"Let him who golden spur or scarlet hat affects
Serve king, or duke, or cardinal, or pope;
This suits not me, who care for neither gaud."[159]

Whether his patron's proverbially slighting reception of a dedication of the first fruits of his epic muse proceeded from obtuseness, or, as Tiraboschi suggests, was a poor jest, it could not but be mortifying to a man of delicacy and conscious genius. Ere long a breach occurred between them, on Ludovico declining to attend the Cardinal in a distant and fatiguing embassy to Hungary.[*160] This occurred in 1517; but he was soon after admitted into the Duke of Ferrara's service with a monthly salary of seven crowns, and allowances for three servants and two horses. His first employment in this new sphere was a mission, in 1519, to condole with Lorenzo de' Medici, the usurping Duke of Urbino, on the loss of his consort Madeleine of France; but ere he reached Florence, Lorenzo's own death had supervened. It was on this occasion he composed his first Capitulo, where, and in his Stanze, he speaks of that prince in the usual fulsome style of courtly bards, alluding to his uncles Leo and Giuliano as

"Twin suckers from that long descended laurel stem,
Which in its verdure decked a golden age."

How little the duty thus imposed upon him consisted with his own tastes may, however, be gathered from an incident characteristic of the age. The venal conduct of Duke Francesco Maria's Spanish followers having brought to a sudden close his attempt to regain his patrimonial states, in the manner detailed in our [thirty-sixth chapter], one of their number resented an imputation to that effect, cast upon his comrades by some gentlemen of Ferrara. A challenge was the result, each party selecting a bravo to maintain their cause. This duel by deputy took place on the Neapolitan territory, and, of the combatants, who fought naked with swords, the Spaniard was left dead on the field. The victor returned to be fêted in the capital of the d'Este; and Ariosto composed his thirty-fifth sonnet upon "Ferrara's true paladin, of truth, genius, worth, and valour, who has cleared up the Spaniard's slippery trick upon the good Duke of Urbino, and testified to Italian bravery." We may well suppose the satisfaction with which the minstrel saw this "good Duke" restored to his station in 1521, and may conjecture that he paid him homage in his mountain capital. A room in the ducal palace there, decorated with his portrait, went by his name, and he was enrolled among the Assorditi academicians.[161] In 1532, a few months previous to his death, Prince Guidobaldo wrote to ask of him an unacted comedy, for representation at Pesaro, to which he replied, regretting his inability to comply with the request, as he had long ceased to write such things.

Ariosto's life presents few remarkable incidents, considering the space which his name justly occupies in the literary annals of Italy. Though honoured and complimented by the Dukes of Urbino and Ferrara, and by Leo X., he seems to have incurred few solid obligations from these Maecenases of his age. The only promotion awarded to him was the administration of Garfagna, a mountain-holding under the d'Este family, chiefly peopled by banditti, which he obtained in 1522, but resigned after three years' sad experience of the turbulent charge. His coronation by Charles V. is apocryphal, although he is understood to have received from that Emperor a diploma as his poet laureate. He died on the 6th of June, 1533, in his home at Ferrara, and was buried in the old church of S. Benedetto. In 1573 his body was transported to the new church, and in 1801 to the Public Library of Ferrara.

It would be foreign to the object proposed in these pages to enter fully into the merits of works so universally known, and so little connected with our immediate subject, as the heroic poems of Ariosto. But we have ample evidence of the popularity enjoyed by his Orlando Furioso, during the first half-century after its publication, in the testimony of one not likely to be partial to a successful rival: "And if the aim which a good poet ought to keep in view be that of imparting pleasure and enjoyment, it is obvious that this was accomplished by Ariosto; for there is neither artisan, nor man of learning, nor boy, nor girl, nor old person, who is satisfied with a second perusal of him. Are not his stanzas a solace to the jaded pilgrim, who sings them to alleviate the irksomeness of his hot and weary way? Do you not hear them chanted all day long in the highways and the fields? I believe that there have not been printed as many copies of Homer or Virgil as of the Furioso, during the time that has elapsed since that most accomplished gentleman published his poem; and if so, as cannot be doubted, is not this a clear proof of its beauty and excellence?"[162] We set aside the minor faults which have been found in the execution, and most gladly escape from all critical discussion of the vexed question, as to its due observance of unity and sustained action. The absence of perfections so questionable is by many accounted a charm. Nowhere has imagination been more freely indulged, nowhere the poetic vein left to play such fantastic tricks; but in its sallies, effort and restraint are alike unknown. As the figures in a magic-lantern, or the endless changes of the kaleidoscope, its phantasmagoria appear and pass by, without our being aware of the machinery which called them up; yet, from time to time, there occur images of life so veracious, traits of nature so touching, that we are again summoned to the realities of existence and the sympathies of humanity, with a startling effect scarcely less marvellous than the wild creations which precede and follow these charming episodes. Even extravagance thus ceases to be a blemish, whilst facility and freshness are ever multiplying new beauties. Episodes and incidents, serious or grotesque, capriciously introduced into the poem, give it a motley and heterogeneous aspect; variety of matter and diversity of style are its familiar characteristics; and its unequal execution is, perhaps, less pardonable than the desultory character of its plan. Nor is it only by its novelty that this freedom of action sustains the interest of the work. The introduction of real personages and recent events relieves the tedium of long continued allegory, and stamps nature and individuality on adventures in themselves extravagant and apocryphal.

