There is little of tenderness, and less of stern sublimity, in any of his poems; and yet it is uniformly affirmed that his aspect and manner were grave, melancholic, and contemplative,—from habit, probably, more than from nature; for in company he was affable, and his conversation peculiarly captivating to women, whom, no doubt, he laid himself out to please, and with whom he was no small favourite. So far, also, as they could appreciate his merit, and endure that aristocracy of mind which pressed hard upon the heels of hereditary rank, or mushroom vanity raised from stercorarious heaps in ecclesiastical hotbeds, his society was courted by the greatest personages in church and state, including popes, cardinals, and sovereign princes. Unassuming, but not indifferent to slights or wrongs from the highest with whom he was associated, he led, on the whole, a feverish life between resolute poverty and precarious dependence, with the continual temptation to rise to wealth by means which he abhorred, and for which he must have abhorred himself had he stooped to employ them.
Of persons of the other sex, who, from time to time, caught his wandering affections, the names of two (whether real or disguised) have been preserved—Alexandra and Guenevra. It is understood that the former (to whom he may have been privately married) was the mother of his two sons,—Giambattista, who devoted himself to a military life, and Virginio, who obtained distinction in literature. For the other lady, his passion might be no more than a poetical one—she being married, and a mother, in an honourable family of Florence akin to his own. Finding her one day adorning a silk coat for one of her children, so as to resemble armour by the devices—the ground silver, and the embroidery purple—against a festival spectacle, at which the lad was to figure in it on Midsummer Eve, he was so inspired by the hand and the needle, that he celebrated their performance in the twenty-fourth book of the "Orlando Furioso;" where, describing a wound, "not deep but long," received in combat with Mandricardo by Zerbino, from which the blood trickled over his splendid panoply, the poet introduces the following admired but frigid simile:—
"Le lucide arme il caldo sangue irriga
Per sino al piè de rubiconda riga.
"Cosi talora un bel purpureo nastro
Ho veduto partir tela d' argento,
Da quella bianca man più ch' alabastro,
Da cui partire il cor spesso mi sento."
"The warm blood, with a crimson rivulet,
Down to the foot his shining armour wet.
"So have I seen a beauteous purple zone
Divide a web of silver, by the art
Of that white hand, outvying Parian stone,
Which oft I feel dividing thus my heart."
This is much more in the strain of fanciful passionless ideality (like Petrarch's mistress, and his praises of her), than warm, ingenuous, honest love, "whose dwelling is the heart of man," and whose language is that of nature, which all may understand who ever knew affection. In the same vein of ingenious artificial compliment and conceit (often, indeed, elegant and captivating to the mind at ease, and amusing itself with love in idleness) are the Elegies, Sonnets, and Madrigals of Ariosto;—all calculated more to set off the beauties of his Muse than of his mistress; and rather to command admiration of himself, than to do honour to her, whom, though a divinity in song, and adored with magnificent rites, he worships with nearly as little devotion as an idol deserves. Of the following sonnet (the nineteenth in the series), Paolo Rolli says, "non è stata mai scritta poesia più sublime,"—"poetry more sublime was never written." It would be hard to persuade any Englishman of this.
"Chiuso era il Sol da un tenebroso velo,
Che si stendea fino all' estreme sponde
Dell' orizonte, e mormorar le fronde
S' udiano, e tuoni andar scorrendo il cielo.
Di pioggia, in dubbio, o tempestoso gelo,
Stav' io per gire oltre le torbid' onde
Del fiume altier che il gran sepolcro asconde,
Del figlio audace del Signor di Delo:—
"Quando apparir sull' altra ripa il lume
De bei vostr' occhij vidi, e udij parole
Che Leandro potean farmi quel giorno.
E tutto a un tempo i nuvoli d'intorno
Si dileguaro, e si scoperse il Sole,
Tacquero i venti, e tranquillossi 'l fiume."
"The sun was shrouded with a gloomy veil
That reach'd the dim horizon's utmost bound,
The forest leaves were heard to murmur round,
And distant thunder peal'd along the gale.
In doubt I stood, of rain or pelting hail,
By the proud river, rapid and profound,
Wherein Apollo's daring son was drown'd[108],
Afraid to dip the oar or hoist the sail:
"When, from the farther bank, the light I saw
Of your fair eyes, and heard a voice, of power
To make Leander of me in that hour.
At once the clouds their dark array withdraw,
The sun brake forth, the rainbow climb'd the hill,
The winds were silent, and the waters still."
