much difficulty to get away, as a winner at dice has to free himself from the mercenary congratulations of the by-standers. On resuming their way, Dante quoted to Virgil a passage in the jEneid, decrying the utility of prayer, and begged hjm to explain how it was to be reconciled with what they had just heard. Vir- gil advised him to wait for the explanation till he saw Beatrice, whom, he now said, he should meet at the top of the mountain. Dante, at this information, expressed a desire to hasten their prog- ress ; and Virgil, seeing a spirit looking towards them as they advanced, requested him to acquaint them with the shortest road. The spirit, maintaining a lofty and reserved aspect, was as si- lent as if he had not heard the request ; intimating by his man- ner that they might as well proceed without repeating it, and eyeing them like a lion on the watch. Virgil, however, went up to him, and gently urged it ; but the only reply was a question as to who they were and of what country. The Latin poet be- ginning to answer him, had scarcely mentioned the word " Man- tua," when the stranger went as eagerly up to his interrogator as the latter had done to him, and said, " Mantua ! My own country ! My name is Sordello." And the compatriots em- braced. O degenerate Italy ! exclaims Dante ; land without affections, without principle, without faith in any one good thing ! here was a man who could not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his heart gush towards him, and there are no people now in any one of thy towns that do not hate and tor- ment one another. Sordello, in another tone, now exclaimed, " But who are ye ?" Virgil disclosed himself, and Sordello fell at his feet.* few montlis she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in soma horrible manner ; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even to her contemporaries. Nello delta Pietra survived, to pass the rest of hia days in a silence which was never broken." Hazlitt's Journey through France and Italy, p. 315. * Sordello was a famous Provencal poet ; with whose writings the world S8 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Sordello now undertook to accompany the great Roman poet and his friend to a certain distance on their ascent towards the penal quarters of the mountain j but as evening was drawing nigh, and the ascent could not be made properly in the dark, he proposed that they should await the dawning of the next day in a recess that overlooked a flowery hollow. The hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled with flowers that surpassed the exquisitest dyes, and green with a grass brighter than emeralds newly broken.* There rose from it also a fragrance of a thou- sand difierent kinds of sweetness, all mingled into one that was new and indescribable ; and with the fragrance there ascended the chant of the prayer beginning, " Hail, Queen of Heaven,"f which was sung by a multitude of souls that appeared sitting on the flowery sward. Virgil pointed them out. They were penitent delayers of pen. itence, of sovereign rank. Among them, however, were spirits who sat mute ; one of whom was the Emperor Rodolph, who ought to have attended better to Italy, the garden of the empire ; and another, Ottooar, king of Bohemia, his enemy, who now com- forted him ; and another, with a small nose,:]: Philip the Third of France, who died a fugitive, shedding the leaves of the lily ; he sat beating his breast ; and with him was Henry the Third of Navarre, sighing with his cheek on his hand. One was the father, and one the father-in-law of Philip the Handsome, the bane of France ; and it was on account of his unworthiness they grieved. But among the singers Virgil pointed out the strong-limbed King of Arragon, Pedro ; and Charles, king of Naples, with his masculine nose (these two were singing together) ; and Henry has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of M. Rayiiouard, in his Choix des Poesies des Troubadours, &/C. * " Fresco smeraldo in 1' ora che si fiaeca.'' An exquisite image of newness and briUiancy. t " Salve, Regina;" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant to the Virgin. t " With nose deprest," says Mr. Gary. But Dante says, literally, "small nose," — nasetto. So, further on, he says, " masculine nose," — maschio naso He meant to imply the greater or less determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed to indicate. THE JOURNEY THROCGH PURGATORY. iW the Thiid of England, the king of the simple life, sitting by him- sfilf ;* and below these, but with his eyes in heaven, Guglielmc marquis of Montferrat. It was now the hour when men at sea think longingly of home, and feel their hearts melt within them to remember the day on which they bade adieu to beloved friends ; and now, too, was the hour when the pilgrim, new to his journey, is thrilled with the like tenderness, when he hears the vesper-bell in the distance, which seems to mourn for the expiring day.f At this hour of the coming darkness, Dante beheld one of the spirits in the flow- ery hollow arise, and after giving a signal to the others to do as * An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect. But Henry was a devout servant of the Church. t " Era gia, 1' ora che volge '1 desio A' naviganti, e iutenerisce '1 cuore Lo di ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio ; E che lo nuovo peregrin d' amore Punge, se ode squilla di lontano Che paia '1 giomo pianger che si muore." A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to be the voice of Evening herself 'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu ; And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way, Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell, That seems to mourn for the expiring day. Kvery body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from Dante's — " The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." Nothing can equal, however, the tone in the Italian origmal, — the " Paia '1 gi6rno piiinger che si muibre." Alas . why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his per- sonal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have left us a work trulv to be called Divine ? 100 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. he did, stretch forth both hands, palm to palm, towards the Easlj and with softest emotion oommenoe the hymn beginning, " Thee before the closing light."* Upon which all the rest devoutly and softly tbllowed him, keep ing their eyes fixed on the heavens. At the end of it they re- mained, with pale countenances, in an attitude of humble expec- tation ; and Dante saw the angels issue from the quarter to which they looked, and descend towards them with flaming swords in their hands, broken short of the point. Their wings were as green as the leaves in spring ; and they wore garments equally green, which the fanning of the wings kept in a state of stream- ing fluctuation behind them as they came. One of them took his stand on a part of the hill just over where the pilgrims stood, and the other on a hill opposite, so that the party in the valley were between them. Dante could discern their heads of hair, notwith- standing its brightness ; but their faces were, so dazzling as to be undistinguishable . " They come from Mary's bosom," whispered Sordello, " to protect the valley from the designs of our enemy yonder, — the Serpent." Dante looked in trepidation towards the only undefended side of the valley, and beheld the Serpent of Eve coming softly among the g»ass and flowers, occasionally turning its head, and licking its polished back. Before he could take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two angels had come down like falcons, and at the whirring of their pinions the serpent fled. The angels returned as swiftly to their stations. Aurora was now looking palely over the eastern cliff" on the other side of the globe, and the stars of midnight shining over the heads of Dante and his friends, when they seated themselves for rest on the mountain's side. The Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for weariness, and was overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamt that a golden eagle flashed down like light- ning upon him, and bore him up to the region of fire, where the heat was so intense that it woke him, staring and looking round about with a pale face. His dream was a shadowing of the * " Te lucis ante terminum ;" — a hymn sung at evening service. THE JOURNEi"^ THROUGH PURGATORY. 101 iruth. He had actually come to another place, — ^to the entrance of Purgatory itself. Sordello had been left behind, Virgil alone remained, looking him cheerfully in the face. Saint Lucy had come from heaven, and shortened the fatigue of his journey by cariying him upwards as he slept, the heathen poet following them. On arriving where they stood, the fair saint intimated the entrance of Purgatory to Virgil by a glance thither of her beau- tiful eyes, and then vanished as Dante woke.* The portal by which Purgatory was entered was embedded in a cliff. It had three steps, each of a different colour ; and on the highest of these there sat, mute and watching, an angel in ash-coloured garments, holding a naked sword, which glanced with such intolerable brightness on Dante, whenever he attempt- ed to look, that he gave up the endeavour. The angel demanded who they were, and receiving the right answer, gently bade them advance. Dante now saw, that the lowest step was of marble, so white and clear that he beheld his face in it. The colour of the next was a deadly black, and it was all rough, scorched, and full of cracks. The third was of flaming porphyry, red as a man's blood when it leaps forth under the lancet. f The angel, whose feet were on the porphyry, sat on a threshold which appeared to be rock-diamond. Dante, ascending the steps, with the encour- agement of Virgil, fell at the angel's feet, and, after thrice beat- ing himself on the breast, humbly asked admittance. The angel, with the point of his sword, inscribed the first letter of the word peccatum (sin) seven times on the petitioner's forehead j then, bidding him pray wjth tears for their erasement, and be cautious how he looked back, opened the portal with a silver and a golden * Lucy, Lucia (supposed to be derived from lux, lucis), is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic countries may be said to pre- side over light, and who is ready invoked in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for that reason among others, for he Mad once hurt his eyes with study, and they had been cured. In her spiritual charac- ter she represents the light of grace. t The first step typifies consciousness of sin ; the secqnd, horror of it; the ihird, zeal to amend. 102 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. key.* The hinges roared, as they turned, like thunder ; and the pilgrims, on entering, thought they heard, mingling with the sound, a chorus ol voices singing, " We praise thee, O God !"-j- It was like the chant that mingles with a cathedral organ, when the words that the choristers utter are at one moment to be distin. guished, and at another fade away. The companions continued ascending till they reached a plain. It stretched as far as the eye could see, and was as lonely as roads across deserts. This was the first flat, or table-land, of the ascending grada- tions of Purgatory, and the place of trial for the souls of the Proud. It was bordered with a mound, or natural wall, of white marble, sculptured all over with stories of humility. Dante be- held among them the Annunciation, represented with so much life, that the sweet action of the angel seemed to be uttering the very word, " Hail !" and the submissive spirit of the Virgin to be no less impressed, like very wax, in her demeanour. The next story was that of David dancing and harping before the ark, — an action in which he seemed both less and greater than a king. Michal was looking out upon him from a window, like a lady full of scorn and sorrow. Next to the story of David was that of the Emperor Trajan, when he did a thing so glorious, as moved St. Gregory to gain the greatest of all his conquests — the delivering of the emperor's soul from hell. A widow, in tears and mourning, was laying hold of his bridle as he rode amidst his court with a noise of horses and horsemen, while the Roman eagles floated in gold over his head. The mis- erable creature spoke out loudly among them all, crying for ven- geance on the murderers of her sons. The emperor seemed to say, " Wait till I return." But she, in the hastiness of her misery, said, " Suppose thou returnest not ?" " Then my successor will attend to thee," replied the em- peror. * The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the commentators to mean power to absolve ; the silver, the learning and judgment requisite to use it. t " Te Deum laudimus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and St Augustine. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY 103 " And what hast thou to do with the duties of another man," cried she, " if thou attendest not to thine own ?" " Now, be of good comfort," concluded Trajan, " for verily my duty shall be done before I go ; justice wills it, and pity arrests me." Dante was proceeding to delight himself further with these sculptures, .when Virgil whispered him to look round and see what was coming. He did so, and beheld strange figures ad- vancing, the nature of which he could not make out at first, for they seemed neither human, nor aught else which he could call to mind. They were souls of the proud, bent double under enor- mous burdens. " O proud, miserable, woe-begone Christians !" exclaims the poet ; " ye who, in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the right path ! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede our flight ?"* The souls came slowly on, each bending down in proportion to his burden. They looked like the crouching figures in architec- ture that are used to support roofs or balconies, and that excite piteous fancies in the beholders. The one that appeared to have the most patience, yet seemed as if he said, " I can endure no further." The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish, raised their voices in a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, which they concluded with humbly stating, that they repeated the clause against temptation, not for themselves, but for those who were yet living. "Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance, requested them to shew the best way of going up to the next circle. Who it was that answered him could not be discerned, on account of their all being so bent down ; but a voice gave them the required direction ; the speaker adding, that he wished he could raise his eyes, so as * " Noil v' accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi, Nati a formar 1' angelica farfalla, Che vola a giustizia senza schermi ?" Know you not, we are worms Bom to compose the angelic butterfly, That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms ? 104 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. to see the living creature that stood near him. He said that his name was Omberto — that he came of the great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco — and that his countrymen, the Siennese, murdered him on account of his arrogance. Dante had bent down his own head to listen, and in so doing he was recognised by one of the sufferers, who, eyeing him as well as he could, addressed him by name. The poet replied by ex- claiming, " Art thou not Oderisi, the glory of Agubbio, the mas- ter of the art of illumination ?" " Ah !" said Oderisi, " Franco of Bologna has all the glory now. His colours make the pages of books laugh with beauty compared with what mine do.* I could not have owned it whilt on earth, for the sin which has brought me hither ; but so it is ; and so will it ever be, let a man's fame be never so green and flourishing, unless he can secure a dull age to come after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept the field against all comers, and now the cry is ' Giotto.' Thus, in song, a new Guide has de- prived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is born who shall drive both out of the nest.f Fame is but a wind that changes about from all quarters. What does glory amount to at best, that a man should prefer living and growing old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thousand years ? A thousand years ! — the twinkling of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before me ; his name resounded once over all our Tuscany, and now it is scarcely whispered in ■ his native place. He was lord there at the time that your once * " PiU ridon le carte Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese : L' onore fe tutto or suo, e niio in parte.'' t The " new Guide" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead) ; the " firat" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem ; and the poet, who is to " chase them from the nest," caccerd di nido (as the not very friend- ly metaphor states it), is with good reason supposed to lie himself! He wrjs right; but was the statement becoming? It was cert.iinly not necessaiy. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti, probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition ; for they could be proud themselves ; and the son has the repu- tation of scepticism, as well as the father. See the Decameron, Giorn. vi A'oii. 9. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PI RGATORy. 105 ^roud but now loathsome Florence had such a lesson given to its frenzy at the battle of Arbia.'"" '• And what is his name ?" inquired Dante. " Salvani," returned the limner. " He is here, because he had the presumption to think that he could hold Sienna in the hollow of his hand. Fifty years hac ^e paced in this manner. Such is the punishment for audacity." " But why is he here at all," said Dante, " and not in the outer region, among the delayers of i-epentance ?" " Because," exclaimed the other, " in the height of his ascend- ancy he did not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in every vein, beg money from the people to ran- som a friend from captivity. Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance ? Thy countrymen shall too soon help thee to understand me."* Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the ground on which they were treading. It was pave- ment, wrought all over with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them, struck flaming down from heaven ; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his hugeness ; Hnd Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel ; and Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children ; and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa ; and Arachne, now half spider, at fault on her own broken web ; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence, flying in terror in his chariot ; and Alcmaeon, who made his mother pay with her life for the or- nament she received to betray his father ; and Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple ; and the head of Cyrus, thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might swill what it had thirsted for ; and Holofernes, beheaded ; and his Assyrians flying at his death ; and Troy, all become cinders * This is the passage from which it is conjectured that Dante knew what it was to " tremble in every vein," from the awful necessity of begging. Mr. Gary, with some other commentators, thinks that the " trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not rather mean the agony of the humiliation ? In Salvani's case it certainly does ; for it was in consideration of the pang to hii pride, that the good deed rescued him from worse punishment. 106 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. and hollow places. Oh ! what a fall from pride was there ! Now, maintain the loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps, hending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of your ways.* " Behold," said Virgil, " there is an angel coming." The angel came on, clad in white, with a face that sent trem- bling beams before it, like the morning star. He shewed the pilgrims the way up to the second circle ; and then, beating his wings against the forehead of Dante, on which the seven initials of sin were written, told him he should go safely, and disap- peared. On reaching the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wail- ings that used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, "f As he went, he per- ceived that he walked lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of the letters on his forehead. He put his hand up to make sure, as a man does in the street when people take notice of something on his head of which he is not aware ; and Virgil smiled. In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated. After the pilgrims had proceeded a mile, they heard the voices of invisible spirits passing them, uttering sentiments of love and charity ; for it was charity itself that had to punish envy. The souls of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for * The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous, of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became the reconcilement with absurdity. t Beati pauperes spiritu. " Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" — one of the beautiful passages of the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they renounced ? " Oh," say his idola- ters, " he did it out of his very love for them, and his impatience to see them triumph." So said the Inquisition. The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed, or from blindness to the Indulgence of their bad passions. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 107 support and humiliation, partly against the rooky wall of the cir- cle, and partly on one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near places of worship. Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks in training, but not so as to hinder them from shedding tears, which they did in abundance ; and they cried, " Mary, pray for us ! — Michael, Peter, and all the saints, pray for us !" Dante spoke to them ; and one, a female, lifted up her chin as a blind person does when expressing consciousness of notice, and said she was Sapia of Sienna, who used to be pleased at people's misfortunes, and had rejoiced when her countrymen lost the battle of Colle. " Sapia was my name," she said, " but sapient I was not," for I prayed God to defeat my countrymen ; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do), I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, ' Now do thy worst, for I fear thee not !' I was like the bird in the fable, who thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers. But who art thou that goest with open eyes, and breathest in thy talk ?" " Mine eyes," answered Dante, " may yet have to endure the blindness in this place, though for no long period. Far more do I fear the sufferings in the one that I have just lefl. I seem to feel the weight already upon me."f * " Sdvia non fui, awegna che Sapia FoBse chiamata." The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English ; for, though the Italian name may possibly remind its readers of sapienza (sapience), there is the differ- ence of a « in the adjective savia, which is also accented on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in English, " Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name." It is pleasant, however, to see the great satur- nine poet among the punsters. It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at the time of the battle, but they do not say for what ; probably from some zeal of faction. + We are here let into Dante's confesFions He owns to a little envy, bu( far more pride : " Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti, Ma picciol tempo ; che poch' fe 1' offesa Fatta per esser cou invidia volti. t08 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. The Florentine then informed Sapia how he came thither, which, she said, was a great sign that God loved him ; and she begged his prayers. The conversation excited the curiosity of two spirits who overheard it ; and one of them, Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the poet of what country he was. Dante, without mentioning the name of the river, intimated that he came from the banks of the Arno ; upon which the other spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked his friend why the stranger sup- pressed the name, as though it was something horrible. Guido said he well might ; for the river, throughout its course, beheld none but bad men and persecutors of virtue. First, he said, it made its petty way by the sties of those brutal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then arrived at the dignity of watering the kennels of the curs of Arezzo, who excelled more in barking than in biting ; then, growing unluokier as it grew larger, like the cursed and miserable ditch that it was, it found in Florence the dogs become wolves ; and finally, ere it went into the sea, it passed the den of those foxes, the Pisans, who were full of such cunning that they held traps in contempt. " It will be well," continued Guido, " for this man to remem- ber what he hears ;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked happy, he added, " This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in the house of Calboli '? Where is there a spark in all Romagna ? Where is the good Lizio ? — where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna ? The Romagnese have all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna ! a Bernardin di Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Faenza ! Wonder not, Tuscan, to see me weep, when I think of the noble spirits that we have lived with — of the Guidos of Prata', and the (Jgolins of hz7.o — of Federigo Tignoso and his band — of tl.e Troppa fe piii la paura ond' 6 sospcsa L' anima mia del tormento di sotto : Che gi^ lo 'ncarco di 1^ giii mi pesa." The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest ; the second, affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have allowed himself to envy — probably those who were more acceptable to women. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 109 Traversaros and Anastagios, families now ruined — and all the ladies and the cavaliers, the alternate employments and delights which wrapped us in a round of love and courtesy, where now there is nothing but ill-will ! O castle of Brettinoro ! why dost thou not fall ? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo done, who will have no more children. Who would propagate a race of Counties from such blood as the Castrocaros and the Conios ? Is not the son of Pagani called the demon ? and would it not be better that such a son were swept out of the family ? Nay, let him live to show to what a pitch of villany it has arrived. Ubal- dini alone is blessed, for his name is good, and he is too old to leave a child after him. Go, Tuscan — go ; for I would be left to my tears." Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and had scarcely done so when a tremendous voice met them, splitting the air like peals of thunder, and crying out, " Whoever finds me will slay me !" then dashed apart, like the thunder-bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had scarcely recovered its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quartei' near them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. " I am Aglauros," it said, " that was turned into stone." Dante drew closer to his guide, and there ensued a dead silence.* The sun was now in the west, and the pilgrims were journey- ing towards it, when Dante suddenly felt such a weight of splen- dour on his eyes, as forced him to screen them with both his * Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her sister Herse. The passage about Cain is one of the subliinest in Dante. Truly wonderful and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for his words are things — veritable thunderbolts. Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros is -thunder-claps crashing into one another — broken thunder. This is exceed- ingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful music ; but Cain is the astonishment and the ov,erwhelmingness. If it were not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two silences ; for I doubt whethe' they are not better even than one. At all events, the final silence is tremer>. dous. at) THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'b PROGRESS. hands. It was an angel coming to shew them the ascent to the next circle, a way that was less steep than the last. While mounting, they heard the angel's voice singing behind them, " Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall obtain mercy !" and on his leaving them to proceed by themselves, the second letter on Dante's forehead was found to have been effaced by the splen- dour. ' The poet looked round in wonder on the new circle, where the sin of Anger was expiated, and beheld, as in a dream, three suc- cessive spectacles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The first was that of a crowded temple, on the threshold of which a female said to her son, in the sweet manner of a mother, " Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us ? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing :"* — and here she became silent, and the vision ended. The next was the lord of Athens, Pisistratus, calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to put to death her daughter's lover, who, in a transport, had embraced her in public. " If we are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, " with those that love us, what is to be done with such as hate ?" The last spec- tacle was that of a furious multitude shouting and stoning to death a youth, who, as he fell to the ground, still kept his face towards heaven, making his eyes the gates through which his soul reached it, and imploring forgiveness for his murderers.^ The visions passed away, leaving the poet staggering as if but half awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in unison for pardon to the " Lamb of God, who take'.h away the sins of the world." They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of them on free-will and necessity ; and after quitting him. and issuing by degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger ; such as the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in singmg ; Haman, retaining his look of -spite and rage on the cross; and Lavinia, mourning for her mother,, who slew herself for rage at the death of Turnus.:jr » St. Luke ii. 48. t The stoning of Stephen. { These illustrative spectacles are not among the best inventions of Dante. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. lil These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken : and Dante heard a voice out of it saying, " The ascent is here." He then, as Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face, as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance of the words, " Blessed are the peace-makers ;" and his forehead was lightened of the third letter.* In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love that was in them. " Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, " to salute Elizabeth." " And Cffisar," cried another, " to smite Pompey at Lerida."f " And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, " died before they reached the promised land." " And the tired among the Trojans preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium." — It was now midnight, and Dante slept and had a dream. His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distor- tion drew her towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold. Her tongue was loosened ; her feet made straight ; she stood upright ; her paleness became a lovely rose-oolour ; and she warbled so beautifully, that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it. " I am the sweet Syren," she said, " who made the mariners Their introduction is forced, and the instances not always pointed. A murder- ess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where Dante found it ; and I am siur- prised he made use of it, intimate as he must have been with the less inconsis. tent story of her namesake, Philomela, in the Metamorphoses. * So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards ; and I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite intimations at each sue cessive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the outset. The whole poem, it is to be re. merabered, is thought to have wanted his final revision. i What an instance to put among those of haste to do good ! But the fame and accomplishments of Csesar, and his being at the head of our Ghibelline'H beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted impartiality. 12 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. urn pale for plpasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song ; and he that harbours with me once, rarely , departs ever, so well I pay him for what he abandons." Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earnest countenance came up to shame her. " O Virgil !" she cried an- grily, " who is this ?" Virgi. approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady ; and the lady tore away the garments of the woman, and shewed her to be a creature so loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror.* Virgil said, " I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move, and find the place at which we are to go higher." It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders ; and Dante was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them, who pointed his swan-like wings up- ward, and then flapped them against the pilgi'ims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante. " Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, " for they shall be comforted." The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the ex- piators of Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could for the tears that choked them, " My soul hath cleaved to the dust." Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The poet fell on his knees ; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. " I am no longer." said he, " spouse of the Church, here ; but fellow-servant with thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my deliver- ance." The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the struggling tones of a woman in ohild-bed, " O blessed Virgin ! That was a poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O good Fabricius ! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with riches." And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for them all. * A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of it in the origi- nal has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the last recesses of foe ling and disgusts us with the denouncer. THE JOURNEY TIIUOUGH PURGATORY. 113 Dame earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was ; and ihe spirit said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked elsewhere, hut because of the shining grace that was in his questioner, though yet alive. " I was root," said the spirit, " of that evil plant which over- shadows all Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the old race of kings was worn out.* We began by seizing the government in Paris ; then plundered in Provence ; then, to make amends, laid hold ot ''oitou, Normandy, and Gascony ; then, still to make amends, put Conradin to death and seized Naples ; then, always to make amends, gave Saint Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas jousted with\ shall transfix the bowels of Flor- ence. Anothe-r of my posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara. Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to seize its money. * The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his dominions. Mr. Gary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his interpretation of the passage, and that " butcher" may be simply a metaphorical term for the bloodthirstiness of Capet's father. But when we find tlie man called, not the butcher, or thai butcher, or butcher in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance " a butcher of Paris" (uii heccaio di Parigi), and when this designation is followed up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the ordinai-y construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems to have had no ground for what his aristo- cratical pride doubtless considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, in- deed, condescended to feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it, in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt contradicts his own theories elsewhere ; for he has repeatedly said, that the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth ex- cepted) are a heap of contradictions. t Mr. Gary thought he had seen an old romance in which there is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an impression to tbn same ettect. 9 114 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGUESS. O Loi-d, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which even no-w thou huggest in delight to thy bosom !* " Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, " we speak while it is light ; such as thou heardest me record, when I ad- dressed myself to the blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we denounce Pygmalion,! the traitor, ■ the robber, and the parricide, each the result of his gluttonous love of gold ; and Midas, who obtained his wish, to the laughter of all time ; and the thief Achan, who still seems frightened at the wrath of Joshua ; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we accuse over again before the Apostles ; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling ;:j; and Cras- sus, on whom we call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold. Thus we record our thoughts in the night- time, now high, now low, now at greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no respondent near me." The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that Virgil stood nigher to * " O Siguov mio, quando sarb io lieto A veder la vendetta che nascosa Fa dolce 1' ira tua nel tuo segreto !" The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian, viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being " too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated as a positive compli- ment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine ! God hugs revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a poor grinning Florentine ! t A ludicrous anti-cliraax this to modem ears! The allusion is to the Pyg- malion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her husband, the priest SichsBus, for his riches. The term " parricide" is here applied in its secondary sense of — the murderer of any one to whom we owe reverence. t Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus supernaturally punished The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 115 his companion, and bade liim be of good heart. " Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout ; but Dante could gather the words only from those who were near him. It was Purgatoiy rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its bounds.* The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement onwards ; and it turned out to be that of Statins, who had been converted to Christianity in the reign of Domitian.j- Mutual astonishment led to inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was ; and Statius fell at his master's feet. Statins had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality. An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead ; and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumhling from a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the visitors, when she said, ' They have no wine.' The women of oldest Rome drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild honey, and hecame great as you see him in the gospel." The poets went on their way ; and Dante was still listening to the others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the psalm, " O Lord, open thou our lips !" and the chanters were expiators of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to circuit the moun- tain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of the tree in » A grand and beautiful fiction. t Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation for this fancy, ex- cept in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in another passage, not neces- sary to give, confounds the poet Statius who was from Naples, with a rhetori. eian of the same name from Thoulouse. 116 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. vain. They soon came up with the poets — a pallid multitude, with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped.* One of them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he heard him speak. It was Forese Do- nati, one of the poet's most intimate connexions. Dante, who haa wept over his face when dead, could as little forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers of re- pentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher. Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife Nella ; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked savages in the mountains of Sardinia. " What is to be said of such creatures ?" continued he. " my dear cousin ! I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be forbidden from the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what infidels ever needed that ? Oh ! if they could see what Heaven has in store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for howling. "f * " Parfen 1' oochiaje anella senza gemme." This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the physiognomist, who "reads the word omo {homo, man), written in the face of the human be- ing, might easily have seen the letter m in theirs." " Chi nel vise de gli uomini legge omo, Bene avria quivi eonosciuto 1' emme." The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples form the letter M, and the eyes the two o's. The enthusiast for Roman domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin ! t " Se le svergognate fosser certe Di quel che 1' ciel veloce lore ammanna, Giti per urlare avrian le bocche aperte." This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John Knoi, who, instead of offering his own " cheek to the smiters," delighted to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaoliing meekness, and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune ou Sundays. But, it will be said, he THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURuaTORY. ii7 Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his aston- iished fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh and blood, casting a shadow with his substance. " If thou callest to mind," said Dante, " what sort of life thou and I led together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks here before us took me out of that life ; and through his guidance it is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now traversing the mountain w.hich leads us to the right path."* After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among the expiators of intemperance. Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet ; and Pope Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the- rest for the eels which he used to smother in wine ; and looked to consequences. Yes ; and produced the worst himself, both spu'itual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take good and bad together, and hope the best in the end. Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who " Compound for sins they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." He was a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The do- facing of " God's image" in his own pereon he considered nothing. * The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having availed himself of the hcense of the time ; though, in justice to such candour, we are bomid not to think worse of it than can be helped. The words in the original are : " Se ti riduci a mente Qua] fosti meco, e quale io teco fui, Ancor fia grave il memorar presente.'^ Literally : " If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast with me^ and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee still." His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of .^neas's descent into hell turned his thouo-hts to religious penitence. Be this as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any very licentious kind, never, if we are to Iieheve Boo-. f^accio, became spotless. 118 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Ubaldinoof Pila, grinding his teeth on air ; and Archbishop Bon- iface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on his flock ; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante eyed one another with curiosity ; an4 the farmer murmured something about a lady of the name of Gentucoa. " Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante. " Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta ; " and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poerr, beginning " LadieSy Jiat understand the lore of love ?"* " I am one," replied Dante, " who writes as Love would have him, heeding no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests. "f " Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta ; " and I now see what it was that hindered the notary, and Guit- tone, and myself, from hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking like one contented to have as- certained a truth. I * The mention of Gentucoa might be thought a compliment to the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for any one else bu^ herself with so much contempt. (See page 126 of the present voh-.me.) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a gentleman to speak of her at all ; unless, indeed, he thought her a person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the record of a fugitive regard ; and in that case the good taste of the record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding some rumour. t A celebrated and charming passage : " lo mi son un, che qjando Amore spira, noto ; e a quel modo Che delta dentro, vo significando." I am one that notes When Love inspires ; and what he speaks I tell In his own way, embodying but his thoughts. t Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment to the hand- some nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the Notary, and THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 119 The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded after the others. The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds ; but a voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to stop, telling them that the ti'ee was an ofiset from that of which Eve tasted. " Call to mind," said the voice, " those creatures of the clouds, the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their effemi- nate thirst."* The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry hackney. " Of what value is thought," said the voice, " if it lose its way ? The path lies hither." Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red • as in a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him, nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fan- ning of its wings fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant as all its flowers ; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and ascended with the two other po- ets into the seventh and last circle of the mountain. This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of the day. The lat- ter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Gary in the notes to his, translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under crudel martire), because an inscrip- tion will then be seen on his forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love ! An odd way for a poet to show his feelings, and a friar hns religion ! * Judges vii. 6. ]20 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. from outside of the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path ; and in the midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They sang the hymn beginning "God of consummate mercy !"* Dante was compelled to divide his atten- tion between his own footsteps and theirs, in order to move with- out destruction. At the close of the hymn they cried aloud, " I know not a man !"t and then recommenced it ; after which they again cried aloud, saying, " Diana ran to the wood, and drove Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus !" And then again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste women and husbands ; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as their time of trial lasted. Occasionally the multitude that went in one direction met an- other which mingled with and passed through it, individuals of both greeting tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in passing they touch the antennas of one another. These two m.ultitudes parted with loud and sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty ; and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers. The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature by the shadow which he cast ; and after the wonted ex- planations, he learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry. Guide Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence, till the sufferer, who told ' him there was a greater than himself in the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provencal poet, who, after begging the prayers o{ the traveller, disappeared in like manner. The fi')«i by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, * Suvima Deus clementim. The ancient beginning of a hymn in the Roman Catholic Church ; now altered, say the commentators, to " SummsE parens clementiae." t Virum non cognosco. " Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man ?" — Luke i. 34. The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of Ca- listo, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable. A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question suggested by these auoraa- lieii, would be a welcome novelty in the jvorld of lettecs. THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 121 when an angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, " Blessed are the pure in heart !" invited the three poets to plunge into the flames themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them aloft, recoiled in hoj- ror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion encour- aged him to obey the angel ; but he could not stir. Virgil said, " Now mark me, son ; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee and Beatrice ;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante followed them. " I could have cast myself," said he, " into molten glass to cool myself, so raging was the furnace." Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He said, " Me- thinks I see her eyes beholding us." There was, indeed, a great light upon the quarter to which they were crossing ; and out of the light issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, " Come, blessed of my Father ! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the ascent is to be gained." The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire ; and the voice and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock ; and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying down for the night near two shep- herds. Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming 3ver a lea, and bending every now and then to gather flowers ; and as she bound the flowers into a garland, she sang, " I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my sister Rachel abides be- fore the mirror, flowerless ; contented with her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is mine."* * An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life ; — not, I think, a hap- py one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart from its terminating comment, no necessary intellectual suggestion ; in rendered, by tim comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express love of ornament ; and, if it were '^3 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible ; and they now produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he awakes knowij himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statins were already up ; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon it at last, and gazed round about item on the skirts of the terrestrial Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to be mas- ter of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the tried and purified lord over himself. The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his compan- ions awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil ; a sweet unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face ; and as the full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, wel- comed the morning's, radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi, when Eolus lets loose the south- wind, and the gathering melody comes rolling through the forest from bough to bough.* Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivu- not for the last sentence, might be taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity. * " Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccogUe Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi, Quand' Eolo scirocco fiior discioglie." " Even as from branch to branch Along the piny forests on the shore Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody, When Eolus halh from his cavern loosed The dripping south." — Gary. " This is the wood," says Mr. Gary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's siib- limest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to the De- cameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec, G. 5, N. 8, and Dry- den's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in it during his abode with Guid: Novello da Polenta." — Translation of Dante, ut sup. p 121 THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY. 123 let, compared with whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless diversities of May-blossoms ; and the poet was standing in admiration, looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took away every other thought ; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side of the water, singing and culling flowers. " Ah, lady !" said the poet, " who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she herself lost the spring time on earth." As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with lovely self-possession, and scarcely sepming to put one foot before the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, showing him the flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus herself was in love. The stream was a little stream ; yet Dante felt it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's Hellespont. The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet was the Lethe of Paradise ; — Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe higher up ; the drinlc of the one doing away all remembrance of evil deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.* It was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived ; and the poets had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence imagined their golden age ; — and at these words she looked at Virgil and Sta- tius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at hel kindly words. • Lethe, Forgetfulness ; Eunoe, Well-min'hdncst. 124 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the contrary way of the s.ream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on his side of it ; lill on a sudden she cried, " Behold, and listen !" and a light of exceeding lustre came, streaming through the woods, followed by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical and apoca- lyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs, and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned >vith olive. The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who it was ; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend ; and the tears ran down his cheeks. " Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, " weep not that Virgil leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming, at which it will behove thee to weep." Then assuming a sterner attitude, and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech for the last, she added, " Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest, Beatrice indeed ; — Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that here only can man be happy ?" Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame. Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent ; such a flavour of bitterness was mingled with her pity. She held her peace ; and the angels abruptly began singing, " In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust j" but went no farther ir the psalm than the words, " Thou hast set my feet in a large room." The tears of Dante had hitherto been suppressed ; but when the singing began, they again rolled down his cheeks. Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, " This man, when he proposed tc himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of i THE JOURNEY" THROUGH PURGATORY. 135 truth so gifted, tha, every good habit ought to have thrived vi'ith him ; but the richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent light of my countenance drew him the right way ; but when I quitted mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave himself to others. When 1 had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained but to show him the state of the condemned ; and there- fore I went to their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe could be passed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of remorse.* " O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, " who standest on the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth V Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they passed his lips. " What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, " when I had given thee aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could .end in nothing ?" Dante said, " Thy face was taken from me, and the presence of false pleasure led me astray." " Never didst thou behold," cried the maiden, " loveliness like mine ; aiid if bliss failed thee because of my death, how couldst thou be allured by mortal inferiority ? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before thee. How could thy spirit endure * " Senza alcuiio sootto Di pentimento." Literally, scot-free. — " Sootlo," scot ; — " payment for dinner or supper in a tarern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal ratlier than Dantesque editor of the Par- naso Jtaliano, and ^i very summary gentleman) ; " here used figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his " Dante" in that collection, vol. ii. p. 297 126 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. to stoop to further chances, or to a childish girl, or any cthei fleeting vanity ? The bird that is newly out of the nest may b( twice or thrice tempted by the snare ; but m vain, surely, is the net spread in sight of one that is older."* Dante stood as silent and abashed as a sorry child. " If but to hear me," said Beatrice, " thus afflicts thee, lifl uj thy beard, and see what sight can do." Dante, though feeling the sting intended by the word " beard,'' did as he was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter theii clouds of flowers about the maiden ; and he beheld her, thougl: still beneath her veil, as far surpassing her former self in love- liness, as that self had surpassed others. The sight pierced bin with such pangs, that the more he had loved any thing else, tht more he now loathed it ; and he fell senseless to the ground. When he recovered his senses, he found himself in the hands of the lady he had first seen in the place, who bidding him keej firm hold of her, drew him into the river Lethe, and so througl: and across it to the other side, speeding as she went like a weav. er's shuttle, and immersing him when she arrived, the angels ali * The allusion to the childish girl (pargolettd) or any other fleeting vanity, " O altra vanita eon si breve uso," IS not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he liked them and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they might have been What answer could they make to the great poet ? Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as i woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. thf sternness of the allegoiy should not have been put into female shape ; anc when she is to be takiu in her literal sense (as the poet also tells us she is) her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of Signer Rubbi, is n( better than snubbing; — to say nothing of the vanity with which she pays com pUments to her own beauty. I must, furthermore, beg leave to diifer with the poet's thinking it an exaltec symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out of supposec compliment to the transcendental object of his affections and his own awakene( merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in charity ; and charity by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so many things, hates nothing Besides, it is any thing but handsome or high-minded to turn round upon ob jects whom we have helped to lower with our own gratified passions, and pro tend a right to scorn them. THE JOURNEY THROl GH PURGATORY. 12? he while singing, " Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."* She then delivered him into the hands of the nymphs that had danced about the car, — nymphs on earth, but stars and cardinal virtues in heaven ; a song burst from the lips of the angels ; and Faith, Hope, and Charity, calling upon Beatrice to unveil her face, she did so ; and Dante quenched the ten-years thirst of his eyes in her ineffable beauty. f After a while he and Statins were made thoroughly regenerate with the waters of Eunoe ; and he felt pure with a new being, and fit to soar into the stars. * " Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. " Purge me with hyssop, and I Bliall be clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter ;han snow." — Psalm U. 7. t Beatrice had been dead ten years. m. THE JOURNEY -THROUGH HEAVEN ^Irgumenl. The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets accord- ing to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,. Jupiter, and Saturn ; of the Eighth Sphere heyond these, or that of the Fixed Stars ; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the moveless Earth ; and 0^ the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which is the Beatific Vifion. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue ; and Dante visits each under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes, on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the Great First Cause THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found him- self in Heaven. He hac" been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by his side. The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empy- rean, and heard the music of the spheres ; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven, the circle of the orb of the moon. This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed, outside, as solid, though as lucid, as Diamond ; yet they entered it, as sunbeams are admitted into water, without dividing the substance. It now appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of which they saw but dimly ; and they be- held many faces eagerly looking at them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn.* Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right ; and he en- tered into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost him. It was Picoarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason of her wonderful increase in beauty, * A curious and happy image. " Toman de' nostri visi le postille Debili si, che perla in bianca fronte Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille : Tali vid' io pid facce a parlar proute." 13:^ THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. She and her associates were such as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity and Religion, but had been Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso.* On Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of Bliss, she and her sister-spirits gently smiled ; and then answered, with faces as happy as first love,f that they willed only what it pleased God to give them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer, that every place in Heaven was paradise, though the bliss might be of different de- grees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side, lustrous with all the glory of the region, 'Costanza, daughter of the king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began singing Ave Maria; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as substances disappear in water.:): A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet * " Rodolfo da Tossignano, Hist. Seraph. Relig. P. i. p. 138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda : ' Her brother Corso, in- flamed with rage against his virgin sister, having joined with him Fariuata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried away his sister forcibly to his own house ; and then, tearing off her religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as to strike grief and horror into the beholders ; and thus, in a few days, through the divine disposal, she passed with a palm of virginity to the Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to certify himself entirely of this occur- rence, has chosen to pass it over discreetly, by making Piccarda say, ' God knows how, after that, my life was framed.' " — Gary, ut sup. p. 137. t A lovely simile indeed. " Tanto lieta Ch' arder parea d' amor nel prime foco. t Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second. " She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting from Muratori and others) ; " and because it was not credited that she could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion ; and it was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty te see her. Many came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased." — Translation of Dante, ut sup. p. 137. THii JOURNEY THRDUGH HEAVEN 133 Mercury, the residence of those who had acted rather out of l)e. sire of Fame than Love of God. The spirits here, as in the for- mer Heaven, crowded towards them, as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that oifers them food. Their eyes sparliled with ce- lestial joy ; and the more they thought of their joy, the brighter they grew ; till one of them who addressed the poet became in- distinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman empire up to his time ; and then gave an account of one of his associates in bliss, Romeo, who had been minister to Ray- mond Beranger, Count of Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every one became a queen ; and all this had been brought about by Romeo, a poor stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romeo, incited Ray- mond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had brought his master's treasury twelve fold for every ten it dis- bursed. Romeo quitted the court, poor and old ; " and if the world," said Justinian, " could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his bread as he went, crust by crust — ^praise him as it does, it would praise him a great deal more."* " Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth, Superilluminiug with light of light The happy fires of theee thy Malahoth !"t Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian ; and then, turning as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire. Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven, or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous. :j: He only knew it by the increased loveliness in the face of his com- panion. The spirits in this orb, who came and went in the light of i! * Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings, t "Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaotli Superillustrans claritate tu^- Felices ignes horum Malahoth." Malahoth ; Hebrew, Mngdoms. t The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the nature of the iuhaoi tants. l34 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. like sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun round in circles of delight, each vi^ith more or less swiftness, according to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why diversities of natures must occur in families ; and Cunizza, sister of the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth ; and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven ; and Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy Land, and whose place was next Folco.* Cunizza said that she did not at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel who was close to her, Folco — contrasted his zeal with the inertness of her contemptible coun- trymen — and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed in his 'aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun ; for in heaven joy is expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed * Charles Martel, sou of the king of Naples and Sicily, and crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become acquainted with Dante during the poet's youth, when the prince met his royal father in the city of Florence. He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father, and who was the friend, of Petrarch. " The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star," says Gary, " are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i. cap. 3, in Mu- ratori, Rer. Ital. Script, torn. viii. p. 173. She eloped from her first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello (see Purg. canto vi. and vii.), with whom she is supposed to have cohabited before her marriage : then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife was living at the same time in the same city ; and, on his being murdered by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of Braganzo : lastly, when he also had fallen by the same hand, she, after her brother's death, was again wedded in Verona." — Translation of Dante, ut sup. p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in the Discorso sul Testo, p. 399. Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab, is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being asked, during an indis- criminate attack on that people, how the orthodox and heterodox were to ba distinguished, he said, " Kill all : God will know his own." For Ranab, see Joshua, chap. ii. and \l ; and Hebrews xi. 31. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 135 the lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or Hercules ; but added, that he had no recollection of them, ex- cept a joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven), but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Foloo concluded with explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing the indifference of popes and car- dinals (those adulterers of the Church) to every thing but ac- cursed money-getting.* In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon, singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be exported, was not conveyable by ex- pression to mortal fancy. The spirits composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Gratian the Ben- edictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius the Areopa- gite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede, Rich- ard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak ; but when he had' done speaking, they began re- suming it, one by one, and circling as they mo-fed, like the wheels of church clocks that sound one after another with a%weet tink- ling, when they summon the hearts of the devout to morning prayer.f * The reader need not be required to attend to the extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology or the poet might have desired. t These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after them. Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every respect- fulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity of one's imagi- nation at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church, Venerable Bede inclu- ded, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many dancing dervises, and keep- ing time to their ecstatic anilities with voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much light or other blessed indistinctness as you please ; the beards and the old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must oe gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not 136 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of the order of St. Dominic ; but with generous grace he held up the founder of the Franciscans, with his vow of pov- erty, as tlie example of what a pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new circle nutracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle, and Saint Buena- ventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St. Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity, the holy wrestler, — benign to his friends and cruel to his enemies ;* — and so confined his re- proofs to his own Franciscan order. He then, as St. Thomas had done with the doctors in the inner circle, named those who con- stituted the outer : to wit, Illuminato, and Agostino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and Petrus Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty- first, Nathan the Prophet, Chrysostom, Anselmo of Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach grammar, Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of Calabria. The two circles then varied their move- ment by wheeling round one another in counter directions ; and after they had chanted, not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of three Persons ingOne, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's thoughts by in- tuition, again addressed him, discoursing of mysteries human and divine, exhorting him to be slow in giving assent or denial to exalted enough, however wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is more heaven iu one placid idea of love than in all these dances and tiulilings. * " Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crude." Cruel indeed ; — the founder of the Inquisition ! The " loving minion" is Mr. Gary's excellent translation of " amoroso drvdo." But what a minion, and how loving ! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down other people's throats ! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia. So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent semi-barbarism in the char- acter of Spain, which it has never got rid of to this day. If it were not for CeiTantes, and some modem patriots, it would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even Lope de Vega was an inquisitor ; and Men- doza, the entertaining author of Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cer- vantes, however, is enough to sweeten a whole peninsula. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 131 propositions without examination, and bidding him warn people in general how they presumed to anticipate the divine judgment as to who should be saved and who not.* The spirit of Solomon then related how souls could resume their bodies glorified ; and the. two circles uttering a rapturous amen, glowed with such intole- rable brightness, that the eyes of Beatrice only were able to sus- tain it. Dante gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and suddenly found himself in the fifth Heaven. It was the planet Mars, the receptacle of those who had Died Fighting for the Cross. In the middle of its ruddy light stood a cross itself, of enormous dimensions, made of light still greater, and exhibiting, first, in the body of it, the Crucified Presence, glittering all over with indescribable flashes like lightning ; and secondly, in addition to and across the Presence, innumerable sparkles of the intensest mixture of white and red, darting to and fro through the whole extent of the crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols, before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words, " Arise and conquer," as one who hears and yet hears not. On a sudden, with a glide like a falling star, there ran down from the right horn of the Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this cluster of splendours, distinguishing itself, as it went, like flame in alabaster. " O flesh of my flesh !" it exclaimed to Dante ; " O super- abounding Divine Grace ! when was the door of Paradise ever twice opened, as it shall have been to thee ?"f Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice, and saw such a * What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility enough to apply it to himself ! t " O sanguis meus, o superinfusa Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui Bis unquam coeli janua reolusa?" The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet in " the obscurity of a learned language." And in truth it is alittle strong. l38 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. rapture of delight in her eyes, that he seemed, at that instant, as if his own had touchet' the depth of his acceptance and of hia heaven.* 'I'he light resumed its speech, but in words too profound in their meaning for Dante to comprehend. They seemed to be re- turning thanks to God. This rapturous absorption being ended, the speaker expressed in more human terms his gratitude to Bea- trice ; and then, after inciting Dante to ask his name, declared himself thus : " O branch of mine, whom I have long desired to behold, I am the root of thy stock ; of him thy great-grandsire, who first brought from his mother the family-name into thy house, and whom thou sawest expiating his sin of pride on the first circle of the mountain. Well it befitteth thee to shorten his long suffering with thy good works. Florenoe,-|- while yet she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wear- ers. Fathers were not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to separate ; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared to practise. The heights of Rome had not been surpassed by your tower of Uccellatoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its aspiring. I saw Bellincion Berti walking the streets in a leathern girdle fas- tened with bone ; and his wife come from her looking-glass with- out a painted face. I saw the Nerlis and the Vecchios contented * " Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo De la mia grazia e del mio Paradise." That is, says Lombard!, " I thought my eyes could not possibly be more fa- voured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei essere gra- ziati ed imparadisati maggiormente) — Variorum edition of Dantef Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373. t Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the original passage with anothf r version, in the Appendix. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 139 with ;he simplest doublets, and their good dames hard at work at their spindles. O happy they ! They were sure of burial in their native earth, and none were left desolate by husbands that loved France better than Italy. One kept awake to tend her child in its cradle, lulling it with the household words that had fondled her own infancy. Another, as she sat in the midst of her family, drawing the flax from the distaff, told them stories of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome. It would have been as great a wonder, then, to see such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man as Lapo Salterello, as it would now be to meet with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia.* " It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful time," continued the poet's ancestor, " when we all lived in such good faith and fellow- ship, and in so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin vouchsafed the first sight of rae to the cries of my mother ; and there, ir your old Baptistery, I became, at once. Christian and Cacoiaguida. My brothers were called Moronto and Eliseo. It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdipado, thy family name of Alighieri. I then followed the Emperor Conrad, and he made me a knight for my good service, and I went with him to fight against the wicked Saracen law, whose people usurp the fold that remains lost through the fault of the shepherd. There, by that foul crew, was I delivered from the snares and pollutions of the world ; and so, from the martyrdom, came to this peace." Cacciaguida was silent. But his descendant praying to be told more of his family and of the old state of Florence, the beatified soldier resumed. He would not, however, speak of his own pre- decessors. He said it would be more becoming to say nothing as to who they were, or the place they came from. All he disclosed * Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of the Ravignani Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman, of manners as shame- less as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the co-exiles of Dante, and special- ly hated by him, was a personage who appears to have exhibited the rare com- bination of judge and fop. An old commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cin- cinnatus. If so, Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved Ccesar ; — that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with tlie tip of liis finger, that he might not discompose the looks. 140 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. was, that his father and mother lived near the gate San Piero.* With regard to Florence, he continued, the number of the inhabi- tants fit to carry arms was at that time not a fifth of its present amount ; but then the blood of the whole city was pure. It had not been mixed up with that of Campi, and Certaldo, and Figghine. It ran clear in the veins of the humblest mechanic. " Oh, how much better would it have been," cried the soul of the old Florentine, " had my countrymen still kept it as it was, and not brought upon themselves the stench of the peasant Knave out of Aguglione, and that other from Signa, with his eye to a bribe ! Had Rome done its duty to the emperor, a^d so prevented the factions that have ruined us, Simifonte would have kept its beggarly upstart to itself; the Conti would have stuck to their parish of A.cone, and perhaps the Buondelmonti to Valdigrieve. Crude mixtures do as much harm to the body politic as to the natural body ; and size is not strength. The blind bull falls with a speedier plunge than the blind lamb. One sword often slashes round about it better than five. Cities themselves perish. See what has become of Luni and of Urbisaglia ; and what will soon become of Sinigaglia too, and of Chiusi ! And if cities perish, what is to be expected of families ? In my time the Ughi, the Catellini, the Filippi, were great names. So were the Albe- riohi, the Ormanni, and twenty others. The golden sword of * " Chi ei si faro, e onde venner quivi, Pill fe tacer che ragionare onesto." Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the lowness of their origin ; others that he did not choose to make them a boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts (see the opening of canto xvi., Paradise, in the origina,), that while he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto xv. 73. (fee), he knew them to be poor in fortune, perhaps of humble condition. What follows, in the text of our ab- stract, about the purity of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic, may seem to intimate some corroboration of this ; and is a curious specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neigh- bours is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that Ital- ian union, of which " Young Italy'' wishes to think Dante such a harbinger. All this too, observe, is said in ;he presence of a vision of Christ on the Cross! THE JOURNKY THROUGH HEAVEN. 141 auighthood was then to be seen in the house of Galigaio. The Column, Verrey, was then a great thing in the herald's eye. The Galli, the Sacohetti, were great ; so was the old trunk of the Calfucci ; so was that of the peculators who now blush to hear of a measure of wheat ; and the Sizii and the Arriguoci were drawn in pomp to their civic chairs. Oh, how mighty I saw them then, and how low has their pride brought them ! Florence in those days deserved her name. She flourished indeed ; and the balls of gold were ever at the top of the flower.* And now the descendants of these men sit in priestly stalls and grow fat. The over-weening Adimari, who are such dragons when their foes run, and such lambs when they turn, were then of note so little, that Albertino Donato was angry with Bellincion, his father- in-law, for making him brother to one of their females> On the other hand, thy foes, the Amidei, the origin of all thy tears through the just anger which has slain the happiness of thy life, were honoured in those days ; and the honour was partaken by their friends. O Buondelmonte ! why didst thou break thy troth to thy first love, and become wedded to another ? Many who are now miserable would have been happy, had God given thee to the river Ema, when it rose against thy first coming to Florence. But the Arno had swept our Palladium from its bridge, and Florence was to be the victim on its altar. "•(• Caociaguida was again silent ; but his descendant begged him to speak yet a little more. He had heard, as he came through the nether regions, alarming intimations of the ill fortune that * The Column, Verrexj (vair, variegated, checkered with argent and azm-e), and the Balls or (Palle d' oro), were arms of old families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names, of which nothing else is recorded. t An allusion, apparently atfquiesceut, to the superstitious popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain. With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to -have first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his engagement, and was assassina- ted Historie Florentine, lib. ii. I -12 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. awaited him, and he was anxious to know, from so high and cer. tain an authority, what it would really be. Cacciaguida said, " As Hippolytus was forced to depart from Athens by the wiles of his cruel step-dame, so must even thou depart out of Florence. Such is the wish, such this very mo- ment the plot, and soon will it be the deed, of those, the business of whose lives is to make a traffic of Christ with Rome. Thou shalt quit every thing that is dearest to thee in the world. Tha is the first arrow shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt experi- ence how salt is the taste of bread eaten at the expense of others ; how hard is the going up and down others' stairs. But what shall most bow thee down, is the worthless and disgusting com- pany with whom thy lot must be partaken ; for they shall all turn against thee, the whole mad, heartless, and ungrateful set. Nev- ertheless, it shall not be long first, before themselves, and not thou, shall have cause to hang down their heads for shame. The brutishness of all they do, will shew how well it became thee to be of no party, but the party of thyself.* " Thy first refuge thou shalt owe to the courtesy of the great Lombard, who bears the Ladder charged with the Holy Bird.| So benignly shall he regard thee, that in the matter of asking and receiving, the customary order of things shall be reversed be- * " Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta Piti caramente ; e questo 6 quello strale Che r areo de 1' esilio pria saetta. Tu proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com' fe duro calle Lo Bcendere e '1 salir per 1' altrui scale. E quel che piti ti graveri le spalle, Sari la compagnia malvagia e scempla Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle : Che tutta ingrata, lutta matta ed empia Si fara contra te : ma pooo appresso Ella, non tu, u' avri rossa la tempia. Di sua bestialitate il suo processo Faril la pruova, si oh' a te fia bello Averti fatta parte per te stesso." t The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of Verona THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 143 tween you two, and the gift anticipate the request. With him ihou shalt behold the mortal^ born under so strong an influence of this our star, that the nations shall take note of him. The) are not aware of him yet, by reason of his tender age ; but ert the Gascon practise on the great Henry, sparkles of his worth shall break forth in his contempt of money and of ease ; and when his munificence appears in all its lustre, his very enemies shall not be able to hold their tongues for admiration.* Look thou to this second benefactor also ; for many a change of the lots of people shall he make, both rich and poor ; and do thou bear in mind, but repeat not, what further I shall now tell thee of thy life.'' Here the spirit, says the poet, foretold many things which afterwards appeared incredible to their very beholders ; — and then added : " Such, my son, is the heart and mystery of the things thou hast desired to learn. The snares will shortly gather about thee ; but wish not to change places with the contrivers ; for thy days will outlast those of their retribution." Again was the spirit silent ; and yet again once more did his descendant qiiestion him, anxious to have the advice of one that saw so far, and that spoke the truth so purely, and loved him so well. " Too plainly, my father," said Dante, " do I see the time com- ing, when a blow is to be struck me, heaviest ever to the man that is not true to himself. For which reason it is fit that I so far arm myself beforehand, that in losing the spot dearest to me on earth, I do not let my verses deprive me of every other refuge. Now I have been down below through the region whose grief is without end ; and I have scaled the mountain from the top of which I was lifted by my lady's eyes ; and I have come thus far through heaven, from luminar}'' to luminary ; and in the course ol this my pilgrimage I have heard things which, if I tell again, may bitterly disrelish with many. Yet, on the other hand, if I prove but a timid friend to truth, I fear I shall not survive with the generations by whom the present times will be called times of old." The light that enclosed the treasure which its descendant had * A prophecy of the reuown of Can Graade della Scala, who had receivsd Dante at bis court. 144 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. found in heaven, first flashed at this speech like a golden mirroi against the sun, and then it replied thus : " Let the consciences blush at thy words that have reason to blush. Do thou, far from shadow of misrepresentation, make manifest all which thou hast seen, and let the sore places be galled that deserve it. Thy bitter truths shall carry with them vital nourishment — ^thy voice, as the wind does, shall smite loud- est the loftiest summits ; and no little shall that redound to thy praise. It is for this reason that, in all thy journey, thou hast been shewn none but spirits of note, since little heed would have been taken of such as excite doubt by their obscurity." The spirit of Cacciaguida now relapsed into the silent joy of its reflections, and the poet was standing absorbed in the mingled feelings of his own, when Beatrice said to him, " Change the cur- rent of thy thoughts. Consider how near I am in heaven to one that repayeth every wrong." Dante turned at the sound of this comfort, and felt no longer any other wish than to look upon her eyes ; but she said, with a smile, " Turn thee round again, and attend. I am not thy only Paradise." And Dante again turned, and saw his ancestor pre- pared to say more. Cacciaguida bade him look again on the Cross, and he should see various spirits, as he named them, flash over it like lightning ; and they did so. That of Joshua, which was first mentioned, darted along the Cross in a stream. The light of Judas Macca- beus went spinning, as if joy had scourged it.* Charlemagne and Orlando swept away together, pursued by the poet's eyes. Guglielmo| followed, and Rinaldo, and Godfrey of Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard of Naples ; and the light of Cacciaguida him- self darted back to its place, and, uttering another sort of voice, * " Letizia era ferza del paldo." t Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of Orange ; but it if doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne, or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Gary thinks the former ; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin?) seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text brings it nearer to Godfrey ; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante) might possibly mean " Raimbaud," the kins- man and associate of the second William. Robert Guiscard is the Nonnan who conquered Naples. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 145 began showing how sweet a singer he too was amidst the glitter- ing choir. Dante turned to share the joy with Beatriee, and, by the lovely paling of her cheek, like a maiden's when it delivers itself of the burden of a blush,* knew that he was in another and whiter star. It was the planet Jupiter, the abode of blessed Administrators of Justice. Here he beheld troops of dazzling essences, warbling as they flew, and shaping their flights hither and thither, like birds when they rise from the banks of rivers, and rejoice with one another in new-found pasture. But the figures into which the flights were shaped were of a more special sort, being mystical compo- sitions of letters of the alphabet, now a d, now an i, now an t, and so on, till the poet observed that they completed .the whole text of Scripture, which says, Diligite jusiiiiam, qui judicatis ter- ram — (Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth). The last letter, m, they did not decompose like the rest, but kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on the top of the letter ; and then, from the body of it, rose thousands of sparks, as from a shaken firebrand, and, gradually expanding into the form of an eagle, the lights which had descended like lilies distributed themselves over the whole bird, encrusting it with rubies flashing in the sun. But what, says the poet, was never yet heard of, written, or imagined, — ^the beak of the eagle spoke ! It uttered many minds in one voice, just as one heat is given out by many embers ; and proclaimed itself to have been thus exalted, because it united 'ustice and mercy while on earth. Dante addressed this splendid phenomenon, and prayed it to ease his mind of the perplexities of its worldly reason respecting * Exquisitely beautiful feeling ! " Quale fe il trasmutare in picciol varco Di tempo in bianca donna, quando '1 volto Suo si discarchi di vergogna il caroo." What follows, respecting letters of the alphabet and the Roman eagle, u in ■ T«ry different taste, though mixed with many beauties. U 146 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. the Divine nature and government, and tlie exclusion from hea. ven of goodness itself, unless vi^ithin the Christian pale. The celestial bird, rousing itself into motion with delight, like a falcon in the conscious energy of its vcill and beauty, when, upon being set free from its hood, it glances above it into the air, and claps its self-congratulating wings, answered neverthe- less somewhat disdainfully, that it was impossible for man, in his mortal state, to comprehend such things ; and that the astonish, ment he feels at them, though doubtless it would be excusable under other circumstances, must rest satisfied with the affirma- tions of Scripture. The bird then bent over its questioner, as a stork does over the nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheel- ing round, and renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, " As my notes are to thee that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly regions that did not believe in Christ, either after he was crucified or before it. Yet many, who call Christ ! Christ ! shall at the last day be found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dis- honour ? In that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict on Bohemia :* — in that book, the woes inflicted on * The emperor Albert the Fu'st, when he obtained Bohemia for his son Rodolph. Of the sovereigns that follow, he who adulterated his people's money, and died by the " hog's teeth" (a wild boar in hunting), is the French king, Philip the Fourth ; the quarrelling fools of England and Scotland are Edward the First and Baliol ; the luxurious Spaniard is Ferdinand the Fourth, said to have killed himself in his youth by intemperance ; the effeminate Bo- hemian, Winceslaus the Second ; the " lame wretch of Jerusalem," Charles the Second of Naples, titular king of Jerusalem ; the cowardly warder of the Isle of Fu-6 (Sicily), Frederick of the house of Arragon ; his filthy brother and uncle, James of Arragon and James of Minorca ; the Portuguese (according to the probable guess of Gary), the rebellious son of King Dionysius ; the Nor- wegian, Haco ; and the Dalmatian, "Wladislaus, but why thus accused, not known. As to Hungary, its crown was then disputed by rival princes ; Na- varre was thinking of shaking off the yoke of France ; and Nicosia and Famagosta, in Cyprus, weje complaining Ol their feeble sovereign, Henry the Second. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 147 Paris by that adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's teeth : — in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds : — in that book, the luxury of the Span- iard, and the effeminate life of the Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy : — ^in that book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a unit, and his worthlessness by a million : — in that book, the avarice and cow- ardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died ; and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness, the writing shall be in short-hand ; and his uncle's and his brother's filthy doings shall be read in that book — ^they who have made such rottenness of a good old house and two diadems ; and there also shall the Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer ! — O blessed Na- varre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy moun- tain walls ! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the beast, who keeps so close in the path of the herd his brethren." The blessed bird for a moment was silent ; but as, at the going dnwH of the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth mto innumerable stars which the sun lights up,* so the splen- dours within the figure of the bird suddenly became more splen- did, and broke forth into songs too beautiful for mortal to re- member. O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere thoughts of those pious hearts ! After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes falling from rock to rock, and shews, by the fulness of its tone, the abundance of its mountain spring ; and as the sound of the guitar is modulated on the neck of it, and the * The opinion in the time of Dante. 148 THE ITALIAiN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. breath of the pipe is accordant to the spiracle from which ii '^. sues, so the murmuring within the eagie suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in words. The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye ; because, of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the eye were the noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar dis- cernment. Of the five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell before he was translated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah, whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death : next Hezekiah, Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of a pastor, he had unwittingly brought de- struction on the world : next Constantine, William the Good of Si- cily, whose death is not more lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown : and lastly, next William, Riphteus the Tro- jan. " What erring mortal," cried the bird, " would believe it possible to find RiphiBus the Trojan among the blest ? — but so it is ; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth."* The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quiver- ing and expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and content, having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness.f * All this part about the eagle, who, it seems, is beheld only in profile, and who bids the poet " mind his eye," in the pupil of which is King David, while the eyebrow consists of orthodox sovereigns, including Riphaeus the Trojan, m irresistibly ludicrous. No consideration can or ought to hinder us from laugh- ing at it. It was mere party-will in Dante to lug it in ; and his perveiseness injured his fancy, as it deserved. In the next passage the real poet resumes himself, and with what relief to ona'^ feelings! : Most beautiful is this simile of the lark : " Qual lodoletta che 'n aere si spazia Prima cantando, e poi taco contenta De r ultima dolcezza che la sazia." In the Pentameron and Pentalogia, Petrarch is made to say, " All th» THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 149 But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans in Heaven ; and once more the celestial figure in. dulged his curiosity. It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory ; and that Riphseus, for the same reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption ; and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes.* Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice, and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been able to bear the smile ; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the planet Saturn, the re- treat of those who had passed their lives in Holy Contemplation. verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the beauti- ful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings against the sky 'I As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented. " Boccaccio. — I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of the first ; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not contenta quite enough without che la sazia 7 The picture is before us, the sentiment within us ; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna. " Petrarch. — I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your remark ; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as blemishes, and even more." — p. 92. Perhaps Dante would have argued that sazia expresses the eai iety itself, st that the very superfiuousness becomes a propriety. * " E come a buon cantor buon citarista Fa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda In che pid di placer lo canto acquista ; Si, mentre che parl6, mi si ricorda, Ch' io vidi le duo luci beuedette, Pur come batter d' occhi si concorda. Con le parole muover le fiammette." 150 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS In this crystal sphere, called after the name of the monarch who reigned over the Age of Innocence, Dante looked up, and beheld a ladder, the hue of which was like gold when the suo glisters it, and the height so great that its top was out of sight ; and down the steps of this ladder he saw coming such multitudes of shining spirits, that it seemed as if all the lights of heayen must have been there poured forth ; but not a sound was in the whole splendour. It was spared to the poet for the same reason that he missed the smile of Beatrice. When they came to a cer- tain step in the ladder, some of the spirits flew off it in circles or other careers, like rooks when they issue from their trees in the morning to dry their feathers in the sun, part of them going away without returning, others returning to the point they left, and others contenting themselves with flying round about it. One of them came so near Dante and Beatrice, and brightened with such ardour, that the poet saw it was done in affection towards them, and begged the loving spirit to tell them who it was. " Between the two coasts of Italy," said the spirit, " and not far from thine own country, the stony mountains ascend into a ridge so lofty that the thunder rolls beneath it. Catria is its name. Beneath it is a consecrated cell ; and in that cell I was called Pietro Damiano.* I so devoted myself to the service of God, that with no other sustenance than the juice of the olive, I forgot both heat ■ and cold, happy in heavenly meditation. That cloister made abundant returns in its season to theSe granaries of the Lord ; but so idle has it become now, that it is fit the world should know its barrenness. The days of my mortal life were drawing to a close, when I was besought and drawn into wearing the hat whic'i descends every day from bad head to worse. f St. Peter and ' jt. Paul came lean and barefoot, getting their bread where they could ; but pastors now-a-days must be lifted from * A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal, and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to Tiraboschi, is " worthy of a better age.*' Petrarch also makes honourable mention of him. See Gary, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have fin- ished his poem there. — Lombardi in loc. vol. iii. p. 547. t The cardinal's hat THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 151 the ground, and have ushers going before them, and train-bearers behind them, and ride upon palfreys covered with their spreading mantles, so that two beasts go under one skin.* O Lord, how long !" At these words Dante saw more splendours come pouring down the ladder, and wheel round and round, and become at every wheel more beautiful. The whole dazzling body then gathered round the indignant speaker, and shouted something in a voice so tremendous, that the poet could liken it to nothing on earth. The thunder was so overwhelming, that he did not even hear what they said.f Pallid and stunned, he turned in affright to Beatrice, who com- forted him as a mother comforts a child tliat wants breath to speak. The shout was prophetic of the vengeance about to over- take the Church. Beatrice then directed his attention to a multi- tude of small orbs, which increased one another's beauty by inter- changing their splendours. They enclosed the spirits of those who most combined meditation with love. One of them was Saint Benedict ; and others Macarius and Romoaldo.ij: The light of St. Benedict issued forth from among its companions to ad- dress the poet ; and after explaining how its occupant was unable farther to disclose himself, inveighed against the degeneracy of the religious orders. It then rejoined its fellows, and the wholfe company clustering into one meteor, swept aloft like a whirlwind. Beatrice beckoned the poet to ascend after them. He did so, * " Si che duo bestie van sott' una pelle.'' t " Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi, E fero un grido di si alto suono, Che non potrebbe qui assomigliaisi : Nfe io lo 'ntesi, si mi vinse il tuono." Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd, And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud ; Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder. If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage into his treatise on the Sublime. t Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name. M'acarius, an Egyotinn monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the Camaldoli. 152 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. gifted with the usual virtue by her eyes ; and found himself in the twin light of the Gemini, the constellation that presided ovej his birth. He was now in the region of the fixed stars. " Thou art now," said his guide, " so near the summit of thj prayers, that it behoves thee to take a last look at things below thee, and see how little they should account in thine eyes." Dante turned his eyes downwards through all the seven spheres, and saw the earth so diminutive, that he smiled at its miserable appearance. Wisest, thought he, is the man that esteems it least ; and truly worthy he that sets his thoughts on the world to come. He now saw the moon without those spots in it which made him formerly attribute the variation to dense and rare. He sustained the brightness of the face of the sun, and discerned all the signs and motions and relative distances of the planets. Finally, he saw, as he rolled round with the sphere in which he stood, and by virtue of his gifted sight, the petty arena, from hill to harbour, which filled his countrymen with such ferocious ambition ; and then he turned his eyes to the sweet eyes beside him.* Beatrice stood wrapt in attention, looking earnestly towards the south, as if she expected some appearance. She resembled the bird that sits among the dewy leaves in the darkness of night, * The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage in Cowley : " Lo, I mount ; and lo, How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew ! Where shall I find the noble British land 3 Lo, I at last a northern speck espy, Which in the sea does lie, And seems a grain o' the sand. For this will any sin, or bleed ? Of civil wars is this the meed ? And is it this, alas, which we, Oh, irony of words ! do call Great Brittanie V And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveuess of the Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb, — " Where am I now 1 angels and God is here." All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full oi grandeur and loveliness. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 153 /earning for the coming of the morning, that she may again be- hold her young, and have light by which to seek the food, that renders her fatigue for them a joy. So stood Beatrice, looking ; which caused Dante to watch in the same direction, with the feel- ings of one that is already possessed of some new delight by the assuredness of his expectation.* The quarter on which they were gazing soon became brighter and brighter, and Beatrice exclaimed, " Behold the armies of the triumph of Christ !" Her face appeared all fire, and her eyes so full of love, that the poet could find no words to express them. As the moon, when the depths of heaven are serene with her fulness, looks abroad smiling among her eternal handmaids the stars, that paint every gulf of the great hollow with beauty ;f so brightest, above myriads of splendours around it, appeared a sun which gave radiance to them all, even as our earthly sun gives light to the constellations. " O Beatrice !" exclaimed Dante, overpowered, " sweet and beloved guide !" " Overwhelming," said Beatrice, " is the virtue with which nothing can compare. What thou hast seen is the Wisdom and * " Come r augello intra I' amate fronde, Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati La notte che le cose ci nasconde, Che pet veder gli aspetti desiati, E per trovar lo cibo onde gli paeca, In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati, Previene '1 tempo in su 1* aperta frasca, E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, Fiso guardando pur che I' alba nasca Cosl la donna mia si stava eretta E attenta, involta in ver la plaga Sotlo la quale il sol mostra men fretta : SI che veggendola io sospesa e vag^ Feoimi quale 6 quel che disiando Altro Torria, e sperando s' appaga." t " Quale ne' plenilunii sereni Trivia ride trp le Ninfe eteme, Che dipingon: '1 ciel per tutti i Beni." 154 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. the Power, by whom the path between heaven and earth has been laid open."* Dante's soul — like the fire which falls to earth out of the swollen thunder-cloud, instead of rising according to the wont of fire — had grown too great for his still mortal nature ; and he could afterwards find within him no memory of what it did. " Open thine eyes," said Beatrice, " and see me now indeed. Thou hast beheld things that empower thee to sustain my smiling." Dante, while doing as he was desired, felt like one who has suddenly waked up from a dream, and endeavours in vain to rec- ollect it. " Neve»," said he, " can that moment.be erased from the book of the past. If all the tongues were granted me that were fed with the richest milk of Polyhymnia and her sisters, they could not express one thousandth part of the beauty of that di- vine smile, or of the thorough perfection which it made of the whole of her divine countenance." But Beatrice said, " Why dost thou so enamour thee of this face, and lose the sight of the beautiful guide, blossoming beneath the beams of Christ ? Behold the rose, in which the Word was made flesh.f Behold the lilies, by whose odour the way of life is tracked." Dante looked, and gave battle to the sight with his weak eyes J As flowers on a cloudy day in a meadow are suddenly lit up by a gleam of sunshine, he beheld multitudes of splendours ef- fulgent with beaming rays that smote on them from above, though he could not discern the source of the effulgence. He had in voked the name of the Virgin when he looked ; and the gracious fountain of the light had drawn itself higher up within the heaven, to accommodate the radiance to his faculties. He then beheld the Virgin herself bodily present, — her who is fairest now in heaven, as she was on earth; and while his eyes were being painted with her beauty,§ there fell on a sudden a seraphic light * He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person. 1 The Virgin Mary. t " Mi rendei A la battaglia de' debili cigli." i " Ambo le luei mi dipinse." THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 155 from heaven, which, spinning into a circle as it came, formed a diadem round her head, still spinning, and warbling as it spun. The sweetest melody that ever drew the soul to it on earth would have seemed like the splitting of a thunder-cloud, compared with the music that sung around the head of that jewel of Paradise.'' " I am Angelic Love," said the light, " and I spin for joy of the womb in which our Hope abided ; and ever, O Lady of Eieaven, must I thus attend thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his loving-kindness from sphere to sphere." All the other splendours now resounded the name of Mary. The Virgin began ascending to pursue the path of her Son ; and Dante, unable to endure her beauty as it rose, turned his eyes to the angelical callers on the name of Mary, who remained yearning afler her with their hands outstretched, as a babe yearns after the bosom withdrawn from his lips. Then rising after her themselves, they halted ere they went out of sight, and sung " O Queen of Heaven" so sweetly, that the delight never quitted the air. A flame now approached and thrice encircled Beatrice, singing all the while so divinely, that the poet could retain no idea ex- pressive of its sweetness. Mortal imagination cannot unfold such wonder. It was Saint Peter, whom she had besought to come down from his higher sphere, in order to catechise and dis- course with her companion on the subject of faith. The catechising and the discourse ensued, and were concluded by the Apostle's giving the poet the benediction, and encircling his forehead thrice with his holy light. " So well," says Dante, " was be pleased with my answers."! * " Qualunque melodia piti dolce suona Qua giti, e piti a se 1' anima tira, Parebbe nuDe che squarciata tuona, Comparata al sonar di quella lira Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro Del quale 11 ciel pid chiaro s' inzaffira.'" t " Benedicendomi cautando Tre volte cinse me, si com' io tacqui, V Apostolico lume, al cui comando Io avea detto ; si nel dir gli piacqui." 156 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. " If ever," continued the Florentine, " the sacred poem to , which heaven and earth have set their hands, and which for years past has wasted my flesh in the writing, shall prevail against the cruelty that shut me out of the sweet fold in which I slept like a lamb, wishing harm to none but the wolves that beset it, — with another voice, and in another guise than now, will I re- turn, a poet, and standing by the fount of my baptism, assume the crown that belongs to me ; for I there first entered on the faith which gives souls to God ; and for that faith did Peter thus encircle "my forehead."* A flame enclosing Saint James now succeeded to that of Saint Peter, and after greeting his predecessor as doves greet one an- other, murmuring and moving round, proceeded to examine the mortal visitant on the subject of Hope. The examination was It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission ; an opinion which hag ex- cited great indignation among the orthodox. See his Discorso sul Testo, ut sup. pp. 64, 77-90 and 335-338 ; and the preface of the Milanese Editors to the " Convito" of Dante, — Opere Minori, 12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's con- jecture seems hardly borne out by the context ; but I think Dante Tiad bold- ness and self-estimation enough to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed to be) would have thought of thus making him- self free of the courts of Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist ! * The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the twenty-fourth canto of Paradise ; and those, of which the passage just given is a translation, com- mence the twenty-fifth : " Se mai continga, che '1 poema sacra Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra Si che m' ha fatto per piti anni macro, Vinca la crudelta, che fuor mi serra Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra ; Con altra voce omai, con altro vello Ritornerb poeta, ed in" sul fonte Del mio battesmo prenderf) 'I capello : Perocchfe ne la fede che fa conte L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e pni Pietro per lei si mi gir6 la fronte." THE JOURNEY THROUGH 11EA:VEN. 157 closed amidst resounding anthems of " Let their hope be in thee ;"* and a third apostolic flame ensued, enclosing Saint John, who completed the catechism with the topic of Charity. Dante acquitted himself with skill throughout ; the spheres resounded with songs of " Holy, holy," Beatrice joining in the warble ; and the poet suddenly found Adam beside him. The parent of the human race knew by intuition what his descendant wished to learn of him ; and manifesting his assent before he spoke, as an animal sometimes does by movements and quiverings of the flesh within its coat, corresponding with its good-will,-|- told him, that his fall was not owing to the fruit which he tasted, but to the vio- lation of the injunction not to taste it ; that he remained in the Limbo on hell-borders upwards of five thousand years ; and that the language he spoke had become obsolete before the days of Nimrod. The gentle fire of Saint Peter now began to assume an awful brightness, such as the planet Jupiter might assume, if Mars and it were birds, and exchanged the colour of their plumage.:): Si- lence fell upon the celestial choristers ; and the Apostle spoke thus : " Wonder not if thou seest me change colour. Thou wilt see, while I speak, all which is round about us colour in like manner. He who usurps my place on earth, — my place, I say, — ay, mine., * " Sperent in te." Psalm ix. 10. The English version says, " And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee." t " Tal volta un animal coverto broglia SI che V affetto convien che si paia Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia." A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for the occa- sion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in which the greet- ings of St. Peter and St. .Tames are compared to those of doves murmuring and sidling round about one another ; though Christian sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles to one's imagination. t " Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne, Qual diverebbe Glove, s' egli e Marte FoBsero augelli e cambLassersi penne." Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the tremendous paseaga that ensues ! 158 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. — which before God is now vacant, — has converted the city in which my dust lies buried into a common-sewer of filth and blood ; so that the fiend who fell from hence rejoices himself down there." At these words of the Apostle the whole face of- Heaven was covered with a blush, red as dawn or sunset ; and Beatrice changed colour, like a maiden that shrinks in alarm from the re- port of blame in another. The eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the Cross. Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his appearance : " Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus, — the blood of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor Urban ; men, for whose deaths all Chris- tendom wept. They died that souls might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom against the other ; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the faith- ful ; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying docu- ments, which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm of God, why sleepest thou ? Men out of Gas- cony and 'Cahors are even now making ready to drink our blood. lofty beginning, to what vile conclusion must thou come ! But the high Providence, which made Scipio the sustainer of the Ro- man sovereignty of the world, will fail not its timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself." As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apos- tle, as he turned with the other saints to depart ; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they became viewless.* * In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush, and in the positive bathos, an'! 1 fear almost indecent irrelevancy of the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, i:iuch more under the feeble aspect of one young lady blush* THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 159 The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or Primum Mobile, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of those beneath it. Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies. All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained many mysteries to him connected with that sight ; and then vehemently denounced the false and foolish teach- ers that quit the authority of the Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig.* Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face be- came so full of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to en- deavour to speak of it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjsyed by any save its Maker.f Her look carried him upward as before, and he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light ; — of light made of intellect full of love ; love of truth, full of joy ; joy, transcendant above all sweetness. Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him, swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes against the blinded eyes ; but the light was love here, and instead of injuring, gave new power to the objec; it embraced. ing for another, — this scene altogether is a very grand one ; and the violence itself of the holy invective awful. A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the hating side of his genius ? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own poem ? St. Francis or St. Dominic? — I am afraid, all things considered, we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius the Second, than a Bene- dict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine Church-hymns he would have written ! » She does not see (so blind is even holy -ehemence !) that for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. Th^reachers brought St Anthony and his pig into their pulpits ; she brings them into Heaven ! t " Certo io credo Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda.'' 160 TilE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. W ith this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours, and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile, like rubies set in gold ; till inebri- ated with the odours, they recast themselves into the bosom of the flood ; and ever as one returned, another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light, that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature ; for the river, and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which they included ; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as without fur- ther assistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time ; and his eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him, like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circumference larger than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with all its verdure and its flowers ; so, round about on all sides, upon thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which as- cended above them, tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasur- able rose, all dilating itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew forward her companion, and said, "Behold ,h» innumerable assemblage of the white gar- ments ! Behold our city, how large its circuit ! Behold our seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comtrs are want- ed to fill them ! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, sur THE JOURNEY THROl GH HEAVEN. 161 mounted with the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set Italy right before she is prepared for it.* The blind waywardness of which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of hunger, kicks away his purse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot walk in the ijame path with such a man, whatever be the road.f But God will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon Magus ; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of Alagna still lower.":): In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed multitude of hu- man souls lay manifest before the eyes of the poet ; and now he observed, that the winged portion of the blest, the angels, who fly up with their wings nearer to Him that fills them with love, came to and fro upon the rose like bees ; now descending into its bosom, now streaming' back to the source of their affection. Their faces were all fire, their wings golden, their garments whiter than snow. Whenever they descended on the flower, they went from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and communicating the peace and ardour which they gathered as they gave. Dante be- held all, — every flight and action of the whole winged multitude, — without let or shadow ; for he stood in the region of light it- self, and light has no obstacle where it is deservedly vouchsafed. " Oh," cries the poet, " if the barbarians that came from the north stood dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the people of Florence to beings just and sane ?" Dante stood, without a wish either to speak or to hear. He felt like a pilgrim who has arrived within the place of his devotion, * The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol ; at the close of whoso brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of restoration to his country were at an end. t Pope Clement tlie Fifth. Dante's enemy, BonifiiL-e, was now dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had prepared for him. } Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red-hot feet are to thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. ■ So says the gentle Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face oC all that is angeli ;a ' 12 162 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. and who looks round about him, hoping some day to relate what tie sees. He gazed upwards and downwards, and on every side round about, and saw movements graceful with every truth of in- nocence, and faces full of loving persuasion, rich in their own smiles and in the light of the smiles of others. He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone ; — gone, as a messen- ger from herself told him, to resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in the third circle from the top, as far from Dante as the bottom of the sea is from the region of thunder ; and yet he saw her as plainly as if she had been close at hand. He addressed words to her of thanks for all she had done for him, and a hope for her assistance after death ; and she looked down at him and smiled. The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade the poet lift his eyes higher ; and Dante beheld the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in the centre of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth ; and she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all the blessed. At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful — she that opened the wound which Blary closed ; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice ; and at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the Miserere ;* and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived before Christ from those who lived after ; a line which, on the opposite side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was di- vided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices, were the souls of such as were too young to have at- taiiled Heaven by assistance of good works. St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the » David. THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. 163 iTirgin, and gather from her countenance the power of beholding he face of Christ as God. Her aspect was flooded with gladness 'rom the spirits around her ; while the angel who had descended o her on earth now hailed her above with " Ave, Maria !" sing- ng till the whole host of Heaven joined in the song. St. Bernard hen prayed to her for help to his companion's eyesight. Bea- rice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the prayer, ;heir hands stretched upwards ; and the Virgin, after benignly ooking on the petitioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the ivay with her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then ooked also, and beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory :o endure. He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness ;hat ever trickled to his heart. Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so iar vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to 3onvey to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory jf what he saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose sight he must have perished had he faltered, ;hat his eyes, unblasted, attained to a perception of the Sum of [nfinitude. He beheld, concentrated in one spot — written in one volume of Love — all which is diffused, and can become the sub- iect of thought and study throughout the universe — all substance ind accident and mode — all so compounded that they become one ight. He thought he beheld at one and the same time the one- less of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies ; Decause, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and n the course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak )f it. But thoughts as well as words failed him ; and though ever af- ;erwards he could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he jould take defect for completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain it, still the utmost he could say of what le remembered would fall as short of right speech as the sounds 3f an infant's tongue while it is murmuring over the nipple ; for ;he more he had looked at that light, the more he found in it to imaze him, so that his brain toiled with the succession of the as- ;onishmt,nts. He saw, in the deep but clear self-subsistence, 164 THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. three circles of three different colours of the same breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from both.* O eternal Light ! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so un- derstanding, thou laughest at thj^-self, and lovest. The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted by its own colours with the likeness of a human face.j" But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathe- matician experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to dis- cover the principle by which he is to square it. He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed him for the purpose ; but the light left him no power to impart the discernment ; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the stars.:^ * The Trinity. t The Incarnation. t In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p. 845, we are informed thai a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of his poem with the word " stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention, however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspira • tions terminated. PULCI fTrteai Jfotite of l)is £ife onb ©enino. CRITICAL NOTICE PULCrS LIFE AND GENIUS. PuLCi, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in poiilt of time, after Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farco after tragedy ; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterer. He was a true poet of the mixed order, grave as well as gay ; had a reflecting mind, a susceptible and mosi affectionate heart ; and perhaps was never more in earnest thar- when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotrj' in his most laughable sallies. Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo, the eldest, was the ear- liest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil ; and Lucca wrote a romance called the Ciriffo Calvaneo, and is commended for his Heroic Epistles. Little else is known of these brothers ; and not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the name of Luerezia degli Albizzi ; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere ; was one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary circle ; and apparently led a life the Ib8 PULCI. most delightful to a poet, always meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens. Nothing is loiown of his latter days. An unpublished work of little credit (Zilioli On the Italian Poets), and an earlier printed book, which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone Be Antiquitatibus Urhis Patavimz), say that he died miserably in Padua, and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its troubles ; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their enemies may have treated him ; but miserable ends are a favourite allegation with theological opponents. The Calviniste affirm of their master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint ; but I have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther, calling them both the greatest villains {sceleratissimi) ; and adding, that one of them (I forget which'' was found dashed on the floor of his bedroom, and torn limb from limb. Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good humour — sport to amuse their friends — a peril- ous speculation. Besides his share in these verses, he is sup posed to have had a hand in his brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems, and of a burlesque panegyric on a country daniael, La Beca, in emulation of the charming poem La Nencia, the first of its kind, written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo, who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs for the people to dance to in Carnival time. The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind. Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the latter's youth, probably from his birth — is spoken of in a tone of domestic intimacy by his wife — HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 169 and is enumerated by him among his companions in a very spe- cial and characteristic manner in his poem on Hawking {La Cac- cia col Falcone), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen about him, and missing Luigi, ote of them says that he has strolled into a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a sonnet : " ' Luigi Pulci ov' 6, che non si sente V ' Egli SB n' andb dianzi in quel boschelto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la meute ; Vorr k fantasticar forse un sonetto.' " " And Where's Luigi Pulci ? I saw him." " Oh, in the wood there. Gone, depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain — some whim. That will not let him rest till it's a sonnet." In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then ill his seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquaint- ed with the courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down the poetic pi'opensity in his friend's absence. " If you were with me," he says, " I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or other betwixt my teeth ; but I say to myself, ' My Lorenzo is not here — he who is my only hope and refuge ;' and so I suppress it." Such is the first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we pos- sess of the sequestered though companionable poet. He prefer- red one congenial listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Delia Cruscans and others after- wards plagued Tasso ; so he banters them in turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom o' Lorenzo. " So che andar dirtito mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia, • Che questa non b storia da menzognft ; Che come io esco un passo de la via, 170 PULCl. Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la pazzia ; Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi 6 inflnita. La mia Acoademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E fitata volentier ne' miei boschetti ; E puossi ben veder 1' Affrica e 1' Asia : Vongon le Ninfe con lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia ; E cosi fuggo mille urban dispetti : SI ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi Gente pur sempre di mal dicer vaghi." " I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this side or to that ; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all pufF, and blame, and contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at ; In short, such crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to know 'em. Yes, gentlemen, my only ' Academe,' My sole ' Gymnasium,' are my woods and bowers ; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream ; And the Nymphs bring me baskets full of flowers. Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream ; And thus my Muse escapeth your town-heurs And town-disdains ; and I eschew your bites. Judges of books, grim Areopagites." He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy in- stituted by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, douot- less with the laughing approbation of the founder, who was some- times not a little troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati. Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his " refuge." The Morgante Maggiore, the work which has rendered the name of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of- a production that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points. The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which pre- HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 171 vailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the ad- vance of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome. The Council of Trent, as Cresoimbeni advised the critics, had not then settled what Christendom was to believe ; and men, provided they complied with forms, and admitted oer- '.ain main articles, were allowed to think, and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the Platonic phi- losophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christian- ity itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian theology to an extent which the soorners of Paganism little suspect. Most of these Helenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's friend, Politian, who had never, theless universality enough to sympathise with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its liveliest and most idio- matic effusions. From all these circumstances in combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a mixed or- der, wliich should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors ; second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding ; third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics, " sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities ; and lastly, a doubt which has strangely ex- isted with some, as to whether he intended to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he opens every canto with some pious invocation ; another asserts that the piety itself is a banter ; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and the levities all in all ; a fourth allows him to have been seri- ous in his description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in all the rest of his poem ; while a fifth candidly gives up the question, as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind, which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi, who was well acquainted with 172 PULCI. the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if not a profound, is gen erally an acute and liberal critic, confesses himself to be thus confounded. " Pulci," he says, " commences all his cantos by a sacred invocation ; and the interests of religion are constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner capri- cious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of profane derision."* Sismondi did not con- sider that- the lively and impassioned people of the south take what may be called household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than northerns can easily conceive ; that levity of manner, therefore, does not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others, perhaps the more so for that reason ; and that, although some poems, like some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to, ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If Rabelais had been able to weep * Literature of the South of Europe, Thomas Roscoe's Translation, vol. ii. p. 54. For the opinions of other writers, here and elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him), Storia delta Poesia Ilaliana, cap, V. sect. 25 ; Gravina, who is more so, Delia Ragion Poetica (quoted in Gin- gu^n^, as below) ; Crescimbeni, Commentari Intorno all' Istoria delta Poesia, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3 (Matbias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work, 4to, Kome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was perhaps the "modestest and most temperate writer' :i his age ("il piti modesto e moderate") ; Gingu^n^, Histoire Litteraire d' Italic, tom iv. p. 314 ; Foscolo, in the Quarterly Review, as further on ; Panizzi on the Romantic Poetry of the Italians, ditto ; Stebbing, Lives of the Italian Poets, second edition, vol. i. ; and the first volume of Lives of Literary and Scientific Men, in Lardner's CyclopiBdia. HIS LIB'E AND GENIUS. 173 as well as to laugh, and to love as well as to be licentious, ht would have had faith and therefore support in something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse, if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the com- pany, after listening with the greatest seriousness to a grace de- livered with equal seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup ? Well, the sacred invocations at the beginning of Pul- ci's cantos were compliances of the like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table ; and yet neither compromised the reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been writ- ten by gallant officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends, and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a captured city ? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling than of whim and mirthv And the whole honest round of humanity not only war. rants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it. If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest wo- man, herself a poetess, «vho wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. The Morgante concludes with an ad- dress respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with a hope that her " devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him in Para- dise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, 174 rULCI. could have had no serious meaning ? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his mother as to a jest ? I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived, Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the Council of Trent. His opinions respect- ing the mystery of the Trinity appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of Archdeacon Travis. And as- suredly he agreed with Origen respecting eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man may ac- cord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the " starry spheres." He may think, with Origen, that God in- tends all his creatures to be ultimately happy,* and yet be con- sidered as loving a follower of Christ as a " dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a fellow-creature. Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, be- fore the appearance of Columbus."]" He made the conclusion, doubtless, as Columbus did, from the speculations of more scien- tific men, and the rumours of seamen ; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements of the public mind ! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps adored, by the descendants of th e calumniators ! In a public li- brary, in Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious bit of parchment ; and is the finger of Galileo ; of that Galileo, whose hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited him un- der the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating * Canto XXV. The passage will be fonnd in the present volume t Id. And this also. HIS LIFE AND ."GENIUS. 175 3ur ideas of the Crgator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West. Like the Commedia of Dante, Pulci's •" Commedia" (for such also in regard to its general cheerfulness,* and probably to its mediocrity of style, he calls it) is a representative in great mea- sure of the feeling and knowledge of his time ; and though not entirely such in a learned and eclectic sense, and not to be com- pared to that sublime monstrosity in point of genius and power, is as superior to it in iberal opinion and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate disposition, and his coun- try's advance in civilisation, combined to render it. The editor of the Paniaso Italiano had reason to notice this engaging per- sonal character in our author's work. He says, speaking of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will " admire Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pijlci."f And all minds, in which lovingness produces love, will agree with him. The Morgante Maggiore is a history of the fabulous exploits and death of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided monarch's favourite, Gan of Maganza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It is founded on the pseudo-history of Arch- bishop Turpin, which, though it received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (^Morgante the Great) seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or the re- sult of an intention to do more with the giant so called tM^n took place ; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier pvt of the poem, he dies when it is not much more than half compW-^ * Canto xxvii. stanza 2. " S' altro ajuto qui non s! dimostra, Sari pur tragedfa la istoria nostra. Ed io pur commedia pensato avea lecriver del mio Carlo finalmente, Ed Alcuin cosi ml promettea," &c. t " In fine tu adorerai I'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ro» tu amerai il I'ulci." — Parn. Ital. vol. ix. p. 344. 17G PULCI. Orlando, the champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented, for the most part, as i very different person from what he appears in history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an exaggeration (still misrepre- sented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican chieflan, who conquer- ed the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and weak.* The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins, his cousin Rinaldo es- pecially, have their separate adventures, all more or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charle- magne ; and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious ; and the two i"oyal and noble scoun- drels, by a piece of prosaical justice better than poetical, are des- patched like common malefactors with a halter. There is, perhaps, no pure invention in the whole of this en- largement of old ballads and chronicles, except the characters of another giant, and of a rebel angel ; for even Morgante's history, though told in a very different manner, has its prototype in the fictions of the pretended archbishop. f The Paladins are well dis- * Ellis's Specimens of Early English Poetical Romances, vol. ii. p. 287 ; and Panizzi's Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry of the Italians, in hia edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p. 113. t De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia, &c. cap. xviii. p. 39 (Ciam- pi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferraoutus, or Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had tlie strength of forty men, and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful beggings of the question ; after which the giant stakes the credit of their respect'TS beliefs on the event of their encounter. HIS LIFE AND GKNIUS. 177 tinguished from one another ; Orlando as foremost alike in prow- ess and magnanimity, Rinaldo by his vehemence, Ricciardetto by his amours, Astolfo by an ostentatious rashness and self-commit- tal ; but in all these respects they appear to have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular idiomatic phraseology ; still less, though it has plenty of infernal magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring order, as in Ariosto ; or with love stories as good as Boiardo's, or even with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be found in both of those poets ; albeit, in the fourteenth canto, there is a long catalogur raisonne of the whole animal crea- tion, which a lady has workec for Rinaldo on a pavilion of silk and gold. To these negative faults must be added the positive ones of too many trifling, unconnected, and uninteresting incidents (at least to readers who cannot taste the flavour of the racy Tuscan idiom) ; great occasional prolixity, even in the best as well as worst passages, not excepting Orlando's dying speeches ; harsh- ness in spite of his fluency (according to Foscolo), and even bad grammar ; too many low or over-familiar forms of speech (so the graver critics allege, though, perhaps, from want of animal spirits or a more comprehensive discernment) ; and lastly (to say nothing of the question as to the gravity or levity of the theol- ogy), the strange exhibition of whole successive stanzas, contain- ing as many questions or affirmations as lines, and commencing each line with the same words. They meet the eye like palisa- does, or a file of soldiers, and turn truth and pathos itself into a jest. They were most likely imitated from the popular ballads. The following is the order of words in which a young lady thinks fit to complain of a desert, into which she has been carried away by a giant. After seven initiatory O's addressed to her friends and to life in general, she changes the key into E : ' E" questa la mia patria dov' io nacqui 1. E' questo il mio palagio e '1 mio castello 1 E" questo il nido ov' alcun tempo giacqui ? E" questo il padre e '1 3iio doloe fratello? 13 178 PULCI. E" questo il popol dov' io tanto piacqui ? E' questo il regno giusto antico e bello t E" questo il porto do la mia salute ? E' questo il premio d' ogni mia virtute ? Ove son or le mie purpurea veste ? Ove son or le gerame e le ricohezze ? Ove son or gi^ le notturne feste ? Ove son or le mie delicatezze ? Ove son or le mie compagne oneste? Ove son or le fuggite dolcezze? Ove son or le damigelle mie ? Ove son, dico ? omfe, non son gi^ quie."* Is this the country, then, where I was born 1 Is this my palace, and my castle this ? Is this the nest I woke in, every morn ? Is this my father's and my brother's kiss ? Is this the land they bred me to adorn ? Is this the good old bower of all my bliss? Is this the haven of my youth and beauty ? Is this the sure reward of all my duty ? Where now are all my wardrobes and their treasures? Where now are all my riches and my rights ? Where now are all the midnight feasts and measures ? Where now are all the delicate delights ? Where now are all the partners of my pleasures ? Where now are all the sweets of sounds and sights ? Where now are all my maidens ever near ? Where, do I say ? Alas, alas, not here ! There are seven more " where nows," including lovers, and " proffered husbands," and " romances," and ending with the startling question and answer, — the counterpoint of the former close, — *' Ove son i' aspre selve e i lupi adesso E gli orsi, e i draghi, e i tigri ? Son qui presso.'' Where now are all the woods and forests drear, Wolves, tigers, bears, and dragons ? Alas, here ! These are all very natural thoughts, and such, no doubt, as would actually pass through the mind of the young lady, in the * Canto xix. st. 21. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 179 candour of desolation ; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by the poor queen in the play of Richard the Second, when she overhears the discourse of the gardener : ** My v/retchedness unto a row of pins, They'll talk of state." Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during the recital of these passages ? Or did he flatter himself that the comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new one ?* * When a proper name happens to be a part of the tautology, the look is still more extraordinary. Orlando is remonstrating with Rinaldo on his being unseasonably in love : " Ov' e, Rinaldo, la tua gagliardia? Ov' fe, Rinaldo, il tuo sommo potere? Ov' 6, Rinaldo, il tuo senno di pria ? Ov' fe, Rinaldo, il tuo antivedere? Ov' fe, Rinaldo, la tua fantasia ? Ov' 6, Rinaldo, 1' arme e '1 tuo destriere ? Ov" 6, Rinaldo, la tua gloria e fama? Ov' 6, Rinaldo, il tuo core ? a la dama." Canto x\i. sL 50. Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy gagliardize ? Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy might indeed ? Oh where, Rinaldo, thy repute for wise ? Oh where, Rinaldo, thy sagacious heed? Oh where, Rinaldo, thy free-thoughted eyes ? Oh where, Rinaldo, thy good arms and steed? Oh where, Rinaldo, thy renown and glory ? Oh where, Rinaldo, thou? — In a love-story. The incessant repetition of the names in the burdens of modern songs is hardly BO bad as this. The single line questions and answers in the Greek drama were nothing to it. Yet there is a still more extraordinaiy play upon words in canto xxiii. et. 49, consisting of the description of a hermitage. It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration mad with envy : — La casa cosa parea bretta e brutta, Vinta dal vento ; e la natta e la notie 180 PULCI. The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external nature, in the Morgante, is remarkable ; for Pulci's ten- derness of heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and delicacy is apparent from a passage con- nected with this pavilion. The fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to accept ; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that " she wishes she could give him the sun 5" and that if she were to say, after all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his lips. The way also in which another of these loving ad- mirers of Paladins conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with a ring and a graceful speech, is in Stilla le stelle, ch' a tetto era tuito : Del pane appena ne detie ta' dotte ; Pere avea pure, e qualehe fraita frutta ; E svina e svena di botto una hotte : Poscia per pesci lasche prese a V esca ; Ma il letto allotta a la frasca fu fresca." This holy hole was a vile thin-hmti, thing. Blown by the blast ; the night nought else o'erhead But staring stars the rude roof entering ; Their svp of supper was no splendid spread; Poor pears their fane, and such-like libelling Of quantum suff! ; — their butt all but; — bad bread; — A flash of fish instead oi flush ol flesh ; Their bed a frisk alfresco, freezing fresh. Really, if Sir Philip Sidney and other serious and exquisite gentlemen had not Fomotimes taken a positively grave interest in the like pastimes of paronomasia, one should hardly conceive it possible to meet with them even in tragi-comedy. Did Pulei find these also in his ballad-authorities ? If his Greek-loving critics made objections here, they had the advantage of him : unless indeed they too, III their Alexandrian predilections, had a sneaking regard for certain shapings of verse into altars and hatchets, such as have been charged upon Theocritus himself, and which might be supposed to "warrant any other conceit on occa- HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. l&l a taste as high as any thing in Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their great successor.* Yet the tenderness of Puloi rather shews itself in the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little escapes of gene- rous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great charms of the Morgante. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he discovers a kinsman ; and this goodness and relationship com- bined move the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without peril out of the clutches of a devil, he longs to go and set free the whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his affection for him. Ri- naldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part with him without manifesting a teiiderness proportionate to their valour, — the old Homeric candoui of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (gen- tilezzd) even in hell ; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, an- swers that he has no doubt of it, or of the capability of " friend- ship" in that quarter ; and he says he is as " sorry to part with him as with a brother." The passage will be found in our ab- stract. There are no such devils as these in Dante ; though Milton has something like them : " Devil with devil damn'd Firm concord holds : men only disagree.'' It 's supposed that the character of Ashtaroth, which is a very * See, in the original, the story of Meridiana, canto vii. King Manfredonio nas come in loving hostility against he? to endeavour to win her affection by his prowess. He finds her assisted by the Paladins, and engaged by her own heart to Uliviero ; and in the despair of his discomfiture, expresses a wish to die by her hand. Meridiana, with graceful pity, begs his acceptance of a jewel, and recommends him to go home with his army ; to which he griev- ingly consents. This indeed is beautiful ; and perhaps I ought to have given an abstract of it, as a specimen of wha!: Puloi could have done iu this way. had hs chosen. 182 rCLCI. new and extraordinary one, and does great honour to the daring goodness of Pulci's imagination, was not lost upon Milton, who was not only acquainted with the poem, but expressly intimates the pleasure le took in it.* Rinaldo advises this devil, as Burns did Lucifer, to " take a thought and mend." Ashtaroth, who had been a seraph, takes no notice of the advice, except with a waving of the recollection of happier times. He bids the hero farewell, and says he has only to summon him in order to receive his aid. This retention of a sense of his former angelical dig- nity has been noticed by Foscolo and Panizzi, the two best writers on these Italian poems.f A Calvinist would call the ex- pression of the sympathy " hardened." A humanist knows it to be the result of a spirit exquisitely softened. An unbounded ten- derness is the secret of all that is beautiful in the serious portion of our author's genius. Orlando's good-natured giant weeps even for the death of the scoundrel Margutte ; and the awful hero himself, at whose death nature is convulsed and the heav- ens open, begs his dying horse to forgive him if ever he has wronged it. A charm of another sort in Pulci, and yet in most instances, perhaps, owing the best part of its oharmingness to its being connected with the same feeling, is his wit. Foscolo, it is true, says it is, in general, more severe than refined ; and it is perilous * " Perhaps it was from that same politic drift that the devil whipt St. Je- rome in a lenten dream for reading Cicero ; or else it was a fantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an angel been his dlscipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading and not the vanity, it had been plainly partial ; first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurrile Plautus, whom he confesses to have been reading not long before ; next, to correct him only, and let so many more an- cient fathers wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of such a tutormg apparition ; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer ; and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same pur- pose ?" — Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, Prose Works, folio, 1697, p. 378. I quote the passage as extracted by Mr. Meri- vale in the preface to his " Orlando in Roncesvalles," — Poems, vol. il. p. 41. t Ut sup. p. 229. Foscolo's remark is to be found in his admirable articlj on the Narrative and Romantic Poims of the Italians, in the Quarterly Re- view, vol. xxi. p. 525. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 183 to differ with such a critic on such a point ; for much of it, un. fortunately, is lost to a foreign reader, in consequence of its de- pendance on the piquant old Tuscan idiom, and on popular say- ings and allusions. Yet I should think it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some more agreeable qual- ity ; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most obvious to a foreigner may claim, if not to have originated, at least to have been- very like the style of one who was among its declared ad- mirers, — and who was a very polished writer, — Voltaire. It con- sists ir. treating an absurdity with an air as if it were none ; or as if it had been a pure matter of course, erroneously mistaken for an absurdity. Thus the good abbot, whose monastery is blockaded by the giants (for the virtue and simplicity of his char- acter must be borne in mind), after observing that the ancient fathers in the desert had not only locusts to eat, but manna, which he has no doubt was rained down on purpose from heaven, la- ments that the " relishes" provided for himself and his brethren should have consisted of " showers of stones." The stones, while the abbot is speaking, come thundering down, and he ex- claims, "For God's sake, knight, come in, for the manna is fall- ing !" This is exactly in the style of the Dictionnaire Philoso- phique. So when Margutte is asked what he believes in, and says he believes in " neither black nor blue," but in a good capon, " whether roast or boiled," the reader is forcibly reminded of Voltaire's Traveller, Scarmentado, who, when he is desired by the Tartars to declare which of their two parties he is for, the party of the black-mutton or the white-mutton, answers, that the dish is " equally indifferent to him, provided it is tender." Vol- taire, however, does injustice to Pulci, when he pretends that in matters of belief he is like himself, — a mere scoffer. The friend of Lucrezia Tornabuoni has evidently the tenderest veneration for all that is good and lovely in the Catholic faith ; and what ever liberties he might have allowed himself in professed extrav aganzas, when an age without Church-authority encouraged them, and a reverend canon could take part in those (it must be ac- knowledged) unseemly " high jinks," he never, in the Morgante, when speaking in his own person, and not in that of the worst characters, intimates disrespect towards any opinion which he did J 84 PULCI. not hold to be irrelevant to a right faith. It is observable that his freest expressions are put in the mouth of the giant Margutte, the lowest of these characters, who is an invention of the author's, and a most extraordinary personage. He is the first unmitigated blackguard in fiction, and is the greatest as well as first. Pulci is conjectured, with great probability, to have designed him as a caricature of some real person ; for Margutte is a Greek who, in point of morals, has been horribly brought up, and some of the Greek refugees in Italy were greatly disliked for the cynicism of their manners and the grossness of their lives. Margutte is a glutton, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and a blasphemer. He boasts of having every vice, and no virtue except fidelity ; which is meant to reconcile Morgante to his company ; but though the lat- ter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to shew on what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt of a merely and grossly anti-serious mode of existence, and his consideration, nevertheless, towards the poor selfish wretch who had had no better training. To this wit and this pathos let the reader add a style of singu- lar ease and fluency, — rhymes often the most unexpected, but never at a loss, — a purity of Tuscan acknowledged by every body, and ranking him among the authorities of the language, — and a modesty in speaking of his own pretensions equalled only by his enthusiastic extolments of genius in others ; and the read- er has before him the lively and affecting, hopeful, charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci, the precursor, and in some respects exemplar, of Ariosto, and, in Milton's opinion, a poet worth read- ing for the " good use" that may be made of him. It has been strangely supposed that his friend Politian, and Ficino the Platon- ist, not merely helped him with their books (as he takes a pride in telling us), but wrote a good deal of the latter part of the Mor- gante, particularly the speculations in matters of opinion. As if (to say nothing of the difference of style) a man of genius, how HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 185 ever lively, did not go through the gravest reflections in t;ie course of his life, or could not enter into any theological or met- aphysical question, to vi^hich he chose to direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy ; and one fit of jaundice or hyp- ochondria might have enabled the poet to see more visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the disciple of Plato. HUMOURS OF GIANTS HUMOURS OF GIANTS. Twelve Paladins had the Emperor Charlemagne in his court ; and the most wise and famous of them was Orlando. It is of him I am about to speak, and of his friend Morgante, and of Gan the traitor, who beguiled him to his death in Roncesvalles, where he sounded his horn so mightily after the dolorous rout. It was Easter, and Charles had all his court with him in Paris, making high feast and triumph. There was Orlando, the first among them, and Ogier the Dane, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Ansuigi ; and there came Angiolin of Bayonne, and Ulivie- ro, and the gentle Berlinghieri ; and there was also Avolio and Avino, and Otho of Normandy, and Richard, and the wise Namo, and the aged Salamon, and Walter of Monlione, and Baldwin who was the son of the wretched Gan. The good emperor was too happy, and oftentimes fairly groaned for joy at seeing all his Paladins together. But Fortune stands watching in secret to baffle our designs. While Charles was thus hugging himself with delight, Orlando governed every thing at court, and this made Gan burst with envy ; so that he began one day talking with Charles after the following manner : — " Are we always to have Orlando for our master ? I have thought of speaking to you about it a thousand times. Orlando has a great deal too much presumption. Here are we, counts, dukes, and kings, at your service, but not at his ; and we have resolved not to be governed any longer by one so much j'ounger than ourselves. You began in Aspramont to give him- to understand how valiant he was, and that he did great things at that fountain ; whereas, if it had not been for the good Gerard, I know very well where the victory would have been. The truth is, he has an eye upon the crown. This, Charles, ia 190 HUMOURS OF GIANTS. the worthy who has deserved so much ! All your generals are afflicted at it. As for me, I shall repass those mountains over which I came to you with seventy -two counts. Do you take him for a Mars ?" Orlando happened to hear these words as he sat apart, and it displeased him with the lord of Pontiers that he should speak so, but much more that Charles should believe him. He would have Icilled Gan, if Uliviero had not prevented him and taken his sword out of his hand ; nay, he would have killed Charlemagne ; but at last he went from Paris by himself, raging with scorn and grief He borrowed, as he went, of Ermillina the wife of Ogier, the Dane's sword Cortana and his horse Rondel, and proceeded on his way to Brava. His wife, Alda the Fair, hastened to em- brace him ; but while she was saying, " Welcome, my Orlando," he was going to strike her with his sword," for his head was be- wildered, and he took her for the traitor. The fair Alda marvel- led greatly, but Orlando recollected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped from his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested himself with her for some days. He then took his leave, being still carried away by his disdain, and resolved to pass over into • Heathendom ; and as he rode, he thought, every step of the way, of the traitor Gan ; and so, riding on wherever the road took him, he reached the confines between the Christian countries and the Pagan, and came upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert. Now above the abbey was a great Nnountain, inhabited by three fierce giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, another Ala- bastro, and the third Morgante ; and these giants used to disturb the abbey by throwing things down upon it from the mountain with slings, so that the poor little monks could not go out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked, but nobody would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot came himself, and opening the door bade him welcome. The good man told him the reason of the delay, and said that since the arrival of the giants they had been so perplexed that they did not know what to do. " Our ancient fathers in the desert," quoth he, " were rewarded according to their holiness. It is not to be supposed that they lived only upon locusts ; doubtless, it also rained man- HUMOURS OF GIANTS. 191 na upon them from heaven ; but here one is regaled with stones, which the giants pour on us from the mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest of the three, Morganfe, plucks up pines and other great trees by the roots, and casts them on us." While they were talking thus in the cemetery, there came a stone which seemed as if it would break Rondel's back. " For God's sake, caA alier," said the abbot, " come in, for the aanna is falling." " My dear Abbot," answered Orlando, " this fellow, methinks, does not v/ish to let my horse feed ; he wants to cure him of be- ing restive ; the stone seems as if it came from a good arm." " Yes," replied the holy father, " I did not deceive you. 1 think, some day or other, they will cast the mountain itself on us." Orlando quieted his horse, and then sat down to a meal ; after which he said, " Abbot, I must go and return the present that has been made to my horse." The abbot with great tenderness endeavoured to dissuade him, but in vain ; upon which he crossed him on the forehead, and said, " Go, then ; and the blessing of God be with you." Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would stay with him for a page, promising to make him comfortable. " Stupid Saracen," said Orlando, " 1 come to you, according to the will of God, to be your death, and not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants here, and are no longer to be endured, dog that you are !" The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to his weapons ; and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, which struck him on the head with such force, as not only made his helmet ring again, but felled him to the earth. Passamonte thought he was dead. " What could have brought that paltry fellow here 1" said he, as he turned away. But Christ never forsakes his followers. While Passamonte was going away, Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, " How now, giant ? do you fancy you have killed me ? Turn back, for unless you have wings, you.- escape is out of the question, 192 HUMOURS OF GIANTS dog of a renegade !" The giant, greatly marvelling, turned back ; and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cor- tana naked in his hand, cleft his skull ; upon which, cursing Mahomet, the monster tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blaspheming fell the sour-hearted and cruel wretch ; but Orlando, in . the mean while, thanked the Father and the Word. The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant ; who, when he saw him, endeavoured to pluck up a great piece of stony earth by the roots. " Ho, ho !" cried Orlando, " you too are for throwing stones, are you ?" Then Alabastro took his sling, and flung at him so large a fragment as forced Orlando to defend himself, for if it had struck him, he would no more have needed a surgeon ;* but collecting his strength, he thrust his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell dead. Now Morgante, the only surviving brother, had a palace made, after giant's fashion, of earth, and boughs, and shingles, in which he shut himself up at night. Orlando knocked, and disturbed him from his sleep, so that he came staring to the door like a madman, for he had had a bewildering dream. " Who knocks there ?" quoth he. " You will know too soon," answered Orlando; " I am come to make you do penance for your sins, like your brothers. Divine Providence has sent me to avenge the wrongs of the monks upon the whole set of you. Doubt it not ; for Passamonte and Ala- bastro are already as cold as a couple of pilasters." " Noble knight," said Morgante, " do me no ill ; but if you are a Christian, tell me in courtesy who you are." " I will satisfy you of my faith," replied Orlando ; " I adore Christ ; and if you please, you may adore him also." " I have had a strange vision," replied Morgante, with a low voice : " I was assailed by a dreadful serpent, and called upon Mahomet in vain ; then I called upon your God who was cruci- * A common pleasantry in the old romances. — " Galaor went in, and then the halberders attacked him on one side, and the knight on the other. Ho snatched an axe from one, and turned to the knight and smote him, so that he had no need of a surgeon." — Southey's Amadis of Gaul, vol. i. p. 146. HUMOURS OF GIANTS. 193 fied, and he succoured ma, and I was delivered from the serpent ; 60 I am disposed to become a Christian." " If you keep in this mind," returned Orlando, " you shall worship the true God, and come with me and be my companion, and I will love you with perfect love. Your idols are false and vain ; the true God is the God of the Christians. Deny the un- just and villanous worship of your Mahomet, and be baptised in the name of my God, who alone is worthy." " I am content," said Morgante. Then Orlando embraced him, and said, " I will lead you to the abbey." " Let us go quickly," replied Morgante, for he was impatient to make his peace with the monks. Orlando rejoiced, saying, " My good brother, and devout with- al, you must ask pardon of the abbot ; for God has enlightened you, and accepted you, and he would have you practise hu- mility." " Yes," said Morgante, " thanks to you, your God shall hence- forth be my God. Tell me your name, and afterwards dispose of me as you will." And he told him that he was Orlando. " Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, " for I have al- ways heard you called a perfect knight ; and as I said, I v/ill follow you all my life long." And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey ; and by the way Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we must submit to the will of God. The doctors of our Church," continued he, " are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in heaven were to feel pity for their mise- rable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing ; and this, you see, would plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of their faith, that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do what he may, they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossi- ble for him to err; so that if their very fathers and mothere are sufTeiing everlasting punishment, it does not disturb them 14 134 HUMOURS OF GlANTd. an atom. This is the custom, I assure you, in the choirs above."* " A word to the wise," said Morgante ; " you shall see if I grieve for my brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God, and behave myself like an angel. So dust to dust ; and now let us enjoy ourselves. I will cut off their hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy monks, that they may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out alone into the desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has purified me, and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom of * ** Sonsi i nostri dottori accordati, Pigliando tutti una conclusione, Che que' che son nel ciel glorificati, S' aveaein nel pensier compassione De' miseri parent! che dannati Son ne lo inferno in gran confusione, La lor felicitii nulla earebbe : E vedi che qui ingiusto Iddio parebbe. Ma egli anno posto in Gesii ferma spene ; E tanto pare a lor, quanto a lui pare : Aiferman cib ch' e' fa, che facci bene, E che non possi in nessun modo errare : Se padre o madre 6 ne V eteme pene, Di questo non si posson conturbare : Che quel che place a Dio, sol place a loro : Questo s' osseiTa ne 1' eterno core. Al savio suol bastar poche parole, Disse Morgante : tu il potrai vedere, De' miei fratelli, Orlando, se mi duole, E s' io m' accordert) di Dio al volere, Come tu di che in ciel servar si suole : Morti co' morti ; or pensiam di godere : Io vo' tagliar le maul a tutti quanti, E porteroUe a que' raonaci santi." This doctrine, which is horrible blasphemy in the eyes of natural feeling, a good reasoning in Catholic and Calvinistic theology. They first make the Deity's actions a necessity from more barbarous assumption, then square them according to a dictum of the Councils, then compliment him by laying all that he has made good and kindly within us mangled and mad at his feet. Mean time tliey think themselves qualified to denounce Moloch and Jugghanaut ! HUMOURS DF GIANTS. !!)* heaven." So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his bretliren, and left their bodies to the beasts and birds. They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Orlan- do in great anxiety ; but the monks not knowing what had hap- pened, ran to the abbot in great haste and alarm, saying, " Will you suffer this giant to come in V And when the abbot saw the giant, he changed countenance. Orlando, perceiving him thus disturbed, made haste and said, " Abbot, peace be with you ! The giant is a Christian ; he believes in Christ, and has renoun- ced his false prophet, Mahomet." And Morgante shewing the hands in proof of his faith, the abbot thanked Heaven with great contentment of mind. The abbot did much honour to Morgante, comparing him with St. Paul ; and they rested there many days. One day, wander- ing over the house, they entered a room where the abbot kept a quantity of armour ; and Morgante saw a bow which pleased him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in the place a great scarcity of water ; and Orlando said, like his good brother, " Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water." " Com- mand me as you please," said he ; and placing a great tub on his shoulders, he went towards a spring at which he had been ac- customed to drinkj at the foot of the mountain. Having reached the spring, he suddenly heard a great noise in the forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it in the bow, and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing towards the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in revenge, ran to- wards the giant, without giving him time to use a second arrow ; so he lent him a cuff on the head which broke the bone, and killed him also ; which stroke the rest seeing fled in haste through the valley. Morgante then placed the tub full of water upon one of his shoulders, and the two porkers on the other, and returned to the abbey which was at some distance, without spilling u drop. The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still more the pork ; for there is no animal to whom food comes amiss. They let their breviaries therefore go to sleep a «hile, and fell 196 HUMOURS OF GIANTS. heartily lo work, so that the cats and dogs had reason to lament the polish of the bones. " But why do we stay here doing nothing ?" said Orlando one day to Morgante ; and he shook hands with the abbot, and told him he must take his leave. " I must go," said he, " and make up for lost time. I ought to have gone long ago, my good father ; but I cannot tell you what I feel within me, at the content I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall bear in mind and in heart with me for ever the abbot, the abbey, and this desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for me, in Jiis own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do not forget us in your prayers." When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, kis heart melted within him for tenderness, and he said, " Knight, if we have failed in any courtesy due to your prowess and great gen- tleness (and indeed what we have done has been but little), pray put it to the account of our ignorance, and of the place which we inhabit. We are but poor men of the cloister, better able to re- gale you with masses and orisons and paternosters, than with din- ners and suppers. You have so taken this heart of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I shall be with you still wherever you go ; and, on the other hand, you will always be present here with me. This seems a contradiction, but you are wise, and will take my meaning discreetly. You have saved the very life and spirit within us ; for so much perplexity had those giants oast about our place, that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May He who sent you into these woods re- ward the justice and piety by which we are delivered from our trouble. Thanks be to him and to you. We shall all be discon- solate at your departure. We shall grieve that we cannot detain you among us for months and years ; but you do not wear these weeds ; you bear arms and armour ; and you may possibly merit as well in carrying those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your virtue has been the means of shewing the giant the way to heaven. Go in peace then, and prosper, whoever you may be. I do not seek your name ; but if ever T am asked who it was that came among us, I shall say that it was HUMOURS OF GIANI'S. 197 an angel from God. If there is any armour or other thing that you would have, go into the room where it is, and take it." " If you have any armour that would suit my companion," replied Orlando, " that I will accept with pleasure." " Come and see," said the abbot ; and they went to a room that was full of armour. Morgante looked all about, but could find nothing large enough, except a rusty breast-plate, which fitted him marvellously. It had belonged to an enormous giant, who was killed there of old by Orlando's father, Milo of Angrante. There was a painting on the wall which told the whole story : how the giant had laid cruel and long siege to the abbey ; and how he had been overthrown at last by the great Milo. Orlando seeing this, said within himself: "O God, unto whom all things are known, how came Milo here, who destroyed this giant?" And reading certain inscriptions which were there, he could no longer keep a firm countenance, but the tears ran down his cheeks. When the abbot saw Orlando weep, and his brow redden, and the light of his eyes become child-like for sweetness, he asked him the reason ; but, finding him- still dumb with emotion, he said, " I do not know whether you are overpowered by admira- tion of what is painfed in this chamber. You must know that I am of high descent, though not through lawful wedlock. I be- lieve I may say I am nephew or sister's son to no less a man than that Rinaldo, who was so great a Paladin in the world, though my own father was not of a lawful mother. Ansuigi was his name ; my own, out in the world, was Chiaramonte ; and this Milo was my father's brother. Ah, gentle baron, for blessed Jesus' sake, tell me what name is yours !" Orlando, all glowing with affection, and bathed in tears, re- plied, " My dear abbot and cousin, he before you is your Orlan- do." Upon this, they ran for tenderness into each other's arms, weeping on both sides with a sovereign aifection, too high to be expressed. The abbot was so overjoyed, that he seemed as if he would never have done embracing Orlando. " By what for- tune," said the knight, " do I find you in this obscure place ? Tell me, my dear abbot, how was it you became a monk, and did not follow arms, like myself and the res of us?" 198 HUMOURS OF GIANTS. " It is the will of God," replied the abbot, hastening to give his feelings utterance. '■ Many and divers are the paths he points out for us by which to arrive at his city ; some walk it with the sword — some with pastoral stafT. Nature makes the inclination different, and therefore there are different ways for us to take : enough if we all arrive safely at one and the same place, the last as well as the first. We are all pilgrims through many kingdoms. We all wish to go to Rome, Orlando ; but we go picking out our journey through different roads. Such is the trouble in body and soul brought upon us by that sin of the old apple. Day and night am I here with my book in hand — day and night do you ride about, holding your sword, and sweating oft both in sun and shadow ; and all to get round at last to the home from which we departed — I say, all out of anxiety and hope to get back to our home of old." And the giant hearing them talk of these things, shed tears also. The Paladin and the giant quitted the abbey, the one on horse- back and the other on foot, and journeyed through the desert till they came to a magnificent castle, the door of which stood open. They entered, and found rooms furnished in the most splendid manner — beds covered with cloth of gold, and floors rejoicing in variegated marbles. There was even a feast prepared in the saloon, but nobody to eat it, or to speak to them. Orlando suspected some trap, and did not quite like it ; but Morgante thought nothing worth considering but the feast. " Who cares for the host," said he, " when there's such a din- ner ? Let us eat as much as we can, and bear off the rest. I always do that when I have the picking of castles." They accordingly sat down, and being very hungry with their day's journey, devoured heaps of the good things before them, eating with all the vigour of health, and drinking to a pitch of weakness.* They sat late in this manner enjoying themselves, and then retired for the night into rich beds. * " E fumo al here .'nfermi, al mangiar sani." I am not sure that I am right in my construction of this passage. Perhaps Pulci means to say, that they had the appetites of men in health, and the thirst of a fever. HUMOURS OF -JlASSia. 199 But what was their astonishment in the morning at finding that they could not get out of the place ! There was no door. All the entrances had ^'anished, even to any feasible window. " We must be dreaming," said Orlando. " My dinner was no dream, I'll swear," said the giant. " Ab for the rest, let it be a dream if it pleases." Continuing to search up and down, they at length found u vault with a tomb in it ; and out of the tomb came a voice, say- ing, "You must encounter with me, or staj"^ here for ever. Lift, therefore, the stone that covers me." " Do you hear that ?" said Morgante ; " I'll have him out, if it's the devil himself. Perhaps it's two devils, Filthy-dog and Foul-mouth, or Itching and Evil-tail."* " Have him out," said Orlando, " whoever he is, even were h as many devils as were rained out of heaven into the centre." Morgante lifted up the stone, and out leaped, surely enough, a devil in the likeness of a dried-up dead body, black as a coal. Orlando seized him, and the devil grappled with Orlando. Mor- gante was for joining him, but the Paladin bade him keep back. It was a hard struggle, and the devil grinned and laughed, till the giant, who was a master of wrestling, could bear it no longer : so he doubled him up, and, in spite of all his efforts, thrust him back into the tomb. " You'll never get out," said the devil, " if you leave me shut up." " Why not ?" inquired the Paladin. " Because your giant's baptism and my deliverance must go together," answered the devil. " If he is not baptised, you can have no deliverance ; and if I am not delivered, I can prevent it still, take my word for it." Orlando baptised the giant. The two companions then issued forth, and hearing a mighty noise in the house, looked back, and saw ii all vanished. " I could find it in my heart," said Morgante, "to go down to those same regions below, and make all the devils disappear in like manner. Why shouldn't we do it ? We'd set free all the * Ca^azzo Farfavello, Libioocco, and Malacoda ; names of devils in Dsntc SCO !iUMOUR.S OF GIANTS, poor souls there. Egad, I'd cut off Minos's ta'l — I'd pull out Charon's beard by the roots — ^make a sop of Phlegyas, and a sup of Phlegethon — unseat Pluto, — kill Cerberus and the Furies with a. punch of the face a-piece — and set Beelzebub scampering like a, dromedary." " You might find more trouble than you wot of," quoth Orlando, •' and get worsted besides. Better keep the straight path, than thrust your head into out-of-the-way places." Morgante took his lord's advice, and went straightforward with him through many great adventures, helping him with loving good-will as often as he was permitted, sometimes as his pioneer, and sometimes as his finisher of troublesome work, such as a slaughter of some thousands of infidels. Now he chucked a spy into a river — now felled a rude ambassador to the earth (for he didn't stand upon ceremony) — now cleared a space round him in battle with the clapper of an old bell which he had found at the monastery — now doubled up a king in his tent, and bore him away, tent and all, and a Paladin with him, because he would not let the Paladin go. In the course of these services, the giant was left to take care of a lady, and lost his master for a time ; but the office being at an end, he set out to rejoin him, and, arriving at a cross-road, met with a very extraordinary personage. This was a giant huger than himself, swarthy-faced, horrible, brutish. He came out of a wood, and appeared to be journeying somewhere. Morgante, who had the great bell-clapper in his hand above-mentioned, struck it on the ground with astonishment, as much as to say, " Who the devil is this ?" and then set him- self on a stone by the way-side to observe the creature. " What's your name, traveller ?" said Morgante, as it came up. " My name's Margutte," said the phenomenon. " I intended to be a giant myself, but altered my mind, you see; and stopped half-way ; so that I am only twenty feet or so." " I'm glad to see you," quoth his brother-giant. " But tell me, are you Christian or Saracen ? Do you believe in Christ or in Apollo ?" " To tell you the truth," said the other, " I bel leve neither in HUMOURS OF GIANTS. 201 black nor blue, but in a good capon, whether it be roast o; boiled. I believe sometimes also in butter, and, when I can get it, in new wine, particularly the rough sort ; but, above all, I believe in wine that's good and old. Mahomet's prohibition of it is all moonshine. I am the son, you must know, of a Greek nun and a Turkish bishop ; and the first thing I learned was to play the fiddle. I used to sing Homer to it. I was then concerned in a brawl in a mosque, in which the old bishop somehow happened to be killed ; so I tied a sword to my side, and went to seek my fortune, accompanied by all the possible sins of Turk and Greek. People talk of the seven deadly sins ; but I have seventy-seven that never quit me, summer or winter ; by which you may judge of the amount of my venial ones. I am a gambler, a cheat, a ruffian, a highwayman, a pickpocket, a glutton (at beef or blows) ; have no shame whatever ; love to let every body know what I can do ; lie, besides, about what I can't do ; have a particular attachment to sacrilege ; swallow perjuries like figs ; never give a farthing to any body, but beg of every body, and abuse them into the bargain ; look upon not spilling a drop of liquor as the chief of all the cardinal virtues ; but must own I am not much given to assassination, murder being inconvenient ; and one thing I am boand to acknowledge, which is, that I never betrayed a messmate." " That's as well," observed Morgante ; " because you see, as you don't believe in any thing else, I'd have you believe in this bell-clapper of mine. So now, as you have been candid with me, and I am well instructed in your ways, we'll pursue our journey together." The best of giants, in those days, were not scrupulous in theii modes of living ; so that one of the best and one of the worst got on pretty well together, emptying the larders on the road, and paying nothing but douses on the chops. When they could find no inn, they hunted elephants and crocodiles. Morgante, who was the braver of the two, delighted to banter, and sometimes to cheat, Margutte ; and he ate up all the fare ; which made the other, notwithstanding the credit he gave himself for readiness of wi* and tongue, cut a very sorry figure, and seriously remonstrate " I reverence you, said Margutte, " in ether matters : but in eat 203 HUMOURS OF GIANTS. ing, you really don't behave well. He who deprives me of my share at hieals is no friend ; at every mouthful of which he roba me, I seem to lose an eye. I'm for sharing every thing to a nicety, even if it be no better than a fig." " You are a fine fellow," said Morgante ; " you gain upon me very much. You are ' the master of those who know.' "* So saying, he made him put some wood on the fire, and per- form a hundred other offices to render every thing snug j and then he slept : and next day he cheated his great scoundrelly com- panion at drink, as he had done the day before at meat ; and the poor shabby devil complained ; and Morgante laughed till he was ready to burst, and again and again always cheated him. There was a levity, nevertheless, in Margutte, which restored his spirits on the slightest glimpse of good fortune ; and if he real- ised a hearty meal, he became the happiest, beastliest, and most confident of giants. The companions, in the course of their jour- ney, delivered a damsel from the clutches of three other giants. She was the daughter of a great lord ; and when she got home, she did honour to Morgante as to an equal, and put Margutte into the kitchen, where he was in a state of bliss. He did nothing but swill, stuff, surfeit, be sick, play at dice, cheat, filch, go to sleep, guzzle again, laugh, chatter, and tell a thousand lies. Morgante took leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents. Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and in- pudent, daubed his face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in his hand, demanded " something for the cook." The fair hostess gave him a jewel : and the vaga- bond shewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had disgraced him for ever. " Softly !" said the brute-beast. " Didn't you take me with you, knowing what sort of fdlow I was ? Didn't I tell ycu I had every sin and shame under heaven ; and have I deceived you by the exhibition of a single virtue ?" • " II maestro di color ohe sanno." A jocose application of Dante's prain of Aristotle. HUMOURS OF GIANTS. 203 Morgante could not help laughing at a candour of this excess- ive nature. So they went on their way till they came to a wood, where they rested themselves by a fountain, and Margutte fell fast asleep. He had a pair of boots on, which Morgante felt tempted to draw off, that he might see what he would do on wa- king. He accordingly did so, and threw them to a little distance among the bushes. The sleeper awoke in good time, and, look- ing and searching round about, suddenly burst into roars of laugh- ter. A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off, making the most ridiculous gestures. The monkey busied himself, and the light-minded drunkard laughed ; and at every fresh gesticulation of the new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at length it was found impossible to be restrained. The glutton had a laughing fit. In vain he tried to stop himself ; in vain his fingers would have loosened the buttons of his doublet, to give his lungs room to play. They couldn't do it ; so he laughed and roared till he burst. The snap was like the splitting of a cannon. Morgante ran up to him, but it was of no use. He was dead. Alas ! it was not the only death ; it was not even the most trivial cause of a death. Giants are big fellows, but Death's a bigger, though he may come in a little shape. Morgante had succeeded in joining his master. He helped him to take Babylon ; he kill- ed a whale for him at sea that obstructed his passage ; he played the part of a main-sail during a storm, holding out his arms and a great hide ; but on coming to shore, a crab bit him in the heel ; and behold the lot of the great giant — he died ! He laughed, and thought it a very little thing, but it proved a mighty one. " He made the East tremble," said Orlando ; " and the bite of a crab has slain him !" O life of ours, weak, and a fallacy !* Orlando embalmed his huge friend, and had him taken to Bab- ylon, and honourably interred ; and after many an adventure, in which he regretted him, his own days were closed by a far baser, though not so petty a cause. How shall I speak of it ? exclaims the poet. How think of * " O vita nostra, debole e fallace !" 