In estimating the rank of this poet, critical judgment has too often been diverted from the quality of his verses to the fittingness of his style; and in comparing him with Tasso, the argument resolves itself into a contrast between romantic and classic poetry. Upon such a discussion we purpose not to enter. Ariosto found his countrymen under the charm of old legendary histories, perpetuated by tradition from the days of Charlemagne and his paladins, and more recently popularised in Pulci's burlesque epic of the Morgante Maggiore, and by Boiardo's unfettered fancy in the Orlando Innamorato. He was content to sail with the stream, spreading his canvas to the prevailing breeze, rather than to strike out another course, and steer in search of newer attractions. This decision necessarily limited the scope of a highly original genius to varying the details and episodes of inventions already familiarised to his readers by other less inspired pens; and it were difficult to account for his thus contentedly following their track, except from the conviction that none else was so certain a guide to success. Domenichi and Berni, aware that Boiardo had unworthily handled his theme, were content to employ themselves in recasting it into more attractive shape, and Le Sage's French translation is a mere paraphrase. But Ariosto chose the higher aim of taking up the story where Boiardo had left it incomplete, and working it out in forms less exaggerated and fanciful, but far more nobly conceived, and executed with infinitely greater polish and poetic beauty.

Pietro Aretino[*163] has been designated by Ariosto[164] "the scourge of princes," a description somewhat more just than the epithet of "divine," which is added possibly in irony; for few men, it is hoped, have been so destitute of those high aspirations which form the link between human and divine nature. He has been aptly compared to an ill-conditioned cur, ever ready to yelp and snap at all who do not feed or fondle him, but to such as do, the most fawning of his species. He was born at Arezzo in 1492, and was natural son of one Luigi Bacci. After serving his apprenticeship to a bookbinder at Perugia, he went to push his fortunes in Rome, where his first remarkable productions were verses illustrating a set of engravings by Marcantonio, after designs by Giulio Romano,—a work so scandalously offensive to decency that scarcely any copies have escaped destruction.[*165] After the death of Giovanni de' Medici delle bande nere, his earliest patron, he went to Venice, and subsequently visited most of the Italian courts. His foul scurrilities and loathsome adulation were dealt out with equal readiness, as best served his insatiable avarice and undisguised selfishness. These base qualities, tempered by tact and great readiness, gained for him a success equally unaccountable and undeserved; he became rich, caressed, applauded, dreaded, and is said to have earned not less than 70,000 scudi during his career. The popularity which his writings enjoyed among all ranks seems an infatuation,[*166] considering their very moderate merit, and must be viewed as symptomatic of a generally depraved taste, though no doubt his own ineffable conceit and insolence contributed to the delusion. "There truly never was a man who combined such haughty presumption with equal ignorance of literature, meanness of spirit, and debauchery of morals. His style possesses no elegance or grace; indeed he seems to me one of the first to introduce those ludicrous hyperboles and extravagant metaphors that came so generally into use during the next century. Never assuredly have I met with books so empty and useless as those of this impostor, whose baseness equalled his profound ignorance, and the sole object of whose writings was self-interest and lucre. As to his manners, they are amply testified by his works, wherein, besides a prodigal sprinkling of obscenity, there are mentioned the women with whom he intrigued, and the children these bore him; they in fact prove him destitute of moral or religious principle; and if ever he makes a show of compunction or amendment, it is but to relapse speedily into his wonted profanity. Truly such a fellow, who ought hardly to have ventured to show himself in public, stands unequalled in presumptuous arrogance. But the most surprising thing is to see a majority of European princes, and not a few learned Italians, humbling themselves before him without a blush, and rendering him a degrading tribute of gifts and eulogies. Chains of gold, considerable sums of money, pensions, and handsome presents of every sort, came in so constantly from various quarters, that he confesses to receiving from different princes 25,000 scudi within eighteen years. The most amusing part of it is that these rich donations were made because he assumed the proud epithet of scourge of princes, on the plan, as it would seem, of threatening them with his indignation, and with attacks upon their actions in his writings; yet never was there a more sordid adulator of the great, and no work of his contains a single word against any sovereign." It would be difficult to select words more graphic or more just than this description by Tiraboschi, which we have preferred adopting, to the task of reviewing so filthy a character.[*167] We shall elsewhere allude to him in connection with Michael Angelo and Titian, and other notices might be selected of his intercourse with Duke Guidobaldo II. The self-assumed privilege of his position did not however always protect him from the merited consequences of his meanness and malevolence. Boccalini (an author scarcely less mordent than himself, who is said to have expiated his satiric vein by being beaten to death) calls him "a magnet of fisty-cuffs and cudgels, whose enemies' hands, rivalling the promptitude of his own pen, had scarred him all over with as many lines as a navigator's chart." Among those who met him with his own weapons was Antonio Francesco Doni, a literary adventurer of Florence, whose arrival about 1552 at the court of Guidobaldo II. inspired Aretino with jealousy which exploded in an impertinent letter. The intruder, however, maintained his ground till 1558, the year after his opponent's characteristic death, and retaliated in a volume published in 1556, entitled Doni's Earthquake, overthrowing the great beastly colossal Antichrist of our Age; a Work composed in Honour of God and the Holy Church, and in Defence of good Christians, and dedicated "to the infamous and rascally source and fountain of all malice, Pietro Aretino, the putrid limb of public imposture, and true Antichrist of our time."