His style is, perhaps, if not the most lofty, yet the most perfect of any Italian poet; it is so sweetly varied, so gracefully and judiciously adorned with metaphors and tropes, so picturesque in description, so vivid in narrative, so exquisitely graduated to impart the suitable colouring to the poet's thoughts. Perhaps the only quality it lacks, is the expression of deep emotion, which his joyous and animated verse seldom attains. Nor can it be said that he ever displays great depth of thought, so that we seek in vain in his works for those marvellous flashes that irradiate the mystery of things. With this want is connected the absence of striking individuality in many of his characters; they are Knights and Saracens such as tradition supplied. When he chooses, however, he can individualize his figures, like Angelica, or Orlando and Alcina, with great success, and many observations interspersed throughout the work, show keen insight into human nature. Voltaire, an ardent admirer of this poet, said he had more knowledge of the human heart than is to be found in all epics and novels from Homer's Iliad down to Richardson's Pamela. He regretted Madame du Deffand had not learnt Italian in order to read so admirable a poet. He says in one of his last poems:
"Je relis l'Arioste ou même la Pucelle."
The Pucelle, indeed, was written in emulation of the Orlando Furioso which it resembles no more than a statue of Silenus resembles the Jupiter of Otricoli.
No one represented more truthfully the effect produced by Ariosto on the mind than Leopardi in the following lines:
"Nascevi ai dolci sogni intanto, e il primo
Sole splendeati in vista,
Cantor vago dell' arme e degl' amori,
Che in età della nostra assai men trista
Empièr la vita di felici errori,
Nova speme d'Italia. O torri, O celle,
O donne, O cavalieri,
O giardini, O palagi! a voi pensando,
In mille vane amenità si perde
La mente mia."
Ariosto began his great poem in 1505, at the age of thirty-one, and finished it in 1516; but the year before his death he published an edition with countless alterations and improvements, and with six additional cantos, and it is in the latter form that it has descended to posterity. At his death he left five cantos of an unfinished epic, entitled Rinaldo Ardito, in which many characters of the Orlando reappear; but the fragment is in a very imperfect state and by no means approaches the beauty of the completed work.