204 HUMOURS OF GIANTS. the horrible slaughter about to fall on the Christians and theii greatest men, so that not a dry eye shall be left in France ? How express my disgust at the traitor Gan, whose heart a thousand pardons from his sovereign, and the most undeserved rescues of him by the warrior he betrayed, could not shame or soften ? How mourn the weakness of Charles, always deceived by him, and always trusting ? How dare to present to my mind the good, the great, the ever-generous Orlando, brought by the traitor into the doleful pass of Roncesvalles and the hands of myriads of his enemies, so that even his superhuman strength availed not to deliver him out of the slaughter-house, and he blew the blast with his dying breath, which was the mightiest, the farthest heard, and the most melancholy sound that ever came to the ears of the un- deceived ? Gan was known well to every body but his confiding sove- reign. The Paladins knew him well ; and in their moments of indignant disgust often told him so, though they spared him the consequences of his misdeeds, and even incurred the most frightful perils to deliver him out of the hands of his enemies. But he was brave ; he was in favour with the sovereign, who was also their kinsman ; and they were loyal and loving men, and knew that the wretch envied them for the greatness of their achieve- ments, and might do the state a mischief; so they allowed them- selves to take a kind of scornful pleasure in putting up with him. Their cousin Malagigi, the enchanter, had himself assisted Gan, though he knew him best of all, and had prophesied that the in- numerable endeavours of his envy to destroy his king and coun- try would bring some terrible evil at last to all Christendom. The evil, alas ! is at hand. The doleful time has come. It will be followed, it is true, by a worse fate of the wretch himself; but not till the valleys of the Pyrenees have run rivers of blood, and all France is in mourning. THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. Notice. This is the •' sad and fearful story Ol the Roncesvalles fight ;" an event which national and religious exaggeration impressed deeply on ths popular mind of Europe. Hence Italian romances and Spanish hallads : hence the famous passage in Milton, " When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia :" hence Dante's record of the dolorosa rotta (dolorous rout) in the Inferno, where he compares the voicr of Nimrod with the horn sounded by the dying Orlando : hence the peasant in Cervantes, who is met by Don Quixote singing the bat- tle as he comes along the road in the morning : and hence the song of Roland actually thundered forth by the army of William the Conqueror as they ad- vanced against the English. But Charlemagne did not " fall," as Milton has Btaiea W^or aots rtlei make him do so. In this respect, if in little else, the Italian poet adhered to the fact. The whole story is a remarkable instance of what can be done by poetry and popularity towards misrepresenting and aggrandising a petty though striking adventure. The simple fact was the cutting off the rear of Charle- magne's army by the revolted Gascons, as he returned from a successful expe- dition into Spain. Two or three only of his nobles perished, among whom was his nephew Roland, the obscure warden of his marches of Brittany. But Charle- magne was the temporal head of Christendom ; the poets constituted his nephew its champion ; and hence all the glories and superhuman exploits of the Orlando of Pulci and Ariosto. The whole assumption of the wickedness of the Saracens, particularly of the then Saracen king of Spain, whom Pulci's authority, the pseudo-Archbishop, Turpin, strangely called Marsilius, was noth- ing but a pious fraud ; the pretended Marsilius having been no less a person than the great and good Abdotilrahmaiin the First, who wrested the dominion of that country out of the hands of the usurpers of his family-rights. Yet so potent and long-lived are the most extravagant fictions, when genius has put its heart into them, that to this day W"> 'ead of the devoted Orlando and his friends not only with gravity, but with u9 liveliest emotion. THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. A MISERABLE man am 1, cries the poet ; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died in Roncesvalles ; and die therefore he must in mj' verses. Altogether impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of this my poem, so that it should be hap- pier somehow, throughout, than melancholy ; but though Gan will die at last, Orlando must die before him, and that makes a tragedy of all. I had a doubt, whether, consistently with the truth, I could give the reader even that sorry satisfaction ; for at the beginning of the dreadful battle, Orlando's cousin, Rinaldo, who is said to have joined it before it was over, and there, as well as afterwards, to have avenged his death, was far away from the seat of slaughter, in Egypt ; and.Jiow was I to suppose that he could arrive soon enough in the valleys of the Pyrenees ? But an angel upon earth shewed me the secret, even Angelo Poli- zdano, the glory of his age and country. He informed me how Arnauld, the Provenijal poet, had written of this very matter, and brought the Paladin from Egypt to France by means of the won- derful skill in occult science possessed by his cousin Maiagigi — a wonder to the ignorant, but not so marvellous to those who know that all the creation is full of wonders, and who have differ- ent modes of relating the same events. By and by, a great many things will be done in the world, of which we have no conception now, and people will be inclined to believe them works of the devil, when, in fact, they will be very good works, and contribute to angelical effects, whether the devil be forced to have a hand in them or not ; for evil itself can work only in subordination to good. So listen when the astonishment comes, and reflect and think the best. Meantime, we must speak of another and more 208 THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. truly devilish astonishment, and of the pangs of mortal flesh and blood. The traitor Gan, for the fiftieth time, had secretly brought the infidels from all quarters against his friend and master, the Em- peror Charles ; and Charles, by the help of Orlando, had con- quered them all. The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court of France tribute ; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited in this particular instance, and his iinown villany at all times, had succeeded in persuading his cre- dulous sovereign to let him go ambassador into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando. Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too ; but the one was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes. The traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying him to write if he had anything to say before the ar- rangements with Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his villany was manifest to every one but the old monarch. He fastened with equal tenderness on Uliviero, who smiled contemptuously in his face, and thought to himself, " You may make as many fair speeches as you choose, but you lie." All the other Paladins who were present thought the same, and they said as much to the emperor ; adding, that on no account should Gan be sent ambassador to Marsilius. But Charles was infatuated. His beard and his credulity had grown old together. Gan was received with great honour in Spain by Marsilius. The king, attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Sara- gossa to meet him, and then conducted him into the city amid tumults of delight. There was nothing for several days but balls, and games, and exhibitions of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French knights, and the people shout- ing " France ! France ! Mountjoy and St. Denis !" Gan made a speech, " like a Demosthenes," to King Marsilius in public ; but he made him another in private, like nobody but himself. The king and he were sitting in a garden ; they were traitors both, and began to understand, from one another's looks, that the real object of the ambassador was yet to be discussed. Marsilius accordingly assumed a more than usually cheerful and THE BATTLE Of KUiNi^ii-ovftLLES. 209 confidential aspect; and, taking his visitor by the hand, said, " You linow the proverb, Mr. Ambassador — ' At dawn, the moun- tain ; afternoon, the fountain.' Different things at different hours. So here is a fountain to accommodate us." It vifas a very beautiful fountain, so clear that you saw your face in it as in a mirror ; and the spot was encircled with fruit- trees that quivered with the fresh air. Gan praised it -very much, contriving to insinuate, on one subject, his satisfaction with the glimpses he got into another. Marsilius understood him ; and as he resumed the conversation, and gradually en- couraged a mutual disclosure of their thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was enabled to do so by con- templating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its ex- pression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime, saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan. By de- grees, he began to touch on that dissatisfaction with Charlemagne and his court, which he knew was in both their minds : he amented, not as to the ambassador, but as to the friend, the inju- ries which he said he had received from Charles in the repeated ittacks on his dominions, and the emperor's wish to crown Drlando king of them ; till at length he plainly uttered his belief, .hat if that tremendous Paladin were but dead, good men would get their rights, and his visitor and himself have all things at their disposal. Gan heaved a sigh, as if he was unwillingly compelled to allow the force of what the king said ; but, unable to contain himself long, he lifted up his face, radiant with triumphant wick- edness, and exclaimed, " Every word you utter is truth. Die he must ; and die also must Uliviero, who struck me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like those ? I have planned every thing — I have settled every thing already with their besotted master. Orlando could not be expected to be brought hither, where he has been accustomed to look for a crown ; but he will come to the Spanish borders — to Ronces- valles — for the purpose of receiving the tribute. Charles will await him, at no great distance, in St. John Pied de Port. Or- lando will bring but a small band with him ; you, when you SIO THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. meet him, will have secretly your whole army at your back. STou surround him ; and who receives tribute then V The new Judas had scarcely uttered these words, when the delight of him and his associate was interrupted by a change in the face of nature. The sky was suddenly overcast ; it thun- dered and lightened ; a laurel was split in two from head to foot ; the fountain ran into burning blood ; there was an earthquake, and the carob-tree under which Gan was sitting, and which was of the species on which Judas Iscariot hung himself, dropped some of its fruit on his head. The hair of the head rose in horror. Marsilius, as well as Gan, was appalled at this omen ; but on assembling Ir's soothsayers, they came to the conclusion that the laurel-tree turned the omen against the emperor, the successor of the CtEsars ; though one of them renewed the consternation of Gan, by saying that he did not understand the meaning of the tree of Judas, and intimating that perhaps the ambassador could explain it. Gan relieved his consternation with anger ; the habit of wickedness prevailed, over all considerations ; and the king prepared to march for Ronoesvalles at the head of all his forces. Gan wrote to Charlemagne, to say how humbly and properly Marsilius was coming to pay the tribute into the hands of Orlaiido, and how handsome it would be of the emperor to meet him half way, as agreed upon, at St. John Pied de Port, and so be ready to receive him, after the payment, at his footstool. He added a brilliant account of the tribute and its accompanying presents. They included a crown in the shape of a garland which had a carbuncle in it that gave light in darkness ; two lions of an " im- measurable length, and aspects that frightened every body ;" some "lively buffalos," leopards, crocodiles, and giraffes; arms and armour of all sorts ; and apes and monkeys seated among the rich merchandise that loaded the backs of the camels. This im- aginary treasure contained, furthermore, two enchanted spirits, called " Floro and Faresse," who were confined in a mirror, and were to tell the emperor wonderful things, particularly Floro (tor there is nothing so nice in its details as lying) ; and Or- lando was lo have heaps of caravans full of Eastern wealth, and a hundred white horses, all with saddles and bridles of gold. THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. 211 There was a beauuful vest, luo, lor Uliviero, all over jewels, worth ten thousand " seraffi," or more. The good emperor wrote in turn to say how pleased he was with the ambassador's diligence, and that matters were arranged precisely as he wished. His court, however, had its suspicions still. Nobody could believe that Gan had not some new mischief in contemplation. Little, nevertheless, did they imagine, after the base endeavours he had but lately made against thern, that he had immediately plotted a new and greater one, and that his object in bringing Charles into the neighbourhood of Roncesvalles was to deliver him more speedily into the hands of TVIarsilius, in the event of the latter's destruction of Orlando. Orlando, however, did as his lord and sovereign desired. He went to Roncesvalles, accompanied by a moderate train of war- riors, not dreaming of the atrocity that awaited him. Gan him- self, meantime, had hastened on to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot ; while Marsilius, to make as- surance doubly sure, brought into the passes of Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on the Pa- ladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers. He had also, by Gan's advice, brought heaps of wine and good cheer to be set before his victims in the first instance ; " for that," said the traitor, "will render the onset the more effective, the feast- ers being unarmed ; and, supposing prodigies of valour to await even the attack of your second army, you will have no trouble with your third. One thing, however, I must not forget," added he ; " my son Baldwin is sure to be with Orlando ; you nmst take care of his life for my sake." " I give him this vest off my own body," said the king ; " let him wear ;t in the battle, and have no fear. My soldiers shall be directed not to touch him." Gan went away rejoicing to France. He embraced the court and his sovereign all round, with the air of a man who had brought them nothing but blessings ; and the old king wept for very tenderness and delight. " Something is going on wrong, and looks very black," thought Malagigi, the good wizard ; " an i Rinaldo is not here, and it is in- 212 THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. dispensably necessary that he should be. I must find out wliere he is, and Ricciardetto too, and send for them with all speed, and at any price." Malagigi called up, by his art, a wise, terrible, and cruel spirit; named Ashtaroth ; no light personage to deal with — ^no little spirit^ such as plays tricks with you like a fairy. A much blacker vis- itant was this. " Tell me, and tell me truly of Rinaldo," said Malagigi to the spirit. Hard looked the demon at the Paladin, and said nothing. His aspect was clouded and violent. He wished to see whether his summoner retained all the force of his ar> The enchanter, with an aspect still cloudier, bade Ashtaroth lay down that look. While giving this order, he also made signs indicative of a disposition to resort to angrier compulsion ; and the devil, apprehending that he would confine him in some hateful place, loosened his tongue, and said, " You have not told me what you desire to know of Rinaldo." " I desire to know what he has been doing, and where he is," returned the enchanter. "He has been conquering and baptising the world, east and west," said the demon, " and is now in Egypt with Ricciardetto." " And what has Gan been plotting with Marsilius," inquired Malagigi, " and what is to come of it ?" " On neither of those points can I enlighten you," said the devil. " I was not attending to Gan at the time, and we fallen spirits know not the future. Had we done so, we had not been so willing to incur the danger of falling. All I discern is, that, by the signs and comets in the heavens, something dreadful is about to happen — something very strange, treacherous, and bloody ; and that Gan has a seat ready prepared for him in hell." " Within three days," cried the enchanter, loudly, " fetch Ri- naldo and Ricciardetto into the pass of Roncesvalles. Do it, and I hereby undertake never to summon thee more." " Suppose they will not trust themselves with me," said the spirit. " Enter Kiiialdo's horse, and bring iiin , whether he trust ihee or not." THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. 213 " It shall be done," returned tlie demon : " and my serving, devil Foul-Mouth, or Fire-Red, shall enter the horse of Ricciar- detto. Doubt it not. Am I not wise, and thyself powerful V There was an earthquake, and Ashtaroth disappeared. Marsilius has now made his first movement towards the de- struction of Orlando, by sending before him his vassal-king Blan- chardin with his presents Df wines and other luxuries. The temperate but courteous hero took them in good part, and distrib- uted them as the traitor wished ; and then Blanchardin, on pre- tence of going forward to salute Charlemagne at St. John Pied de Port, returned and put himself at the head of the second army, which was the post assigned him by his liege lord. The device on his flag was an " Apollo" on a field azure. King Falseron, whose son Orlando had slain in battle, headed the first army, the device of which was a black figure of the devil Belphegor on a dapple-grey field. The third army was under King Balugante, and had for ensign a Mahomet with golden wings in a field of red. Marsilius made a speech to them at night, in which he con- fessed his ill faith, but defended it on the ground of Charles's hatred of their religion, and of the example of " Judith and Holo- fernes." He said that he had not come there to pay tribute, and sell his countrymen for slaves, but to make all Christendom pay tribute to them as conquerors ; and he concluded by recommend- ing to their good-will the son of his friend Gan, whom they would know by the vest he had sent him, and who was the only soul among the Christians they were to spare. This son of Gan, meantime, and several of the Paladins who were disgusted with Charles's credulity, and anxious at all events to be with Orlando, had joined, the hero in the fated valley ; so that the little Christian host, considering the tremendous valour of their lord and his friends, and the comparative inefficiency of that of the infidels, were at any rate not to be sold for nothing. Rinaldo, alas ! the second thunderbolt of Christendom, was des- tined not to be there in time to save their lives. He could only ivenge the dreadful tragedy, and prevent still worse consequences to the whole Christian court and empire. The Paladins had in vain begged Orlando to be on his guard against treachery, and send for a more numerous body of men. The great heart of tlte 2* 214 THE BATTLE OE RONCESVALLES. Champion of the Faith was unwilling to think the worst as long as he could help it. He refused to summon aid that might be superfluous ; neither would he do any thing but what his liege lord had desired. And yet he could not wholly repress a misgiv- ing. A shadow had fallen on his heart, great and cheerful as it was. The anticipations of his friends disturbed him, in spite of the face with which he met them. I am not sure that he did not, by a certain instinctive foresight, expect death itself; but he felt bound not to encourage the impression. Besides, time pressed ; the moment of the looked-for tribute was at hand ; and little combinations of circumstances determine often the greatest events. King Blanchardin had bi'ought Orlando's people a luxurious supper ; King Marsilius was to arrive early next day with the tribute ; and Uliviero accordingly, with the morning sun, rode forth to reconnoitre, and see if he could discover the peaceful pomp of the Spanish court in the distance. Guottibuoffi was with him, a warrior who had expected the very worst, and repeatedly implored Orlando to believe it possible. Uliviero and he rode up the mountain nearest them, and from the top of it beheld the first army of Marsilius already forming in the passes. " O Guottibuoffi !" exclaimed he, " behold thy prophecies come true ! behold the last day of the glory of Charles ! Every where I see the arms of the traitors around us. I feel Paris tremble all the way through France, to the ground beneath my feet. O Malagigi, too much in the right wert thou ! O devil Gan, this then is the consummation of thy good offices !" Uliviero put spurs to his horse, and galloped back down the mountain to Orlando. " Well," cried the hero, " what news V " Bad news," said his cousin ; " such as you would not hear of yesterday. Marsilius is here in arms, 'and all the world has come with him." The Paladins pressed round Orlando, and entreated him to sound his horn, in token that he needed help. His only answer was, to mount his horse, and ride up the mountain with San- sonetto. As soon, however, as lie cast forth his eyes and beheld what was round about him, he turned in sorrow, and looked down into THE BATTLE OF RONCE,S\ ALLES. 215 Roncesvalles, and said, " O valley, miserable indeed ! the blood that is shed in thee this day will colour thy name for ev«r." Many of the Paladins had ridden after him, and they again pressed him to sound his horn, if only in pity to his own people. He said, " If Csesar and Alexander were here. Soiplo and Han- nibal, and Nebuchadnezzar with all his flags, and Death stared me in the face with his knife in his hand, never would I sound my horn for the baseness of fear." Orlando's little camp were furious against the Saracens. They armed themselves with the greatest impatience. There was nothing but lacing of helmets and mounting of horses ; and good Archbishop Turpin went from rank to rank, exhorting and en- couraging the warriors of Christ. Accoutrements -and habili- ments were put on the wrong way ; words and deeds mixed in confusion ; men running against one another out of very absorp- tion in themselves ; all the place full of cries of " Arm ! arm ! the enemy !" and the trumpets clanged over all against the mountain-echoes. Orlando and his captains withdrew for a moment to consulta- tion. He fairly groaned for sorrow, and at first had not a word to say ; so wretched he felt at having brought nis people to die in Roncesvalles. Uliviero spoke first. He could not resist the opportunity of comforting himself a little in his despair, with referring to his unheeded advice. " You see, cousin," said he, " what has come at last. Would to God you had attended to what I said ; to what Malagigi said ; to what we all said ! I told you Marsilius was nothing but an anointed scoundrel. Yet forsooth, he was to bring us tribute ! and Charles is this moment expecting his mummeries at St. John Pied de Port ! Did ever any body believe a word that Gan said, but Charles ? And now you see this rotten fruit has come to a head ; this medlar has got its crown." Orlando said nothing in answer to Uliviero ; for in trath he had nothing to say. He broke away to give orders to the camp ; bade them take refreshment ; and then adi'ressing both officers and men, he said, " I confess, that if it had entered my heart to conceive the king of Spain to be such a villain, never would you ai6 THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. have seen this day. He has exchanged with me a thousand courtesies and good words ; and I thought that the worse ene- mies we had been before, the better friends we had become now. I fancied every human being capable of this kind of virtue on a good opportunity, saving, indeed, such base-hearted wretches as can never forgive their very forgivers ; and of these I certainly did not suppose him to be one. Let us die, if we must die, like honest and gallant men ; so that it shall be said of us, it was only our bodies that died. It becomes our souls to be invincible, and our glory immortal. Our motto must be, ' A good heart and no hope.' The reason why I did not sound the horn was, partly be- cause I thought it did not become us, and partly because our liege lord could be of little use, even if he heard it. Let Gan have his glut of us like a carrion crow ; but let him find us 4nder heaps of his Saracens, — an example for all time. Heaven, my friends, is with us, if earth is against us. Methinks I see it open this moment, ready to receive our souls amidst crowns of glory ; and therefore, as the champion of God's church, I give you my benediction ; and the good archbishop here will absolve you ; and so, please God, we shall all go to Heaven and be happy." And with these words Orlando sprang to his horse, crying, " Away against the Saracens !" but he had no sooner turned his face than he wept bitterly, and said, " O holy Virgin, think not of me, the sinner Orlando, but have pity on these thy servants." Archbishop Turpin did as Orlando said, giving the whole band his benediction at once, and absolving them from their sins, so that every body took comfort in the thought of dying for Christ, and thus they embraced one another, weeping ; and then lance was put to thigh, and the banner was raised that was won in the jousting at Aspramont. And now with a mighty dust, and an infinite sound of horns, and tambours, and trumpets, which came filling the valley, the first army of the infidels made its appearance, horses neighing, and a thousand pennons flying in the air. King Falseron led them on, saying to his officers, " Now, gentlemen, recollect what [ said. The first battle is for the leaders only ; — and, above all, let nobodj dare to lay a finger on Orlando. He lielongs to iiiy< THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. 217 self. The revenge of my son's death is mine. I will out the man down that comes between us." " Now, friends," said Orlando, " every man for himself, and St. Michael for us all. There is no one here that is not a perfect knight." And he might well say it ; for the flower of all France was there, except Rinaldo and Ricciardetto ; every man a picked man ; all friends and constant companions of Orlando. There was Richard of Normandy, and Guottibuoffi, and Uliviero, and Count Anselm, and Avolio, and Avino, and the gentle Berlinghieri, and his brother, and Sansonetto, and the good Duke Egibard, and As- tolfo the Englishman, and Angiolin of Bayona, and all the other Paladins of France, excepting those two whom I have mentionedl And so the captains of the little troop and of .the great array sat looking at one another, and singling one another out, as the latter came on ; and then either side began raising their war-cries, and the mob of the infidels halted, and the knights put spear in rest, and ran for a while, two and two in succession, each one against the other. Astolfo was the first to move. He ran against Arlotto of Soria; and Angiolin then ran against Malducco ; and Mazzarigi the Renegade came against Avino ; and Uliviero was borne forth by his horse Rondel, who couldn't stand still, against Malprimo, the first of the captains of Falseron. And now lances began to be painted red, without any brush but themselves ; and the new colour extended itself to the buck- lers, and the cuishes, and the cuirasses, and the trappings of the steeds. Astolfo thrust his antagonist's body out of the saddle, and his soul into the other world ; and Angiolin gave and took a terrible blow with Malducco ; but his horse bore him onward ; and Avino had something of the like encounter with Mazzarigi ; but Uliviero, though he received a thrust which hurt him, sent his lance right through the heart of Malprimo. Falseron was daunted at this blow. " Verily," thought he, " this is a miracle." Uliviero did not press on among the Sara- cens, his wound was too painful ; but Orlando now put himself and his whole band into motion, and you may guess what an up- SIS THE BATTLE OF RO^CESVALLLES. roar ensued. The sound of the rattling of the blows and helmets was as if the forge of Vulcan had been thrown open. Falseron beheld Orlando coming so furiously, that he thought him a Luci. fer who had burst his chain, and was quite of another mind than when he proposed to have him all to himself. On the contrary, he recommended himself to his gods ; and turning away, begged for a more auspicious season of revenge. But Orlando hailed and arrested him with a terrible voice, saying, " O thou traitor ! Was this the end to which old quarrels were made up ? Dost thou not blush, thou and thy fellow-traitor Marsilius, to have kissed me on the cheek like a Judas, when last thou wert in France?" Orlando had never shewn such anger in his countenance as he did that day. He. dashed at Falseron with a fury so swift, and at the same time a mastery of his lance so marvellous, that though he plunged it in the man's body so as instantly to kill him, the body did not move in the saddle. The hero himself, as he rush- ed onwards, was fain to see the end of a stroke so perfect, and, turning his horse back, he touched the carcass with his sword, and it fell on the instant. They say, that it had no sooner fallen than it disappeared. People got off their horses to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being left ; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found eis empty as the shell that is cast by a lobster. O new, and strange, and porten- tous event ! proof manifest of the anger with which God regards treachery. When the first infidel army beheld their leader dead, such fear fell upon them, that they were for leaving the field to the Pala- dins ; but they were unable. Marsilius had drawn the rest of his forces round the valley like a net, so that their shoulders were turned in vain. Orlando rode into the thick of them, with Count Anselm by his side. He rushed like a tempest ; and wherever he went, thunderbolts fell upon helmets. The Paladins drove here and there after them, each making a whirlwind round about him and a bloody circle. Uliviero was again in the melep ; and Walter of Amulion threw himself into it ; and Baldwin roared like a lion ; and Avino and Avolio reaped the wretches' heads like a turnip-field ; and blows blinded men's eyes ; and Arch- THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. 219 bishop Turpin himself had changed his crozier for a lance, and chased a new flock before him to the mountains. Yet what could be done against foes without number ? Multi- tudes fill up the spaces left by the dead without stopping. Mar. silius, from his anxious and raging post, constantly pours them in. The Paladins are as units to thousands. Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto ? The horses did not tarry ; but fate had been quicker than en- chantment. Ashtaroth, nevertheless, had presented himself to Ri- naldo in Egypt, as though he had issued out of a flash of light- ning. After telling his mission, and giving orders to hundreds of invisible spirits round about him (for the air was full of them), he and Foul-Mouth, his servant, entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh and snort and leap with the fiends within them, till oiT they flew through the air over the pyr- amids, crowds of spirits going like a tempest before them. Ric- ciardetto shut his eyes at first, on perceiving himself so high in the air j but he speedily became used to it, though he looked down on the sun at last. In this manner they passed the desert, and the sea-coast, and the ocean, and swept the tops of the Pyrenees, Ashtaroth talking to them of wonders by the way ; for he was one of the wisest of the devils, and knew a great many things which were then unknown to man. He laughed, for instance, as they went over sea, at the notion, among other vain fancies, that nothing was to be found beyond the pillars of Hercules ; " for," said he, " the earth is round, and the sea has an even sur- face all over it ; and there are nations on the other side of the globe, who walk with their feet opposed to yours, and worship other gods than the Christians." " Hah !" said Rinaldo ; " and may I ask whether they can be saved V " It is a bold thing to ask," said the devil ; " but do you take the Redeemer for a partisan, and fancy he died for you only ? Be assured he died for the whole world. Antipodes and all. Per- haps not one soul will be left out the pale of salvation at last, but the whole human race adore the truth, and find mercy. The Christian is the only true religion ; but Heaven loves all good, ness that believes honestly, whatsoever the belief may be." SflO THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. Rinaldo was mightily taken with the humanity of the devil's opinions ; but they were now approaching the end of their jour- ney, and began to hear the noise of the battle ; and he could no longer think of any thing but the delight of being near Orlando, and plunging into the middle of it. " You shall be in the very heart of it instantly," said his bear- er. " I love you, and would fain do all you desire. Do not fancy that all nobleness of spirit is lost among us people below. You know what the proverb says, ' There's never a fruit, however de- generate, but will taste of its stock.' I was of a different order of beings once, and But it is as well not to talk of happy times. Yonder is Marsilius ; and there goes Orlando. Farewell, and give me a place in your memory." Rinaldo could not find words to express his sense of the devil's good-will, nor that of Foul-Mouth himself. He said : " Ashta- roth, I am as sorry to part with you as if you were a brother ; and I certainly do believe that nobleness of spirit exists, as you say, among your people below. I shall be glad to see you both some- times, if you can come ; and I pray God (if my poor prayer be worth any thing) that you may all repent and obtain his pardon ; for without repentance, you know, nothing can be done for you." " If I might suggest a favour," returned Ashtaroth, " since you are so good as to wish to do me one, persuade Malagigi to free me from his service, and I am yours for ever. To serve you will be a pleasure to me. You will only have to say, ' Ashtaroth,' and my good friend here will be with you in an instant." " I am obliged to you," cried Rinaldo, " and so is my brother. I will write Malagigi, not merely a letter, but a whole packet-full of your praises ; and so I will to Orlando ; and you shall be set free, depend on it, your company has been so perfectly agree- able." " Your humble servant," said Ashtaroth, and vanished with his companion like lightning. But they did not go far. There was a little chapel by the road-side in Roncesvalles, which had a couple,of bells ; and on the top of that chapel did the devils place themselves, in order that they might catch the souls of the infidels as they died, and so carry them off to the in- THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. 221 fernal regions. Guess if their wings had plenty to do that day ! Guess if Minos and Rhadamanthus were busy, and Charon sung in his boat, and Lucifer hugged himself for joy. Guess, also, if the tables in heaven groaned with nectar and ambrosia, and good old St. Peter had a dry hair in his beard. The two Paladins, on their horses, dropped right into the mid- dle of the Saracens, and began making such havoc about them, that Marsilius, who overlooked the fight from a mountain, thought his soldiers had turned one against the other. He therefore de- scended in fury with his third army ; and Rinaldo, seeing him coming, said to Riociardetto, " We had better be off here, and join Orlando ;" and with these words, he gave his horse one turn round before he retreated, so as to enable his sword to make a bloody circle about him ; and stories say, that he sheared off twenty heads in the twirl of it. He then dashed through the as- tonished beholders towards the battle of Orlando, who guessed it could be no other than his cousin, and almost dropped from his horse, out of desire to meet him. Riociardetto followed Rinaldo ; and Uliviero coming up at the same moment, the rapture of the whole party is not to be expressed. They almost died for joy. After a thousand embraces, and questions, and explanations, and expressions of astonishment (for the infidels held aloof awhile, to take breath from the horror and mischief they had undergone), Orlando refreshed his little band of heroes, and then drew Rinal- do apart, and said, " O my brother, I feel such delight at seeing you, I can hardly persuade myself I am not dreaming. Heaven be praised for it. I have no other wish on earth, now that I see you before I die. Why didn't you write ? But never mind. Here you are, and I shall not die for nothing." " I did write," said Rinaldo, " and so did Riociardetto ; but villany intercepted our letters. Tell me what to do, my dear cousin ; for time presses, and all the world is upon us." " Gan has brought us here," said Orlando, " under pretence of receiving tribute from Marsilius — you see of what sort ; and Charles, poor old man, is waiting to receive his homage at the town of St. John ! I have never seen a lucky day since you left us. I believe I have done for Charles more than in duty bound, 222 THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. and that my sins Dursue me, and I and mine must all perish in Roncesvalles." " Look to Marsilius," exclaimed R,inaldo ; " he is right upon us." Marsilius was upon them, surely enough, at once furious and frightened at the coming of the new Paladins ; for his camp, nu. merous as it was, had not only held aloof, but turned about to fly like herds before the lion ; so he was forced to drive them back, and bring up his other troops, reasonably thinking that such numbers must overwhelm at last, if they could but be kept to- gether. Not the less, however, for this, did the Paladins continue to fight as if with joy. They killed and trampled wheresoevr they went' J Rinaldo fatiguing himself with sending infinite numbers of souls to Ashtaroth, and Orlando making a bloody passage towards Marsilius, whom he hoped to settle as he had done Falseron. In the course of this his tremendous progress, the hero struck a youth on the head, whose helmet was so good as to resist the blow, but at the same time flew off; and Orlando seized him by the hair to kill him. " Hold !" cried the youth, as loud as want of breath could let him j "you loved my father — I'm Bujaforte." The Paladin had never seen Bujaforte j but he saw the like- ness to the good old Man of the Mountain, his father ; and he let go the youth's hair, and embraced and kissed him. " O Buja- forte !" said he ; "I loved him indeed — my good old man ; but what does his son do here, fighting against his friend ?" Bujaforte was a long time before he could speak for weeping. At length he said, " Orlando, let not your noble heart be pained with ill thoughts of my father's son. I am forced to be here by my lord and master Marsilius. I had no friend left me in the world, and he took me into his court, and has brought me here before I knew what it was for ; and I have made a shew of fight- ing, but have not hurt a single Christian. Treachery is on every side of you. Baldwin himself has a vest given him by Mar. silius, that every body may know the son of his friend Gan, and do him no injury. See there — look how the lances avoid him." THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. 223 " Put your helmet on again," said Orlando, " and behave just as you have done. Never will your father's friend be an enemy to the son. Only take care not to come across Rinaldo." The hero then turned in fury to look for Baldwin, who was Hastening towards him at that moment with friendliness in his looks. " 'Tis strange," said Baldwin ; " I have done my duty as well as I could, yet no body will come against me. I have slain right and left, and cannot comprehend what it is that makes the stoutest infidels avoid me." " Take off your vest," cried Orlando, contemptuously, " and you will soon discover the secret, if you wish to know it. Your father has sold us to Marsilius, all but his honourable son." " If my father," cried Baldwin, impetuously tearing off the vest, " has been such a villain, and I escape dying any longer, by God ! I will plunge this sword through his heart. But I am no traitor, Orlando ; and you do me wrong to say it. You do me foul dishonour, and I'll not survive it. Never more shall you behold me alive." Baldwin spurred off into the fight, not waiting to hear another word from Orlando, but constantly crying out, " You have done me dishonour ;" and Orlando was very sorry for what he had said, for he perceived that the youth was in despair. And now the fight raged beyond all it had done before ; and the Paladins themselves began to fall, the enemy were driven forward in such multitudes by Marsilius. There was unhorsing of foes, and re-seating of friends, and great cries, and anguish, and unceasing labour ; and twenty Pagans went down for one Christian ; but still the Christians fell. One Paladin disappeared after another, having too much to do for mortal men. Some could not make way through the press for very fatigue of killing, and others were hampered with the falling horses and men. Sansonetto was thus beaten to earth by the club of Grandonio ; and Walter d'Amulion had his shoulders broken ; and Angiolin of Bayona, having lost his lance, was thrust down by Marsilius, and Angiolin of Bellonda by Sirionne ; and Berlinghieri and Ot- tone are gone ; and then Astolfo went, in revenge of whose death Orlando turned the spot on whioh he died into a gulf of Saracen 224 THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. blood. Rinaldo met the luckless Bujaforte, who had just begun to explain how he seemed to be fighting on the side which his father hated, when the impatient hero exclaimed, " He who is not with me is against me j" and gave him a volley of such hor- rible cuffs about the head and ears, that Bujaforte died without being able to speak another word. Orlando, cutting his way to a spot in which there was a great struggle and uproar, found the poor youth Baldwin, the son of Gan, with two spears in his breast. " I am no traitor now," said Baldwin ; and so saying, fell dead to the earth ; and Orlando lifted up his voice and wept, for he was bitterly sorry to have been the cause of his death. He then joined Rinaldo in the hottest of the tumult ; and all the surviving Paladins gathered about them, including Turpin the archbishop, who fought as hardily as the rest ; and the slaughter was lavish and horrible, so that the eddies of the wind chucked the blood into the air, and earth appeared a very seething-caul- dron of hell. At length down went Uliviero himself. He had become blind with his own blood, and smitten Orlando without knowing him, who had never received such a blow in his life. " How now, cousin !" cried Orlando ; " have you too gone over to the enemy ?" " O, my lord and master, Orlando," cried the other, " I ask your pardon, if I have struck you. I can see nothing — I am dying. The traitor ArcalifTe has stabbed me in the back ; but I killed him for it. If you love me, lead my horse into the thick of them, so that I may not die unavenged." "I shall die myself before long," said Orlando, "out of very toil and grief ; so we will go together. I have lost all hope, all pride, all wish to live any longer : but not my love for Uliviero. Come — let us give them a few blows yet ; let them see what you can do with your dying hands. One faith, one death, one only wish be ours." Orlando led his cousin's horse where the press was thickest, and dreadful was the strength of the dying man and of his half- dymg companion. They made a street, through which they pass- ed out of the battle ; and Orlando led his cousin away to his tent, and said, " Wait a little till I return, for 1 will go and sound the horn on the hill yonder." THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. 225 " 'Tis of no use," said Uliviero ; " and my spjit is fast going, and desires to be with its Lord and Saviour." He would have said more, but his words came from him imperfectly, like those of a man in a dream ; only his cousin gathered that he meant to commend to him his sister, Orlando's wife, Alda the Fair, of whom indeed the great Paladin had not thought so much in this world as he might have done. And with these imperfect words he ex- pired. But Orlando no sooner saw him dead, than he felt as if he was leil alone on the earth ; and he was quite willing to leave it ; only he wished that Charles at St. John Pied de Port should hear how the case stood before he went ; ana so he took up the horn, and blew it three times with such force that the blood burst out of his nose and mouth. Turpin says, that at the third blast the horn broke in two. In spite of all the noise of the battle, the sound of the horn broke over it like a voice out of the other world. They say that birds fell dead at it, and that the whole Saracen army drew back in terror. But fearfuller still was its effect at St. John Pied de Port. Charlemagne was sitting in the midst of his court when the sotlnd reached him ; and Gan was there. The emperor was the first to hear it. " Do you hear that V said he to his nobles. " Did you hear the horn, as I heard it V Upon this they all listened ; and Gan felt his heart misgive him. The horn sounded the second time. " What is the meaning of this ?" said Charles. " Orlando is hunting," observed Gan, " and the stag is kill- ed. He is at the old pastime that he was so fond of in Aspra- monte." But when the horn sounded yet a third time, and the blast was one of so dreadful a vehemence, every body looked at the other, and then they all looked at Gan in fury. Charles rose from his seat. " This is no hunting of the stag," said he. " The sound goesto my very heart, and, I confess, makes me tremble. I am awakened out of a great dream. O Gan ! O Gan ! Not for thee do I blush, but for myself, and for nobody else. O my God, what is to be done ! But whatever is to be done, must be done 826 IHE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES. quickly. Take this villain, gentlemen, and keep him in nard prison. foul and monstrous villain ! Would to God I had not lived to see this day ! O obstinate and enormous folly ! O Mai- agigi, had I but believed thy foresight ! 'Tis thou wert the wise man, and I the grey-headed fool." Ogier the Dane, and Namo and others, in the bitterness of their grief and anger, could not help reminding the emperor of all which they had foretold. But it was no time for words. They put the traitor into prison ; and then Charles, with all his court, took his way to Roncesvalles, grieving and praying. It was afternoon when the horn sounded, and half an hour af- ter it when the emperor set out ; and meantime Orlando had re- turned to the fight that he might do his duty, however hopeless, as long as he could sit his horse, and the Paladins were now re- duced to four ; and though the Saracens suffered themselves to be mowed down like grass by them and their little band, he found his end approaching for toil and fever, and so at length he with- drew out of the fight, and rode all alone to a fountain which he knew of, where he had before quenched his thirst. His horse was wearier still than he, and no sooner had its mas- ter alighted, than the beast, kneeling down as if to take leave, and to say, " I have brought you to your place of rest," fell dead at his feet. Orlando cast water on him from the fountain, not wish- ing to believe him dead ; but when he found it to no purpose, he grieved for him as if he had been a human being, and addressed him by name in tears, and asked forgiveness if ever he had done him wrong. They say, that the horse at these words once more opened his eyes a little, and looked kindly at his master, and so stirred never more. They say also that Orlando then, summoning all his strength, smote a rock near him with his beautiful sword Durlindana, think- ing to shiver the steel in pieces, and so prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy ; but though the rock split like a slate, and a ieep fissure remained ever after to astonish the eyes of pilgrims, the sword remained unhurt. i " O strong Durlindana," cried he, " O noble and worthy sword, bad I known thee from the first as I know thee now, never would [ have been brought to this pass." THE BATTLE OF KONCESVALLES. 297 And now Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and Turpin came up, hav- ing given chase to the Saracens till they were weary, and Orlando gave joyful welcome to his cousin, and they told him how the battle was won, and then Orlando knelt before Turpin, his face al'. in tears, and begged remission of his sins, and confessed them, and Turpin gave him absolution ; and suddenly a light came down upon him from heaven like a rainbow, accompanied with a sound of music, and an angel stood in the air blessing him, and then disappeared ; upon which Orlando fixed his eyes on the hilt of his sword as on a crucifix, and embraced it and said, " Lord, vouchsafe that I may look on this poor instrument as on the symbol of the tree upon which Thou sufieredst thy unspeakable martyrdom !" and so adjusting the sword to his bosom, and em- bracing it closer, he raised his eyes, and appeared like a creature seraphical and transfigured ; and in bowing his head he breathed out his pure soul. A thunder was then heard in the heavens, and the heavens opened and seemed to stoop to the earth, and a flock of angels was seen like a white cloud ascending with his spirit, who were known to be what they were by the trembling of their wings. The white cloud shot out golden fires, so that the whole air was full of them ; and the voices of the angels mingled in song with the instruments of their brethren above, which made an inexpressible harmony, at once deep and dulcet. The priestly warrior Turpin, and the two Paladins, and the hero's squire Te- rigi, who were all on their knees, forgot their own beings, in following the miracle with their eyes. It was now the ofiice of that squire to take horse and ride ofl to the emperor at St. John Pied de Port, and tell him of all that had occurred ; but in spite of what he had just seen, he lay for a time overwhelmed with grief. He then rose, and mounted his steed, and left the Paladins and the archbishop with the dead body, who knelt about it, guarding it with weeping love. The good squire Terigi met the the emperor and his cavalcade coming towards Roncesvalles, and alighted and fell on his knees, telling him the miserable news, and how all his people were slain but two of his Paladins, and himself, and the good arch- bishop. Charles for anguish began tearing his white locks ; but Terigi oimforted him against so doing, by giving an account qf 228 THE BATTLE OF EC NCESVALLES. the manner of Orlando's death, and how he had surely gone to heaven. Nevertheless, the squire himself vifas broken-hearted with grief and toil ; and he had scarcely added a denouncement of the traitor Gan, and a hope that the emperor would appease Heaven finally by giving his body to the winds, than he said, " The cold of death is upon me ;" and so he fell dead at the em- peror's feet. Charles was ready to drop from his saddle for wretchedness. He cried out, " Let nobody comfort me more. I will have no comfort. Cursed be Gan, and cursed this horrible day, and this place, and every thing. Let us go on, like blind miserable men that we are, into Roncesvalles ; and have patience if we can, out of pure misery, like Job, till we do all that can be done." So Charles rode on with his nobles ; and they say, that for the sake of the champion of Christendom aDtamj-le. THE SARACEN FRIENDS. 285 PART THE SECOND. The conclusion of this part of the history of Iroldo and Pra- sildo was scarcely out of the lady's mouth, when a tremendous voice was heard among the trees, and Rinaldo found himself con- fronting a giant of a frightful aspect, who with a griffin on each side of him was guarding a cavern that contained the enchanted horse which had belonged to the brother of Angelica. A combat ensued ; and after winning the horse, and subsequently losing the company of the lady, the Paladin, in the course of his adven- tures, came upon a knight who lay lamenting in a green place by a fountain. The knight heeding nothing but his grief, did not perceive the new comer, who for some time remained looking at him in silence, till, desirous to know the cause of his sorrow, he dismounted from his horse, and courteously begged to be informed of it. The stranger in his turn looked a little while in silence at Rinaldo, and then told him he had resolved to die, in order to be rid of a life of misery. And yet, he added, it was not his own lot which grieved him, so much as that of a noble friend who would die at the same time, and who had nobody to help him. The knight, who was no other than Tisbina's husband Iroldo, then briefly related the events which the reader has heard, and proceeded to state how he had traversed the world ever since for two years, when it was his misfortune to arrive in the territories of the enchantress Falerina, whose custom it was to detain for- eigners in prison, and daily give a couple of them (a lady and a cavalier) for food to a serpent which kept the entrance of her enchanted garden. To this serpent he himself was destined to 5* 286 THE SARACEN FRIENDS. be sacrificed, when Prasildo, the possessor of his wife Tisbina, hearing of his peril, set out instantly from Babylon, and rode night and day till he came to the abode of the enchantress, deter- mined that nothing should hinder him from doing his utmost to save the life of a friend so generous. Save it he did, and that by a generosity no less devoted ; for having attempted in vain to bribe the keeper of the prison, he succeeded in prevailing on the man to let him substitute himself for his friend ; and he was that very day, perhaps that very moment, preparing for the dreadful death to which he would speedily be brought. " I will not survive such a friend," concluded Iroldo. " I know I shall contend with his warders to no purpose ; but let the wretches come, if they will, by thousands ; I shall fight them to the last gasp. One comfort in death, one joy I shall at all events experience. I shall be with Prasildo in the other world. And yet when I think what sort of death he must endure, even the release from my own miseries afflicts me, since it will not pre- vent him from undergoing that horror." The Paladin shed tears to hear of a case so piteous and affec- tionate, and in a tone of encouragement offered his services towards the rescue of his friend. Iroldo looked at him in aston- ishment, but sighed and said, " Ah, sir, I thank ypu with all my heart, and you are doubtless a most noble cavalier, to be so fear- less and good-hearted ; but what right have I to bring you to destruction for no reason and to no purpose ? There is not a man on earth but Orlando himself, or his cousin Rinaldo, who could possibly do us any good ; and so I beg you to accept my thanks and depart in safety, and may God reward you." " It is true," replied the Paladin, " I am not Orlando ; and yet, for all that, I doubt not to be able to effect what I propose. Nor do I offer my assistance lut of desire of glory, or of thanks, or return of any kind ; except indeed, that if two such unparalleled friends could admit me to be a third, I should hold myself a happy man. What ! you have given up the woman of your heart, and dei)rived yourself of all joy and comfort ; and your friend, on the other hand, has become a prisoner and devoted to death, for your sake ; and can I be expected to leave two such friends m a THE SARACEN FRIENDS. 287 jeopardy sc monstrous, and not do all in my power to save them 1 I would rather die first myself, and on your own principle ; J meajn, in order to go with you into a better world." While they were talking in this manner, a great ill-looking rabble, upwards of a thousand strong, made their appearance, carrying a banner, and bringing forth two prisoners to die. The wretches were armed after their disorderly fashion j and the prisoners each tied upon a horse. One of these hapless persons too surely was Prasildo ; and the other turned out to be the dam- sel who had told Rinaldo the story of the friends. Having been deprived of the Paladin's assistance, her subsequent misadven- tures had brought her to this terrible pass. The moment Rinaldo beheld her, he leaped on his horse, and dashed among the villains. The sight of such an onset was enough for their cowardly hearts. The whole posse fled before him with precipitation, all except the leader, who was a villain of gigantic strength ; and him the Pala- din, at one blow, clove through the middle. Iroldo could not speak for joy, as he hastened to release Prasildo. He was forced to give him tears instead of words. But when speech at length became possible, the two friends, fervently and with a religious awe, declared that their deliverer must have been divine and not human, so tremendous was the death-blo"v he had given the ruf- fian, and such winged and contemptuous slaughter he had dealt among the fugitives. By the time he returned from the pursuit, their astonishment had risen to such a pitch, that they fell on their knees and worshipped him for the Prophet of the Saracens, not believing such prowess possible to humanity, and devoutly thanking him for the mercy he had shewn them in coming thus visibly from heaven. Rinaldo for the moment was not a little disturbed at this sally of enthusiasm ; but the singular good faith and simplicity of it restored him to himself; and with a smile be- tween lovingness and humility he begged them to lay aside all such fancies, and know him for a man like themselves. He then disclosed himself for the Rinaldo of whom they had spoken, and made such an impression on them with his piety, and his at- tributing what had appeared a superhuman valour to nothing but nis belief in the Christian religion, that the transported friends 2b8 the SARACEN FRIENDS. became converts on the spot, and accompanied him thenceforth as the most faithful of his knights. The story tells us nothing further of Tisbina, thougb there can be no doubt that Boiardo meant to give us the conclusion of her share in it ; for the two knights take an active part in the adventures of their mw friend Rinaldo. Perhaps, hovfever, the discontinuance of the poem itself was lucky for the au- thor, as far as this episode was concerned ; for it is difficult to conceivi; in vrhs sutnner he would have wound it up to the satisfaction of the reader. SEEING AND BELIEVING. 53lrgtiment. A lady Has two suitors, a young and an old one, the latter of whom wins her against her inclinations by practising the artifice of Hippomanes in his race with Atalanta. Being very jealous, he locks her up in a tower; and the youth, who continued to be her bver, makes a subterraneous passage to it ; and pretending to have married her sister, invites the old man to his house, and introduces hia own wife to him as the bride. The husband, deceived, but still jealous, facili- tates their departure out of the country, and returns to his tower to find himself deserted. This story, like that of the Saracen Friends, is told by a damsel to a knight while riding in his company ; with this difference, that she is the heroine of it herself. She is a damsel of a nature still lighter than the former; and the reader's sympathy with the trouble she brings on herself, and the way she gets out of it, will be modified accordingly. On the other hand, nobody can respect the foolish old man with his unwarrantable marriage ; and the moral of Boiardo's story is still useful for these " enlightened times," though conveyed with an air of levity. In addition to the classics, the poet has been to the Norman fablers for his story. The subterranean passage has been more than once repeated in ro- mance; and the closing incident, the assistance given by the husband to hii wife's elopement, has been imitated in the farce of LUmd and Clarissa. SEEIiNG AND BELIEVING. Mi father (said the damsel) is King of the Distant Islands, where the treasure of the earth is collected. Never was greater wealth known, and I was heiress of it all. But it is impossible to foresee what is most to be desired for us in this world. I was a king's daughter, I was rich, I was hand- some, I was lively ; and yet to all those advantages I owed my ill-fortune. Among other suitors for my hand there came two on the same day, one of whom was a youth named Ordauro, handsome from head to foot ; the other an old man of seventy, whose name was Folderico. Both were rich and of noble birth ; but the greybeard was counted extremely wise, and of a foresight more than human. As I did not feel in want of his foresight, the youth was far mora to my taste ; and accordingly I listened to him with perfect good- will, and gave the wise man no sort of encouragement. I was not at liberty, however, to determine the matter ; my father had a voice in it ; so, fearing what he would advise, ] thought to secure a good result by cunning and management. It is an old observation, that the craft of a woman exceeds all other craft. Indeed, it is Solomon's own saying. But now-a-days peo- ple laugh at it ; and I found to my cost that the laugh is just. 1 requested my father to proclaim, first, that nobody should have me in marriage who did not surpass me in swiftness (for I was a damsel of a mighty agility) ; and secondly, that he who did sur- pass me should be my husband. He consented, and I thought my happiness secure. You must know, I have run down a bird, and caught it with my own hand. Well, both my suitors came to the race ; the youth on a large 292 SEEING AND BELIEVING. war-horse, trapped with gold, which curvetted in a prodigious manner, and seemed impatient for a gallop ; the old man on a mule, carrying a great bag at his side, and looking already tired out. They dismounted on the place chosen for the trial, which was a meadow. It was encircled by a world of spectators ; and the greybeard and myself (for his age gave him the first chance) only waited for the sound of the trumpet to set off. I held my competitor in such contempt, that I let him get the start of me, on purpose to make him ridiculous ; but I was not prepared for his pulling a golden apple out of his bag, and throw- ing it as far as he could in a direction different from that of the goal. The sight of a curiosity so tempting was too much for my prudence ; and it rolled away so roundly, and to such a distance, that I lost more time in reaching it than I looked for. Before I overtook the old gentleman, he threw another apple, and this again led me a chase after it. In short, I blush to say, that, resolved as I was to be tempted no further, seeing that the end of our course was now at hand, and my marriage with an old man instead of a young man was out of the question, he seduced me to give chase to a third apple, and fairly reached the goal before me. I wept for rage and disgust, and meditated every species of unconjuga) treatment of the old fox. What right had he to marry such » child as I was ? I asked myself the question at the time ; I asked it a thousand times afterwards ; and I must confess, that the more I have tormented him, the more the retaliation delights me. However, it was of no use at the moment. The old wretch bore me off to his domains with an ostentatious triumph ; and then, his jealousy misgiving him, he shut me up in a castle on a rock, where he endeavoured from that day forth to keep me from the sight of living being. You may judge what sort of castle it was by its name — Altamura (lofty wall). It overlooked a desert on three sides, and the sea on the fourth ; and a man might as well have flown as endeavoured to scale it. There was but one path up to the entrance, very steep and difficult ; and when you were there, you must have pierced outwork after outwork, and picked the lock of gate after gate. So there sat I in this delicious retreat, hopeless, and bursting with rage. I called upon death day and night, as mj only refuge. I had no comfort but in see SEEING AND BELIEVING. 293 ing my keeper mad with jealousy, even in that desolate snot. I think he was jealous of the very flies. My handsome youthy»Ordauto, however, had not forgotten me ; no, nor even given me up. Luckily he was not only very clever, but rich besides ; without which, to be sure, his brains would not have availed him a pin. What does he do, therefore, but take a house in the neighbourhood on the sea-shore ; and while my tor- mentor, in alarm and horror, watches every movement, and thinks him coming if he sees a cloud or a bird, Ordauro sets people se- cretly to work night and day, and makes a subterraneous passage up to the very tower ! Guess what I felt when I saw him enter ! Assuredly I did not shew him the face which I shewed Folderico. I die with J05 this moment to think of my delight. As soon as we could dis course of any thing but our meeting, Ordauro concerted measures for my escape ; and the greatest diiRculty being surmounted by the subterraneous passage, they at last succeeded. But our ene- my gave us a frightful degree of trouble. There was no end of the old man's pryings, peepings, and pre. cautions. He left me as little as possible by myself; and he had all the coast thereabouts at his command, together with the few boats that ever touched it. Ordauro, however, did a thing at once the most bold and the most ingenious. He gave out that he was married ; and inviting my husband to dinner, who had heard the news with transport, presented me, to his astonished eyes, for the bride. The old man looked as if he would have died for rage and misery. " Horrible villain !" cried he, " what is this V Ordauro professed astonishment in his turn. " What !" asked he ; " do you not know that the princess, your lady's sister, is wonderfully like her, and that she has done me the honour of becoming my wife ? I invited you in order to do honour to yourself, and so bring the good families together." " Detestable falsehood I" cried Folderico. " Do you think I'm blind, or a born idiot ? But I'll see to tl is business directly ; and terrible shall be my revenge." So saying, he flung out, and hastened, as fast as age would let him, to the room in the tower, where he expected to find me not •234 SEEING AND BELIEVING. But there he did find me : — there was I, sitting as if nothing had happened, with my hand on my cheek, and full of my old mel. ancholy. , • " God preserve me !" exclaimed he ; " this is astonishing in- deed ! Never could I have dreamt that one sister could be so like another ! But is it so, or is it not ? I have terrible sus- picions. It is impossible to believe it. Tell me truly," he con- tinued ; " answer me on the faith of a daring woman, and you shall get no hurt by it. Has any one opened the portals for you to-day ? Who was it ? How did you get out ? Tell me the truth, and you shall not suffer for it ; but deceive me, and there is no punishment that you may not look for." It is needless to say how I vowed and protested that I had never stirred ; that it was quite impossible j that I could not have done it if I would, &c. I took all the saints to witness to my veracity, and swore I had never seen the outside of his tremen- dous castle. The monster had nothing to say to this ; but I saw what he meant to do — I saw that he would return instantly to the house of Ordauro, and ascertain if the bride was there. Accordingly, the moment he turned the key on me, I flew down the subterra- neous passage, tossed on my new clothes like lightning, and sat in my lover's house as before, waiting the arrival of the panting old gentleman. " Well," exclaimed he, as soon as he set eyes upon me, " never in all my life — no — I must allow it to be impossible — never can my wife at home be the lady sitting here." From that day forth the old man, whenever he saw me in Or- dauro's house, treated me as if I were indeed his sister-in-law, though he never had the heart to bring the two wives together, for fear of old recollections. Nevertheless, this state of things was still very perilous ; and my new husband and myself lost no time in considering how we should put an end to it by leaving the country. Ordauro resorted, as before, to a bold expedient. He told Folderico that the air of the sea-coast disagreed with him ; and the old man, whose delight at getting rid of his neighbour helped to blind him to the deceit, not only expedited the move, ment, but offered to see him part of thi way on his journey ! SEEING AND BELIEVING. '295 The offer was accepted. Six miles he rode forth with us, the stupid old man ; and then, taking his leave, to return home, we pushed our horses like lightning, and so left him to tear his hair and his old beard with nries and curses, as s(x n as he opened the door of his tower. ARIOSTO: Critical Notice of Ijio £ife anb Renins. CRITICAL NOTICE ARIOSTO'S LIFE AND GENIUS. The congenial spirits of Pulci and Boiardo may be said to have attained to their height in the person of Ariosto, upon the orinciple of a transmigration of souls, or after the fashion of that hero in romance, who was heir to the bodily strengths of all whom he conquered. Lodovico Giovanni Ariosto was born on the 8th of September, 1474, in the fortress at Reggio, in Lombardy, and was the son of Niccold Ariosto, captain of that citadel (as Boiardo had been), and Daria Maleguzzi, whose family still exists. The race was transplanted from Bologna in the century previous, when Obizzo the Third of Este, Marquess of Ferrara, married a lady belong- ing to it, whose Christian name was Lippa. Niccolo Ariosto, besides holding the same ofRce as Boiardo had done, at Modena as well as at Reggio, was master of the household to his two suc- cessive patrons, the Dukes Borso and Ercole. He was also em- * 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, BarufTaldi, till I corrected the proofs and the press was waiting ; o}'-herwise I might have added two or three more particulars, not, however, of any great consequence. Panizzi is, as usiial, copious and to the purpose ; and has, for the first time I believe, critically proved the regularity and connectedness of Aiiosto's plots, as well as the hol- lowncss of the pretensions of the house of Este to be considered patrons of literature. It is only a pity that his LAfe of Ariosto is not better arranged. I have, of course, drawn my own conclusions respecting particulars, and some- times have thought I had roaepp to differ with those who have preceded me; but not, I hope, with a presuioption unbecoming a foreigner. 