The foregoing version has been rendered as little paraphrastic as might be (though the eighth line is interpolated); but all rhymed translations from the Italian, in the same number of lines as the original, must be encumbered either with additional thought or verbiage—our language being altogether more brief in syllabic composition.
The society of Ariosto was courted by the learned and the polite; not for his wit and intelligence only, but for the privilege of hearing his latest compositions, as they came warm from his mind, or were gradually wrought to perfection by that patient labour for which he was distinguished, and to which he is indebted for as much of his glory as to the creative energy of his genius itself. For when he had originated, by force of invention, his most admired performances, he never ceased to improve them afterwards by touches innumerable, exquisite, and undiscerned by ordinary eyes, till the art which effected the changes at length disappeared in its own consummation, and those seemed to be the first thoughts in the first words, which were really the last transmigrations of the former through the latter. No poet of any age has more inseparably identified his conceptions with his language than Ariosto; in fact, his ideas themselves are so vernacular, that they can scarcely be made to speak any other than their native tongue; they defy translation. Nothing, indeed, can be easier than to render the literal meaning in dictionary terms; yet nothing less resembling the original in all that constitutes its prime excellence—grace, freedom, and simplicity—can be imagined than these. Of the "Orlando Furioso" there are three English versions: that by sir John Harrington, in the reign of queen Elizabeth, is coarse, careless, and unfaithful; that of Hoole, about fifty years ago, tame, diffuse, and prosaic; the recent one by W. S. Rose, esq., elegant, spirited, and probably as true to the text as any readable paraphrase can be under the difficulties aforementioned.
While this magnificently wild and sportive work was in progress, and after its first publication, during the refining process through which it was continually passing till the last year of his own life, the poet was accustomed to read, at the courts of Hippolito and Alfonso, and in other favoured circles, the cantos as they were produced, revised, or had received their final polish. This accounts partly for the manner in which the hundredfold story is told,—not as recorded in a book, but as delivered spontaneously before princes and prelates, scholars and gentry, assembled to listen to the marvellous adventures of knights and ladies, giants and enchanters, from the lips of the gifted narrator. Ariosto excelled in the practice of reading aloud, whether the subjects were his own, or those of his illustrious predecessors or contemporaries; to which his melodious voice, distinct utterance, and versatile spirit gave peculiar emphasis and animation. This accomplishment was of great value after the revival of letters, when books were scarce, and authors depended, for pecuniary recompence, more upon the gratuities of patrons, than upon honourable profits from extensive sales of their writings. But though he was thus master of the rarest art of speech,—good reading, especially of verse, being seldomer attained (perhaps because it is less duly appreciated) than eloquent declamation,—he was never forward either to begin, by obtruding it upon his friends for his own gratification, nor slow to leave off when he had wearied himself for others. As his ear was nice, and his taste pure in this respect, he was proportionately offended by indifferent, vulgar, or boisterous recitation. The story is told of him, that one day, passing a potter's shop, he heard the unlettered artisan singing, in harsh and ill-accented numbers, a stave of the "Orlando." According to sir John Harrington, it was the thirty-second in the first canto[109],—and this will do as well as any other in a questionable tale,—in which Rinaldo tries to catch his horse, with as little success as many a groom and gentleman has done before and since. The poet, as little able to keep his temper as his hero on the occasion, rushed among the crockery, smashing now one piece, then another, on the right hand and on the left, with his walking-stick. The potter, half paralised and half frantic, hastily, yet hesitatingly, enquired why the gentleman should thus injure a poor fellow who had done him no harm? No harm, man?" replied the enraged author, "I am scarcely even with thee yet: I have cracked three or four wretched jugs of thine, not worth a groat, and thou hast been mangling and murdering a stanza of mine worth a mark of gold!" Unluckily for the credit of this sally of professional petulance, the same anecdote has been told of Camoens, the Portuguese, who lived half a century later; and something like it of Philoxenus, who lived nearly 2000 years earlier. Yet the tradition concerning Ariosto may be true; who, remembering the classic precedent, might choose to follow it in a case where no redress could be looked for, except from taking the law into his own hands. At the worst, such an outrage must have been a piece of caustic pleasantry; and it may be taken for granted, that the sufferer was well compensated for having afforded the poet no very disagreeable opportunity of indulging his humour; since, however the learned may pretend to despise the opinions of the multitude, there is scarcely any proof of fame more flattering to the proudest aspirant, than a cross-wind of popular applause. Cervantes, who well understood the secrets of a poet's breast, goes farther, and, with consummate propriety, makes the student, whose verses had been commended to the skies by Don Quixote, say within himself,—"How sweet is praise, even from the lips of a madman!"