300 ARIOStO. ployed, like him, in diplomacy ; and was made a count by the Emperor Frederick the Third, though not, it seems, with re- mainder to his heirs. Lodovico was the eldest of ten children, five sons and five daughters. During his boyhood, theatrical entertainments were in great vogue at court, as we have seen in the life of Boiardo ; and at the age of twelve, a year after the decease of that poet (who must have been well known to him, and probably encour- aged his attempts), his successor is understood to have dramatised, after his infant fashion, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and to have got his brothers and sisters to perform it. Panizzi doubts the possibility of these precocious private theatricals ; but con- sidering what is called " writing" on the part of children, and that only one other performer was required in the piece, or at best a third for the lion (which some little brother might have " roared like any sucking-dove"), I cannot see good reason for disbelieving the story. Pope was not twelve years old when ho turned the siege of Troy into a play, and got his school-fellows to perform it, the part of Ajax being given to the gardener. Man is a theatrical animal {(doii ^ly/ijriKfo), and the instinct is developed at a very early period, as almost every family can witness that has taken its children to the " playhouse." At fifteen the young poet, like so many others of his class, was consigned to the study of the law, and took a great dislike to it, The extreme mobility of his nature, and the wish to please his father, appear to have made him enter on it willingly enough in the first instance ;* but as soon as he betrayed symptoms of disgust, Niccold, whose affairs were in a bad way, drove him back to it with a vehemence which must have made bad worse. f At the expiration of five years he was allowed to give it up. * See in his Latin poems the lines beginning, " Haec me verbosas suasit perdiscere leges.'' De Diversis Amoribus, t " Mio padre mi caccib con spiedi e lancie," &c. Satira vi. There is some appearance o. oontradiction in this passage and the one referred o in the preceding note ; but I thinlt the ronclusion in the text the probable 'Ds, and that he was not compelled t ' study Ihi" law in the first instance. He HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 301 There is reason to believe that Ariosto was " theatricalising" during no little portion of this time ; for, in his nineteenth year, lie is understood to have been taken by Duke Ercole to Pavia and to Milan, either as a writer or performer of comedies, proba- bly both, since the courtiers and ducal family themselves occa- sionally appeared on the stage ; and one of the poet's brothers mentions his having frequently seen him dressed in character.* On bfeing delivered from the study of the law, the young poet appeal's to have led a cheerful and unrestrained life for the next four or five years. He wrote, or began to write, the comedy of the Cassaria ; probably meditated some poem in the style of Boiardo, then in the height of his fame ; and he cultivated the Latin language, and intended to learn Greek, but delayed, and unfortunately missed it in consequence of losing his tutor. Some of his happiest days were passed at a villa, still possessed by the Maleguzzi family, called La Mauriziana, two miles from Reggio. Twenty-five years afterwards he called to mind, with sighs, the pleasant spots there which used to invite him to write verses ; the garden, the little river, the mill, the trees by the water-side, and all the other shady places in which he enjoyed himself during that sweet season of his life " betwixt April and May."! To complete his happiness, he had a friend and cousin, Pandolfo Ariosto, who loved every thing that he loved, and for whom he augured a brilliant reputation. But a dismal cloud was approaching. In his twenty-first year he lost his father, and found a large family left on his hands in narrow circumstances. The charge was at first so heavy, espe- cially when aggravated by the death of Pandolfo, that he tells us he wished to die. He took to it manfully, however, in spite of these fits of gloom ; and he lived to see his admirable efforts rewarded ; his brothers enabled to seek their fortunes, and his sisters properly taken care of. Two of them, it seems, had be- come nuns. A third married ; and a fourth remained long in his house. It is not known what became of the fifth. speaks more than once of his father's memory with great tenderness, particularly in the lines on his death, entitled Z)e Nicolao Areosto. * His brother Gabriel expressly mentions it in his prologue to the Scholaatica t " GiS, it' fur dolci inviti," &c. — Satira v. PART II. 6 302 ARIOSTO. In these family-matters the anxious son and brother was occu- pied for three or four years, not, however, without recreating himself with his verses, Latin and Italian, and recording his admiration of a number of goddesses of his youth. He men- tions, in particular, one of the name of Lydia, who kept him often from " his dear mother and household," and who is proba- bly represented by the princess of the same name in the Orlando, punished in the smoke of Tartarus for being a jilt and coquette.* His friend Bembo, afterwards the celebrated cardinal, recommend- ed him to be blind to such little immaterial, points as ladies' infi- delities. But he is shocked at the advice. He was far more of Othello's opinion than Congreve's in such matters ; and declared, that he would not have shared his mistress's good-will with Jupi- ter himself, f Towards the year 1504, the poet entered the service of the unworthy prince. Cardinal Ippolito of Este, brother of the new Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the First. His eminence, who had been made a prince of the church at thirteen years of age by the infamous Alexander the Sixth (Borgia), was at this period little more than one-and -twenty ; but he took an active part in the duke's affairs, both civil and military, and is said to have made himself conspicuous in his father's lifetime for his vices and bru- tality. He is charged with having ordered a papal messenger to be severely beaten for bringing him some unpleasant despatches : which so exasperated his unfortunate parent, that he was exiled to Mantua ; and the marquess of that city, his brother-in-law, was obliged to come to Ferrara to obtain his pardon. But this was a trifle compared with what he is accused of having done to one of his brothers. A female of their acquaintance, in answer to a speech made her by the reverend gallant, had been so unlucky , as to say that she preferred his brother Giulio's eyes to his emi- nence's whole body : upon which the monstrous villain hired two ♦ See, in the present volume, the beginning of Astolfo's Journey to the Moon, t " Me potiua fugiat, nullis mollita querehs, Dum simulet reliquos Lydia dura procos. Parte carere onni male, quam admittere queinquam In partem. Cupiat Juppiter ipse, negem." Ad Petrwm, Bembma HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 303 ruffians to put out his brother's eyes ; some say, was present at tne attempt. Attempt only it fortunately turned out to be, at least in part ; the opinion being, that the sight of one of the eyes was preserved.* Party-spirit has so much to do with stories of princes, and princes are so little in a condition to notice them, that, on the principle of not condemning a man till he has been heard in his defence, an honest biographer would be loath to credit these hor- rors of Cardinal Ippolito, did not the violent nature of the times, and the general character of the man, even with his defenders, incline him to do so. His being a soldier rather than a church- man was a fault of the age, perhaps a credit to the man, for he appears to have had abilities for war, and it was no crime of his if he was put into the church when a boy. But his conduct to Ariosto shewed him coarse and selfish ; and those who say all they can for him admit that he was proud and revengeful, and that nobody regretted him when he died. He is said to have had a taste for mathematics, as his brother had for mechanics. The truth seems to be, that he and the duke, who lived in troubled times, and had to exert all their strength to hinder Ferrara from becoming a prey to the court of Rome, were clever, harsh men, of no grace or elevation of character, and with no taste but for war ; and if it had not been for their connexion with Ariosto, no- body would have heard of them, except while perusing the annals of the time. Ippolito might have been, and probably was, the ruffian which the anecdote of his brother Giulio represents him ; but the world would have heard little of the villany, had he not treated a poet with contempt. The admirers of our author may wonder how he could become the servant of such a man, much more how he could praise hiin as he did in the great work which he was soon to begin writing. * Panizzi, on the authority of Guicciaidini 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. Fer- rante died in confinement at the expiration of thirty-four years ; Giulio, at the end of fifly-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. 1. p. xii. 304 ARIOSTO. But Ariosto was the son of a man who had passed his life in the service of the family ; he had probably been taught a loyal blind. ness to its defects ; gratuitous panegyrics of princes had been the fashion of men of letters since the time of Augustus ; and the poet wanted help for his relatives, and was of a nature to take the least show of favour for a virtue, till he had learnt, as he unfor- tunately did, to be disappointed in the substance. It is not known what his appointment was under the cardinal. Probably he was a kind of gentleman of all work ; an officer in his guards, a com- panion to amuse, and a Confidential agent for the transaction of business. The employment in which he is chiefly seen is that of an envoy, but he is said also to have been in the field of battle ; and he intimates in his Satires, that household attentions were expected of him which he was not quick to offer, such as pulling off his eminence's boots, and putting on his spurs.* It is certain that he was employed in very delicate negotiations, sometimes to the risk of his life from the perils of roads and torrents. Ippo- lito, who was a man of no delicacy, probably made use of him on every occasion that required address, the smallest as well as greatest, — an interview with a pope one day, and a despatch to a dog-fancier the next. His great poem, however, proceeded. It was probably begun before he entered the cardinal's service ; certainly was in progress during the early part of his engagement. This appears from a letter written to Ippolito by his sister the Marchioness of Mantua, to whom he had sent Ariosto at the beginning of the year 1509 to congratulate her on the birth of a child. She gives her brother special thanks for sending his message to her by " Messer Ludo- vico Ariosto," who had made her, she says, pass two delightful days, with giving her an account of the poem he was writing.')' * " Che debbo fare io qui 'i Agli usatti, agli spron (perch' io son grande) Non mi posso adattar, per pome o trarne." SaMra ii. t " 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 6 stato summamente grato, cussi Io riugrazio de la visitazione, et particolarmente di havermi maiidato il dicto Ms. Ludovico, per che ultra che mi sia stato acetto, re- presentando la persona de la S. V. Reverendiss. lui anche per conto suo mi ha HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 305 Isabella was the name ot this princess ; and the grateful poet aid not forget to embalm it in his verse.* Ariosto's latest biographer, Panizzi, thinks he never served un- der any other leader than the cardinal ; but I cannot help being Df opinion with a former one, whom he quotes, that he once took arms under a captain of the name of Pio, probably a kinsman of his friend Alberto Pio, to whom he addresses a Latin poem. It was probably on occasion of some early disgust with the cardinal ; but I am at a loss to discover at what period of time. Perhaps, indeed, he had the cardinal's permission, both to quit his service, and return to it. Possibly he was not to quit it at all, except ac- cording to events ; but merely had leave given him to join a party in arms, who were furthering Ippolito's own objects. Italy was full of captains in arms and conflicting interests. The poet might even, at some period of his life, have headed a troop under another cardinal, his friend Giovanni de' Medici, afterwards Leo the Tenth. He had certainly been with him in various parts of Italy ; and might have taken part in some of his bloodless, if not his most military, equitations. Be this as it may, it is understood that Ariosto was present at the repulse given to the Venetians by Ippolito, when they came up the river Po against Ferrara towards the close *f the year 1509 ; though he was away from the scene of action at his sub- sequent capture of their flotilla, the poet having been despatched between the two events to Pope Julius the Second on the delicate business of at once appeasing his anger with the duke for resist- ing his allies, and requesting his help to a feudatary of the church. Julius was in one of his towering passions at first, but gave way before the address of the envoy, and did what he desired. But Ariosto's success in this mission was nearly being the death of him in another ; for Alfonso having accompanied the French the , year following in their attack on Vicenza, where they committed cruelties of the same horrible kind as have shocked Europe with- addutta gran satisfazione, havendomi ciim la narratione de 1' opera che compona ^to passar questi due giorni non solum senza fastidio, ma cum placer gran- disBimo." — Tiraboschi, Storia della Poesia Itaiiana, Matthias' editi jn, vol. iii p. 197. • Orlando Furioeo, canto xxix. st. 29. 306 ARIOSTO. in a few months past,* the poet's tongue, it was thought, might be equally efRoacious a second time ; but Julius, worn out of pa- tience with his too independent vassal, who maintained an alii- anoe with the French when the pope had ceased to desire it, was to be appeased no longer. He excommunicated Alfonso, and threatened to pitc.i his envoy into the Tiber; so that the poet was fain to run for it, as the duke himself was afterwards, when he visited Rome to be absolved. Would Julius have thus treated Ariosto, could he have foreseen his renown ? Probably he would. The greater the opposition to the will, the greater the will itself. To chuck an accomplished envoy into the river would have been much ; but to chuck the immortal poet there, laurels and all, in the teeth of the amazement of posterity, would have been a temp- tation irresistible. It was on this occasion that Ariosto, probably from inability to choose his times or modes of returning home, contracted a cough, which is understood to have shortened his existence ; so that Ju- lius may have killed him after all. But the pope had a worse enemy in his own hosom — his violence — which killed himself in a much shorter period. He died in little more than two years afterwards ; and the poet's prospects were all now of a very dif- ferent sort-»-at least he thought so; for in March, 1513, his friend Giovanni de' Medici succeeded to the papacy, under the title of Leo the Tenth. Ariosto hastened to Rome, among a shoal of visitants, to con- gratulate the new pope, perhaps not without a commission from Alfonso to see what he could do for his native country, on which the rival Medici family never ceased to have designs. The poet was full of hope, for he had known Leo under various fortunes ; had been styled by him not only a friend, but a brother ; and , promised all sorts of participations of his prosperity. Not one of them came. The visitor was cordially received. Leo stooped from his throne, squeezed his hand, and kissed him on both his cheeks ; but " at night," says Ariosto, " I went all the way to the Sheep to get my supper, wet through." All that Leo gave him was a " bull," probably the one securing to him the profits * See the horriMe account of the suffocated Vicentme Grottoes, ia Sjsmondi, Hiatoire dea Republiques JUUusmes, &c. "VlA. LV. p. 4d. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 30', of his Orlando ; and the poet's friend Bibbiena — wit, cardinal, and liinsman of Berni — facilitated the bull, but the receiver dis- charged the fees. He did not get one penny by promise, pope, or friend.* He complains a little, but all in good humour ; and good-naturedly asks what he was to expect, when so many hun- gry kinsmen and partisans were to be served first. Well and wisely asked too, and with a superiority to his fortunes which Leo and Bibbiena might have envied. It is thought probable, however, that if the poet had been less a friend to the house of Este, Leo would have kept his word with him, for their intimacy had undoubtedly been of the most cordial description. But it is supposed that Leo was afraid he should have a Eerrarese envoy constantly about him, had he detained Ariosto in Rome. The poet, however, it is admitted, was not a good hunter of preferment. He could not play the assenter, and bow and importune : and sovereigns, however friendly they may have been before their elevation, go the way of most princely flesh when they have attained it. They like to take out a man's gratitude beforehand, perhaps because they feel little security in it afterwards. The elevation to the papacy of the cheerful and indulgent son of Lorenzo de' Medici, after the troublous reign of Julius, was hailed with delight by all Christendom, and nowhere more so than in the pope's native place, Florence. Ariosto went there to see the spectacles ; and there, in the midst of them, he found himself robbed of his heart by the lady whom he afterwards married. Her name was Alessandra Benucci. She was the widow of one of the Strozzi family, whom he had known in Ferrara, and he had long admired her. The poet, who, like Petrarch and Bocsaccio, * " Piegossi^ me dalla beata sede ; La mano e poi le gote ambe mi prese, E U santo bacic in amendue mi diede. Di mezza quella bolla anco cortese Mi fu, della quale era il mio Bibbiena Espedito m' ha il resto alle mie spese. Indi col seno e con la falda plena Di speme, ma di pioggia molle e brutto La uotte andai fL: al Montone a cena.' Sat. iv. 308 ARIOSTO. has recorded the da;' on which he fell in love, which was that of St. John the Baptist (the showy saint-days of the south offer spa cial temptations to that effect), dwells with minute fondness on the particulars of the lady's appearance. Her dress was black silk, embroidered with two grape-bearing vines intertwisted ; and " between her serene forehead and the path that went dividing in two her rich and golden tresses," was a sprig of laurel in bud. Her observer, probably her welcome T not yet accepted lover, beheld something very significant in this attirte ; and a mysterious poem, in which he records a device of a black pen feathered with gold, which he wore embroidered on a gown of his own, has been supposed to allude to it. As every body is tempted to make his guess on such occasions, I take the pen to have been the black- haired poet himself, and the golden feather the tresses of the lady. Beautiful as he describes her, with a face full of sweetness, and manners noble and engaging, he speaks most of the charms of her golden locks. The black gown could hardly have implied her widowhood : the allusion would not have been delicate. The vine belongs to dramatic poets, among whom the lover was at that time to be classed, the Orlando not having appeared. Its duplifi- cation intimated another self; and the crowning laurel was the success that awaited the heroic poet and the conqueror of the lady's heart.* The marriage was never acknowledged. The husband was in the receipt of profits arising from church-offices, which putlhim into the condition of the fellow of a college with us, who cannot marry so long as he retains his fellowship : but it is proved to have taken place, though the date of it is uncertain. Ariosto, in a satire written three or four years after his falling in love, says he never intends either to marry or to take orders ; because, if he takes orders, he cannot marry ; and*if he marries, he cannot take orders — that is to say, must give up his semi-priestly emol-- uments. This is one of the falsehoods which the Roman Catholic religion thinks itself warranted in tempting honest men to fall into ; thus perplexing their faith as to the very roots of all faith, and tending to maintain a sensual hypocrisy, which can do * See canzone the first, " Non so s' io potr6," &c. ; and the capitolo beginnind " Delia mia negra penna in frcgio d' oro." HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 309 no good to the strongest minds, and must terribly injure the weak. Ariosto's love for this lady I take to have been one of the causes of dissatisfaction between him and the cardinal. " For- tunately for the poet," as Panizzi observes, Ippolito was not al- ways in Ferrara. He travelled in Italy, and he had an arch- bishopric in Hungary, the tenure of which compelled occasional residence. His company was not desired in Rome, so that he was seldom there. Ariosto, however, was an amusing compan- ion ; and the cardinal seems not to have liked to go anywhere ' without him. In the year 1515 he was attended by the poet part of the way on a journey to Rome and Urbino ; but Ariosto fell ill, and had leave to return. He confesses that his illness was owing to an anxiety of love ; and he even makes an appeal to the pardinal's experience of such feelings ; so that it might seem he was not afraid of Ippolito's displeasure in that direction. But the weakness which selfish people excuse in themselves becomes a " very different thing" (as they phrase it) in another. The ap- peal to the cardinal's experience might only have exasperated him, in its assumption of the identity of the case. However, the poet was, at all events, left this time to the indulgence of his love and his poetry ; and in the course of the ensuing year, a copy of the first edition of the Orlando Furioso, in forty cantos, was put into the hands of the illustrious person to whom it was dedicated. The words in which the cardinal was pleased to express him- self on this occasion have become memorable. " Where the devil. Master Lodovick," said the reverend personage, "have you picked up such a parcel of trumpery ?" The original term is much stronger, aggravating the insult with indecency. There is no equivalent for it in English ; and I shall not repeat it in Italian. " It is as low and indecent," says Panizzi, " as any in the language." Suffice it to say that, although the age was not scrupulous in such matters, it was one of the last words befitting the lips of the reverend Catholic ; and that, when Ippolito of Este (as Ginguene observes) made that speech to the great poet, "he uttered — prince, cardinal, and mathematician as he was— on impertinence."* * Histoire lAUiraire, &c. vol '. p. 335. 6* 310 ARIOSTO. Was the cardinal put out of temper by a device which ap- peared in this book ? On the leaf succeeding the title-pago ivas the privilege for its publication, granted by Leo in terms of the most flattering personal recognition.* So far so good ; unless the unpoetical Este patron was not pleased to see such interest taken in the book by the tasteful Medici patron. But on the back of this leaf was a device of a hive, with the bees burnt out of it for their honey, and the motto '' Evil for good" (Pro bono malum). Most biographers are of opinion that this device was aimed at the cardinal's ill return for all the sweet words lavished on him and his house. If so, and supposing Ariosto to have presented the dedication-copy in person, it would 'have been curious to see the faces of the two men while his Eminence was looking at it. Some will think that the goodnatured poet could hardly have taken such an occasion of displaying his resentment. But the device did not express at whom it was aimed : the cardinal need not have applied it to himself if he did not choose, especially as the book was full of his praises ; and goodnatured people will not always miss an opportunity of covertly inflicting a sting. The device, at all events, shewed that the honey-maker had got worse than nothing by his honey ; and the house of Este could not say they had done any thing to contradict it. I think it probable that neither the poet's device nor the car- dinal's speech were forgotten, when, in the course of the next year, the parties came to a rupture in consequence of the servant's re- * " Singularis tua et pervetus erga nos familiamque nostrum observantia, cgregiaque bonarum arlium et litterarum doctrina, atque in studiis mitioribus, prtesertimque poetices elegans et prsEcIarum ingenium, jure prope suo a nobis exposcere videntur, ut quae tibi usui futurffi sint, justa piEBsertim et honesta petenti, ea tibi liberaliter et gratiose concedamus. Quamobrein," &c. *' On the same page," says Panizzi, " are mentioned the privileges granted by the king of France, by the repubhc 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 undervpent the singular obloquy ot being a bull of excommunication against all who objected to the poem ! a mis- conception on the part of some ignorant man, or misrepresentation by some malignant one, which affords a remarkable warning agaiast taking things on trust from one writer after another. Even Bayle (see the article " Leo X." in his Dictionary') suffered his incUnations to blind his vigilance. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 311 fusing to attend his master into Hungary. Ariosto excused him- self on account of the state of his health and of his family-. He said that a cold climate did not agree with him ; that his chest was affected, and could not bear even the stoves of Hungary ; and that he could not, in common decency and humanity, leave his mother in her old age, especially as all the rest of the family were away but his youngest sister, whose interests he had also to take care of. But Ippolito was not to be appeased. The public have seen, in a late female biography, a deplorable instance of the un- feelingness with which even a princess with a reputation for re- ligion could treat the declining health and unwilling retirement of a poor slave in her service, fifty times her superior in every thing but servility. Greater delicacy was not to be expected of the military priest. The nobler the servant, the greater tne ae- sire to trample upon him and keep him at a disadvantage. It is a grudge which rank owes to genius, and which it, can only wave when its possessor is himself" one of God Almighty's gentlemen." I do not mean in point of genius, which is by no means the high- est thing in the world, whatever its owners may think of it ; but in point of the highest of all things, which is nobleness of heart. I confess I think Ariosto was wrong in expecting what he did of a man he must have known so well, and in complaining so much of courts, however good-humouredly. A prince occupies the sta- tion he does, to avert the perils of disputed successions, and not to be what his birth cannot make him — if nature has not supplied the materials. Besides, the cardinal, in his quality of a mechan- ical-minded man with no taste, might with reason have complain- ed of his servant's attending to poetry when it was " not in his bond ;" when it diverted from the only attentions which his em- ployer understood or desired. Ippolito candidly confessed, as Ariosto himself tells us, that he not only did not care for poetry, but never gave his attendant one stiver in patronage of it, or for any thing whatsoever but going his journeys and doing as he was bidden.* On the other hand, the cardinal's payments were sorry * " Apollo, tua mercfe, tua mercfe, santo Collegio delle Muse, io non mi trovo Tanto per voi, ch' io possa farmi un manto: 312 ARIOSTO. ones ; and the poet might with justice have thought, that he was not bo ind to consider them an equivalent for the time he was ex- pected to give up. The only thing to have been desired in this case was, that he should have said so ; and, in truth, at the close of the explanation which he gave on the subject to his friends at court, he did — boldly desiring them, as became him, to tell the cardinal, that if his eminence expected him to be a " serf" for what he received, he should decline the bargain ; and that he preferred the humblest freedom and his studies to a slavery so preposterous.* The truth is, the poet should have attached himself wholly to the Medici. Had he not adhered to the duller house, he might have led as happy a life with the pope as Pulci did with the pope's father ; perhaps have been made a cardinal, like his friends Bem- bo and Sadolet. But then we might have lost the Orlando. The only sinecure which the poet is now supposed to have re- tained, was a grant of twenty-five crowns every four months on the episcopal chancery of Milan : so, to help out his petty income, he proceeded to enter into the service of Alfonso, which shews that both the brothers were not angry with him. He tells us, that he would gladly have had no new master, could he have helped it ; but that, if he must needs serve, he would rather serve the master of every body else than a subordinate one. At this juncture he had a brief prospect of being as free as he wished j E se 'I signer m' ha dato onde far novo Ogni anno mi potrei piti d' lui mantello, Che mi abbia per vol dato, non approvo. Egli r ha detto." Saiira n. * " Se avermi dato onde ogni quattro mesi Ho venticinque scudi, nb si fenni, Che molte volte non mi sien contesi, Mi debbe incatenar, schiavo tenermi, Obbligarmi ch' io sudi c tremi senza Rispetto alcun, ch' io muoja o ch' io m' infermi, Non gli lasciate aner questa credenza : Ditegli, che piii tosi: ch' esser servo, Torr6 la povertade in pazienza.'' Satira n. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 313 for an uncle died leaving a large landed property still known as the Ariosto lands {Le Arioste) ; but a convent demanded it on the part of one of their brotherhood, vi^ho was a natural son of this gentleman ; and a more formidable and ultimately successful claim was advanced in a court of law by the Chamber of the Duchy of Ferrara, the first judge in the cause being the duke's own stew ard and a personal enemy of the poet's. Ariosto, therefore, while the suit was going on, was obliged to content himself with his fees from Milan and a monthly allowance which he received from the duke of " about thirty-eight shillings," together with provisions for three servants and two horses. He entered the duke's service in the spring of 1518, and remained in it for the rest of his life. But it was not so burdensome as that of the cardinal ; and the consequence of the poet's greater leisure was a second edition of the Furioso, in the year 1521, with additions and corrections ; still, however, in forty cantos only. It appears, by a deed of agreement,* that the work was printed at the author's expense ; that he was to sell the bookseller one hundred copies for sixty livres (about 51. 12s.) on condition of the book's not being sold at the rate of more than sixteen sous (Is. 8d.) ; that the author was not to give, sell, or allow to be sold, any copy of the book at Ferrara, except by the bookseller ; that the bookseller, after dis- posing of the hundred copies, was to have as many more as he chose on the same terms ; and that, on his failing to require a further supply, Ariosto was to be at liberty to sell his volumes to whom he pleased. "With such profits," observes Panizzi, "it ivas not likely that the poet would soon become independent :" and it may be added, that he certainly got nothing by the first edi- tion, whatever he may have done by the second. He expressly tells us, in the satire which he wrote on declining to go abroad with Ippolito, that all his poetry had not procured him money enough to purchase a cloak.f Twenty years afterwards, when he was dead, the poem was in such request, that, between 1542 and 1551, Panizzi calculates there must have been a sale of it in Europe to the amount of a hundred thousand copies.:): ♦ Panizzi, vol. i. p. 29. The agreement itself is in Baruffaldi. t See the lines before quoted, beginning " Apollo, tua mercfe." t Bibliographical Notices of Editions of Ariosto, prefixed to hia first vol. p. 51. 314 ARIOSTO. The second edition of the Furioso did not extricate the authoi from very serious difficul ties ; for the next year he was compelled to apply to Alfonso, either to relieve him from his necessities, or permit him to look for some employment more profitable than the ducal service. The answer of this prince, who was now rich but had always been penurious, and who never laid out a farthing, if he could help it, except in defence of his capital, was an ap- pointment of Ariosto to the government of a district in a state of anarchy, called Garfagnana, which had nominally returned to his rule in consequence of the death of Leo, who had wrested it from him. It was a wild spot in the Apennines, on the borders of the Ferrarese and papal territories. Ariosto was there three years, and is said to have reduced it to order ; but, according to his own account, he had very doubtful work of it. The place was over- run with banditti, including the troops commissioned to suppress them. It required a severer governor than he was inclined to be ; and Alfonso did not attend to his requisitions for supplies. The candid and goodnatured poet intimates that the duke might have given him the appointment rather for the governor's sake than the people's ; and the cold, the loneliness and barrenness of the place, and, above all, his absence from the object of his affections, op- pressed him. He did not write a verse for twelve months ; he says he felt like a bird moulting.* The best thing got out of it was an anecdote for posterity. The poet was riding out one day with a few attendants — some say w alking out in a fit of absence of mind — when he found himself in the midst of a band of out- laws, who, in a suspicious manner, barely suffered him to pass. A reader of Mrs. Radcliffe might suppose them a band of condot- ticri, under the command of some profligate desperado ; and such perhaps they were. The governor had scarcely gone by, when ♦ " La novitk del loco k stata tanta, C ho fatto come augel che muta gabbia, Che molti giorni testa che non canta." For the rest of the above particulars see the fifth satire, beginning " II vigesl- mo giomo di Febbraio." I quote the exordium, because these compositions are differently numbered in different editions. The one I generally use is thai of Molini — Poeiie Varie di Loiovieo Ariosto, cm Annotazioni. Firenze, 12m» 1824. HIS LIFiJ AND GENirS. 315 the leader of the band, discovering vvlio he was, came riding back with much earnestness, and making his obeisance to the poet, said, that he never should have allowed him to pass in that manner had he known him to be the Signor Ludovico Ariosto, author of the Orlando Furioso ; that his own name was Filippo Pacchione (a celebrated personage of his order) ; and that his men and himself, so far from doing the signor displeasure, would have the honour of conducting him back to his castle. " And so they did," says Baretti, " entertaining him all along the way with the various ex- cellences they had discerned in his poem, and bestowing upon it the most rapturous praises."* On his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto is understood to have made several journeys in Italy, either with or without the duke his master ; some of them to Mantua, where it has been said that he was crowned with laurel by the Emperor Charles the Fifth. But the truth seems to be, that he only received a laureate diplo- ma : it does not appear that Charles made him any other gift. His majesty, and the whole house of Este, and the pope, and all the other Italian princes, left that to be done by the imperial gen- eral, the celebrated Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto,to whon; he was sent on some mission by the Duke of Ferrara, and who settled on him an annuity of a hundred golden ducats ; " the only reward," says Panizzi, " which we find to have been conferred on Ariosto expressly as a poet."f Davallos was one of the con- * Italian Library, p. 53. I quote Baretti, because he speaks with a corre». ponding enthusiasm. He calls the incident " a very rare proof of the irresisti- ble 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 lohiisou had made some such remark to him wliile relating the story in Bolt C!ourL Nqr is the former part of the sentence unlike him: " A very rare proof, .fir, 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 occa^ sion he selected the history of Felixmarte of Hyrcania as his course of reading during a visit. t The deed of gift sets forth the interest which it becomes princes and com- manders to take in men of letters, particularly poets, as heralds of their fame, and consequently the special fitness of the illustrious and superexcellent poe Me ARIOSTO, queiu/s of Francis tne First, young and liandsome, and himselt a writer of verses. The grateful poet accordingly availed himself of his benefactor's accomplishments to make him, in turn, a pres- ent of every virtue under the sun. Cssar was not so liberal,; Nestor so wise, Achilles so potent, Nireus' so beautiful, nor even Ladas, Alexander's messenger, so swift.* Ariosto was now verg- ing towards the grave ; and he. probably saw in "the hundred ducats a golden sunset of his cares. Meantime, however, the poet had built a house, which, although small, was raised with his own money ; so that the second edition of the Orlando may have realized some profits at last. He re- corded the pleasant fact in an inscription over the door, which has become celebrated : 'Parva, sed aptamihi; sed nulli obnoxia ; sed uon Sordida ; parta meo sed tamen aere domus." Small, yet it suits me; is of no offence; Was built, not meanly, at my own expense. What a pity (to compare great things with small) that he had not as long a life before him to enjoy it, as Gil Bias had with his own comfortable quotation over his retreat at Lirias !f The house still remains ; but the inscription unfortunately be- came effaced ; though the following one remains, which was ad- ded by his son Virginio : " Sic domus hsc Areostea Propitios habeat deos, olim ut Pindarica." Dear to the gods, whatever come to pass, Be Ariosto's house, as Pindar's was. This was an anticipation — perhaps the origin — of Milton's son- Lodovico Ariosto for receiving from Alfonso Davallos, Marquess of Vasto, the irrevocable sum of, &c. &c. Panizzi has copied the substance of it from Fa- ruffaldi, vol. i. p. 67. • Orlando Furioso, canto xxxiii. st. 2S. t ' Inveni portum : spes et fortuna, valete ; Sat me lusistis ; ludite nunc alios." My port is found: adieu, ye freaks of chance j The dince ye led me, now let others dance. KIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 317' net about his own house, addressed t / " Captains and Collonels," during the civil war.* Uavallos made the poet his generous present in the October of the year 1531 ; and in the same month of the year following the Orlando was published as it now stands, with various insertions throughout, chiefly stories, and six additional cantos. Cardinal Ippolito had been dead some time ; and the device of the beehive was exchanged for one of two vipers, with a hand and pair of shears cutting out their tongues, and the motto, " Thou hast pre- ferred ill-will to good" (Dilexisii maliliam super benigniiatem). The allusion is understood to have been to certain critics whose names have all perished, unless Sperone (of whom we shall hear more by and by) was one of them. The appearance of this edi- tion was eagerly looked for ; but the trouble of correcting the press, and the destruction of a theatre by fire which had been built under the poet's direction, did his health no good in its rapid- ly declining condition ; and after suifering greatly from an ob- struction, he died, much attenuated, on the sixth day of June, 1533. His decease, his fond biographers have told us, took place " about three in the afternoon ;" and he was " aged fifty-eight years, eight months, and twenty-eight days." His body, accord- ing to his direction, was taken to the church of the Benedictines during the night by four men, with only two tapers, and in the most private and simple manner. The monks followed it to the grave out of respect, contrary to their usual custom. 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. • " The great EmEitliian conqueror bade spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground," &(, 318 ARIOSTO. Ariosto was tall and stott, with a dark complexion, bright black eyes, black and curling hair, aquiline noSe, and shoulders broad but a little stooping. His aspect was thoughtiul, 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, not- withstanding the exuberance of beard, it does not suggest the' sweetness observable in one of the medals of Ariosto, a wax im- pression of which is now before me ; nor has the nose so much delicacy and grace.* The poet's temperament inclined him to melancholy, but his in- tercourse was always cheerful. One biographer says he was strong and healthy — another, that he was neither. In all proba- bility he was naturally strong, but weakened by a life full of emotion. He talks of growing old at forty-four, and of having been bald for some time.f He had a cough for many years be- fore 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 prabably against wine of any kind ; and Panizzi thinks the cough was never subdued. His physicians forbade him all sorts of stimulants with his food.:]: * 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 tliis device, that in his fragment called the Five Cantos (c. v. st. 2G), the Paladin Rinaldo wears it embroidered on his mantle. t " lo son de' dieci 11 primo, o vecchio fatto Di quaranta quattro anni, e il capo calvo Da tin tempo in qua sotto U cufEotto appiatto.'' Satira ii. t " II vin fumoso, a me vie pid interdetto Che '1 tosco, cost! a inviti si tracanna, E sacrilegio b non ber molto, e schietto. (lie is speaking of the wines of Hungary, and of the hard drinking expected of strangers in that country.) Tutti li cibi son con pepe e canna, Di amomo e d' altri aromati, che tutti Come nocivi il medico mi danna." Sail: 1 ii. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 319 His temper and habits were those of a man wholly given up to ove and poetry. In his youth he was volatile, and at no time without what is called some " affair of the heart." Every wo- man 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, sup- posing 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 ffiends were most of the great names of the age, including h world of ladies, and the whole graceful court of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, for which Catiglione wrote his book of the Gentleman {II 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 Uandello on writing his novels, and Bembo, and Flami- nio, and Berni, and Molza, and Sannazzaro, and the Medici fam- ily, 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."* 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 ab- sorbed in thought. His indignation was roused by mean and brutal vices ; but he took a large and liberal view of human na. ture 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 nis children ; and, in spite of his tendency to pleasure, supplied the place, of an anxious and careful father to his brothers and sis. ters, who idolized him. * Pigiia, J Roinanzij p. 119. 320 ARIOSTO. " Ornabat pietas et grata modestia vatem," wrote Ms brother Gabriel, " Sancta fides, dictique memor, munitaque recto Justitia, et nuUo patientia victa labore, Et constans virtus animi, et dementia mitis, Ambitione procul pulsa fastfisque tumore ; Credere uti posses natum felicibus horis, Felici fulgente astro Jovis atque Diones."* 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 concar 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, vifho was afraid of being poi- soned for his possessions, would trust himself in no other hands ; but the clergyman was his own grand-uncle and namesake, prob- ably godfather ; so that the compliment is not so very great. In his youth he underwent a long rebuke one day from his fa- ther 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 excel- lent 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 ! * Epicedium on his brother's death. It is reprinted (perhaps for the first time since ] 582) in Mr. Fanizzi's Appendix to the Life, in his first volume, Ik clxi. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 321 He was perpolually 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 pro- portion 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.* He, however, discovered that correction was not always im- provement. 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 con- tented himself with so small an abode, when he built such mag- nificent mansions in his poetry, he said it was easier to put words together than blocks of stone. j- * " Le donne, i cavalier, 1' arme, gli amori, Le cortesie, le audaci iraprese, io canto," is Anosto'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 degen* racy of his country, calls to mind with graceful and touching regret, " Le donne, i cavalier, gli affanni e gli agi, Che inspiiavano amore e cortesia." The ladies and the knights, the cares and leisures, Breathing around them love and couitesy. 1 The origin<' is much pithier, but I cannot find equivalents for the alliten< 322 ARIOSTO. 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 knowl- edge ; and with regard to books, he not only mentions the libra- ry 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.* 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. j" 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 indiscriminate- ly gallant as to be fond of goitres.^ 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 Alessan- dra 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 tion. He said, " Porvi le pietre e porvi le parole non 6 il medesimo." — Pigna, p. 119. According to his son, however, his remark was, that " palaces could he made in poems without money." He probably expressed the same thing in dif- ferent ways to different people. * Vide Sat. iii. "Ml sia un tempo," &c. ; and the passage in Sat. vii. begin ning " Di libri antiqui." t The inkstand which Shelley saw at Ferrara (Essays and Letters, p. 149^ covdd not have been this; probably his eye was caughtby a wrong one. Doubts also, after what we know of the tricks practised upon visitors of Stratford-upon- Avon, may unfortunitely be entertained of the " plain old wooden piece of fur- niture," 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 niood.«, conscious and unconscious wills, &c. What would be said by an auto- graphist to the strange old, ungraceful, slovenly handwriting « f Shakspnare > t See vol. i. of the present work, pp. IG, 118, and 126. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 323 Other was named Maria, and is understood to have been a gov- erness in his father's family.* 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 vin- egar and boiled must (sapa), which seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi.f 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 after- wards, 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 ab- sorption 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 govern- ment from the perils of travelling among war-makers and ban- ditti. Imagination finds something worthy of itself on great oc- casions, 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 coun- • Baruffddi, 1807; p. 105, t " 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 porca Selvaggio." 334 ARIOSTO. tries without liaving to pay innkeepers, and ploughing liarmless seas without thunder and lightning.* 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.f He found it impossible, however, to restrain his contempt of bigotry ; and like most great writers in Catholic countries, was a derider of the prehensions 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 nonsense ; 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 in 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 * " Chi "vuole andare," &c. SatiraW. t " Se Nicoletto o Fra Martin fan segno D' infedele o d' eretico, ne accuso II saper troppo, e men con lor mi sdegno: Perchfe salendo lo intelletto in suso Per veder Dio, non de' parerci strano Se talor cade gid cieco e confuso." Satira vi. Tliis satKe was addressed to BembOi The cardinal is said to have asked a visitor from Germany whether Brother Martin really beUeved what he preached ; and to have expressea 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 feces. This was bad ; but inquisitors are a million times worse. By the Nicoletto here mentioned by Ariosto in com- pany ■with Luther, we are to understand (according to the conjecture of Molini) a Paduan professor of the name of Niccoli> Vernia, who was accused of hold- ing the Pantheistic opinions of Averroes. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 325 names were Virginio and Gianbattkta, 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 miscellane- ous poetry, all occasionally exhibiting a master-hand. The com- edies, however, were unfortunately modelled on those of the an- cients ; and the constant termination of the verse with trisyl- lables contributes to render them tedious. What comedies might he not have written, had he given himself up to existing times and manners !* The satires are rather good-natured epistles to his friends, written with a charming ease and straightforwardness, and con- taining 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 del- icacies in old-fashioned vessels. The Orlando Furioso is, literally, a continuation of the Orlan- do Innamorato ; so much so, that the story is not thoroughly intelli- gible without it. This was probably the reason of a circumstance thatw&uldbe otherwise unaccountable, and that was ridiculoi\sly ''Take a specimen of this leap-frog versification from the prologue to th« Cassaria • — " Questa commedia, ct' oggi rscitdtam < Sarii, se nol sapete, 6 .a Cassdria, Ch' un altra volta, gia, vent' anni pdssano, Veder si fece sopra questi piilpiti Ed allora assai piaeque a tutto il pdpolo^ Ma non ne ripostt) gia, degno premio, Che data in preda a gl' importuni ed dmdi Stampator fu," &c. Thii through five comedies in five acts ! PART II. 7 326 ARIOSTO. charged against him as a proof of despairing envy by the despair ing envy of Sperone ; namely, his never having once mentioned tha 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 nar- ration. But Boiardo was so popular when he wrote, that the very silence shews he must have thought the mention of his name super- fluous. 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 eu- logised the hospitality of the house of Boiardo.* 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 genevul, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it fiom 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 con- verted, and marries ; and Orlando all the while slays his thou- sands, 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 joes forth to conclude the war by the death ai the king of Algiers. The great charm, however, of the Orlando Furioso is nc* in ' knight-errantry, or its main plot, or the cunning interwt of its minor ones, but in its endless variety, truth, * In the verses entitled Bacchi Statua. HIS LIFE AJND GENIUS. 327 and animal spirits ; in its fidelity to actual nature while it keeps within the bounds of the probable, and its no less enchanting ver- isimilitude during its wildest sallies of imagination. At one mo- ment 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 pal- ace ; 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 enchant- ing 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 exqui- site, 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 rhap- sody of panegyric. Ariosto is inferior, in some remarkable respects, to his predecessors Puloi 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 think, equal in pathos to that of the sti'uggle at Roncesvalles ; for though Orlando's jealousy is pa- thetic, as well as appalling, the effects of it are confined to one person, and disputed by his oicessive strength. Ariosto has taken all tenderness out of Angelica, except that of a kind of boarding-school first love (which, however, as hereafter 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 tc me, that Ariosto hardly improved so much as lia 328 ARIOSTO. might have done upon his predecessor's imitations of the classics I cannot help thinking that, upon the whole, he had better hava loft them alone, and depended entirely on himself. Shelley says, ■ he fias too much fighting and "revenge,"* — vi'hich 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 reflect- ing 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 en- largement. The genius of romance has increased to an extraor- dinary 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 na- ture, 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, pleasurable, or even indifierent, he still has the life, ease, and beauty of the operations of the daily planet. Even where he seems dull and commonplace, his brightness and orig- inality at other times make it look like a good-natured conde- scension to our ov/n common habits of thought and discourse ; aa though he did it but on purpose to leave nothing ansaid thai ♦ Essays and LetteTs, ut sup. v5l. ii. p. 125. HIS LIFE AND 3ENIUS. 329 could bring him within the categorj of ourselves. His charm- ing manner intimates that, instead of taking thought, he chooses 'o take pleasure with us, and compare old notes ; and we are de- lighted 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."* 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 ludicrous- ly, but because he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as Shakspeare in Hamlet does to give that of si- lence, 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 Na- ture 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 ac tions, as if she had made them herself. His hippogriff returnSj like a common horse, to the stable to which he has been acous. ♦ " Le lacrime scendean tra gigli e rbse, Lci dove awien ch' alcune sfe n' inghiozzi." Canto xii. st. 94. Which has been wcil trauslated by Mr. Rose : " And between rose and lily, from her eyes Tears fall so fast, she needs must swallow some." 330 ARIOSTO. tomed. 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 palo 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 prqfounded 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." Fosoolo quotes this passage from the Dictionnaire PhilosopMque ; and adds another from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which the painter speaks of a similar inability on his own part, when young, to en- joy the perfect nature of Raphael, and the admiration and aston ■ ishment which, in his riper years, he grew to feel for it.* 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 pop- ular 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. Anc'ient defeated empires are sounds and emptiness ; * Essay on the Narrative and Ronumiic Poems of the Italians, in the Quap- lerty Review, vol. xxi. HIS LIPK AND GENIUS. 331 therefore the Assyrian and Persian monarchies become, in nia limbo of vanities, a heap of positive bladders. Youth is head- strong, and kissing goes by favour ; so Angelica, queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and marries a common soldier. 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 exclu- sive 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 fig. ments 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 and insipid fiction I can call to mind in the Or- lando Furioso is that of the " swans" who rescue " medals" from the river of oblivion (canto xxxv.). It betrays a singular forget- fulness of the poet's wonted verisimilitude ; for what metaphor can reconcile us to swans taking an interest in medals ? Pop- ular 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) shew that no man could paint better when he chose. The bo BOffls of his females " c'lme and go, like the waves on the sea 33-2 ARIOSTO. coast in summer airs."* His witches draw the fish out of the water " With simple words and a pure warbled spell."t 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."t 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 che pur adorna il mondo."S 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 charm- ing 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;" "UD dl lo presse."ll 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 cacclar mille."ir I see thousands Hunted by tens. He compares the noise of a tremendous battle heard in the neigh- bourhood to the sound of the cataracts of the Nile : * " Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte." Canto -vii. st. 14. + " Con semplici parole e puri incanti." Canto ■n. st. 38. t Canto xiv. st. 7D. § Canto xxviii. st. 93, U Canto XV. st. 57. IT Id. st. 23. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 333 " un alto Buon ch' a quel s' accorda Con che i vicin' cadendo il Nil assorda."* He " scourges" ships at sea with tempests — say rather the " mis- arable seamen ;" while night-time grows blacker and blacker on the " exasperated waters. "j- When Rodomont has plutiged 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 I' ha tanta finestra, Che ben vedere e veduto esser puote Dai visi impress! di color di morte t The whole description of Orlando's jealousy and growing mad ness is Shaksperian 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 6ver invented by poet. Spenser thought so ; and has imitated and emulated it in one of hjs own finest passages. Ariosto has not the spleen and gall of Dante, and therefore his satire is not so tremendcfus ; yet it is very exquisite, as all the world have ac- knowledged 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 pro- foundly pathetic as our great poet's Griselda. Yet many a gen- tle eye has moistened at the conclusion of the story of Isabella ; and to recur once more to Orlando's jealousy, all who have ex- perienced that passion will feel it shake 'hem. I have read some- where of a visit paid to Voltaire by an Italian gentleman, who re- cited 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. • Canta xn. st. 56. t Canto xviii. st. 143 1 Canto x-vii. st. 13. 334 ARIOSTO. Such is the poem which the gracious and good Cardinal Ippo- lito designated as a " parcel of trimpery." It had, indeed, to contend with more slights than his. Like all originals, it was obli- ged 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 du- ring their lives. Bembo was approached in a posture of adora- tion and fear ; the infamous Aretino extorted a fulsome letter of praises from the great and the learned."* 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 like- ly 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 tlie 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 Dthers at being mentioned at all ! These silly people thought it .aking too great a liberty ! The poor flies of a day did not know '.hat a god had taken them in hand to give them wings for eter- nity. Happily for them the names of most of these mighty per- sonages 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 Fiirioso of his, which pleases the vulgar :" " L' Ariosto Con quel Furwso suo che piace al volgo." •' His poem," adds Panizzi, " has the merit of not having pleased any body."f A suller. critic, Sperone (the same that afterwards • Essay, ag above, p. 531 t Boiardo arid Ariosto, vol. iv. p. SIS HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 335 plagued Tasso), was so disappointed at being left out, that he be- came the poet's bitter enemy. He talked of Ariosto taking him- self 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 goodnatured 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 wonder- ful."* The great Galileo knew Ariosto nearly by heart. t 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. * i^/e, ill Panizzi, p. ix. t Open di Galileo, Padova, 1744, vol. i. p. /sxii THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. Argument. Part I. — Angelica flies from the camp of Charlemagne into a wood, where Bhe meets with a number of her suitors. Description of a beautiful natura 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 Angehca 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 de- ■voured by an ore, 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 palax^e. whither Angehca comes too. She quits it, and again eludes her suitora. Paet II. — Cloridan and Medoro, two Moorish youths, after a battle witli 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. Me- doro, however, survives his friend, and is cured of his wounds by Angehca, 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. Part III. — ^When the lovers had quitted their abode in the wood, Orlando, by chance, arrived there, and saw every where, all round him, in-doors and out-of- doors, inscriptions of " Angehca and Medoro." He tries in vain to disbeheve his eyes ; finally, learns the whole story from the owner of the cottage, and loses his senses. What he did in that state, both in the neighbourhood and afei off, where he runs naked thiJUgh the country. His arrival among his brothel Paladins; and the result. THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. (continued by ariosto from boiardo.*) PART THE FIRST. ANGELICA AND HER SUITORS. Angelica, not at all approving her consignment to the care of Namo by Charlemagne, for the purpose of being made the prize of the conqueror, resolved to escape before the battle vi'ith the Pagans. She accordingly mounted her palfrey at once, and fled with all her might till she found herself in a wood. Scarcely had she congratulated herself on being in a place of refuge, when she met a warrior full armed, whom with terror she recognised to be the once-loved but now detested Rinaldo. He had lost his horse, and was looking for it. Angelica turned her palfrey aside instantly, and galloped whithersoever it chose to carry her, till she came to a river-side, where she fouad another of her suitors, Ferragus. She called loudly upon him for help. Rinaldo had recognised her in turn ; and though he was on foot, she knew he would be coming after her. Come after her he did. A fight between the rivals ensued ; and the beauty, taking advantage of it, again fled away — fled like the fawn, that, having seen its mother's throat seized by a wild beast, scours through the woods, and fancies herself every instant in the jaws of the monster. Every sweep of the wind in the trees — every shadow across her path — drove her with sudden ♦ See p. 33 of the present volume. ■HO THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. Starts into the wildest cross-roads ; for it made her feel as if Ri- naldo was at her shoulders.* Slackening her speed by degrees, she wandered afterwards she knew not whither, till she came, next day, to a pleajat t wood that was gently stirring with the breeze. There were two streams in it, which kept the grass always green ; and when you listened, you heard them softly running among the pebbles with a broken murmur. Thinking herself secure at last, and indeed feeling as if she were now a thousand miles off from Rinaldo — tired also with her long journey, and with the heat of the summer sun — she here determined to rest herself. She dismounted ; and having re- lieved her horse of his bridle, and let him wander away in tne fresh pasture, she cast her eyes upon a lovely natural bower, formed of wild roses, which made a sort of little room by the water's side. The bower beheld itself in the water ; trees en- closed it overhead, on the three other sides ; and in the middle was room enough to lie down on the sward ; while the whole was so thickly trellised with the leaves and branches, that the sun- beams themselves could not enter, much less any prying sight. The place invited her to rest ; and accordingly the beautiful creature laid herself down, and so gathering herself, as it were, together, wont fast asleep. f * " Fugge tra selve spaventose e scure, Per lochi inabitati, ermi e selvaggi. II mover de le frondi e di verzure Che di cerri sentia, d' olmi e di faggi, Fatto le avea con subite paure Trovar di qui e di li strani viaggi ; Ch' ad ogni ombra veduta o in monte o in valle Temea Rinaldo aver sempre alle spalle." Canto i. st. 33. t " Ecco non lungi un bel cespuglio vede Di spin fioriti e di vermiglie r6se, Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede, Chiuso dal Sol fra 1' alte quercie ombrose ; Cosi v6to nel mezo, che concede Fresca stanza fra 1' ombre piU nascose : E la foglie coi rami in modo fe mista, Che '1 Sol non v' entra, non che minor rista. THE AD (VENTURES OF ANGELICA. 341 She had not slept long when she was awakened by the tramp- ling of a horse ; and getting up, and looking cautiously through the trees, she perceived a cavalier, who dismounted from his steed, and sat himself down by the water in a melancholy pos- ture. It was Saoripant, king of Circassia, one of her lovers, wretched at the thought of having missed her in the camp of King Charles. Angelica loved Sacripant no more than the rest ; but, considering him a manof great conscientiousness, she thought he would make her a good protector while on her journey home. She therefore suddenly appeared before him out of the bower, like a goddess of the woods, or Venus herself, and claimed his protection. Never did a mother bathe the eyes of her son with tears of such exquisite joy, when he came home after news of his death in battle, as the Saracen king beheld this sudden appari- tion with its divine face and beautiful manners.* He could not help clasping her in his arms ; and very different intentions were coming into his head than those for which she had given him credit, when the noise of a second warrior thundering through the woods made him remount his horse and prepare for an en- counter. The stranger speedily made his appearance, a person- age of a gallant and fiery bearing, clad in a surcoat white as snow, with a white streamer for a crest. He seemed more bent on having the way cleared before him than anxious about the manner of it ; so couching his lance as he came, while Sacri- pant did the like with his, he dashed upon the Circassian with such violence as to cast him on the ground ; and though his own horse slipped at the same time, he had it up again in an instant Dentro letto vi fan tener' crbette, Ch' invitano a posar chi s' appresenta. La bella donna in mezo a quel si mettc ; Ivi si scorca, et ivi s' addormenta." St. 37 An exquisite picture ! * And how lovely is this ! " E fuor di quel cespuglio oscuro e cieco Fa di se bella et improvvisa mostra, Come di selva o fuor d' ombroso spcco • Diana in sccna, o Citerea si moatra,'^ &c. St. 52. 342 . THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. with his spurs ; and so, continuing his way, was a mile ofl' oe- fore the Saracen recovered from his astonishment. As the stunned and stupid ploughman, who has been stretcned by a thunderbolt beside his slain oxen, raises himself from the ground after the lofty crash, and looks with astonishment at the old pine-tree near him which has been stripped from head to foot, with just such amazement the Circassian got up from his down- fall, and stood in the presence of Angelica, who had witnessed it. Never in his life had he blushed so red as at that moment. Angelica comforted him in sorry fashion, attributing the dis- aster to his tired and ill-fed horse, and observing that his enemy had chosen to risk no second encounter ; but, while she was talk- ing, a messenger, with an appearance of great fatigue and anx- iety, came riding up, who asked Sacripant if he had seen a knight in a white surcoat and crest. " He has this instant," answered the king, " overthrown me, and galloped away. Who is he V " It is no he," replied the messenger. " The rider who has overthrown you, and thus taken possession of whatever glory you may have acquired, is a damsel ; and she is still more beautiful than brave. Bradamante is her illustrious name." And with these words the horseman set spurs to his horse, and left the Saracen more miserable than before. He mounted An- gelica's horse without a word, his own having been disabled ; and so, taking her up behind him, proceeded on the road in continued silence.* They had just gone a couple of miles, when they again heard a noise, as of some powerful body in haste ; and in a little while, a horse without a rider came rushing towards them, in golden trappings. It was Rinaldo's horse, Bayardo.f The Circassian, * How admirable is the suddenness, brevity, and force of this scene ! And it is as artful and dramatic as off-hand ; for this Amazon, Bradamante, is the fu- ture heroine of the warlilce part of the poem, and the beauty from whose mar- riage with Ruggiero is to spring the house of Este. Nor without her appear- ance at this moment, as Panizzi has shewn (vol. i. p. cvi.), could a variety of subsequent events have taken place necessary to the greatest interests of the story. All the previous pass^ires in romance about Amazons are nothing cjm- p^red with this flash of a thunderbolt. t From bayard, old French ; bay-colour. THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. 343 aismounting, thought to seize it, but was welcomed with a curvet, which made him beware how he hazarded something worse. The horse then went straight to Angelica in a way as caressing as a dog ; for he remembered how she fed him in Albracca at the time when she was in love with his ungracious master : and the beauty recollected Bayardo with equal pleasure, for she had need of him. Sacripant, however, watched his opportunity, and mounted the horse ; so that now the two companions had each a separate steed. They were about to proceed more at their ease, when again a great noise was heard, and Rinaldo himself was seen coming after them on foot, threatening the Saracen with furious gestures, for he saw that he had got his horse ; and he recognised, above all, in a rage of jealousy, the lovely face beside him. Angelica in vain implored the Circassian to fly with her. He asked if she had forgotten the wars of Albracca, and all which he had done to serve her, that thus she supposed him afraid of another battle. Sacripant endeavoured to push Bayardo against Rinaldo ; but the horse refusing to fight his master, he dismounted, and the two rivals encountered each other with their swords. At first they went through the whole sword-exercise to no effect ; but Rinaldo, tired of the delay, raised the terrible Fusberta,* and at one blow cut through the other's twofold buckler of bone and steel, and benumbed his arm. Angelica turned as pale as a criminal going to execution ; and, without farther waiting, galloped off through the forest, looking round every instant to see if Rinaldo was upon her. She had not gone far when she met an old man who seemed to be a hermit, but was in reality a magician, coming along upon an ass. He was of venerable aspect, and seemed worn out with age and mortifications ; yet, when he beheld the exquisite face before him, and heard the lady explain how it was she needed his assistance, even he, old as he really was, began to fancy himself a lover, and determined to use his art for the purpose of keeping his two rivals at a distance. Taking out a liook, and reading a little in it, there issued from the air a spirit in likeness of a ser- * His famous sword, vide p. ii7. 344 THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. vant, whom he sent to the two combatants with directions to give them a false account of Orlando's having gone off to France with Angelica. The spirit disappeared ; and the magician jour- neying with his companion to the sea-coast, raised another, who entered Angelica's horse, and carried her, to her astonishment and terror, out to sea, and sc round to some lonely rocks. There, to her great comfort at fira;, the old man rejoined her ; but his proceedings becoming very mysterious, and exciting her indigna- tion, he cast her into a deep sleep. It happened, at this moment, that a ship was passing by the rocks, bound upon a tragical commission from the island of Ebuda. It was the custom of that place to consign a female daily to the jaws of a sea- monster, for the purpose of averting the wrath of one of their gods ; and as it was thought that the god would be appeased if they brought him one of singular beauty, the mariners of the ship seized with avidity on the sleeping An- gelica, anS carried her off, together with the old man. The people of Ebuda, out of love and pity, kept her, unexposed to the sea-monster, for some days ; but at length she was bound to the rock where it was accustomed to seek its food ; and thus, in tears and horror, with not a friend to look to, the delight of the world expected her fate. East and west she looked in vain ; to the heavens she looked in vain ; every where she looked in vain. That beauty which had made King Agrican come from the Cas- pian gates, with half Scythia, to find his death from the hands of Orlando; that beauty which ha'd made King Sacripant forget both his country and his honour ; that beauty which had tarnished the renown and the wisdom of the great Orlando himself, and turned the whole East upside down, and laid it at the feet of loveliness, has now not a soul near it to give it the comfort of a word. Leaving our heroine a while in this condition, I must now tell you that Ruggiero, the greatest of all the infidel warriors, had been presented by his guardian, the magician Atlantes, with two wonderful gifls ; the one a shield of dazzling metal, which blinded and overthrew every one that looked at it ; and the other an ani- mal which combined the bird with the quadruped, and was called the Hippogriff, or grifHn-horse. It had the plumage, the wings, head, beak, and from;-legs ol' ■a griffin, and the rest like a horse. THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. 345 It was not made by enchantment, but was a creature of a natural kind found but very rarely in the Riphsean mountains, far on the other side of the Frozen Sea.* With these gifls, high mounted in the air, the young ward of , Atlantes was now making the grandest of grand tours. He had for some time been confined by the magician in a castle, in order to save him from the dangers threatened in his horoscope. From Ihis he had been set free by the lady with whom he was destined to fall in love ; he had then been inveigled by a wicked fairy into her tower, and set free by a good one ; and now he was on his travels through the world, to seek his mistress and pursue knight- ly adventures. Casting his eyes on the coast of Ebuda, the rider of the hippo-' griff beheld the amazing spectacle of the lady tied to the rook ; and struck with a beauty which reminded him of her whom he loved, he resolved to deliver her from a peril which soon became too manifest. A noise was heard in the sea ; and the huge monster, the Ore, appeared half in the water, and half out of it, like a ship which drags its way into port after a long and tempestuous voyage.f It seemed a huge mass without form except the head, which had * To richness and rarity, how luach is added by remoteness ! It adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it. t " Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro Mezo ascoso ne I' onda, e mezo sorto. Come sospinto suol da Borea o d' Ostro Venir lungo navilio a pigliar'porto." Canto X. St. 100. Improved from Ovid, Metamorph. lib. iv. 706: } " Ecce velut navis praefixo concita rostro Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis ; Sic fera," &c. As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce, Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar. Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose ; but Ariosto gives trie pon- derousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far as the combat is concerned, it mutated from Ovia's story of Perseus ani Andromeda. S46 THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. eyes sticiing out, and bristles like a boar. Ruggiero, who had dashed down to the side of Angelica, and attempted to encourage her in vain, now rose in the air ; and the monster, whose atten- tion was diverted by a shadow on the water of a couple of great wings dashing round and above him, presently felt a spear on his neck ; but only to irritate him, for it could not pierce the skin. In vain Ruggiero tried to do so a hundred times. The combat was of no more effect than that of the fly with the mastiff, when it dashes against his eyes and mouth, and at last comes once too often within the gape of his snapping teeth. The ore raised such a foam and tempest in the waters with the flapping of his tail, that the knight of the hippogriff hardly knew whether he was in •air or sea. He began to fear that the monster would disable the creature's wings ; and where would its rider be then ? He there- fore had recourse to a weapon which he never used but at the last moment, when skill and courage became of no service : he un- veiled the magic shield. But first he flew to Angelica, and put on her finger the ring which neutralized its effect. The shield blazed on the water like another sun. The ore, beholding it, felt it smite its eyes like lightning ; and rolling over its unwieldy body in the foam which it had raised, lay turned up, like a dead fish, insensible. But it was not dead ; and Ruggiero was so long in making ineffectual efforts to pierce it, that Angelica cried out to him for God's sake to release her while he had the opportunity, lest the monster should revive. " Take me with you," she said ; " drown me ; any thing, rather than let me be food for this horror." The knight released her instantly. He set her behind him on the winged horse, and in a few minutes was in the air, transport- ed with having deprived the brute of his delicate supper. Then, turning as he went, he imprinted on her a thousand kisses. He had intended to make a tour of Spain, which was not far off; but he now altered his mind, and descended with his prize into a love- ly spot on the coast of Brittany, encircled with oaks full of night- ingales, with here and there a solitary mountain. It was a little green meadow with a brook.* Ruggiero look- ed about him with transport, and was preparing to disencumber * " Sul lito un hosco era di querce ombrose, Dove ogn' or par che Filomena piagna : THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. 347 himself of his hot armour, when the blushing beauty, casting her eyes downwards, beheld on her finger the identical magic ring which her father had given her when she first entered Christen- dom, and which had delivered her out of so many dangers. If put on the finger only, it neutralized all enchantment ; but put into the mouth, it rendered the wearer invisible. It had been stolen from her, and came into the hands of a good fairy, who gave it to Ruggiero, in order to deliver him from the wiles of a oad one. Falsehood to the good fairy's friend, his own mistress Bradamante, now rendered him unworthy of its possession ; and at the moment when he thought Angelica his own beyond re- demption, she vanished out of his sight. In vain he knew the secret of the ring, and the possibility of her being still present — the certainty, at all events, of her not being very far off. He ran hither and thither like a madman, hoping to clasp her in his arms, and embracing nothing but the air. In a little while she was dis- tant far enough ; and Ruggiero, stamping about to no purpose in a rage of disappointment, and at length resolving to take horse, perceived he had been deprived, in the mean time, of his hippogrifT. It had loosened itself from the tree to which he had tied it, and taken its own course over the mountains. Thus he had lost horse, ring, and lady, all at once.* Pursuing his way, with contending emotions, through a valley between lofty woods, he heard a great noise in the thick of them. He rushed to see what it was ; and found a giant combating with Ch' in mezo avea un piatel^con una fonte, E quinci e quindi \ui solitario monte. Q,mvi il bramoso cavalier ritenne L' audace-corso, e nel pratel discese.' St. 113. What a landscape ! and what a charm beyond painting he has put into it with his nightingales ! and then what figures besides ! A knight on a winged steed descending with a naked beauty into a meadow in the thick of woods, with " here and there a solitary mountain." The mountains make no formal circle ; they keep their separate distances, with their various intervals of light and shade. And what a heart of solitude is given to the meadow by the loneliness of these its waiters aloof! * Nothing can be more perfectly wrought up than this sudden change of cir- cumstances. 348 THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. a young knight. The giant got the better of the knight ; and having cast him on the ground, unloosed his helmet for the pur- pose of slaying him, when Ruggiero, to his horror, beheld in the youth's face tliat of his unworthily-treated mistress Bradamante. He rushed to assault her enemy ; but the giant, seizing her in his arms, took to his heels ; and the penitent lover followed hirri with all his might, but in vain. The wretch was hidden from his eyes by the trees. At length Ruggiero, incessantly pursuing him, issued forth into a great meadow, containing a noble man- sion ; and here he beheld the giant in the act of dashing through the gate of it with his prize. The mansion was an enchanted one, raised by the anxious old guardian of Ruggiero for the purpose of enticing into it both the youth himself, and all from whom he could experience danger in the course of his adventures. Orlando had just been brought there by a similar device, that of the apparition of a knight car- rying off Angelica ; for the supposed Bradamante was equally a deception, and the giant no other than the magician himself. There also were the knights Ferragus, and Brandimart, and Grandonio, and King Sacripant, all searching for something they had missed. They wandered about the house to no purpose ; and sometimes Ruggiero heard Bradamante calling him ; and sometimes Orlando beheld Angelica's face at a window.* At length the beauty arrived in her own veritable person. She was again on horseback, and once more on the look-out for a knight who should conduct her safely home — whether Orlando or Sacripant she had not determined. The same road which had brought Ruggiero to the enchanted house having done as much for her, she now entered it invisibly by means of the ring. Finding both the knights in the place, and feeling under the necessity of coming to a determination respecting one or the other, * To feel the complete force of this picture, a reader should have been in the South, and beheld the like sudden apparitions, at open windows, of ladies looking forth in dresses of beautiful colours, and with faces the most interesting. I re- member a vision of tliis sort at Carrara, on a bright but not too hot day (I fancied that the marble mountains there cooled it). It resembled one of Titian's wo- men, with its broad shoulders, and boddice and sleeves differently coloured from the petticoat ; and seemed literally framed in the unsEished window. Mat I am digressing. THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. 340 Angelica made up her mind in favour of King Sacripant, whom she reckoned to be more at her disposal. Contriving therefore to meet him by himself, she took the ring out of her mouth, and suddenly appeared before him. He had hardly recovered from his amazement, when Ferragus and Orlando himself came up ; and as Angelica now was visible to all, she took occasion to de- liver them from the enchanted house by hastening before them into a wood. They all followed of course, in a frenzy of anx- iety and delight ; but the lady being perplexed with the presence of the whole three, and recollecting that she had again obtained possession of her ring, resolved to trust her safe conduct to invis- ibility alone ; so, in the old fashion, she left them to new quarrels DV suddenly vanishing from their eyes. She stopped, neverthe- less, a while to laugh at them, as they all turned their stupified races hither and thither ; then suffered them to pass her in a blind thunder of pursuit ; and so, gently following at her leisure on the same road, took her way towards the East. It was a long journey, and she saw many places and people, and was now hidden and now seen, like the moon, till she came one day into a forest near the walls of Paris, where she beheld a youth lying wounded on the grass, between two companiojs that were dead. PART n. 350 THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA PART THE SECOND. ANGELICA AND MEDOllO. Now, in order to understand who the youth was that Angelica found lying on the grass between the two dead companions, and how he came to be so lying, you must know that a great battle had been fought there between Charlemagne and the Saracens, in which the latter were defeated, and that these three people be- longed to the Saracens. The two that were slain were Dardinel, king of Zuniara, and Cloridan, one of his followers ; and the wounded survivor was another, whose name was Medoro. Clo- ridan and Medoro had been loving and grateful servants of Dar- dinel, and very fast friends of one another ; such friends, indeed, that on their own account, as well as in honour of what they did for their master, their history deserves a particular mention. They were of a lowly stock on the coast of Syria, and in all the various fortunes of their lord had shewn him a special at- tachment. Cloridan had been bred a huntsman, and was the robuster person' of the two. Medoro was in the first bloom of youth, with a complexion rosy and fair, and a most pleasant as well as beautiful countenance. He had black eyes, and hair that ran into curls of gold ; in short, looked like a very angel from heaven. These two were keeping anxious watch upon the trenches of the defeated army, when Medoro, unable to cease thinking of the master who had been left dead on the field, told his friend that he could no longer delay to go and look for his dead body, and bury it. " You," said he, " will remain, xnd so be able to do justice to my memory, in case I fail." Cloridan, though he delighted in this proof of his friend's noble-heartedness, did all he could to dissuade him from so peril- THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. 351 ous an enterprise ; but Medoro, in the fervour of his gratitude for benefits conferred on him by his lord, was immovable in his deter- mination to die or to succeed ; and Cloridan, seeing this, deter- mined to go with him. They took their way accordingly out of the Saracen camp, and in a short time found themselves in that of the enemy. The Christians had been drinking over-night for joy at their victory, and were buried in wine and sleep. Cloridan halted a moment, and said in a whisper to his friend, " Do you see this ? Ought 1 to lose such an opportunity of revenging our beloved master ? Keep watch, and I will do it. Look about you, and listen on every side, while I make a passage for us among these sleepers with my sword." Without waiting an answer, the vigorous huntsman pushed into the first tent before him. It contained, among other occu- pants, a certain Alpheus, a physician and caster of nativities, who had prophesied to himself a long life, and a death "in the bosom of his family. Cloridan cautiously put the sword's point in his throat, and there was an end of his dreams. Four other sleepers were despatched in like manner, without time given them to utter a syllable. After them went another, who had en- trenched himself between two horses ; then the luckless Grill, who had made himself a pillow of a barrel which he had emp- tied. He was dreaming of opening a second barrel, but, alas, was tapped himself. A Greek and a German followed, who had been playing late at dice ; fortunate, if they had continued to do so a little longer ; but they never counted a throv/ like this among their chances. By this time the Saracen had grown ferocious with his bloody work, and went slaughtering along like a wild beast among sheep. Nor could Medoro keep his own sword unemployed ; but he dis- dained to strike indiscriminately — he was choice in his victims. Among these was a certain Duke La Brett, who had his lady fast asleep in his arms. Shall I pity them ? That will I not. Sweet was their fated hour, most happy their departure ; for, embraced as the sword found them, even so, I believe, it dismissed them into the other world, loving and enfolded. Two brothers were slain next, sons of the Count of Flanaers, 353 THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. and newly-made valorous knights. Charlemagne had seen them turn red with slaughter in the field, and had augmented their coat of arms with his lilies, and promised them lands beside in Friesland. And he would have bestowed the lands, only Medoro ibrbade it. The friends now discovered that they had approached the quarter in which the Paladins kept guard about their sovereign. They were afraid, therefore, to continue the slaughter any fur- ther ; so they put up their swords, and picked their way cau- tiously through the rest of the camp into the field where the battle had taken place. There they experienced so much difiiculty in the search for their master's body, in consequence of the horrible mixture of the corpses, that they might have searched till the perilous return of daylight, had not the moon, at the close of a prayer of Medoro's, sent forth its beams right on the spot where the king was lying. Medoro knew him by his cognizance, argent and gules. The poor youth burst into tears at the sight, weeping plentifully as he approached him, only he was obliged to let his tears flow without noise. Not that he cared for death — at that moment he would gladly have embraced it, so deep was his af- fection for his lord ; but he was anxious not to be Hindered in his pious office of consigning him to the earth. The two friends took up the dead king on their shoulders, and were hasting away with the beloved burthen, when the white, ness of dawn began to appear, and with it, unfortunately, a troop of horsemen in the distance, right in their path. It was Zerbino, prince of Scotland, with a party of horse. He was a warrior of extreme vigilance and activity, and was reiurn- ing to the camp after having been occupied all night in pursuing such of the enemy as had not succeeded in getting into their en- trenchments.* * Ariosto elsewhere represents him as the handsomest man in the world ; sav- ' tig of him, in a line that has become famous, " Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa." Canto X. St. 84. — Nature made him, and then broke the mould. (The word is generally printed ruppe; bu; I use the primitive text of Mr. Pan- THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. 353 " My friend," exclaimed tlie huntsman, " we must e'en take to our heels. Two living people must not be sacrificed to one who IS dead." With these words he let go his share of the burden, taking for granted tnat the friend, whose life as well as his own he was thinking to secure, would do as he himself did. But attached as Cloridan had been to his mastei*, Medoro was far more so. He accordingly received the whole burden on his shoulders. Clori- dan meantime scoured away, as fast as feet could carry him, thinking his companion was at his side : otherwise he would soon- er have died a hundred times over than have left him. In the interim, the party of the Scottish prince had dispersed themselves about the plain, for the purpose of intercepting the two fugitives, whichever way they went ; for they saw plainly they were enemies, by the alarm they shewed. There was an old forest at hand in those days, which, besides being thick and dark, was full of the most intricate cross-paths, and inhabited only by game. Into this Cloridan had plunged. Medoro, as well as he could, hastened after him ; but hampered as he was with his burden, the more he sought the darkest and most intricate' paths, the less advanced he found himself, especial- ly as he had no acquaintance with the place. On a sudden, Cloridan having arrived at a spot so quie-t that he became aware of the silence, missed his beloved friend. " Great God !" he exclaimed, " what have I done ? Left, him I know not where, or how !" The swift runner instantly turned about, and, retracing his steps, came voluntarily back on tht? road to his own death. As he approached the scene where it was to take place, he began to hear the noise of men and horses ; then he discern- ed voices threatening ; then the voice of his unhappy friend ; and at length he saw him, still bearing .his load, in the midst of the whole troop of horsemen. The prince was commanding them to seize him. The poor youth, however, burdened as he was, rendered it no such easy matter ; for he turned himself about like a wheel, and entrenched himself, now behind this tree, and now nizzi's edition.) Boiarilo's handsomest man, Astolfo, was an Englishman ; Ari- osto's is a Scotchman. See, in the present volume, the note on the charactt,! of Astolfo, p. 23. 354 THE ADVENTURE-i OF ANGELICA. behind that. Finding this would not do, he laid his beloved bur. den on the ground, and then strode hither and thither, over and round about it, parrying the horsemen's endeavours to take him prisoner. N ever did poor hunted bear feel more conflicting emo- tions, when, surprised in her den, she stands over her oflspi'ing with uncertain heart, groaning with a mingled sound of tenderness and rage. Wrath bids her rush forward, and bury her nails in the flesh of their enemy ; love melts her, and holds her back in the middle of her fury, to look upon those whom she bore.* Cloridan was in an agony of perplexity what to do. He longed to rush forth and die with his friend ; he longed also still to do what he could, and not to let him die unavenged. He therefore halted a while before he issued from the trees, and, putting an arrow to his bow, sent it well-aimed among the horsemen. A Scotsman fell dead from his saddle. The troop all turned to see * " Come orsa, che 1' alpestre cacciatore Ne la pietrosa tana assalita abbia, Sta sopra i figli con incerto core, E freme in suono di pieti e di rabbia : Ira la 'nvita e natural furore A spiegar 1' ugne, e a insanguinar le labbia ; " Amor la 'ntenerisce, e la rltira A riguardare a i figli in mezo 1' ira." Like as a bear, whom men in mountains start In her old stony den, and dare, and goad, Stands o'er her children with uncertain heart, And roars for rage and sorrow in one mood : Anger iinpels her, and her natural part, To use her nails, and bathe her lips in blood ; Love melts her, and, for all her angry roar. Holds back her eyes to look on those she bore. This stanza in Ariosto has become famous as a beautiful transcript of a beautiftil passage in Statius, which, inde«d, it surpasses in style, but not in feeling, d»- pecially when we consider with whom the comparison originates : " Ut lea, quam saevo foetam pressere cubUi Venantes Numidaj, natos erecta superstat Mente sub incerta, torvum ac miserabile frendens: lUa quidem turbare globos, et frangere morsu Tela queat ; sed prolis amor crudeUa vincit Pectora, et in media catulos circumspicit ira." Thebais, x. 414. THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. 355 whence the arrow came ; and as they were raging and crying out, a second stuck in the throat of the loudest. " This is not to be borne," cried the prince, pushing his horse towards Medoro ; " you shall suffer for this." And so speaking, he thrust his hand into the golden looks of the youth, and dragged him violently backwards, intending to kill him ; but when he looked on his beautiful face, he couldn't do it. The youth betook himself to entreaty. " For God's sake, sir knight !" cried he, " be not so cruel as to deny me leave to bury my lord and master. He was a king. I ask nothing for myself — ^not even my life. I do not care for my life. I care for noth- ing but to bury my lord and master." ' These words were spoken in a manner so earnest, that the good prince could feel nothing but pity ; but a ruffian among the troop, losing sight even of respect for his lord, thrust his lance into the poor youth's bosom right over the prince's hand. Zer- bino turned with indignation to smite him, but the villain, seeing what was coming, galloped off; and meanwhile Cloridan, think- ing that his friend was slain, came leaping full of rage out of the wood, and laid about him with his sword in mortal desperation. Twenty swords were upon him in a moment ; and perceiving life flowing out of him, he let himseir fall down by the side of his friend.* * This adventure of Cloridan and Medoro is imitated from the Nisus and Euiyalus of Virgil. An Italian critic, quoted by Panizzi, says, that the way in which Cloridan exposes himself to the enemy is inferior to the Latin poet's famous I " Me, me (adsum qui feci), in me convertite ferrum." Me, me ('tis I who did the deed), slay me. And the reader will agree with Panizzi, that he is right. The circumstance, also, of Euryalus's bequeathing his aged mother to the care of his prince, in case he fiiils in his enterprise, is very touching ; and the main honour, both of the invention of the whole episode and its particulars, remains with Virgil. On the other hand, the enterprise of the friends m the Italiaii poet, which ia that of burying their dead master, and not meiely of communicating with an absent general, is more affecting, though it may be less patriotic ; the inabihty of Zerbino to kill him, when he looked on his face, is extremely so ; and, as Panizzi has shewn, the adventure is made of importance to the whole story ot the poem, and is not simply an episode, like that in the jEneid. It serves, too in a very particular manner to introduce Medoro w orthily to the alTection of S56 THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. The Scotsmen, supposing both the friends to be dead, now tooK their departure ; and Medoro indeed would have been dead before long, he bled so profusely. But assistance of a very unusual sort was at hand. A lady on a palfrey happened to be coming by, who observed signs of life in him, and was struck with his youth and beauty. She was attired with great simplicity, but her air was that of a person of high rank, and her beauty inexpressible. In short, if. was the proud daughter of the lord of Cathay, Angelica herself. Finding that she could travel in safety and independence by means of the magio ring, her self-estimation had risen to such a height, that she disdained to stoop to the companionship of the greatest man living. She could not even call to mind that such lovers as the County Orlando or King Sacripant existed : and it mortified her beyond measure to think of the affection she had entertained for Rinaldo. "Such arrogance," thought Love, "is not to be endured." The little archer with the wings put an arrow to his bow, and stood waiting for her by the spot where Medoro lay. Now, when the beauty beheld the youth lying half dead with his wounds, and yet, on accosting him, found that he lamented less for himself than for the unburied body of the king his mas- ter, she felt a tenderness unknown before creep into every par- ticle of her being ; and as the greatest ladies of India were ac- customed to dress the wounds of their knights, she bethought her of a balsam which she had observed in coming along ; and so, looking about for it, brought it back with her to the spot, together with a herdsman whom she had met on horseback in search of one of his stray cattle. The blood was ebbing so fast, that the poor youth was on the point of expiring ; but Angelica bruised the plant between stones, and gathered the juice into her delicate hands, and restorea his strength with infusing it into the wounds ; so that, in a little while, he was able to get on the horse belong- ing to the herdsman, and be carried away to the man's cottage. He would not quit his lord's body, however, nor that of his Angelica ; for, mce female though she be, we should hardly have gone along with her passion as we do, in a poem of any seriousness, had it been founded merely on his beauty. 'THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. 367 f friend, till he had seen them laid in the ground. He then went with the lady, and she took up her abode with him in tje cottage, and attended him till he recovered, loving him more and more day by day ; so that at length she fairly told him as much, and he loved her in turn ; and the king's daughter married the lowly, born soldier. O County Orlando ! O King Sacripant ! That renowned val- our of yours, say, what has it availed you ? That lofty honour, tell us, at what price is it rated ? What is the reward ye have obtained for all your services ? Shew us a single courtesy which the lady ever vouchsafed, late or early, for all that you ever suf- fered in her behalf. O King Agrican ! if you could return to life, how hard would you think it to call to mind all the repulses she gave you — all the pride and aversion and contempt with which she received your advances ! O Ferragus ! O thousands of others too numerous to speak of, wbo performed thousands of exploits for this ungrateful one, what would you all think at beholding her in the arms of the courted boy ! Yes, Medoro had the first gathering of the kiss off the lips of Angelica — those lips never touched before — that garden of roses on the threshold of which nobody ever yet dared to venture. The love was headlong and irresistible ; but the priest was called in to sanctify it ; and the brideswoman of the daughter of Cathay was the wife of the cottager. The lovers remained upwards of a month in the cottage. An gelica could not bear her young husband out of her sight. She was for ever gazing on him, and hanging on his neck. In-doors and out-of-doors, day as well as night, she had him at her side. In the morning or evening they wandered forth along the banks of some stream, or by the hedge-rows of some verdant meadow. In the middle of the day they took refuge from the heat in a grotto that seemed made for lovers ; and wherever, in their wan- derings, they found a tree fit to carve and write on, by the side of fount or river, or even a slab of rock soft enough for the pur pose, there they were sure to leave their names on the bark or marble; so that, what « i*h the inscriptions in-doors and out-of 8* 358 THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA.' doors (for the walls of the cottage displayed them also), a visitor of the place could not have turned his eye in any direction with- out seeing the words " ANGELICA AND MEDORo" written in as many different ways as true-lovers' knots could run.* Having thus awhile enjoyed themselves in the rustic solitude, the Queen of Cathay (for in the course of her adventures in Christendom she had succeeded to her father's crown) thought it time to return to her beautiful empire, and complete the triumph of love by crowning Medoro king of it. She took leave of the cottagers with a princely gift. The islanders of Ebuda had deprived her of every thing valuable but a rich bracelet, which, for some strange, perhaps supersti- tious, reason, they left on her arm. This she took off, and made a present of it to the good couple for their hospitality ; and so bade them farewell. The bracelet was of inimitable workmanship, adorned with gems, and had been given by the enchantress Morgana to a favourite youth, who was jescued from her wiles by Orlando. The youth, in gratitude, bestowed it on his preserver ; and the hero had humbly presented it to Angelica, who vouchsafed to accept it, not because of the giver, but for the rarity of the gifl. The happy bride and bridegroom, bidding farewell to France, proceeded by easy journeys, and crossed the mountains into Spain, where it was their intention to take ship for the Levant. Descending the Pyrenees, they discerned the ocean in the dis- * Canto xix. st. 34, &c. AH the world have felt this to be a true picture of first love. The inscription may be said to be that of every other pair of lovers that ever existed, who knew how to write their names. Hovf musical, too, are the words " Angelica and Medoro!" Boiardo invented the one ; Arir^sto found the match foi: it. One has no end to the pleasure of repeatincr them. All hail to the moment when I first became aware of their existence more than fifty years ago, in the house of the gentle artist Benjamin West ! (Let the reader indulge me with this recollection.) I sighed with plea- sure to look on them at that time; I sigh now, with far more pleasure than pain, to look back on them, for they never come across me but with delight . and poetry is a world in which nolhing beautiful ever thoroughly forsakes us. THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. 359 tance, and had now reached the coast, and were proceeding by the water-side along the high road to Barcelona, when they beheld a miserable-looking creature, a madman, all over mud and dirt, lying naked in the sands. He had buried himself half inside them for shelter from the sun ; but having observed the lovers as they came along, he leaped out of his hole like a dog, and came raging against them. But, before I proceed to relate who this madman was, I must return to the cottage which the two lovers had occupied, and recount what passed in it during the interval between their bid- ding it adieu and their arrival in this place. 3110 THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. PART THF. THIRD. THE JEALOUSY OF ORLANDO. DuRiNS the course of his search for Angelica, the County Orlando had just restored two lovers to one another, and was pur- suing a Pagan enemy to no purpose through a wild and tangled wood, when he came into a beautiful spot by a' river's side, which tempted him to rest himself from the heat. It was a small meadow, full of daisies and butter-cups, and surrounded with trees. There was an air abroad, notwithstanding the heat, whicli made the shepherds glad to sit without their jerkins, and receive the coolness on their naked bodies : even the hard-skinned cattle were glad of it ; and Orlando, who was armed cap-a-pie, was delighted to take off his helmet, and lay aside his buckler, and repose awhile in the midst of a scene so refreshing. Alas ! if was the unhappiest moment of his life. Casting his eyes around him, while about to get off his horse, he observed a handwriting on many of the trees which he thought he knew. Riding up to the trees, and looking more closely, he was sure he knew it ; and in truth it was no other than that of his adored mistress Angelica, and the inscription one of those numerous inscriptions of which I have spoken. The spot was one of the haunts of the lovers while they abode in the shep. herd's cottage. Wherever the County turned his eyes, he be- lield, tied together in true-lovers' knots, nothing but the words " ANGELICA AND MEDOEO." All the trees had them — his eyes could see nothing else ; anc every letter was a dagger that pierced his heart. The unhappy lover tried in vain to disbelieve what he saw THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. 3G1 He endeavoured to compel himself to think that it was some other Angelica who had written the words ; but he knew the hand- writing too well. Too often had he dwelt upon it, and made himself familiar with every turn of the letters. He then strove to fancy that " Medoro" was a feigned name, intended for him- self; but he felt that he was trying to delude himself, and thai the more he tried, the bitterer was his conviction of the truth. He was like a bird fixing itself only the more deeply in the lime in which it is caught, by struggling and beating its wings. Orlando turned his horse away in his anguish, and paced it towards a grotto covered with vine and ivy, which he looked into. The grotto, both outside and in, was full of the like inscriptions. ■It was the retreat the lovers were so fond of at noon. Their names were written on all sides of it, some in chalk and coal,* others carved with a knife. The wretched beholder got off his horse and entered the grotto. The first thing that met his eyes was a larger inscription in the Saracen lover's own handwriting and tongue — a language which the slayer of the infidels was too well acquainted with. The words were in verse, and expressed the gratitude of the " poor Medoro," the writer, for having had in his arms, in that grotto, the beautiful Angelica, daughter of King Galafron, whom so many had loved in vain. The writer invoked a blessing on every part of it, its shades, its waters, its flowers, its creeping plants ; and entreated every person, high and low, who should chance to visit it, particularly lovers, that they would bless the place like- wise, and take care that it was never polluted by foot of herd. Thrice, and four times, did the unhappy Orlando read thess \vords, trying always, but in vain, to disbelieve what he saw. Every time he read, they appeared plainer and plainer ; and every time did a cold hand seem to be wringing the heart in hi5 bosom. At length he remained with his eyes fixed on the stone, seeing nothing more, not even the stone itself. He felt as if his wits were leaving him, so abandoned did he seem of all comfort. * " Scritti, qual con carbone e qual con gesso.'' Canto xxiii. st. 106. Ariosto did not mind soiling the beautiful fingers of Angelica with coal anfl chalk. He knew that Love did not mind it. 362 THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. Let those imagine what he felt who have experienced the same emotions — who know, by their own sufferings, that this is the grief" which surpasses all other griefs. His head had fallen on his bosom ; his look was deprived of all confidence ; he could not even speak or shed a tear. His impetuous grief remained within him by reason of his impetuosity — like water which attempts to rush out of the narrow-necked bottle, but which is so compressed as it comes, that it scarcely issues drop by drop. Again he endeavoured to disbelieve his eyes — ^to conclude that somebody had wished to calumniate his mistress, and drive her lover mad, and so had done his best to imitate her handwriting. With these sorry attempts at consolation, he again took horse, the sun having now given way to the moon, and so rode a little onward, till he beheld smoke rising out of the tops of the -.trees, and heard the barking of dogs and the lowing of cattle. By these signs he knew that he was approaching a village. He en- tered it, and going into the first house he came to, gave his horse to the care of a youth, and was disarmed, and had his spurs of gold taken off, and so went into a room that was shewn him with- out demanding either meat or drink, so entirely was he filled with his sorrow. Now it happened that this was the very cottage into which Medoro had been carried out of the wood by the loving Angelica. There he had been cured of his wounds — there he had been loved and made happy — and there, wherever the County Orlando turned his eyes, he beheld the detested writing on the walls, the windows, the doors. He made no inquiries about it of the people of the house : he still dreaded to render the certainty clearer than he would fain suppose it. But the cowardice availed him nothing ; for the host seeing him unhappy, and thinking to cheer him, came in as he was get- ting into bed, and opened on the subject of his own accord. It was a story he told to every body who came, and he was accus- tomed to have it admired ; so with little preface he related all the particulars to his new guest — how the youth had been left for dead on the field, and how the lady had found him, and had him brought to the cottage — sa i iiow she fell in love with him as ho grew well — and how she could be content with nothing but mar THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. 3G3 ryiiig him, though she was daughter of the greatest king of the East, and a queen herself. At the conclusion of his narrative, the good man produced the bracelet which had been given him by Angelica, as evidence of the truth of all that he had been saying. This was the final stroke, the last fatal blow, given to the poor hopes of Orlando by the executioner. Love. He tried to conceal his misery, but it was no longer to be repressed ; so finding the tears rush into his eyes, he desired to be alone. As soon as the man had retired, he let them flow in passion and agony. In vain , he attempted to rest, much less to sleep. Every part of the bed appeared to be made of stones and thorns. At length it occurred to him, that most likely they had slept in that very bed. He rose instantly, as if he had been lying on a serpent. The bed, the house, the herdsman, every thing about the place, gave him such horror and detestation, that, without waiting for dawn, or the light of moon, he dressed himself, and went forth and took his horse from the stable, and galloped on- wards into the middle of the woods. There, as soon as he found himself in the solitude, he opened all the flood-gates of his grief, and gave way to cries and outcries. But he still rode on. Day and night did Orlando ride on, weeping and lamenting. He avoided towns and cities, and made his bed on the hard earth, and wondered at himself that he could weep so long. " These," thought he, " are no tears that are thus poured forth. They are life itself, the fountains of vitality ; and I am weeping and dying both. These are no sighs that I thus eternally exhale. Nature could not supply them. They are Love himself storming in my heart, and at once consuming me and keeping me alive with his miraculous fires. No more — no more am I the man I seem. He that was Orlando is dead and buried. His ungrate- ful mistress has slain him. I am but the soul divided from his body — doomed to wander here in this misery, an example to those that put their trust in love." For the wits of the County Orlando were going ; and he wan- 'ered all night round and round in the wood, till he came back to e grotto whee"3 Medoro had wi itteu his triumphant verses. Mad- 364 THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. ness then indeed fell upon him. Every particle cf his being seemed torn up with rage and fury ; and he drew his mighty sword, and hewed the grotto and the writing, till the words flew in pieces to the heavens. Woe to every spot in the place in which were written the names of " Angelica and Medoro." Woe to the place itself: never again did it afford refuge from the heat of day to sheep or shepherd ; for not a particle of it remained as it was. With arm and sword Orlando defaced it all, the clear and gentle fountain included. He hacked and hewed it inside aud out, and cut down the branches of the trees that hung over it, and tore away the ivy and the vine, and rooted up great bits of earth and stone, and filled the sweet water with the rubbish, so that it was never clear and sweet again ; and at the end of his toil, not having sat- isfied or being able to satisfy his soul with the excess of his vio- lence, he cast himself on the ground in rage and disdain, and lay groaning towards the heavens. On the ground Orlando threw himself, and on the ground he remained, his eyes fixed on heaven, his lips closed in dumbness ; and thus he continued for the space of three days and three nights, till his frenzy had mounted to such a pitch, that it turned against himself. He then arose in fury, and tore off mail and breastplate, and every particle of clothing from his body, till hu- manity was degraded in his heroical person, and he became na- ked as the beasts of the field. In this condition, and his wits quite gone, sword was forgotten as well as shield and helm ; and he tore up fir-tree and ash, and began running through the woods. The shepherds hearing the cries of the strong man, and the crashing of the boughs, came hastening from all quarters to know what it was ; but when he saw them he gave them chase, and smote to death those whom he reached, till the whole country was up in arras, though to no pur- pose ; for they were seized with such terror, that while they threatened and closed after him, they avoided him. He entered cottages, and tore away the food from the tables ; and ran up the craggy hills and down into the valleys ; and chased beasts as well as men, tearing the fawn and the goat to pieces, and stuffing their flesh into his stomach with fierce will. Raging and scouring onwards in this manner, he arrived one THE ADVENTURES OP ANGELICA. 365 day at a bridge over a torrent, on which the fierce Rodomont had fixed himself for the purpose of throwing any one that attempted to pass it into the water. It was a very narrow bridge, with scarcely room for two horses. But Orlando took no heed of its narrowness. He dashed right forwards against man and steed, and forced the champion to wrestle with him on foot ; and, wind- ing himself about him with hideous strength, he leaped backwards with him into the torrent, where he left him, and so mounted the opposite bank, and again rushed over the country. A more ter- rible bridge than this was in his way — even a precipitous pass of frightful height over a valley ; but still he scoured onwards, throwing over it the agonised passengers that dared, in their ig- norance of his strength, to oppose him ; and so always rushing and raging, he came down the mountains by the sea-side to Bar- celona, where he cast his eyes on the sands, and though!, in his idiot mind, to make himself a house in them for coolness and re- pose ; and so he grubbed up the sand, and laid himself down in it : and this was the terrible madman whom Angelica and Medo- ro saw looking at them as they were approaching the city. Neither of them knew him, nor did he know Angelica ; but, with an idiot laugh, he looked at her beauty, and liked her, and came horribly towards her to carry her away. Shrieking, she put spurs to her horse and fled ; and Medoro, in a fury, came af- ter the pursuer and smote him, but to no purpose. The great madman turned round and smote the other's horse to the ground, and so renewed his chase after Angelica, who suddenly regained enough of her wits to recollect the enchanted ring. Instantly she put it into her lips ana disappeared ; but in her hurry she fell from her palfrey, and Orlando forgot her in the instant, and, mounting the poor beast, dashed off with it over the country till it died : and so at last, after many dreadful adventures by flood ana field, he came running into a camp full of his brother Paladins, who recognised him with tears ; and, all joining their forces, sue ceeded in pulling him down and binding him, though not without many wounds ; and by the help of these friends, and the special grace of the apostle St. John (as will be told in another place), the wits of the champion of the church were restored, and he be- J66 THE ADVENTURES OF ANGELICA. came ashamed of that passion for an infidel beauty which the heavenly powers had thus resolved to punish. But Angelica and Medoro pursued the rest of their journey in peace, and took ship on the coast of Spain for India ; and there she crowned her bridegroom King of Cathay. The description of Orlando's jealousy and growing madness is reckoned one of the finest things in Italian poetry ; and very fine it surely is — as strong as the hero's strength, and sensitive as the heart of man. The circumstances are heightened, one after the other, with the utmost art as well as nature. There is a scriptural awfulness in the account of the hero's becoming naked ; and tho violent result is tremendous. I have not followed Orlando into his feats ot ultra-supernatural strength. The reader requires to be prepared for them by the whole poem. Nor are they necessary, I think, to the production of the best efiect ; perhaps would hurt it in an age unaccustomed to the old romances. ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON i^rgnmeni. The Paladin Astolfo ascends on the hippogriff to tlie top of one of the moun- tains at the source of the Nile, called the Mountains of the Moon, where he discovers the Terrestrial Paradise, and is welcomed by St. John the Evangelist. The Evangelist then conveys him to the Moon itself, where he is shewn all the things that have been lost on earth, among which is the Reason of Orlando, who had been deprived of it for loving a Pagan beauty. Astolfo is favoured with a singular discourse by the Apostle, and is then presented with a vial con- taining the Reason of his great brother Paladin, which he conveys to earth. ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON When the hippogrifF loosened itself from the tree to which Ruggiero had tied it in the beautiful spot to which he descended with Angelica,* it soared away, like the faithful creature it was, 10 the house of its own master, Atlantes the magician. But not long did it remain there — no, nor the house itself, nor the magi- cian ; for the Paladin Astolfo came with a mighty horn given him by a greater magician, the sound of which overthrew all such abodes, and put to flight whoever heard it ; and so the house of Atlantes vanished, and the enchanter fled ; and the Paladin took possession of the griffin-horse, and rode away with it on farther adventures. , One of these was the deliverance of Senapus, king of Ethiopia, from the visitation of the dreadful harpies of old, who came in- festing his table as they did those of jEneas and Phineus. Astol- fo drove them with his horse towards the sources of the river Nile, in the Mountains of the Moon, and pursued them with the hip- pogrifF till they entered a great cavern, which, by the dreadful cries and lamentings that issued from the depths within it, the Paladin discovered to be the entrance from earth to Hell. The daring Englishman, whose curiosity was excited, resolved to penetrate to the regions of darkness. " What have I to fear ?" thought he ; " the horn will assist me, if I want it. I'll drive the triple-mouthed dog out of the way, and put Pluto and Satan to fligbt."t Astolfo tied the hippc5griff to a tree, and pushed forward in spite of a smoke that, grew thicker and thicker, ofTending his eyes and nostrils. It became, however, so exceedingly heavy * See p. 116. t /riosto is here irnit?'ing Pulti, and bearding Dante. See vol. i. p. 200. saa ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON. and noisome, that he found it would be impossible to complete his enterprise. Still he pushed forward as far as he could, especially as he began to discern in the darkness something that appeared to stir with an involuntary motion. It looked like a dead body which has hung up many days in the rain and sun, and is waved unsteadily by the wind^ It turned out to be a condemned spirit in this first threshold of Hell, sentenced there, with thousands of others, for having been cruel and false in love. Her name was Lydia, and she had been princess of the country so called.* Anaxarete was among them, who, for her hard-heartedness, be- came a stone ; and Daphne, who now discovered how she had erred in making Apollo " run so much ;" and multitudes of other women ; but a far greater number of men — men being worthier of punishment in oifences of love, because women are proner to believe. Theseus and Jason were among them ; and Amnon, the abuser of Tamar ; and he that disturbed the old kingdom of Latinus."!" Astolfo would fain have gone deeper into the jaws of Hell, but the smoke grew so thick and palpable, it was impossible to move a step farther. Turning about, therefore, he regained the entrance ; and having refreshed himself in a fountain hard by, and r* mounted the hippogriff, felt an inclination to ascend as high as he possibly could in the air. The excessive loftiness of the moun- tain above the cavern made him think that its top could be at no great distance from the region of the Moon ; and accordingly he pushed his horse upwards, and rose and rose, till at length he * I know of no story of a cruel Lydia but the poet's own mistress of that name, whom I take to be the lady here "shadowed forth." See Life, p. 114. t The story of Anaxarete is in Ovid, lib. xiv. Every body knows that of Daphne, who made Apollo, as Ariosto says, "run so much" (correr tanto). Theseus and Jason are in hell, as deserters of Ariadne and Medea ; Amnon, for the atrocity recorded in the Bible (2 Samuel, ehap. xiii.) ; and .Eneas for inter- fering with Turnus and Lavinia, and taking possession of places he had no right to. It is delightful to see the great, generous poet going upon grounds of reason and justice in the teeth of the trumped-up rights of the "pious .Eneas," that shabby deserter of Dido, and canting prototype of Augustus. He turns the tables, also, with brave candour, upon the tyrannical claims of the stronger sex to privileges which they deny the other; and says, that there are more laithless men in Hell than faithless women ; wliich, if personal infidelity fcnda people there, most undoubtedly is the case beyond all comparison. ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON. 371 found himself on its table-land. It exhibited a region of celestial beauty. The flowers were like beds of precious stones for col- our and brightness ; the grass, if you could have brought any to earth, would have been found to surpass emeralds ; and the trees, whose leaves were no less beautiful, were in fruit and flower at once. Birds of as many colours were singing in the branches ; the murmuring rivulets and dumb lakes were more limpid than crystal : a sweet air was for ever stirring, which reduced the warmth to a gentle temperature ; and every breath of it brought an odour from flowers, fruit-trees, and herbage all at once, which nourished the soul with sweetness.* In the middle of this lonely plain was a palace radiant as fire. Astolfo rode his horse round about it, constantly admiring all he saw, and filled with increasing astonishment ; for he found that the dwelling was thirty miles in circuit, and composed of one entire carbuncle, lucid and vermilion. What became of the boasted wonders of the world before this ? The world itself, in the comparison, appeared but a lump of brute and fetid matter.f As the Paladin approached the vestibule, he was met by a venerable old man, clad in a white gown and red mantle, whose beard descended on his bosom, and whose aspect announced him as one of the elect of Paradise. It was St. John the Evangelist, who lived in that mansion with Enoch and Elijah, the only three mortals who never tasted death ; for the place, as the saint in- formed him, was the Terrestrial Paradise ; and the inhabitants were to live there till the angelical trumpet announced the com- ing of Christ " on the white cloud." The Paladin, he said, had * " Che di soavita. 1' alma notriva" is beautiful ; but the passage, as a whole, is not well imitated from the Terrestria Paradise of Dante. It is not bad in itself, but it is very inferior to the one tha' suggested it. See vol. i. p. 122, &c. Ariosto's Terrestrial Paradise was at home, among the friends who loved him, and whom he made happy. t This is better; and the house made of one jewel thirty miles in circuit is an extravagance that becomes reasonable on reflection, affording a just idea of what might be looked for among (he endless planetary wonders of Natate, which confound all our relative ideas of size and splendour. The " lucid -ver- milion" of a structure so enormous, and under a sun so pure, presents a goi- geous spectacle to the imagination. Dante himself, if he could have forgiven the poet his animal spirits and views of the Moon so different from his own, ^ might have stood in admiration before an abode at once so luscious and so vast 372 ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON. been allowed to visit it, by the favour of God, for the purpose of fetching avcay to earth the lost vi'its of Orlando, which the cham- pion of the Church had been deprived of for loving a Pagan, and which had heen attracted out of his brains to the neighbouring sphere, the Moon. Accordingly, after the new friends had spent two days in dis- course, and meals had been served up, consisting of fruit so exquisite that the Paladin could not help thinking our first parents had some excuse for eating it,* the Evangelist, when the Moon arose, took him into the car which had borne Elijah to heaven ; and four horses, redder than fire, conveyed them to the lunar world. The mortal visitant was amazed to see in the Moon a world re- sembling his own, full of wood and water, and containing even cities and castles, though of a different sort from ours. It was strangi. to find a sphere so large which had seemed so petty afar off; and no less strange was it to look down on the world he had left, and be compelled to knit his brows and look sharply before he could well discern it, for it happened at the time to want light.f But his guide did not leave him much time to look about him. He conducted him with due speed into a valley that contained, in one miraculous collection, whatsoever had been lost or wasted on earth. I do not speak only (says the poet) of riches and domin- ions, and such like gratuities of Fortune, but of things also which Fortune can neither grant nor resume. Much fame is there which Time has withdrawn — infinite prayers and vows which are made to God Almighty by us poor sinners. There lie * " De' fratti a lui del Paradiso diero, Di tal sapor, ch' a suo giudizioj sanza Scusa non sono i due primi parenti, Se pur quei fur si poco ubbidienti." Canto xxxiv. st. 60. f Moaern astronomers differ very much both with Dante's and Ariosto's ftloon; nor do the "argent fields" of Milton appear bettor placed in our mys- terious satellite, with its no-atmosphere and no-water, and its tremendous preci- pices. It is to be hoped (and believed) that knowledge will bo best for us -all in the end; for it is not always so bv the wav. It displaces beautiful igno- ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON. 373 tne tears and the sighs of lovers, the hours lost in pastimes, the leisures of the dull, and the intentions of the lazy. As to desires, they are so numerous that they shadow the whole place. Astolfo went round among the different heaps, asking what they were. His eyes were first struck with a huge one of bladders which seemed to contain mighty sounds and the voices of multi- tudes. These he found were the Assyrian and Persian monarch- ies, together with those of Greece and Lydia.* One heap was nothing but hooks of silver and gold, which were the presents, it seems, made to patrons and great men in hopes of a return. Another consisted of snares in the shape of garlands, the manu- facture of parasites. Others were verses in praise of great lords, all made of crickets which had burst themselves with singing. Chains of gold he saw theire, which were pretended and unhappy love-matches ; and eagles' claws, which were deputed authorities ; and pairs of bellows, which were princes' favours ; and over- turned cities and treasuries, being treasons and conspiracies ; and serpents with female faces, that were coiners and thieves ; and all sorts of broken bottles, which were services rendered in misera- ble courts. A great heap of overturned soupf he found to be alms to the poor, which had been delayed till the giver's death. He then came to a great mount of flowers, which once had a sweet smell, but now a mo-st rank one. This (with submission) was the present which the Emperor Constantine made to good Pope Sylvester.:; Heaps of twigs he saw next, set with bitd- * Very fine and scornful, 1 think, this. Mighty monarchies reduced tu actual bladders, which, little too as they were, contained big sounds, t Such, I suppose, as was given at convent-gates. { The pretended gift of the palace ef St. John Lateran, the foundation i I the pope's temporal sovereignty. This famous passage was quoted and trai • lated by Milton. " Di varii fieri ad un gran monte passa Ch' ebbe gik buon odore, or putia forte, ^uesto era il done (se perO dir lece) Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece." Canto xxxiv. st. 80 The lines were not so bold in the first edition. Tliey stood thus ; " Ad un TM nte di rose e gigli passa, Ch' ebbe git. buon odore, or putia forte, PART IT. 9 374 ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON. lime, which, dear ladies, are your charms. In short there was no end to what he saw. Thousands and thousands would not complete the list. Every thing was there which was to be met with on earth except folly in the raw material, for that is never exported.* There he beheld some of his own lost time and deeds ; and yet, if nobody had been with him to make him aware of them, never would he have recognised them as his.f They then arrived at something, which none of us ever prayed God to bestow, for we fancy we possess it in superabundance ; yet here it was in greater quantities than any thing else in the place — I mean, sense. It was a subtle fluid, apt to evaporate if not kept closely ; and here accordingly it was kept in vials of greater or less size. The greatest of them all was inscribed with the fol- lowing words : " The sense of Orlando." Others, in like manner, exhibited the names of the proper possessors ; and among them the frank-hearted Paladin beheld the greater portion of his own. But what more astonished him, was to see multitudes of the vials Ch' era corrotto ; e da Giovanni intese, Che fu im gran don ch' un gran signor inal spese." " He came to a mount of lilies and roses, that once had a sweet smell, but now stank with corruption ; and he vmderstood from John that it was a great gift which a great lord ill expended." The change of these Unes to the stronger ones in the third edition, as they now stand, served to occasion a charge against Ariosto of having got his privi- lege of pubhcation from the court of Rome for passages which never existed, and which he afterwards basely introduced ; but, as Panizzi observes, the third edition had a privilege also; so that the papacy put its hand, as it were, to these very lines. This is remarkable; and doubtless it would no^ have oc- curred in some other ages. The Spanish Inquisition, for instance, erased it, though the holy brotherhood found no fault with the story of Giocondo. * " Sol la pazzia non v' 6, poca nfe assai ; Che sta qua, giii, n& se ne parte mai." St. 78. t Part of this very striking passage is well translated by Harrington , " He saw some of his own lost time and deeds. And yel he knew them not to be his own." I have heard these lines nore than once repeated with touching earnestneiis by Charles Lamb. ASTOLPO'S JOURNEV TO THE MOON. 375 almost full to the stopper, which bore the names of men whom ha had supposed to enjoy their senses in perfection. Some had lost them for love, others for glory, others for riches, others for hopes from great men, others for stupid conjurers, for jewels, for paint- ings, for all sorts of whims. There was a heap belonging to sophists and astrologers, and a still greater to poets.* Astolfo, with leave of the " writer of the dark Apocalypse," took possession of his own. He had but to uncork it, and set it under his nose, and the wit shot up to its place at once. Turpin acknowledges that the Paladin, for a long time afterwards, led the life of a sage man, till, unfortunately, a mistake which he made lost him his brains a second time.f The Evangelist now presented him with the vial containing the wits of Orlando, and the travellers quitted the vale of Lost Trea- sure. Before they returned to earth, however, the good saint shewed his guest other curiosities, and favoured him with many a sage remark, particularly on the subject of poets, and the neglect of them by courts. He shewed him how foolish it was in princes and other great men not to make friends of those who can immoi-- talise them ; and observed, with singular indulgence, that crimes themselves might be no hindrance to a good name with posterity, if the poet were but feed well enough for spices to embalm the criminal. He instanced the cases of Homer and Virgil. " You are not to take for granted," said he, "that Mneas was so pious as fame I'eports him, or Achilles and Hector so brave.. Thousands and thousands of warriors have excelled them ; but their descendants bestowed fine houses and estates on great wri- ters, and it is from their honoured pages that all the glory has pro- ceeded. Augustus was no such religious or clement prince as the trumpet of Virgil has proclaimed him. It was his good taste in poetry that got him pardoned his iniquitous proscription. Nero himself might have fared as well as Augustus, had he possessed as much wit. Heaven and earth might have been his enemies to * Readers need not have the points of this exquisite satire pointed out lo them. In noticing it, I only mean to enjoy it in their company — particularly the passage about the men accounted wisest, and the emphatic " I mean, sense" (lo dico, il senno). t Admirable lesson to frailty 376 ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON, no purpose, had he known how to keep friends with good authors. Homer makes the Greeks victorious, the Trojans a poor set, and Penelope undergo a tliousand wrongs rather than be unfaithful to lier husband ; and yet, if you would have the real truth of the matter, the Greeks were beaten, and the Trojans the conquerors, and Penelope was a .* See, on the other hand, what infamy has become the portion of Dido. She was honest to her heart's core ; and yet, because Virgil was no friend of hers, she is look- ed upon as a baggage. " Be not surprised," concluded the good saint, " if I have ex- pressed myself with warmth on this subject, I love writers, and look upon their cause as my own, for I was a writer myself when I lived among you ; and I succeeded so well in the vocation, that time and death will never prevail against me. Just therefore is it, that I should be thankful to my beloved Master, who procured me so great a lot. I grieve for writers who have fallen on evil times — men that, with pale and hungry faces, find the doors of courtesy closed against all their hardships. This is the reason there are so few poets now, and why nobody cares to study. Why should he study ? The very beasts abandon places where there is nothing to feed them." At these words the eyes of the blessed old man grew so inflam- ed with anger, that they sparkled like two fires. But he presently suppressed what he felt ; and, turning with a sage and gracious smile to the Paladin, prepared to acoompan)' him back to earth with his wonted serenity. He accordingly did so in the sacred car : and Astolfo, after re ceiving his gentle benediction, descended on his hippogriff from the mountain, and, joining the delighted Paladins with the vial, his wits were restored, as you have heard, to the noble Orlando. The figure which is here cut by St. John gives this remarkable satire a most remarkable close. His association of himself with the fraternity of authors was * I do not feel warranted in injurmg the strength of the term here made use of by the indignant apostle, and yet am withheld from giving it in all its force by the delicacy, real or false, of the times. I must therefore leave it to be sup- phed by the reader according Id the requirements of his own feelings. ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON. 377 thought J, little " strong" by Ariosto's contemporaries. The lesson read to the house of Este is obvious, and could hardly have been pleasant to men reputed to be such "criminals" themselves. Nor can Ariosto, in this passage, be reck- oned a very flattering or conscientio';> pleader for his brother-poets. Resent- ment, and a good jest, seemed to have conspired to make hmi forget what was due to himself The original of St. John's remarks about Augustus and the ancient poeti must not be omitted. It is exquisite of its kind, both in matter and etyls^ Voltaire has quoted it somewhere with rapture. " Non fu si santo n6 benigno Augusto Come la tuba di Virgilio suona : L' aver avuto in poesia buon gusto Jja proscrizion iniqua gli perdona. Nessun sapna se Neron fosse ingiusto, Nb sua fama saria forse men buona, Avesse avuto e terra e ciel nimici, Se gli scrittor sapea tenersi amici. Omero Agamennon vittorioso, E fe' i Trojan parer vili et inerti; E che Penelopea fida al suo sposo Da i prochi miUe oltraggi avea sofferti ; E, se tu vuoi che '1 ver non ti sia ascoso, Tutta al contrario 1' istoria convarij : I ;ae i Greci citti, e che Ti t& vj m « E che Penelopea fu meieUice. Da 1' altra parte odi che fama lascia Elissa, ch' ebbe il cor tanto pudico; Che riputata viene una bagascia, Solo perchfe Maron non le fu amico." Canto XXXV. st. % ARIODANTE ANJO OINEYKA PART III. ^rgnment. The Diike of Albany, pretending to be in love with a dam?el in the service of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the damsel, in his revenge, to personite Ginevra in a balcony at night, and so make her lover bejieve that she is fal*3. Ariodante, deceived, disappears from court. News is brought of his death ; and his brother Ltircanio publicly denounces Ginevra, who, accord- ing to the laws of Scotland, is sentenced to death for her supposed lawless passion. Lurcanio then challenges the unknown paramour (for the duke's face had not been discerned in the balcony) ; and Ariodante, who is not dead, is fighting him in disguise, when the Paladin Rinaldo comes up, discloses the whole affair, and slays the tleeeiver. ARIODANTE AND GINEVEA.* Charlemagne had suffered a great defeat at Paris, and the Paladin Rinaldo was sent across the Channel to ask succours of the King of England ; but a tempest arose ere he could reach the coast, and drove him northwards upon that of Scotland, where he found himself in the Caledonian Forest, a place famous of old for knightly adventure. Many a clash of arms had been heard in its shady recesses — many great things had been done there by knights from all quarters, particularly the Tristans and the Launcelots, and the Gawains, and others of the Round Table of King Arthur. Rinaldo, bidding the ship await him at the town of Berwick, plunged into the forest with no other companion than his horse Bayardo, seeking the wildest paths he could find, in the hope of some strange ad venture, f He put up, for the first day, at an abbey which was accustomed to entertain the knights and ladies that journeyed that way ; and after availing himself of its hospi- tality, he inquired of the abbot and his monks if they could direct him where to find what he looked for. They said that plenty of adventures were to be met with in the forest ; but that, for the * The main point of this story, the personation of Glnevra 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 Perrara, and in Ariosto's own time. Was Ariosto himself a party % " Ario- dante" almost includes his name ; and it is certain that he was once in love with a lady of the name of Ginevra. t 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 J and in one respect it is so. We may imagine, how- ever, that the ship is wind-bound, and that ho meant to return to it on change of weather. The Caledonian Forest, it is to be observed, if close at hand. 383 ARIODANTE ANTV GINEVRA. most part, they remained in as much obscurity as the spots in which they occurred. It would be more becoming his valour, they thought, to exert itself where it would not be hidden ; and they concluded with telling him of one of the noblest chances for renown that ever awaited a sword. The daughter of their king was in need of a defender against a certain baron of the name of Lurcanio, who sought to deprive her both of life and reputatior.. He accused her of having been found in the arms of a lover with- out the license of the priest ; which, by the laws of Scotland, was a crime only to be expiated at the stake, unless a champion could be found to disprove the charge before the end of a month. Un- fortunately the month had nearly expired, and no champion yet made his appearance, though the king had promised his daiaghter's hand to anybody of noble blood who should establish her inno- cence ; and the saddest part of the thing was, that she was ac- counted innocent by all the world, and a very pattern of modesty. While this horrible story was being told him, the Paladin fell into a profound state of thought. After remaining silent for a lit- tle while, at the close of it he looked up, and said, " A lady then, it seems, is condemned to death for having been too kind to one lover, while thousands of our sex are playing the gallant with whomsoever they please, and not only go unpunished for it, but are admired ! Perish such infamous injustice ! The man was a madman who made such a law, and they are little better who maintain it. I hope in God to be able to shew them their error." The good monks agreed, that their ancestors were very un- wise to make such a law, and kings very wrong who could, but would not, put an end to it. So, when the morning came, they speeded their guest on his noble purpose of fighting in the lady's behalf. A guide from the abbey took him a short cut through the forest towards the place where the matter was to be decided ; but, before they arrived, they heard cries of distress in a dark quarter of the forest, and, turning their horses thither to see what it was, they observed a damsel between two vagabonds, who were standing over her with drawn swords. The moment the wretches saw the new comer, they fled ; and Rinaldo, after re-assuring the damsel, and requesting to know what had brought her to a pass BO dreadful, made his guide take her '::p on his horse behind him ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. 383 In order that they might lose no more time. The damsel, who was very beautiful, could not speak at first, for the horror of what she had expected to undergo ; but, on Rinaldo's repeating his request, she at length found words, and, in a voice of great humility, began to relate her story. But before she begins, the poet interferes with an impatient re- mark. — " Of all the creatures in existence," cries he, " whether they be tame or wild, whether they are in a state of peace or of war, man is the only one that lays violent hands on the female of his species. The bear offers no injury to his ; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion ; the heifer has no fear of the hoi'ns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind ? Hus- band and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some- times with bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow him- self to give a blow to a woman, or to hurt even a hair of her head, is a violater of nature, and a rebel against God ; but to poison her, to strangle her, to take the soul out of her body with a knife, — he that can do that, never will I believe him to be a man at all, but a fiend out of hell with a man's face."* Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo, and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony for ever. But to return to what she was going to say. — " You are to know, sir," she began, " that I have been from my childhood in the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with her ; \ was held in honour, and I led » 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 vrith 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 ™lenc<3 is most probably owing (at least in excessive cases) to some unnatiiral condition of circumstances. 384 ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. a happy life, till it pleased the cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that there was no being on earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the prin- cess regarded as most exclusively her own ; for there she kept her jewels, and there she was accustomed to sleep during inclem- ent states of the weather. It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which looked out to some lonely ruins ; and nobody ever passed that way, day or night. " Our intercourse continued for several months ; and, finding that I placed all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day a design he had upon the princess's hand ; nay, did not blush to ask my assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own, when I confess that I under- took to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer to fhe princess's than to mine ; and he pretended that he sought the alliance mere- ly on that account ; protesting that he should love me more than" ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name. But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please him. " Day and night I, exerted all my endeavours to recommend him to the princess. Heaven is my witness that I did it in real earnest, however wrong it was. But my labour was to no pur- pose, for she was in love herself. She returned in all its warmth the passion of a most accomplished and valiant gentleman, wlio had come into Scotland with a j'ounger brother from Italy, and who had made himself such a favourite with every body, my lover included, that the king himself had bestoWed on hi^n titles and estates, and put him on a footing with the greatest lords of the land. " Unfortunately, the princess not only turned a deaf ear to al I said in the duke's favour, but grew to dislike him in proportion to my recommendation ; so that, finding there was no likelihood of his success, his own love was secretly turned into hate and rage. He studied, little as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect of happiness. He resorted, for ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. 385 this purpose, to a most crafty expedient, which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in reality ; and, in order to indulge this whim, he' requested me to dress my- self in the identical clothes which the princess put off when she went to bed that night, and then to appear in them at my usual post in the balcony, and so let down the ladder as though I were her very self, and receive him into my arms. " I did all that he desired, mad fool that I was ; and out of the part which I played has come all this mischief. I have intimated to you that the duke and Ariodante (for such was the other's name) had been good friends before Ginevra preferred him to ray false lover. Pretending therefore to be still his friend, and entering on the subject of a passion which he said he had long en- tertained for her, Ife expressed his wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if he pleased, might have ocular testimony. " Greatly astonished at this news was Ariodante. He had re- ceived all the proofs of his mistress's affection which it was pos- sible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest scorn re- fused to believe it ; but as the duke, with the air of a man who could not help the melancholy communication, quietly persisted in his story, the unhappy lover found himself compelled, at any ; ate, to let him afford those proofs of her infidelity which he as- serted to be in his power. The consequence was, that Ariodante came with his brother to the ruins I spoke of j and there the two were posted on the night when I played my unhappy part in the balcony. He brought Lurcanio with him (that was the brother's name), because he suspected that the duke had a design on his life, not conceiving what he alleged against Ginevra to be possible. Lurcanio, however, was not in the secret of his brother's engage- ment with the princess. It had been disclosed hitherto neither to him nor to any one, the lady not yet having chosen to divulge it to the king himself. Ariodante, therefore, requested his brother to take his station at a little distance, out of sight of the palace 386 IRIODANTE AND GINEVRA. and not to come to him unless he should call : ' otherwise, my dear brother,' concluded he, ' stir not a step, if you love me.' " ' Doubt me not,' said Lurcanio ; and, with these words, the latter entrenched himself in his post. " Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony, — ^the only person visible at that moment in all the place. In a few minutes the Duke of Albany appeared below it, making the sig- nal to which I had been accustomed ; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes of both, and let down the ladder. " Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mys- terious situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little distance ; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely houses, perceived all that was going on. " I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which the princess had put off that night ; and as I was not unlike her in air and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her very self. The duke impa- tiently mounted the ladder ; I received him as impatiently in my arms ; and circumstances, though from very diiferent feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour. " You may imagine the grief of Ariodante. It rose at once to despair. He did not call out ; so that, had not his brother followed him, still worse would have ensued than did ; for he drew his sword, and was proceeding in distraction to fall upon it, when Lurcanio rushed in and stopped him. 'Miserable brother!' ex- claimed he, ' are you mad ? Would you die for a woman like this ? You see what a wretch she is. I discern all your case at once, and, thank God, have preserved you to turn your sword where it ought to be turned, against the defender of such a pat- tern of infamy." " Ariodante put up his sword, and suffered himself to be led away by his brother. He even pretended, in a little while, to be able to review his condition calmly, but not the less had he se- cretly resolved to perish. Next day he disappeared, nobody knew whither ; and about eight days afterwards, news was se ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. 387 cretly brought to Ginevra, by a pilgrim, that he had thrown Hm- self from a headland into the sea. " ' I met him by chance,' said the pilgrim, ' and we happened to be standing on the top of the headland, conversing, when he cried out to me, ' Relate to the princess what you beheld on part- ing from me ; and add, that the cause of it was my having seen too much. Happy had it been for me had I been blind !' And with these words,' concluded the pilgrim, ' he leaped into the sea below, and was instantly buried beneath it.' " The princess turned as pale as death at this story, and for a while remained stupified. But, alas ! what a scene was it my fate to witness, when she found herself in her chamber at night, able to give way to her misery. She tore her clothes, and her very flesh, and her beautiful hair, and kept repeating the last words of her lover with amazement and despair. The disappearance of Ariodante, and a rumour which trans- pired of his having slain himself on account of some hidden an- guish, surprised and afflicted the whole court. But his brother Lurcanio evinced more and more his impatience at it, and let fall the most terrible words. At length he entered the court when the king was holding one of his fullest assemblies, and laid open, as he thought, the whole matter ; setting forth how his unhappy brother had secretly, but honourably, loved the princess ; how she had professed to love him in return ; and how she had grossly deceived him, and played him impudently false before his own eyes. He concluded with calling upon her unknown paramour to come forth, and shew reasons against him with his sword why she ought not to die. " I need not tell you what the king suffered at hearing this strange and terrible recital. He lost no time in sharply investi- gating the truth of the allegation ; and for this purpose, among other proceedings, he sent for the ladies of his daughter's cham- ber. You may judge, sir, — especially as, I blush to say it, I still loved the Duke of Albany, — that I could not await an examina- tion like that. I hastened to meet the duke, who was as anxious to get me out of the way as I was to go ; and to this end profess- ing the greatest zeal for my security, he commissioned two men to convey me secretly to a fortress he possessed in this forest. 2* a88 ARIODANTE VM U GINEVRA. Tis at no gieat distance from the place where Heaven sent you to my deliverance. You saw, sir, hov little those wretches in- tended to take me anywhere except to my grave ; and by this you may judge of the agonies and shame I have endured in know. ino- what a dupe I have been to one of the cruelest of men. But thus it is that Love treats his most faithful servants." The damsel here concluded her story ; and the Paladin, re- joicing at having become possessed of all that was required to establish the falsehood of the duke, proceeded with her on his road to St. Andrews, where the lists had been set up for the determi- nation of the question. The king and his court were anxiously praying at that instant for the arrival of some champion to fight with the dreaded Lurcanio ; for the month, as I have stated, was nearly expired, and this terrible brother appeared to have the bu- siness all his own way ; so that the stake was soon to be looked ■ for at which the hapless Ginevra was to die. Fast and eagerly the Paladin rode for St. Andrews, with his squire and the trembli.ig (la nsjl, Mht Wi.s low agitated for new reasons, though the knight gave her assurances of nis protection. They were not far from the city when they found people talking of a champion who had certainly arrived, but whose name was unknown, and his face constantly concealed by his visor. Even his own squire, it seems, did not know him ; for the man had but lately been taken into his service. Rinaldo, as soon as he entered the city, left the damsel in a place of security, and then spurred his horse to the scene of action, when hefound the accu- ser and the champion in the very midst of the fight. The Pala- din, whose horse, notwithstanding the noise of the combat, had been heard coming like a tempest, and whose sudden and heroical appearance turned all eyes towards him, rode straight to the royal canopy, and, begging the king to stop the combat, disclosed the whole state of the matter, to the enchantment of all present, ex- cept the Duke of Albany ; for the villain himself was on horse- back there in state as grand constable, and had been feasting his miserable soul with the hope of seeing Ginevra condomned. The combatants were soon changed. Instead of Lurcanio and the un- known champion (whom the new comer had taken care to extol for his generosity), it was the Paladin and the Uuke that weie op- ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. 38? posed, and hr>^-ibly did the latter's heart fail him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short work of him, took his static i with fierce delight ; and at the third sound of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished when life forsook him. Rinaldo then took off his own helmet ; and the king, who had seen the great Paladin before, and who felt more rejoiced at his daugh- ter's deliverance than if he had lost and regained his crown, lifted up his hands to heaven, and thanked God for having honoured her innocence with so illustrious a defender. The other champion, who, in the mean time, had been looking on through the eyelets of his visor, was now entreated to disclose his own face. He did so with pecuiiar emotion, and king and all recognised with transport the face of the loved, and, as it was supposed, lost Ariodante. The pilgrim, however, had told no falsehood. The lover had indeed thrown himself into the sea, and disappeared from the man's eyes ; but (as oftener happens than people suppose) the death which was desired when not present became hated when it was so ; and Ariodante, lover as he was, rising at a little distance, struck out lustily for the shore, and reached it.* He felt even a secret contempt for his attempt to kill himself; yet putting up at an hermitage, became interested m the reports concerning the princess, whose sorrow flattered, and whose danger, though he could not cease to think her guilty, af flicted him. He grew exasperated with the very brother he loved when he found that Luroanio pursued her thus to the death ; anc on all these accounts he made his appearance at the place of com bat to fight him, though not to slay. His purpose was to seek his own death. He concluded that Ginevra would then see who it was that had really loved her, while his brother would mourn the rashness which made him pursue the destruction of a woman. * This is quite in Ariosto's high and bold taste for truth under all circumstan les. A less great and unmisgiving Doet would have had the lover picked up bv a fisherman. 390 ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA. " Guilty she is," thought he, " but no such guilt can deserve so cruel a punishment. Besides, I could not bear that she should die before me. She is still the woman I love, still the idol of my thoughts. Right or wrong, Lmust die in her behalf." With this intention he purchased a suit of black armour, and obtained a squire unknown in those parts, and so made his ap- pearance in the lists. What ensued there I need not repeat ; but the king was so charmed with the issue of the whole business, with the resuscitation of the favourite whom he thought dead, and the restoration of the more than life of his beloved daughter, that, to the joy of all Scotland, and at the special instance of the great Paladin, he made the two lovers happy without delay ; and the bride brought her husband for dowry the title and estatos of tlie man who had wronged him. SUSPICION. SUSPICION." It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the worl'd 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 merce- nary, taking care of isone but himself when he sees the wolf coming ; he is the right good shepherd, staking his own life in that of his ilock, 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 • 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 re- spects 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 sev- eral 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 m 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 un- likely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's. 394 SUSPICION. m 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 virtuej they at least are not as bad as they would l)e 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 jus- tice, 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, noi* 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 infiicter 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 h'ght. His name is Suspicion.* 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 free- dom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants are * A tremend )us fancy this last ! " Sta lor 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 lor giacque, Di tormentarle mai nan rimanea." SUSPICION. 395 in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal re- venge 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 {)eards ; 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 in- mates 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 tne 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 Rhada- manthus said, " I must put this fellow into other quarters." Ac- cordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the torments are beyond all others. Nevertheless, even here he seemed to be under no distress. A.t 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 con- clusion, that the man should be sent back to earth, and consigned to the torments of suspipiqn for ever, . He went j and the earthly fiend re-entered his being anew with 398 SUSPICION. 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 barricade, 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 ; foi they warn, as far as warning can do good, and they neither afSict humanity nor degrade God. Spenser has imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry ; for, by a curious inter- mixture 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 hve 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 wretck 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 lookfed 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, jind him assailing, sore his carcass tear, That hardly he away with life djes fly. Nor stays till safe himself he sec fVom jeopardy. STJSPICIO.V. 397 Nor stay'd he till he came unto the place Where late his treasure he entombfed had j 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 lurkfed in his wounded miiui. 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 dreadfiilly. 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-damnfed spright. That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight. But Ihrough long anguish and self-murd'ring thought He was so wasted and forpinfed quite. That all his substance was consumed to nought. And nothing lefl; but like an airy sprite ; That on the rocks he fell so flit and light. That he thereby received no hurt at all ; But chancfed 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 ; 398 SUSPICION. 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, hut dying lives. And doth himself with sorrow new vostain, That death and hfe 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 pnvy grief and horror«vain, Ts waxen so deformed, that he has qmte Forgot he was a w>i, srd JtalouBy is h^bt." Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's; but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special circum- stances. 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 Aiiosto'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 Uiat all ia secure. li^ABELLA ISABELLA. R'lDOMONT, 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 mor- tified by the publicity of the rejection before his own lord para- mount, 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 sopne of warfare and re- turn to Africa ; and, in the coarse of :As jju.Tiey thither, he had come into the south of France, where, observing a sequestered spot that suited his humour, he 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 o£ 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, * The ingenious martyrdom in this story, which has been 1x)Id by other wri- ters of fiction, is taken from an alleged fact related in Barbaro's treatise De Me 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 1 But the colouring of Ariosto's narration is peculiarly his own j and his apostrophe at the close beautiful. 402 ISABELLA. who spared the life of Medoro, and who now hinwelf lay dead under that pall. He had expired in her arms from wounds in- flicted 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 mo- ment 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 with- out 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 cahnly oppos&d all which the other asserted. ISABELLA. 463 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 bet- ter ; 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 oif 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 perish- ed in consequence of not knowing how to swim, in spite of the prayers and tears that he addressed to Heaven ; others again af- firm, 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 somewhat 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 cdTin- try 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 possi- ble 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 arma: but the question was, how she could protect her- «elf from the pagan's violence, before she had secured the means FART in. 3 404 ISABELLA. 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 scarcel; a soul on earth but herself." She then told him the secret ; which consisted in the prepara- tion 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 forthwith, 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 miracu- lous herb, still, however, attended by the Saracen, who woiild 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, — Ro- domont 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 ISABELLA. 405 convinced how much in earnest I have been. You shall see all the virtue of this blessed preparation. I have only to bathe my. self 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 re- suit." 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 cf 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, thou soul blessed and bf autiful. If any words of mine could have force m them sufii- ci .nt to endure so long, hard would I labour to give them all the w yrthiness that art can bestow, so that the world might rejoice in tb f name for thousands and thousands of years. Go in peace, ai i4 take thy seat in the skies, and be an example to womankind oi 'aith beyond all weakness. TASSO: yfrittcal Notice of f)is £ife anb <3m\ae. CRITICAL NOTICE TASSO'S LIFE AND GENIUS.* The romantic poetry of Italy having risen to its highest and apparently its most lawless pitch in the Orlando Furioso, a re- action took place in the next age in the Jerusalem Delivered. It did not hurt, however, the popularity of Ariosto. It only in- creased the number of poetic readers ; and under the auspices, * My authorities for this notice are, Blacli's Life of Tusso (2 \o;ii. 4to, 1810), his original, Serassi, Vita di Tor(juaio Tasso (do. 1790), and the works of the poet in the Pisan edition of Professor Rosini (33 vols. 8vo, 1832). I have been Indebted to nothing in Black which I have not ascertained by reference to the Italian biographer, and quoted nothing stated by Tasso himself but from the works. Black's Life, which is a free version of Serassi's, modified by the translator's own opinions and criticism, is elegant, industrious, and interesting. .Serassi's was the first copious biography of the poet founded on original docu- ments ; and it deserved to be translated by Mr. Black, though servile to the house of Este, and, as might be expected, far from being always ingenuous. Among other instances of this writer's want of candour is the fact of his having been the discoverer and suppressor of the manuscript review of Tasso by Gali- leo. The best summary account of the poet's Ufe and writings which I have met with is Gingu^n^'s, in the fifth volume of his Histoire Litteraire, &c. It is written with his usual grace, vivacity, and acuteness, and contains a good notice of the Tasso controversy. As to the Pisan edition of the works, it is the completest, I believe, in point of contents ever published, comprises all tho controversial criticism, and is, of course, very useful ; but it contains no lifr except Manso's (now known to be very inconclusive), has got a heap of feeble variorum comments on the Jerusalem, no notes worth speaking of to the rest of the works, and notwithstanding the claim in the title-page to the merit of a " ')etter order," has left the correspondence in a deplorable state of irregularity, as well as totally without elucidation. Tne learned Professor is an agreeable wri- ter, and, I believe, a very pleasant man, but he certainly is a provoking editer. 410 TASSO. 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 fic- tion. 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 Mneid, the oldest romance of Italy. The author of this epic of the Crusades was of a family so no- ble and so widely diffused, that, under the patronage of the em- perors and the Italian princes, it flourished in a very remarkable manner, not only in its own country, but in Flanders, Germany, and Spain. There was a Tasso once in England, ambassador of Philip the Second ; another, like Cervantes, distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto ; and a third gave rise to the sovereign German house of Tour and Taxis. Taxus is the Latin of Tasso. The Latin word, like the Italian, means both a badger and a yew-tree ; and the family in general appear to have taken it in the former sense. The animal is in their coat of arms. But the poet, or his immediate relatives, preferred being more romantical- ly shadowed forth by the yew-tree. The parent stock of the race was at Bergamo in Lombardy ; and here was born the father of Tasso, himself a poet of celebrity, though his fame has been eclipsed by that of his son. Bernardo Tasso, author of many elegant lyrics, of some vol- umes of letters, not uninteresting but too florid, and of the Ama- digi, an epic romance now little read, was a man of small prop- erty, very honest and good-hearted, but restless, ambitious, and with a turn for expense beyond his means. He attached himself to various princes, with little ultimate advantage, particularly to the unfortunate Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, whom he faith- fully served for many years. The prince had a high sense of his worth, and would probably have settled him in the wealtli and honours he was qualified to adorn, but for those Spanish op pressions in the history of Naples which ended in the ruin of both master and servant. Bernardo, however, had one happy interval of prosperity ; and during this, at the age of forty-six, he married Porzia di Rossi, a young lad}' of a rich and noble family, with a HIS LIFE IND GENIUS. 411 claim to a handsome dowry. He spent some delightful years with her at Sorrento, a spot so charming as to have been con- sidered the habitation of the Sirens ; and here, in the midst oi his orange-trees, his verses, and the breezes of an aromatic coast, he had three children, the eldest of whom was a daughter named Cornelia, and the youngest the author of the Jerusalem Delivered. The other child died young. The house distinguished by the poet's birth was restored from a dilapidated condition by order of Joseph Bonaparte when King of Naples, and is now an hotel. Torquato Tasso was born March the 11th, 1544, nine years after the death of Ariosto, who was intimate with his father. He was very devoutly brought up ; and grew so tall, and became so premature a scholar, that at nine, he tells us, he might have been taken for a boy of twelve. At eleven, in consequence of the misfortunes of his father, who had been exiled with the Prince of Salerno, he was forced to part from his mother, who remained at home to look after a dowry which she never received. Her brothers deprived her of it ; and in two years' time she died, Bernardo thought by poison. Twenty-four years afterwards her illustrious son, in the midst of his own misfortunes, remembered with sighs the tears with which the kisses of his poor mothel (vere bathed when she was forced to let him go.* * In the beautiful fragment beginning, O dd grand Apennmo : " Me dal sen della madre empia fortuna Pargoletto divelse. Ah ! di que' baci, Ch' ella bagnt) di lagrime dolenti, Con sospir mi rimembra, e degli ardenti Preghi, che sen portir 1' aure fugaci, Ch' io giunger non dovea pid volto a volto Fra quelle braccia accolto Con nodi cosi stretti e si tenaci. Lasso ! e seguii con mal sicure piante, Uual Ascanio, o Camilla, il padre errante." Me from my mother's bosom my hard lot Took when a child. Alas ! though all these years I have been used to sorrow, I sigh to think upon the floods of tears Which bathed her kisses on that doleful morrow : I sigh to think of all the prayers and cries She wasted, straining me with Ufled ?ye8 : 3* 412 TA3 SO. The little Torquato following, as he says, like another Ascanius, the footsteps of his wandering father, joined Bernardo in B^me. After two years' study in that city, partly under an old priest who lived with them, the vicissitudes of the father's lot took away the son first to Bergamo, among his relations, and then to Pesaro, in the duchy of Urbino, where his education was associated for nearly two years with that of the young prince, afterwards Duke Francesco Maria the Second (della Rovere), who retained a re. gard for him through life. In 1559 the boy joined his father in Venice, where the latter had been appointed secretary to the Academy ; but next year he was withdrawn from these pleasing va- rieties of scene by the parental delusion so common in the history of men of letters — the study of the law ; which Bernardo intended him to pursue henceforth in the city of Padua. He accordingly arrived in Padua at the age of sixteen and a half, and fulfilled his legal destiny by writing the poem of Rinaldo, which was publish- ed in the course of less than two years at Venice. The goodna- tured and poetic father, convinced by this specimen of jurispru- dence how useless it was to thwart the hereditary passion, per- mitted him to devote himself wholly to literature, which he there- ore went to study in the university of Bologna ; and there, at the early age of nineteen, he began his Jerusalem Delivered ; that is to say, lie planned it, and wrote three cantos, several of the stan- zas of which he retained when the poem was matured. He quit- ted Bologna, however, in a fit of indignation at being accused of the authorship of a satire ; and after visiting some friends at Cas- telvetro and Correggio, returned to Padua on the invitation of his friend Scipio Gonzaga, afterwards cardinal, who wished him to become a member if an academy he had instituted, called the Eterei (Ethereals). Here he studied his favourite philosopher, Plato, and composed three Discourses on Heroic Poetry, dedica- ted to his friend. He now paid a visit to his father in Mantua, For never more on one aiiother's face Was it our lot to gaze anJ to embrace ! Her little stumbling boy, Like to the child of Troy, Or like to one doomed to no haven ratier, Follow ?d the footsteps of his wandering father. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 413 where the unsettled man had become secretary to the duke ; and here, it is said, he fell in love with a young lady of a distinguish- ed family, whose name was Laura Peperara ; but this did not hinder him from returnmg to his Paduan studies, in which he spent nearly the whole of the following year. He was then in- formed that the Cardinal of Este, to whom he had dedicated his Rinaldo, and with whom interest had been made for the purpose, had appointed him one of his attendants, and that he was expected at Ferrara by the 1st of December. Returning to Mantua, in order to prepare for this appointment with his father, he was seiz- ed with a dangerous illness, which detained him there nearly a twelvemonth longer. On his recovery he hastened to Ferrara, and arrived in that city on the last day of October, 1565, the first of many years of glory and misery. The cardinal of Este was the brother of the reigning Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the Second, grandson of the Alfonso of Ariosto. It is curious to see the two most celebrated romantic poets of Italy thrown into unfortunate connexion with two princes of the same house and the same respective ranks. Tasso's cardinal, however, though the poet lost his favour, and though very little is known about him, left no such bad reputation behind him as Ippolito. It was in the service of the duke that the poet experienced his suf- ferings. This prince, who was haughty, ostentatious, and quarrelsome, was, at the time of the stranger's arrival, rehearsing the shows and tournaments intended to welcome his bride, the sister of the Emperor Maximilian the Second. She was his second wife. The first was a daughter of the rival house of Tuscany, which he detested ; and the marriage had not been happy. The new con- sort arrived in the course of a few weeks, entering the city in great pomp ; and for a time all went happily with the young poet. He \yas in a state of ecstasy with the beauty and grandeur he beheld around him — obtained the favourable notice of the duke's two sis- ters and the duke himself — went on with his Jerusalem Delivered, which, in spite of the presence of Ariosto's memory, he was resolv- ed to load with praises of the house of Este ; and in this tumult of pride and expectation, he beheld the duke, like ont of the heroes of his poem, set out to assist the empe'i" against tht Turks at the 414 TASSO. head of three hundred gtutlemen, armed at all points, and mantled in various-coloured velvets embroidered with gold. To complete the young poet's happiness, or commence his dis- appointments, he fell in love, notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have loved in return ; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli. Among his rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and who accused him on this occasion of courting two ladies at once. Guarini's accusation has been supposed to refer to the duke's sister Leonora, whose name has become so romantically mixed up with the poet's biography ; but the latest inquiries render it prob- able that the allusion was to Laura Peperara.* The young poet, however, who had not escaped the influence of the free manners of Italy, and whose senses and vanity may hitherto have been more interested than his heart, rhymed and flattered on all sides of him, not of course omitting the otarms of princesses. In order to win the admiration of the ladies in a body, he sustained for three days, in public, after the fashion of the times. Fifty Am- orous Conclusions ; that is to say, affirmations on the subject of love ; doubtless to the equal delight of his fair auditors and him- self, and the creation of a good deal of jealousy and ill-will on •the part of such persons of his own sex as had not wit or spirits enough for the display of so much logic and love-making. In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness ; but the continuation of his Jerusalem, an Oration spoken at the opening of the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leo- nora's sister Lucrezia with the Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections ; and a journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into scenes that were not only totally new, but otherwise highly interesting to the singer of Godfrey of Boulogne. The occasion of it was a visit of the cardinal, his master, to the court of his relative • Rosini, Saggio sugli AmoH di Tarquato Tasso, &c., in the Professor's cdj tion of his works, vol. xxxiii. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 415 Charles the Ninth. It is supposed that his Eminence went to confer with the king on matters relative to the disputes which not long afterwards occasioned the detestable massacre of St. Bar- tholomew. Be^re his departure, Tasso put into the hands of one of his friends a document, which, as it is very curious, and serves to illustrate perhaps more than one cause of his misfortunes, is here given entire. Memorial kft by Tasso on Ms departure to France. " Since life is frail, and it may please Almighty God to dispose of me otherwise in this my journey to France, it is requested of Signor Ercole Rondinelli that he will, in that case, undertake the management of the following concerns : " In the first place, with regard to my compositions, it is my wish that all my love-sonnets and madrigals should be collected and published ; but with regard to those, whether amatory or otherwise, which I have written for any friend, my request is, that they should be buried with myself save only the one commencing " Or che T aura mia dolce altrove spira." I wish the publication of the Oration spoken in Ferrara at the opening of the academy, of the four books on Heroic Poetry, of the six last cantos ofthe Godfrey (the Jerusalem), and of those stanzas of the two first which shall seem least imperfect. All these compositions, how- ever, are to be submitted to the review and consideration of Signor Scipio Gonzaga, of Signor Domenico Veniero, and of Signor Battista Guarini, who, I persuade myself, will not refuse this trouble, when they consider the zealous friendship I have entertained for themselves. " Let them be informed, too, that it was my intention that they should cut and hew without mercy whatever should appear to them defective or superfluous. With regard to additions or changes, I should wish them to proceed more cautiously, since, after all, the poem would remain imperfect. As to my other compositions, should there be any which, to the aforesaid Signor Rondinelli and the other gentlemen, might seem not unworthy of publication, let them be disposed of according to their pleasure. 416 TASSO. " In respect to my property, I wish that such part of it as I nave pledged to Abram for twenty-five lire, and seven pieces of arras, which are likewise in pledge to Signor Ascanio for thirteen scudi, together with whatever I have in this house, should be sold, and that the overplus of the proceeds shouldigo to defray the expense of the following epitaph to be inscribed on a monument to my father, whose body is in St. Polo. And should any impediment take place in these matters, I entreat Signor Er- cole to have recourse to the favour of the most excellent Madame Leonora, whose liberality I confide in, for my sake. " I, Torquato Tasso, have written this, Ferrara, 1570." I shall have occasion to recur to this document by and by. I will merely observe, for the present, that the marks in it, both of impru- dence in money-matters and confidence in the goodwill of a prin- cess, are very striking. " Abram" and " Signor Ascanio" were both Jews. The pieces of arreis belonged to his father ; and probably this was an additional reason why the affectionate son wished the proceeds to defray the expense of the epitaph. The epitaph recorded his father's poetry, state-services, and vicissitudes of fortune. Tasso was introduced to the French king as the poet of a French hero and of a Catholic victory ; and his reception was so favourable (particularly as the wretched Charles, the victim of his mother's bigotry, had himself no mean poetic feeling), that, with a rash mix- ture of simplicity and self-reliance (respect makes me unwilling to call it self-importance), the poet expressed an impolitic amount of astonishment at the favour shown at court to the Hugonots — ^little suspecting the horrible design it covered. He shortly afterwards broke with his master the cardinal ; and it is supposed that this unseasonable escape of zeal was the cause. He himself appears to have thought so.* Perhaps the cardinal only wanted to get the imprudent poet back to Italy ; for, on Tasso's return to Ferrara, he was not only received into the service of the duke with a salary of some fifteen golden scudi a- nonth, but told that he was exempted from any particular duty, and might attend in ♦ hettere I itdite, p. 33, in the Opere, vol. xvii. HIS LIFE AND GENl JS. 417 peace lo his studies. Balzac affirms, that while Tasso was at the court of France, he was so poor as to beg a crown from a friend ; and that, when he left it, he had the same coat on his back that he came in.* The assertions of a professed wit and hyperbolist are not to be taken for granted ; yet it is difficult to say to what shifts improvidence may not be reduced. The singer of the house of Este would now, it might have been supposed, be happy. He had leisure ; he had money ; he had the worldly honours that he was fond of; he occupied himself in perfecting the Jerusalem ; and he wrote his beautiful pastoral, the Aminta, which was performed before the duke and his court to the delight of the brilliant assembly. The duke's sister Lu- crezia, princess of Urbino, who was a special friend of the poet, sent for him to read it to her at Pesaro ; and in the course of the ensuing carnival it was performed with similar applause at the court of her father-in-law. The poet had been as much enchanted by the spectacle which the audience at Ferrara presented to his eyes, as the audience with the loves and graces with which he enriched their stage. The shepherd Thyrsis, by whom he meant himself, reflected it back upon them in a passage of the perform- ' ance. It is worth while dwelling on this passage a little, because it exhibits a brief interval of happiness in the author's life, and also shews us what he had already begun to think of courts at the moment he was praising them. But he ingeniously contrives to put the praise in his own mouth, and the blame in another's. The shepherd's friend, Mopsus (by whom Tasso is thought to have meant Speroni), had warned him against going to court : " Per6, figlio, Va su 1' avviso,'' &c. " Therefore, my son, take my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and pivunes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all. Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." " What place is that V said I ; and he resumed ; — " Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see • Bntretiens, 1663, p. 169, quoted by Serassi, pp. 175, 1*!. 418 TASSO. / Things as they jre not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is glass and brass ; and coffers that look silver, Heavy with wealth, are baskets full of bladders.* The very walls there are so strangely made. They answer those who talk ; and not in syllablea, Or bits of words, like echo in our woods, But go the whole talk over, word for word, With something else besides, that no one said.t The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers, Chairs, and whatever furniture there is In room or bedroom, all have tongues and speech, And are for ever tattling. Idle Babble Is always going about, playing the child ; And should a dumb man enter in that place, The dumb would babble in his own despite. And yet this evil is the least of all That might assail thee. Thou might'st be arrested In fearful transformation to a willow, A beast, fire, water, — fire for ever sighing, Water for ever weeping." — Here he ceased : And I, with all this fine foreknowledge, went To the great city ; and, by Heaven's kind will, Came where they live so happily. The first sound I heard was a delightful harmony. Which issued forth, of voices loud and sweet ; — Sirens, and swans, and nymphs, a heavenly noise Of heavenly things ; — which gave me such delight, That, all admiring, and amazed, and joyed, I stopped awhile quite-motionless. There stood Within the entrance, as if keeping guard Of those fine things, one of a higlvsouled aspect, Stalwart withal, of whom I was in doubt Whether to think him better knight or leader.t He, with a look at once benign and grave, In royal guise, invited me within; He, great and in esteem ; me, lorn and lowly. Oh, the sensations and the sights which then Shower''d on me. Goddesses I saw, and nymphs • Suggested by Ariosto's furniture in the Moon. + This was a trick which he afterwards thought he had reason to complain rf in a style very different from pleasantry. X Alfonso. The word for " leader" in the original, dace, made the allusion more obvious. The epithet " royal," in the next sentence, conveyed a welcome intmiation to the ducal ear, the house of Este being very proud of its connexiuo with the sovereigns of Europe, and very desirous of becoming royal itself. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 419 Graceful and beautiful, and harpers fine As Linus or as Orpheus ; and more deities, All without veil or cloud, bright as the virgin Aurora, when she glads immortal eyes. And sows her beams and dew-drops, silver and gold. la wt K-untnei of 1574, the Duke of Ferrara went to Venice to pay his respects ta the successor of Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, then on tils vay +0 Franoe from his Icingdom of Poland. Tasso went with the I^uke, ai;a. i'' understood to have taken the opportunity of looking *or -a. pi^x/t," of his Jerusalem, which was now almost finished. Wriltra w^,:". anxious to publish in that crafty city, because its governi.'t.'^i would give no security of profit to books printed elsewhere. Alfonso, who was in mourn- ing for Henry's brother, and to whom mourning itself only sug- gested a new occasion of pomp and vanity, took with him to this interview five hundred Ferrarese gentlemen, all dressed in long black cloaks ; who walking about Venice (says a reporter) " by twos and threes," wonderfully impressed the inhabitants with their " gravity and magnificence."* The mourners feasted, however ; and- Tasso had a quartan fever, which delayed the completion of the Jerusalem till next year. This was at length effected ; and now once more, it might have been thought, that the writer would have reposed on his laurels. But Tasso had already begun to experience the uneasiness at- tending superiority ; and, unfortunately, the strength of his mind was not equal to that of his genius. He was of an ultra-sensitive temperament, and subject to depressing fits of sickness. He could not calmly bear envy. Sarcasm exasperated, and hostile criti- cism afflicted him. The seeds of a suspicious temper were nour- ished by prosperity itself. The author of the Armida and the Jerusalem began to think the attentipns he received unequal to his merits ; while with a sort of hysterical mixture of demand for applause, and provocation of censure, he not only condescended to read his poems in manuscript wherever he went, but, in order to secure the goodwill of the papal licenser, he transmitted it for revisal to Rome, where it was mercilessly criticised for the space of two years by t le bigots and hypocrites of a court, which Lu- » Serassi, vol, i. p. 210. 430 TASSC. ther had rendered a very different one from that in the time of Ariosto. This new source of chagrin exasperated the eomplexional rest- lessness which now made our author think that he should be more easy anywhere than in Ferrara ; perhaps more able to communi- cate, with and convince his critics ; and, unfortunately, he per- mitted himself to descend to a weakness the most fatal of all oth- ers to a mind naturally exalted and ingenuous. Perhaps it was one of the main causes of all which he sufleced. Indeed, he him- self attributed his misfortunes to irresolutioli. What I mean in the present instance was, that he did not disdain to adopt un- derhand measures. He shewed a face of satisfaction with Alfonso, at the moment that he was taking steps to exchange his court for another. He wrote for that purpose to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, now a prelate at the court of Rome, earnestly begging him, at the same time, not to commit him in their correspondence ; and Scipio, who was one of his kindest and most indulgent friends, and who doubtless saw that the Duke of Ferrara and his poet were not of dispositions to accord, did all he could to procure him an ap- pointment with one of the family of the Medici. Most unhappily for this speculation (and perhaps even the good-natured Gonzaga took a little more pleasure in it on that account), Alfonso inherited all the detestation of his house for tha'. lucky race ; and it is remarkable, that the same jealousies which hindered Ariosto's advancement with the Medici were still more fatal to the hopes of Tasso ; for they served to plunge him into the deepest adversity. In vain he had warnings given him, both friendly and hostile. The princess, now Duchess of Urbino, who was his particular friend, strongly cautioned him against the temptation of going away. She said he was watched. He him- self thought his letters were opened ; and probably they were. They certainly were at a subsequent period. Tasso, however, persisted, and went to Rome. Scipio Gonzaga introduced him to Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici, afterwards Grand Duke of Tus- cany ; and Ferdinand made him offers of protection so handsome, that they excited his suspicion, The self-tormenting poet thought tl». r -^voured more of hatre; to the Este family, than honour to HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 4^1 himself.* He did not accept them. He did nothing at Rome but make friends, in order to perplex them ; listen to his critics, in order to worry himself ; and perform acts of piety in the churches, by way of shewing that the love-scenes in the Jerusalem were inno- cent. For the bigots had begun to find something very question- able in mixing up so much love with war. The bloodshed they had no objection to. The love bearded their prejudices, and ex- cited their envy. Tasso returned to Ferrara, and endeavoured to solace himself with eulogising two fair strangers who had arrived at Alfonso's court, — Eleonora Sanvitale, who had been newly married to the Count of Scandiano (a Tiene, not a Boiardo, whose line was ex- tinct), and Barbara Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, her mother-in- law. The mother-in-law, who was a Juno-like beauty, wore her hair in the form i#f a crown. The still more beautiful daughter- in-law had an under lip such as Anacreon or Sir John Suckling would have admired,, — pouting and provoking, — KfOKaXovficvau ^iXij^,i. Tasso wrote verses on them both, but particularly to the lip ; and this Countess of Scandiano is the second, out of the three Leono- ras, with whom Tasso was said by his friend Manso to have been in love. The third, it is now ascertained, never existed ; and his love-making to tiie new or second Leonora, goes to shew how little of real passion there was in the praises of the first (the Prin. cess Leonora), or probably of any lady at court. He even pro- fessed love, as a forlorn hope, to the countess's waiting-maid. Yet these gallantries of sonnets are exalted into bewilderments of the heart. His restlessness returning, the poet now condescended to craft a second time. Expecting to meet with a refusal, and so to be afforded a pretext for quitting Ferrara, he applied for the vacant office of historiographer. It was granted him ; and he then dis- gusted the Medici by pleading an unlooked-for engagement, which he could only reconcile to his applications for their favour by renouncing his claim to be believed. If he could have de- ceived others, why might he not have deceived them ? * " Alia lor magnanimity fe convenevole il mostrar, ch' amor delle virtii, non odio verso altri, gli abbia gii mossi ad invitarmi con invito cosl largo." Opere, vol. XV. p. 94. 422 TASSO. All the lurking weakness of the poet's temperament began to display itself at this juncture. His perplexity excited him to a degree of irritability bordering on delirium ; and circumstances conspired to increase it. He had lent an acquaintance the key of his rooms at court, for the purpose (h» tells us) of accommo- dating some intrigue ; and he suspected this person of opening cabinets containing his papers. Remonstrating with him one day in the court of the palace, either on that or some other account, the man gave him the lie. He received in return a blow on the face, and is said by Tasso to have brought a set of his kinsmen to assassinate him, all of whom the heroical poet immediately put to flight. At one time he suspected the Duke of jealousy respect- ing the dedication of his poem, and at another, of a wish to burn it. He suspected his servants. He became suspicious of the truth of his friend Gonzaga. He doubted, even, whether some praises addressed to him by Orazio Ariosto, the nephew of the great poet, \vhich, one would have thought, would have been to him a consummation of bliss, were not intended to mystify and hurt him. At length he fancied that his persecutors had accused him of heresy to the Inquisition ; and, as he had gone through the metaphysical doubts, common with most men of reflection respecting points of faith and the mysteries of creation, he feared that some indiscreet words had escaped him, giving colour to the charge. He thus beheld enemies all around him. He dreaded stabbing and poison ; and one day, in some paroxysm of rage or horror, how occasioned it is not known, ran with a knife or dag- ger at one of the servants of the Duches^ of Urbino in her own chamber. Alfonso, upon this, apparently in the mildest and most reason- able manner, directed that he should be confined to his apartments, and put into the hands of the physician. These unfortunate events took place in the summer of 1577, and in the poet's thirty- third year. Tasso shewed so murh affliction at this treatment, and, at the game time, bore it so patiently, that the duke took him to his beautiful country-seat of Belriguardo ; where, in one of his ao- counts of the matter, the poet says that he treated him as a brother ; but in another, he accuses him of having taken pains to HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 423 njake him criminate himself, and confess certain matters, real or supposed, the nature of which is a puzzle with posterity. Some are of opinion (ana this is the prevailing one), that he was found guilty of being in love with the Princess Leonora, perhaps of being loved by herself. Others think the love out of the question, and that the duke was concerned at nothing but his endeavouring to transfer his services and his poetic reputation into the hands of the Tiledici. Others see in the duke's conduct nothing but that of a good master interesting himself in the welfare of an afflicted servant. It is certain that Alfonso did all he could to prevent the surrep- titious printing of the Jerusalem Delivered, in various towns of Italy, the dread of which had much afflicted the poet ; and he also endeavoured, though in vain, to ease his mind on the subject of the Inquisition ; for these facts are attested by state-papers and other documents, not dependent either on the testimony of third persons or the partial representations of the sufferer. But Tasso felt so uneasy at Belriguardo, that he requested leave to retire a while into a convent. He remained there several days, apparent- ly so ro-uoh to his satisfaction, that he wrote to the duke to say that it ivas his intention to become a friar ; and yet he had no sooner got into the place, than he addressed a letter to the Inquisi- tion at Rome, beseeching it to desire permission for him to come to that city, in order to clear himself from the charges of his enemies. He also wrote to two other friends, requesting them to further his petition ; and adding that the duke was enraged with him in consequence of the anger of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, it is supposed, had accused Tasso of having revealed to Alfonso some indecent epithet which his highness had applied to him.* These letters were undoubtedly intercepted, for they were found among the secret archives of Modena, the only principality * The application is the conjecture of Black, vol. i. p. 317. Serassi sup- pressed the whole passage. The indecent word would have been known but for the delicacy or courtliness of Muratori, who substituted an ef-cetera in its (ilace, ODserving, that he had " covered" with it " an indecent word not fit to be ](rinted" ("sotto quell' et-ceiera ho ia coperta un' indecente parola, che non era jecito di lasciar correre alle stampe." Opere dd Tasso, vol. xvi. p. 114.) By " covered" he seems to have meant blotted out ; for in the latest edition of Tasso the et-ceteri is retained. 4M TASSO. ultimatel}' remaining in the Este family j so that, agreeably to the saying of listeners hearing no good of themselves, if Alfonso did not know tlie epithet before, he learnt it then. The reader may conceivo his feelings. Tasso, too, at the same time, was plaguing him with letters to similar purpose ; and it is observable, that while in those which he sent to Rome he speaks of Cosmo de' Medici as " Grand Duke," he takes care in the others to call him simply the " Duke of Florence." Alfonso had been exasperated to the last degree at Cosmo's having had the epithet " Grand" added by the Pope to his ducal title ; and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred of bitter " physio," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age for giv- ing it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in. a manner which it is hu- miliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The duke at length, forbade his writing to him any more ; and Tasso, whose fears of every kind of ill usage had been wound up to a pitch unbearable, watched an opportunity when he was care- lessly guarded, and fled at once from the convent and Ferrara. The unhappy poet selected the loneliest ways he could find, and directed his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sis- ter lived. He was afraid of pursuit ; he probably had little money ; and considering his ill health and his dread of the In- quisition, it is pitiable to think what he may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd ; and as he feared even his sister at first, from doubting whether she still loved him, his interview with her was in all its circumstan- ces painfully dramatic. Cornelia Tasso, now a widow, with two sons, was still residing at Sorrento, where the poet, casting his eyes around him as he proceeded towards the house, must have beheld with singular feelings of wretchedness the lovely spots in which he had been a happy little boy. He did not announce him- self at once. He brought letters, he said, from the lady's brother ; and it is affecting to think, that whether his sister might or might not have retained otherwis' any per^^ppal recollection of him since HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 425 that time (for he had not seen her in the interval), his disguise was completed by the alterations which sorrow had made in his appearance. For, at all events, she did not know him. She saw in him nothing but a haggard stranger who was acquainted with the writer of the letters, and to "•vhom they referred for particu- lars of the risk which her brother ran, unless she could afford him her protection. These particulars were given by the stran- ger with all the pathos of the real man, and the loving sister faint- ed away. On her recovery, the visitor said what he could to re- assure her, and then by degrees discovered himself. Cornelia welcomed him in the tenderest manner. She did all that he de- sired ; and gave out to her friends that the gentleman was a cousin from Bergamo, who had come to Naples on family af- fair.=. For a little while the affection of hib sister, and the beauty and freshness of Sorrento, rendered the mind of Tasso more easy : bu* his restlessness returned. He feared he had mortally offended the Duke of Ferrara ; and, with his wonted fluctuation of purpose, he now wished to be restored to his presence for the very reason he had run away from it. He did not know with what vengeance he might be pursued. He wrote to the duke ; but received no answer. The Duchess of Urbino was equally silent. Leonora alone responded, but with no encouragement. These appearan ces only made him the more anxious to dare or to propitiate his doom ; and he accordingly determined to put himself in the duke's hands. His sister entreated him in vain to alter his resolution. He quitted her before the autumn was over ; and, proceeding to Rome, went directly to the house of the duke's agent there, who, in concert with the Ferrarese ambassador, gave his master advice of the cir- cumstance. Gonzaga, however, and another good friend, Cardinal Albano, doubted whether it would be wise in the poet to return to Ferrara under any circumstances. They counselled him tc be satisfied with being pardoned at a distance, and with having his papers and other things returned to him ; and the two frienda iramediataly wrote to the duke requesting as much. The duke apparently acquiesced in all that was desired ; but he said thai the illness of his sister, the Duchess of Urbino, delayed the proou ration of the papers, which, it seems, were chiefly in her han-is. 426 TASSO. The upshot was, that tne papers did not come ; and Tasso, with a mixture of rage and fear, and perhaps for more reasons than he has told, became uncontrollably desirous of retracing the rest of his steps to Ferrara. Love may have been among these reasons — probably was ; though it does not follow that the passion must have been for a princess. The poet now, therefore, petitioned to that ef- fect ; and Alfonso wrote again, and said he might come, but only on condition of his again undergoing the ducal course of medicine ; adding, that if he did not, he was to be finally expelled his high- ness's territories. He was graciously received — too graciously, it would seem, for Ills equanimity ; for it gave him such a flow of spirits, that the duke appears to have thought it necessary to repress thera. The unhappy poet, at this, began to have some of his old suspicions j and the unaccountable detention of his papers confirmed them. He made an effort to keep the suspicions down, but it was by means, unfortunately, of drowning them in wine and jollity ; and this gave him such a fit of sickness as had nearly been his death. He recovered, only to make a fresh stir about his papers, and a still greater one about his poems in general, which, though his Je- rusaleiii was yet only known in manuscript, and not even his Aminta published, he believed ought to occupy the attention of mankind. People at Ferrara, therefore, not foreseeing the respect that pos- terity would entertain for the poet, and having no great desire perhaps to encourage a man who claimed to be a rival of theii countryman Ariosto, now began to consider their Neapolitan guest not merely an ingenious and pitiable, but an overweening and tiresome enthusiast. The court, however, still seemed to be in- terested in its panegyrist, though Tasso feared that Alfonso meant to burn his Jerusalem. Alfonso, on the other hand, is supposed to have feared that he would burn it himself, and the ducal praises with it. The papers, at all events, apparently including the onlj fair copy of the poem, were constantly withheld ; and Tasso, in a new fit of despair, again quitted Ferrara. This mystery of the papers is certainly very extraordinary. The poet's first steps were to Mantua, where he met with no such reception as encouraged him to stay. He then went to Ur- bine, but did not stop long. The prince, it is true, was very gra. HIS LIFE i.ST) GENIUS. 437 cious ; and bandages for a cautery were applied by the fair hands of his highness's sister ; but, though the nurse enchanted, the surgery frightened him. The hapless poet found himself pursued wherever he went by the tormenting beneficence of medicine. He escaped, and went to Turin. He had no passport ; and pre- sented, besides, so miserable an appearance, that the people at the gates roughly refused him admittance. He was well received, however, at court ; and as he had begun to acknowledge that he was subject to humours and delusions, and wrote to say as much to Cardinal Albano, who returned him a most excellent and af- fecting letter, full of the kindest regard and good counsel, his friends entertained a hope that he would become tranquil. But he disappointed them. He again applied to Alfonso for permis- sion to return to Ferrara — again received it, though on worse than the old conditions — and again found himself in that city in the be- ginning of the year 1579, delighted at seeing a brilliant assem- blage from all quarters of Italy on occasion of a new marriage of the duke's (with a princess of Mantua). He made up his mind to think that nothing could be denied him, at such a moment, by the bridegroom whom he meant to honour and glorify. Alas ! the very circumstance to which he looked for success, tended to throw him into the greatest of his calamities. Alfonso was to be married the day after the poet's arrival. He was therefore too busy to attend to him. The princesses did not at- tend to him. Nobody attended to him. He again applied in vain for his papers. He regretted his return ; became anxious to be any where else ; thought himself not only neglected but derided ; and at length became excited to a pitch of frenzy. He broke forth into the most unmeasured invectives against the duke, even in public ; invoked curses on his head and that of his whole race ; retracted all he had ever said in the praise of any of them, prince or otherwise ; and pronounced him and his whole court " a parcel of ingrates, rascals, and poltroons."* The outbreak was reported to the duke ; and the consequence was, that the poet was sent to the hospital of St. Anne, an establishment for the reception of the poor and lunatic, where he remained (with the * Black's version (vol. ii. p. 58) is not strong enough. The words in Serassi ■re " una ciurma di poltroni, ingrati, e ribaldi," ii. p. 33. PART in. 4 428 TASSO. exception of a few unaccountable leave-days) upwards of sever years. This melancholy event happened in the March of the year 1579. Tasso was stunned by this blow as much as if he had never done or suffered any thing to expect it. He could at first do nothing but wonder and bewail himself, and implore to be set free. The duke answered, that he must be cured first. Tasso replied by fresh entreaties ; the duke returned the same answers. The unhappy poet had recourse to every friend, prince, and great man he could think of, to join his entreaties ; he sought refuge in com- position, but still entreated ; he occasionally reproached and even bantered the duke in some of his letters to his friends, all of which, doubtless, were opened ; but still he entreated, flattered, adored, all to no purpose, for seven long years and upwards. In time he became subject to maniacal illusions ; so that if he was not actu- ally mad before, he was now considered so. He was not only visited with sights and sounds, such as many people have experi- enced whose brains have been over-excited, but he fancied him- self haunted by a sprite, and become the sport of " magicians." The sprite stole his things, and the magicians would not let him get well. He had a vision such as Benvenuto Cellini had, of the Virgin Mary in her glory ; and his nights were so miserable, that he ate too much in order that he might sleep. When he was temperate, he lay awake. Sometimes he felt " as if a horse had thrown himself on him.'' "Have pity on me," he says to the friend to whom he gives these affecting accounts ; "1 am miserable, because the world is unjust."* The physicians advised him to leave off wine ; but he says he could not do that, though he was content to ise it in moderation. In truth he required something to support him against the physi- cians themselves, for they continued to exhaust his strength by their medicines, and could not supply the want of it with air and freedom. He had ringings in the ears, vomits, and fluxes of blood. It would be ludicrous, if it were not deplorably pathetic, to hear BO great a man, in the commonest medical terms, now protesting against the eternal drenches of these practitioners, now humbly * Jpere, vol. 3 v. pp. 158, 174, &c. H.S IFE AND GENIUS. 429 submitting to them, and now entreating lilce a child, that they might at east not be " so bitter." The physicians, with the dulte at their head, were as mad for their rhubarbs and lancets as the quacks in Moliere ; and nothing but the very imagination that had nearly saoriiiced the poet's life to their ignorance could have hindered him from dashing his head against the wall, and leaving them to the execrations of posterity. It is the only occa- sion in which the noble profession of medicine has not appeared in wise and beneficent connexion with the sufferings of men of letters. Why did Ferrara possess no Brocklesby in those days ? no Garth, Mead, Warren, or Southwood Smith ? Tasso enabled himself to endure his imprisonment with compo- sition. He supported it with his poetry and his poem, and what, alas ! he" had been too proud of during his liberty, the praises of his admirers. His genius brought him gifts from princes, and some money from the booksellers : it supported him even against his critics. During his confinement the Jerusalem Delivered was first published ; though, to his grief, from a surreptitious and mu- tilated copy. But it was followed by a storm of applause ; and if this was succeeded by as great a storm of objection and contro- versy, still the healthier part of his faculties were roused, and he exasperated his critics and astonished the world by shewing how coolly and learnedly tne poor, wild, imprisoned genius could dis- cuss the most intricate questions of poetry and philosophy. The disputes excited by his poem are generally supposed to have done him harm ; but the conclusion appears to be ill founded. ' They diverted his thoughts, and made him conscious of his powers and his fame. I doubt whether he would have been better for entire approbation : it would have put him in a state of elevation, unfit for what he had to endure. He had found his pen his great sol- ace, and he had never employed it so well. It would be incredi- ble what a heap of things he wrote in this complicated torment of imprisonment, sickness, and " physic," if habit and mental activity had not been fjfFicient to account for much greater won- ders. His letters to his friends and others would make a good- sized volume ; those to his critics, another ; sonnets and odes, a third ; and his Dialogues after the manner of Plato, two more Perhaps a good half of all he wrote was written in this hosp.'tui 430 TASSO. 01 St. Anne ; and he studied as well as composed, and had to read all that was written at the time, pro and con, in the discussions about his Jerusalem, which, in the latest edition of his works, amount to three out of six volumes octavo ! Many of the occa- sions, however, of his poems, as well as letters, are most painful to think of, their object having been to exchange praise for money. And it is distressing, in the letters, to see his other little wants, and the fluctuations and moods of his mind. Now he is angry about some book not restored, or some gift promised and delayed. Now he is in want of some books to be lent him ; now of some praise to comfort him ; now of a little fresh linen. He is very thankful for visits, for respectful letters, for "sweetmeats;" and greatly puzzled to know what to do with the bad sonnets and panegyrics that are sent him. They were sometimes too much even for the allowed ultra courtesies of Itajian acknowledgment. His compliments to most people are varied with astonishing grace and ingenuity ; his accounts of his condition often sufficient to bring the tears into the manliest eyes ; and his ceaseless and vain efforts to procure his liberation mortifying when we think of him- self, and exasperating when we think of the petty despot whc detained him in so long, so degrading, and so worse than useless a confinement. Tasso could not always conceal his conLcinpt of his imprisoner from the ducal servants. Alfonso excelled the grandiloquent poet himself in his love of pomp and worship ; and as he had no particular merits to warrant it, his victim bantered his love of titles. He says, in a letter to the duke's steward, " If it is the pleasure of the Most Serene Signor Duke, Most Clement and Most Invincible, to keep me in prison, may I beg that he will have the goodness to return certain little things of mine, which his Most Invincible, Most Clement, and Most Serene Highness has so often promised me."* But these were 'are ebullitions of gaiety perhaps rather of • " Prego V. Si gnoria che si contenti, se piace al Screnissimo Signor Duca, Clementissimo ed Invitissimo, che io stia in prigione, dl farmi dar le poche robic ciole mie, che S. A. Invitissima, Clementi*3ima, Serenissima m' ha proiut-soe tante volte,'' tSic. Opere, vol. xiv. p. 6. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 4^1 bitter despair. A playful address to a cat to lend him her eyes to write by, during some hour in which he happened to be with- out a light (for it does not appear to have been denied him), may be taken as more probable evidence of a mind relieved at the moment, though the necessity for the relief may have been very sad. But the style in which he generally alludes to his situation is far different. He continually begs his correspondents to pity him, to pray for him, to attribute his errors to infirmity. He complains of impaired memory, and acknowledges that he has become subject to the deliriums formerly attributed to him by the enemies that had helped to produce them. Petitioning the native city of his ancestors (Bergamo) to intercede for him with the duke, he speaks of the writer as "this unhappy person;" and subscribes himself, — " Most illustrious Sjgnors, your affectionate servant, Torquato Tasso, a prisoner, and infirm, in the hospital of St. Anne in Ferrara." In one of his addresses to Alfonso, he says morr affectingly : "I have sometimes attributed much to myself, and consider- ed myself as somebody. But now, seeing in how many ways imagination has imposed on me, I suspect that it has also de- ceived me in this opinion of my own consequence. Indeed, me- thinks the past has been a dream ; and hence I am resolved to rely on my imagination no longer." Alfonso made no answer. The causes of Tasso's imprisonment, and its long duration, are among the puzzles of biography. The prevailing opinion, not- withstanding the opposition made to it by Serassi and Black, is, that the poet made love to the Princess Leonora — perhaps was beloved by her ; and that her brother the duke punished him for his arrogance. This was the belief of his earliest biographer, Manso, who was intimately acquainted with the poet in his latter days ; and from Manso (though ne did not profess to receive the information from Tasso, but only to gather it from his poems) it spread over all Europe. Milton took it on trust from him ;* and so have our English translators Hoole and Wiffen. The Abbe de ♦ " Altera Torquatum cepit Leonora poetam," &c. CS TASSO. Charnes, however, declined to do so ;* and Montaigne, who saw the poet in St. Anne's hospital, says nothing of the love at all. He at. tributes his condition to poetical excitement, hard study, and the meeting of the extremes of wisdom and folly. The philosopher, how- ever, speaks of the poet's having survived his reason, and become unconscious both of himself and his works, which the reader knows to be untrue. He does not appear to have conversed with Tasso. The poet was only shewn him ; probably at a sick moment, or by a new and igriorant official. t Muratori, who was in the ser- vice of the Este family at Modena, tells us, on the authority of an old acquaintance who knew contemporaries of Tasso, that the " good Torquato" finding himself one day in company with the duke and his sister, and going close to the princess in order to answer some question which she had put to him, was so transport- eb by an impulse " more than poetical,", as to give her a kiss ; upon which the duke, who had observed it, turned about to his gentlemen, and said, " What a pity to see so great a man dis- tracted !" and so ordered him to be locked up.:): But this writer adds, that he does not know what to think of the anecdote : he neither denies nor admits it. Tiraboschi, who was also in the service of the Este family, doubts the truth of the anecdote, and believes that the duke shut the poet up solely for fear lest his violence should do harm.§ Serassi, the second biographer of Tasso, who dedicated his book to an Este princess inimical to the poet's memory, attributes the confinement, on his own shewing, to the violent words he had uttered against his master. || Walker, the author of the Memoir on Italian Tragedy, says, that the life by Serassi himself induced him to credit the love-story ilT so does * Vie du Tasse, 1695, p. 51. , t In the Apology for Ravmond de Sebonde ; Essays, vol. ii. ch. 12. X In his Letter to Zeno, — Opere del Tasso, xvi. p. 118. § Storia della Poesia Italiana (Mathias's ediUon), vol. iii. part i. p. 235. II Serassi is very peremptory, and even ahusive. He charges every body who has said any thing to the contrary with imposture. " Egli non v' ha dubbio, che le troppe imprudenti e temerarie parole, che il Tasso si lasci6 uscir di bocca in questo incontro, furone la sola cagiont; della sua prigionia, e ch' fe mera favola ed imposiura tutto ci6, che diversamente 6 stato affermato e suritto da altri in tale proposito." Vol. ii. p. 33. But we have seen that the good Abb^ could prac- tise a little imposition himself. IT Black, ii. 88. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 433 otingu6ne.* Black, forgetting the age and illnesses of hundreds of enamoured ladies, and the distraction of lovers at all times, de- rides the notion of passion on either side : because, he argues, Tasso was subject to frenzies, and Leonora forty-two years of age, and not in good health.f What would Madame d'Houdetot have said to him ? or Mademoiselle L'Espinasse ? or Mrs. Inchbald, wlio used to walk up and down Sackville Street in order that she might see Dr. Warren's light in his window ? Foscolo was a believer in the love ;:): Sismondi admits it ;§ and Rosini, the editor of the latest edition of the poet's works, is passionate for it. He wonders how any body can fail to discern it in a number of passages, which, in truth, may mean a variety of other loves ; and he in- sists much upon certain loose verses {lascivi) which the poet, among his various accounts of the origin of his imprisonment, as- signs as the cause, or one of the causes, of it.|| I confess, after a reasonable amount of inquiry into this sub- ject, that I can find no proofs whatsoever of Tasso's having made love to Leonora ; though I think it highly probable. I believe the main cause of the duke's proceedings was the poet's own vio- lence of behaviour and incontinence of speech. I think it very likely that, in the course of the poetical love-making to various ladies, which was almost identical in that age with addressing them in verse, Torquato, whether he was in love or not, took more liberties with the princesses than Alfonso approved ; and it is equally probable, that one of those liberties consisted in his indul- ging his imagination too far. It is not even impossible, that more gallantry may have been going on at court than Alfonso coula * Ilist. Litt. d'ltalie, v. 343, &c. + Vol. ii. p. 89. t Such at least is my impression ; but I cannot call the evidence to mind. ■ § lAterature of tlie South of I^urope (Roscoe's translation), vol. ii. p. Wo. To shew the loose way in which the conclusions of a man's own mind are pre- sented as facts admitted by others, Sismondi says, that Tasso's " passion" was the cause of his return to Ferrara. There is not a tittle of evidence to shew for it. II Saggio sugli Amori, &c. ut sup. p. 84, and passim., As specimens of the learned professor's reasoning, it may be observed that whenever the words humble, daring, high, noble, and roi/id, occur in the poet's love-verses, he thinks they mual allude to the Princess Leonora ; and he argues, that Alfonso never could have been so angry with any "versi lascivi," if they had not had the saro» direction. VM TASSO. endure to see alluded to, especially by an ambitious pen. But there is no evidence that such was the case. Tasso, as a gentle- man, could not have hinted at such a thing on the part of a prin- ;ess of staid reputation ; and, on the other hand, the "love " he speaks of as entertained by her for him, and M'arranting the ap- plication to her for money in case of his death, was too plainly worded to mean any thing but lovn in the sense of friendly regard. " Per amor mio " is an idiomatica expression, meaning " for my sake ;" a strong one, no doubt, and such as a proud man like Al- fonso might think a liberty, but not at all cf necessity an amatory boast. If it was, its very effrontery and vanity were presump- tions of its falsehood. The lady whom Tasso alludes to in the passage quoted on his first confinement is complained of for her coldness towards him ; and, unless this was itself a gentlemanly blind, it might apply to fifty other ladies besides the princess. The man who assaulted him in the streets, and who is supposed to have been the violator of his papers, need not have found any secrets of love in them. The servant at whom he aimed the knife or the dagger might be as little connected with such matters ; and the sonnets which the poet said he wrote for a friend, and which he desired to be buried with him, might be alike innocent of all reference to Leonora, whether he wrote them for a friend or not. Leonora's death took place during the poet's confine- ment ; and, lamented as she was by the verse-writers according to custom, Tasso wrote nothing on the event. This silence has been attributed to the depth of his passion ; but how is the fact proved ? and why may it not have been occasioned by there hav- ing been no passion at all ? All that appears certain is, that Tasso spoke violent and con- temptuous words against the duke ; that he often spoke ill of him in his letters ; that he endeavoured, not with perfect ingenuous- ness, to exchange his service for that of another prince ; that he asserted his madness to have been pretended in the first instance purely to gratify the duke's whim for thinking it so (which was one of the reasons perhaps why Alfonso, as he complained, would not believe a word he said) ; and finally, that, whether the mad- ness was or was not so pretended, it unfortunately became a con- firmed though milder form of mania, during a long confinement. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 435 Alfonso, too proud to forgive the poet's contempt, continued tiius Iv detain him, partly perhaps because he was not sorry to have a pre- text for revenge, partly because he did not knovi' ■whsit to do with him consistently either with his own or the poet's safety. He had not been generous enough to put Tasso above his wants ; he had not address enough to secure his respect ; he had not merit enough to overlook his reproaches. If Tasso had been as great a man as he was a poet, Alfonso would not have been reduced to these per- plexities. The poet would have known how to settle quietly down on his small court-income, and wait patiently in the midst of his beautiful visions for what fortune had or had not in store for him. But in truth, he, as well as the duke, was weak ; they made a bad business of it between them ; and Alfonso the Second closed the accounts of the Este family with the Muses, by keeping his panegyrist seven years in a mad-house, to the astonishment of posterity, and the destruction of his own claims to renown. It does not appear that Tasso was confined in any such dungeon as they now exhibit in Ferrara. The conduct of the Prior of the Hospital is more doubtful. His name was Agostino Mosti ; and, strangely enough, he was the person who had raised a monument to Ariosto, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. To this predi- lection has been attributed his alleged cruelty to the stranger from Sorrento, who dared to emulate the fame of his idol ; — an extraor- dinary, though perhaps not incredible, mode of shewing a critic's regard for poetry. But Tasso, while he laments his severity, wonders at it in a man so well bred and so imbued with literature, and thinks it can only have originated in " orders."* Perhaps there were faults of temper on both sides ; and Mosti, not liking his office, forgot the allowance to be made for that of a prisoner and sick man. His nephew Giulio Mosti, became strongly attach- ed to the poet, and was a great comfort to him. At length the time for liberation arrived. In the summer of 1586, Don Vincenzo Gonzaga, Prince of Mantua, kinsman of the poet's friend Scipio, came to Ferrara for the purpose of compli- menting Alfonso's heir on his nuptials. The whole court of Man- tua, with hereditary regard for Tasso, whose father had been one * Opei-e, vol. xvii. p. 32. 4* 436 TASSC. of their ornaments, were desirous of having him among them ; and the prince extorted Alfonso's permission to take him away, on condition (so hard did he find this late concession to humanity, and so fearful was he of losing the dignity of jailor) that his de- liverer should not allow him to quit Mantua without obtaining leave. A young and dear friend, his most frequent visitor, An- tonio Constantini, secretary to the Tuscan ambassador, went to St. Anne's to prepare the captive by degrees for the good news. He told him that he really might look for his release in the course of a few days. The sensitive poet, now a premature old man of forty-two, was thrown into a transport of mingled delight and anxiety. He had been disappointed so often that he could scarcely believe his good fortune. In a day or two he writes thus to his visitor : " Your kindness, my dear friend, has so accustomed me to your precious and frequent visits, that I have been all day long at the window expecting your coming to comfort me as you are wont. But since you have not yet arrived, and in order not to remain altogether without consolation, I visit you with this letter. It encloses a sonnet to the ambassador, written with a trembling hand, and in such a manner that he will not, perhaps, have less difficulty in reading it than I had in writing." Two days afterwards, the prince himself came again, requested of the poet some verses on a given subject, expressed his esteem for his genius and virtues, and told him that, on his return to Mantua, he should have the pleasure of conduotmg him to that city. Tasso lay awake almost all night, composing the verses ; and next day enclosed them, with a letter, in another to Constan- tini, ardently begging him to keep the prince in mind of his prom- ise. The prince had not forgotten it ; and two or three days afterwards, the order for the release arrived, and Tasso quitted his prison. He had been conlned seven years, two months, and several days. He awaited the prince's departure for a week or two in his friend's abode, paying no visits, probably from inability to endure so much novelty. Neither was he inclined or sent for to pay his respects to the duke. Two such parties could hardly have been desirous to look on each other. The duke must es- pecially have disliked the thought of it ; though Tasso afterwards HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 437 fancied otherwise, and that he was offended at his non-appearance- But his letters, unfortunately, differ with themselves on this point, as on most others. About the middle of July 1586, the poet quit- ted Ferrara for ever. At Mantua Tasso was greeted with all the honours and atten- tions which his love of distinction could desire. The good old duke, the friend of his father, ordered handsome apartments to be provided for him in the palace ; the prince made him presents of costly attire, including perfumed silken hose (kindred elegancies to the Italian gloves of Queen Elizabeth) ; the princess and her mother-in-law were declared admirers of his poetry ; the courtiers caressed the favourite of their masters ; Tasso found literary so- ciety ; he pronounced the very bread and fruit, the fish and the flesh, excellent ; the wines were sharp and brisk (" such as his father was fond of") ; and even the physician was admirable, for he ordered confections. One might imagine, if circumstances had not proved the cordial nature of the Gonzaga family, and the real respect and admiration entertained for the poet's genius by the greatest men of the time, in spite of the rebuke it had received from Alfonso, that there had been a confederacy to mock and mystify him, after the fashion of the duke and duchess with Don Quixote (the only blot, by the way, in the book of Cervantes ; if, indeed, he did not intend it as a satire on the mystifiers). For a while, in short,, the liberated prisoner thought himself happy. He corrected his prose works, resumed and finished the tragedy of Torrismond, which he had begun some years be- fore, corresponded with princes, and completed and published a narrative poem left unfinished by his father. Torquato was as loving a son as Mozart or Montaigne. Whenever he had a glimpse of felicity, he appears to have associated the idea of it with that of his father. In the conclusion of his fragment, " O del grand' Apennino," he affectingly begs pardon cf his blessea spirit for troubling him with his earthly griefs.* * " Padre, o buon- padre, che dal del rimirl, Egro e morto ti piansi, e ben tu il sai; E gemendo scaldai La tomba e il letto. Or che negli altri giri Tu godi, a te 31 deve onor, non lutto : A me versatc il niio dolor sia tutto." 438 TASSO. But, alas, what had been an indulgence of self-esteem had now become the habit of a disease ; and in the course of a few months the restless poet began to make his old discovery, that he was not sufficiently cared for. The prince had no leisure to attend to him ; the nobility did not " yield him the first place," or at least (he adds) they did not allow him to be treated " externally as their equal ; and he candidly confessed that he could not live in a place where such was the custom.* He felt also, naturally enough, however well it might have been intended, that it was not pleasant to be confined to the range of the city of Mantua, attended by a servant, even though he confessed that he was now subject to " frenzy." He contrived to stay another half-year by help of a brilliant carnival and of the select society of the prince's court, who were evidently most kind to him ; but at the end of the twelvemonth he was in Bergamo among his relations. The prince gave him leave to go ; and the Cavaliere Tasso, his kins- man, sent his chariot on purpose to fetch him. Here again he found himself at a beautiful country-seat, which the family of Tasso still possesses near that city ; and here again, in the house of his father, he proposed to be happy, " having never desired," he says, " any journey more earnestly than this." He left it in the course^ of a month, to return to Mantua. And it was only to wander still. Mantua he quitted in less than two months to go to Rome, in spite of the advice of his best friends. He vindicated the proceeding by a hope of obtaining some permanent settlement from the Pope. He took Loretto by the way, to refrosh himself with devotion ; arrived in a transport at Rome ; got nothing from the Pope (the hard-minded Sixtus the Fifth) ; and in the spring of the next year, in the triple hope of O father, my good father, looking now On thy poor son from heaven, well Itjiowest thcu What scalding tears I shed Upon thy grave, upon thy dying bed ; But since thou dwellest in the happy skies, 'Tis fit I raise to thee no sorrowing eyes : Be all my grief on my own head. * " Non posso vLver in citti, ove tutti i nobili, o non mi concedano i primi hiJghi, o almeno non si contentino che la cosa in quel che appartiene a. queste csterinri dimostrazioni, vada del pari." Opere, vol. xiii. p. 153. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 439 again embracing his sister, and recovering the dowry of his mo- ther and the confiscated property of his father, he proceeded to Naples. Naple.3 was in its most beautiful vernal condition, and the Ne- apolitans vv'elcomed the poet vs'ith all honour and glory ; but his sister, alas, was dead ; he got none of his father's property, nor (till too late) any of his mother's ; and before the year was out, he was again in Rome. He acquired in Naples, however, another friend, as attached to him and as constant in his attentions as his beloved Constantini, to wit, Giambattista Manso, Marquis of Villa, who became his biographer, and who was visited and praised for his good offices by Milton. In the society of this gen. tleman he seemed for a short while to have become a new man. He entered into field sports, listened to songs and music, nay, danced, says Manso, with " the girls." (One fancies a poetical Dr. Johnson with the two country damsels on his knees.) In short, good air and freedom, and no medicine, had conspired with the lessons of disappointment to give him, before he died, a glimpse of the power to be pleased. He had not got rid of all his spirit- ual illusions, even those of a melancholy nature ; but he took the latter more quietly, and had grown so comfortable with the race in general, that he encouraged them. He was so entirely freed from his fears of the Inquisition and of charges of magic, that whereas he had formerly been anxious to shew that he meant nothing but a poetical fancy by the spirit which he inti'oduced as communing with him in his dialogue entitled the Messenger, he now maintained its reality against the arguments of his friend Manso ; and these arguments gave rise to the most poetical scene in his history. He told Manso that he should have ocular testi- mony of the spirit's existence ; and accordingly one day while they were sitting together at the marquis's fireside, " he turned hio eyes," says Manso, " towards a window, and held them a long lime so intensely on it, that, when I called him, he did not answer. At last, ' Behold,' said he, ' the friendly spirit which has courteous- ly come to talk with me. Lift up your eyes and see the truth.' 1 turned ray eyes thither immediately (continues the marquis) ; but though I endeavoured to look as keenly as I could, I beheld tnthingbut the rays of the sun, which streamed through the panes 4iJ TASSO. of the window into the chamber. Whilst I still looked around, without beholding any object, Torquato began to hold, with this unknown something, a most lofty converse. I heard, indeed, and saw nothing but himself; nevertheless his words, at one time ques- tioning, at another replying, were such as take place between those who reason strictly on some important subject. And from what was said by the one, the reply of the other might be easily oompre- bended by the intellect, although it was not heard by the ear. The discourses were so lofty and marvellous, both by the sub- limity of their topics and a certain unwonted manner of talking, that, exalted above myself in a kind of ecstasy, I did not dare to interrupt them, nor ask Tasso about the spirit, which he had an- nounced to me, but which I did not see. In this v/ay, while I listened between stupefaction and rapture, a considerable time had elapsed ; till at last the spirit departed, as I learned from tlie words of Torquato ; who, turning to me, said, ' From this day forward all your doubts will have vanished from your mind.' ' Nay,' said I, ' they are I'ather increased j since, though I have heard many things worthy of marvel, I have seen nothing of what you promised to shew me to dispel them.' He smiled, and said, ' You have seen and heard more of him than perhpas ,' and here he paused. Fearful of importuning him with new questions, the discourse ended ; and the only conclusion I can draw is, what I before said, that it is more likely his visions or frenzies will dis- order my own mind than that I shall extirpate his true or imagi- nary opinion."* Did the " smile" of Tasso at the close of this extraordinary scene, and the words which he omitted to add, signify that his friend had seen and heard more, perhaps, than the poet wouM have liked to explain ? Did he mean that he himself alone had been seen and heard, and was author of the whole dialogue 1 Perhaps he did ; for credulity itself can impose ; — can take pleasure in seeing others as credulous as itself. On the other hand, enough has become known in our days of the phenomena of morbid perception, to render Tasso's actual belief in such visions not at all surprising. It is not uncommon for the sanest * Black, vol. U. p. 240. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 44] people oi delicate organisation to see faces before them while going to sleep, sometimes in fantastical succession. A stronger exercise of this disposition in temperaments more delicate will enlarge the face to figure ; and there can be no question that an imagination so heated as Tasso's, so full of the speculations of the later Platonists, and accompanied by a state of body so " nerv- ous," and a will so bent on its fancies, might embody whatevei he chose to behold. The dialogue he could as easily read in the vision's looks, whether he heard it or not with ears. If Nicholay, the Prussian bookseller, who saw crowds of spiritual people go through his rooms, had been a poet, and possessed of as wilful an imagination as Tasso, he might have gifted them all with speak- ing countenances as easily as with coats and waistcoats. Sweden- borg founded a religion on this morbid faculty ; and the Catholics worship a hundred stories of the like sort in the Lives of the Saints, many of which are equally true and false ; false in reali- ty, though true in supposition. Luther himself wrote and studied till he saw the Devil ; only the great reformer retained enough of his naturally sturdy health and judgment to throw an inkstand at Satan's head, — a thing that philosophy has been doing ever since. Tasso's principal residence while at Naples had been in the beautiful monastery of Mount Olivet, on which the good monks begged he would write them a poem ; which he did. A cold j-eception at Rome, and perhaps the difference of the air, brought back his old lamentations ; but here again a monastery gave him refuge, and he set himself down to correct his former works and compose new ones. He missed, however, the comforts of society and amusement which he had experienced at Naples. Neverthe- less, he did not return thither. He persuaded himself that it was necessary to be in Rome in order to expedite the receipt of some books and manuscripts from Bergamo and other places ; but his restlessness desired novelty. He thus slipped back from the neighbourhood of Rome to the city itself, and from the city back to the monastery, his friends in both places being probably tired of his instability. He thought of returning to Mantua ; but a present from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, accompanied by an invitation to his court, drew him, in one of his short-lived-trans. 442 TASSO. ports, to Florence. He returned, in spite of tlie best and most generous reception, to Rome ; then left Rome for Mantua, on invitation from his ever-kind deliverer from prison, novif the reign- ing duke ; tired again, even of him ; returned to Rome ; then once more to Napies, where the Prince of Conca, Grand Admiral of the kingdom, lodged and treated him like an equal ; but he grew suspicious of the admiral, and went to live with his friend Manso ; quitted Manso for Rome again ; was treated with rever- ence on the way, like Ariosto, by a famous leader of banditti ; was received at Rome into the Vatican itself, in the apartments of his friend Cintio Aldobrandino, nephew of the new pope Clement the Eighjh, where his hopes now seemed to be raised at once to their highest and most reasonable pitch ; but fell ill, and was obliged to go back to Naples for the benefit of the air. A life so strangely erratic to the last (for mortal illness was ap- proaching) is pei'haps unique in the history of men of letters, and might be therefore worth recording even in that of a less man than Tasso ; but when we recollect that this poet, in spite of all his weaknesses, and notwithstanding the enemies they provoked and the friends they cooled, was really almost adored for his genius in his own time, and instead of refusing jewels one day and soliciting a ducat the next, might have settled down almost any where in quiet and glory, if he had but possessed the patience to do so, — it becomes an association of weakness with power, and of adversity with the means of prosperity, the absurdity of which admiration itself can only drown in pity. He now took up his abode in another monastery, that of San Severino, where he was comforted by the visits of his friend Man- so, to whom he had lately inscribed a dialogue on Friendship ; for he continued writing to the last. He had also the consolation, such as it was, of having the lawsuit for his mother's dowry set- tled in his favour, though under circumstances that rendered it of little importance, and only three months before his death. So strangely did Fortune seem to take delight in sporting with a man of genius, who had thought both too much of her and too little ; too much for pomp's sake, and too little in prudence. Among his new acquaintances were the young Marino, afterwards the corrupter of Ita ran poetry, and the Prince o*' Venosa, an amateur HIS LIFE AND GENIlio. 443 composer of music. The dying poet wrote madrigals for him so much to his satisfaction, that, being about to marry into the house of Este, he wished to reconcile him with the Duke of Ferrara ; and Tasso, who to the last moment of his life seems never to have been able to resist the chance of resuming old quarters, apparently from the double temptation of renouncing them, wrote his old master a letter full of respects and regrets. But the duke, who himself died in the course of the year, was not to be moved from his silence. The poet had given him the last possible offence by recasting his Jerusalem, omitting the glories of the house of Este, and dedicating it to another patron. Alfonso, who had been ex- travagantly magnificent, though not to poets, had so weakened his government, that the Pope wrested Ferrara from the hands of his successor, and reduced the Este family to the possession of Modena, which it still holds and dishonours. The duke and the poet were thus fading away at the same time ; they never met again in this world ; and a new Dante would have divided them far enough in the next.* The last glimpse of honour and glory was now opening in a very grand manner on the poet — the last and the greatest, as if on purpose to give the climax to his disappointments. Cardinal Cin- tio requested. the Pope to give him the honour of a coronation. It had been desired by the poet, it seems, three years before. He was disappointed of it at that time ; and now that it was granted, he was disappointed of the ceremony. Manso says he no longer cared for it ; and, as he felt himself dying, this is not improbable. Nevertheless he went to Rome for the purpose ; and though the severity of the winter there delayed the intention till spring, wealth and honours seemed determined to come in floods upon the poor expiring great man, in order to take away the breath which they had refused to support. The Pope assigned him a yearly pension of a hundred scudi ; and the withholders of his mother's dowry came to an accommodation by v/hich he was to have an annuity of a hundred ducats, and a considerable sum in hand. ♦ The world in general have taken no notice of Tasso's re-construction of his Jerusalem, which he called the Gerusalcmme Conguistafa. It never "obtained," as the phrase is. It was the mere tribute of his declining years to bigotry and new acquaintances ; and ther fore I say no more of it. 444 TASSO. His hand was losing strength enough to close upcn the money Scarcely was the day for the coronation about to dawn, when the poet felt his dissolution approaching. Alfonso's doctors had killed him at last by superinducing a habit of- medicine-taking, which defeated its purpose. He requested leave to return to the monas- tery of St. Onofrio — wrote a farewell letter to Constantini — re- ceived the distinguished honour of a plenary indulgence from the Pope — said (in terms very like what Milton might have used, had he died a Catholic), that " this was the chariot upon which he hoped to go crowned, not with laurel as a poet into the capitol, but with glory as a saint to heaven " — and expired on the 25th of April, 1575, and the fifty -first year of his age, closely embra- cing the crucifix, and imperfectly uttering the sentence begin- ning, " Into thy hands, O Lord !"* Even after death, success mocked him ; for the coronation took ])lace on the senseless dead body. The head was wreathed with laurel ; a magnificent toga delayed for a while the shroud ; and a procession took place through the city by torchlight, all the in. habitants pouring forth to behold it, and painters crowding over the bier to gaze on the poet's lineaments, from which they pro- duced a multitude of portraits. The corpse was then buried in the church of St. Onofrio ; and magnificent monuments talked of, which never appeared. Manso, however, obtained lea"ve to set up a modest tablet ; and eight years afterwards a Ferrarese car- dinal (Bevilacqua) made what amends he could for his country- men, by erecting the stately memorial which is still to be seen. Poor, illustrious Tasso ! weak enough to warrant pity from his inferiors — great enough to overshadow in death his once-fancied superiors. He has been a by- word for the misfortunes of genius ; but genius was not his mis 'brtune ; it was his only good, and might have brought him all happiness. It is the want of genius, as far as it goes, and apart from martyrdoms for conscience' sake, which produces misfortunes even to genius itself — the want of as much wit and balance on the common side of things, as genius is sup- posed to confine to the uncommon. Manso has left a minute account of his friend's person and * In Tfwnus tuas, Domine. One likes- 'o know Ihe actual words ; at least ao It appears to me. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 415 manners. He was tall, even among the tall ; had a pale com- plexion, sunken cheeks, lightish brown hair, head bald at the top, large blue eyes, square forehead, big nose inclining towards the mouth, lips pale and thin, white teeth, delicate white hands, long arms, broad chest and shoulders, legs rather strong than fleshy, and the body altogether better proportioned than in good condi- tion ; the result, nevertheless, being an aspect of manly beauty and expression, particularly in the countenance, the dignity of which marked him for an extraordinary person even to those who did not know him. His demeanour was grave and deliberate; he laughed seldom ; and though his tongue was prompt, his de- livery was slow ; and he was accustomed to repeat his last words. He was expert in all manly exercises, but not equally graceful ; and the same defect attended his otherwise striking eloquence in public assemblies. His putting to flight the assassins in Ferrara gave him such a reputation for courage, that there went about in his honour a popular couplet : " CoUa penna e coUa spada Nessun val quanto Torquato." For the sword as well as pen Tasso is the man of men. He was a little eater, but not averse to wine, particularly such as combined piquancy with sweetness ; and he always dressed in black. Manso's account is still more particular, and yet it does not tell all ; for Tasso himself informs us that he stammered, and was near-sighted ;* and a Neapolitan writer who knew him adds to the near-sightedness some visible defect in the eyes.f I should doubt, from what Tasso says in his letters, whether he was fond of speaking in public, notwithstanding his debvi in that line with the Fifty Amorous Conclusions. Nor does he appear to have » Serassi, ii. 276. f "Quern, cernia, quisquis es, procera statura virum, Iubcw oculis, &c. bic Torquatus est." — Cappacio, Illustrmm Literis Virorum Eiogia et Judicia, quoted by Serassi, ut sup. The Latin word luseus, as well as the Italian Iosco, means, I believe, near-sighted; but it certainly means also a great d^al more; and unless the word cernia (thou beholdest) is a mere form of speech implying a foregone conclusion, it shews that the defect was obvious to the spectator. 446 TASSO. been remarkable for his conversation. Manso has left a collec- tion of one hundred of his pithy sayings — a suspicious amount, and unfortunately more than warranting the suspicion ; for al- most every one of them is traceable to some other man. They come from the Greek and Latin philosophers, and the apothegms of Erasmus. The two following have the greatest appearance of being genuine : A Greek, complaining that he had spoken ill of his counti-y, and maintaining that all the virtues in the world had issued out of it, the poet assented ; with the addition, that they had not left one behind them. A foolish young fellow, garnished with a number of golden chains, coming into a room where he was, and being overheard by him exclaiming, "Is this the great man that was mad?" Tasso said, " Ye.s ; but that people had never put on him more than one chain at a time." His character may be gathered, but not perhaps entirely, from what has been written of his life ; for some of his earlier letters show him to have been not quite so grave and refined in his way of talking as readers of the Jerusalem might suppose. He was probably at that time of life not so scrupulous in his morals as he professed to be during the greater part of it. His mother is thought to have died of chagrin and impatience at being separated so long from her husband, and not knowing what to do to save her dowry from her brothers ; and I take her son to have combined his mother's ultra-sensitive organization with his father's worldly imprudence and unequal spirits. The addition of the nervous temperament of one parent to the aspiring nature of the other gave rise to the poet's trembling eagerness for distinction ; and Torquato's very love for them both hindered him from seeing what should have been corrected in the infirmities which he in- herited. Falling from the highest hopes of prosperity into the most painful aflaictions, he thus wanted solid principles of action to support him, and was forced to retreat upon an excess of self- esteem, which allowed his pride to become a'beggar, and his nat- urally kind, loving, just, and heroical disposition to condescend to almost every species of inconsistency. The Duke of Ferrara, HIS LIFE AND GENIUS, 447 ne complains, did not believe a word he said ;* and the fact is, that, partly from disease, and partly from a want of courage to look his defects in the face, he beheld the same things in so many different lights, and according as it suited him at the moment, that, without intending falsehood, his statements are really not !c be relied on. He degraded even his verses, sometimes with panegyrics for interest's sake, sometimes out of weak wishes lo oblige, of wnich he was afterwards ashamed ; and, with the ex- ception of Constantini, we cannot be sure that any one person praised in them retained his regard in his last days. His suspi- cion made him a kind of Rousseau ; but he was more amiable than the Genevese, and far from being in the habit of talking against old acquaintances, whatever he might have thought of them. It is observable, not only that lie never married, but he told Manso he had led a life of entire continence ever since ho entered the walls of his prison, being then in his thirty-fifth year.f Was this out of fidelity to some mistress ? or the consequence of a previous life the reverse of continent 1 or was it from some principle of superstition ? He had become a devotee, apparently out of a dread of disbelief; and he remained extremely religious for the rest of his days. The two unhappiest of Italian poets, Tasso and Dante, were the two inost superstitious. As for the once formidable question concerning the compara- tive merits of this poet and Ariosto, which anticipated the modern quarrels of the classical and romantic schools, some idea of the treatment which Tasso experienced may be conceived by sup- posing all that used to be sarcastic and bitter in the periodical party- criticism among ourselves some thirty years back, collected into one huge vial of wrath, and poured upon the new poet's head. Even the great Galileo, who was a man of wit, bred up in the pure Tuscan school of Berni and Casa, and who was an idolater of Ariosto, wrote, when he was young, a "review" of the Jeni- salem Delivered, which it is painful to read, it is so unjust and * " II Signer Duca non crede ad alcuni mia parola." Opere, xiv. 161. t " Fui da bocca di lui medesimo rassicurato, che dal tempo del suo rilegnu in aant' Anna, ch' avenne negli anni trentacinque delta sua vita e sedici avanti la mortc, egli inticramente fu casto : degli anni primi non mi favellt) mai di modo ch' io possa alcnna cosa di certo qui raccontare." Opn-e, xxxiii 235. 448 TASSO. contemptuous.* But now that the only final arbiter, posterity, has accepted both the poets, the dispute is surely the easiest thing in the world to settle ; not, indeed, with prejudices of creeds or temperaments, but before any judges thoroughly sympathising with the two claimants. Its solution is the principle of the greater including the less. For Ariosto errs only by having an unbounded circle to move in. His sympathies are unlimited ; and those who think him inferior to Tasso, only do so in conse- quence of their own want oi sympathy with the vivacities that de- grade him in their eyes. Ariosto can be as grave and exalted as Tasso when he pleases, and he could do a hundred things which Tasso never attempted. He is as different in this respect as Shakspeare from Milton. He had far more knowledge of man- kind than Tasso, and he was superior in point of taste. But it is painful to make disadvantageous comparisons of one great poet with another. Let us be thankful for Tasso's enchanted gardens, without being forced to vindicate the universal vi^orld of his pre- deoessor. Suffice it to bear in mind, that the grave poet himself agreed with the rest of the Italians in calling the Ferrarese the " divine Ai'iosto ;" a title which has never been popularly given to his rival. The Jerusalem Delivered is the history of a Crusade, related with poetic license. The Infidels are assisted by unlawful arts ; and the libertinism that brought scandal on the Christians, is con- verted into youthful susceptibility, led away by enchantment. The author proposed to combine the ancient epic poets with Ari osto, or a simple plot, and uniformly dignified style, with roman- tic varieties of adventure, and the luxuriance of fairy-land. He did what he proposed to do, but with a judgment inferior to Vir- gil's ; nay, in point of the interdependence of the adventures, to Ariosto, and with far less general vigour. The mixture of affec- tation with his dignity is so frequent, that, whether Boileau's fa- mous line about Tasso's tinsel and Virgil's gold did or did not mean to imply that the Jerusalem was nothing but tinsel, and the Mneid all gold, it is certain that the tinsel is so interwoven with the ^old, as to render it more of a rule than an exception, and • It is to be found in the colUjotcd works, ^it supra, both of tlie pliilosophei and tlie poet. HIS Lr-E AND GENIUS. 4t9 put a provoking distance between Tasso's epic pretensions ana those of the greatest masters of the art. People who talce for granted the conceits because of the " wildness" of Ariosto, and the good taste because of the " regularity" of Tasso, just assume the reverse of the fact. It is a rare thing to find a conceit in A riosto ; and, where it does exist, it is most likely defensible on some Shakspearian ground of subtle propriety. Open Tasso in almost any part, particularly the love-scenes, and it is marvellous if, before long, you do not see the conceits vexatiously interfering with the beauties. " Oh maraviglia! Amor, che appena 6 nato, GiiL grande vola, e gia, trionfa armato." Canto i. st. 4'7. Oh, miracle ! Love is scarce born, when, lo. He flies full wing'd, and lords it with his bow ! " Se '1 miri fulminar ne 1' arme awolto, Marte lo stimi ; Amor, se scopre il volto." St. 58. Mars you would think him, when his thund'ring race In arms he ran ; Love when he shew'd his face. Which is as little true to leason as to taste ; for no god of war could look like a god of love. The habit of mind would render it impossible. But the poet found the prettiness of the Greek Anthology ii-resistible. Olindo, tied to the stake amidst the flames of martyrdom, can say to his mistress : " Altre fiamme, altri nodi amor promise." Canto ii. st. 34. Other flames, other bonds than these, love promised. The sentiment is natural, but the double use of the " flames" on such an occasion, miserable. In the third canto the fair Amazon Clorinda challenges her love to single combat. " E di due morti in un punto lo sfida." St. 23. " And so at once she threats to kill him twice,'" Fairfax. That is to say, with her valour anc beauty. Another twofold employment o flame, witli an exclamaticn 450 TASSO. to secure our astonishmerii, makes its appearance i:i the fourth canto : " Oh miracol d' amor ! che le faville Tragge del pianto, e i cor' ne 1' acqua accende," St. 76. Oh, miracle of love ! that draweth sparks Of lire from tears, and kindlest hearts in water! Tin's puerile antithesis of fire and water, fire and ice, light in dark- ness, silence in speech, together with such pretty turns as wound- ing one's-self in wounding others, and the worse sacrifice of con- sistency and truth of feeling, — lovers making long speeches on the least fitting occasions, and ladies retaining their rosy cheeks in the midst of fears of death, — ^is to be met with, more or less, throughout the poem. I have no doubt they were the proximate cause of that general corruption of taste which was afterwards completed by Marino, the acquaintance and ardent admirer of Tasso when a boy. They have been laid to the charge of Pe- trarch ; but, without entering into the question, how far and in what instances conceits may not be natural to lovers haunted, as Petrarch was, with one idea, and seeing it in every thing they behold, what had the great epic poet to do with the faults of the lyrical ? And what is to be said for his standing in need of the excuse of bad example ? Homer and Milton vi-ere in no such want. Virgil would not have copied the tricks of Ovid. There is an effeminacy and self reflection in Tasso, analogous to his Uinaldo, in the enchanted garden ; where the hero wore a looking- glass by his side, in which he contemplated his sophisticated self, and the meretricious beauty of his enchantress.'^ Agreeably to this tendency to weakness, the style of Tasso, when not supported by great occasions (and even the occasion itself sometimes fails him), is too apt to fall into lameness and commonplace, — to want movement and picture ; while, at the same time, with singular defect of enjoyment, it does not possess * It is an extraordinary instance of a man's violating, in older life, the better critical principles of his youth, — that Tasso, in his Discourses on Poetry, should liave objected to a passage in Ariosto about sighs and tears, as being a " conceit too lyrical," (though it was warranted by the subtleties of madness, see present volume, p. 131), and yet afterwards riot in the same conceits when wholly without warrant. HIS LIFE AND GENIUS. 451 the music which might be expected from a lyrical and voluptuous poet. Bernardo prophesied of his son, that, however he might surpass him in other respects, he would never equal him in sweet- ness ; and he seems to have judged him rightly. I have met with a passage in Torquato's prose writings (but I cannot lay my hands on it), in which he expresses a singular predilection for verses full of the same vowel. He seems, if I remember rightly, to have regarded it, not merely as a pleasing variety, which it is on occasion, but as a reigning principle. Voltaire (I think, in his treatise on Epic Poetry) has noticed the multitude of o's in the exordium of the Jerusalem. This apparent negligence seems •o have been intentional. " Cantt) r armi pietijse e '1 capitanb Che '1 gran Sepblcrb liberb