Of Ariosto's personal habits, some whimsical peculiarities have been mentioned, not worth repeating, except to gratify the very natural curiosity—call it impertinent who will—which most readers feel to learn all that they can about a favourite author. He himself confesses that he could scarcely distinguish the different kinds of food; and it has been already seen that he was in the practice of eating voraciously.—A friend, who had invited him to an entertainment for the diversion of the company, ordered a roasted kite to be palmed upon him for a partridge. By the blunder of a servant, the carrion was set before a nicer guest, who smelled the joke, if he did not relish it, and the poet escaped the savoury snare.—A stranger, calling upon him once when he had just sat down to dinner, Ariosto eagerly ate up all the "short commons" which had been provided, while the other was entertaining him with most excellent discourse. Being afterwards reproved by his brother for lack of hospitality, he coolly replied,—"The loss was the gentleman's own; he should have taken care of himself." His rudeness and hurry at table were attributed principally to fits of rumination or absence of mind; and if he sometimes over-satisfied his appetite, he did not usually indulge it with more than one meal a day.
Quite in consonance with the poet's reveries were his raptures of execution. After wandering in a day-dream of thought, he would suddenly sit down and disburthen his overcharged brain with effusions of song, that seemed as spontaneous as spring showers that fall in gusts through broad sunshine, though they have been long collecting in the zenith; or, he would start from "a brown study" at midnight, and call upon his servant Gianni to bring pen, ink, and paper immediately, that he might fix, before they vanished for ever, the imaginations which had charmed him in his trance. The "Orlando" thus appeared to come to him, canto by canto, as the Koran to Mahomet; and no doubt the one was as truly inspired as the other. His early reading had so filled and fertilised his mind, that he subsisted in thought almost exclusively on the inexhaustible harvests perpetually produced from the remembrances of that; and in his latter years was so indolent, or so indifferent a searcher of the writings of others, that he frequently passed weeks without turning over the pages of any except his own,—in which, like the spider, he seemed to have a personal existence; so diffusing himself through them, that it might be said of him, that, not with a touch only, "exquisitely fine," he could "feel the whole thread," but also "live along the line."
In his last hours, he is represented as maintaining his philosophical tranquillity,—neither affecting stoical sternness, nor the hideous jocularity of some, who, to hide their misgivings, die "as a fool dieth." He professed to leave the world without much regret—having never, indeed, been very well satisfied with his portion in it; and, believing that in a future state men would know each other, he observed, that he should be happy to meet many whom he loved, and who had gone before him. How content to die in the dark are men of the highest faculties, and otherwise of the most inquisitive minds, who have never known, or who have rejected, the truth of that Gospel by which life and immortality were brought to light!
As might be expected on the demise of one so celebrated for genius, sonnets, elegies, and epitaphs in abundance were composed and published to his honour. His body was buried in the church of the Benedictines at Ferrara, when the monks of that order, contrary to their usual reserve, accompanied the funeral procession: a plain slab of marble being laid over the grave, was presently over-run with Greek, Latin, and Italian verses, as the natural products of so poetical a spot. His son Virginio afterwards prepared a chapel and sepulchre for his parent, in the garden of the house which he had himself built, and where he had spent many of his last and happiest days. But the good fathers had such reverence for the relics of a poet, who certainly was any thing rather than a saint, and whom no pope would canonise, that they would not allow their removal. In process of time. Agostino Mosti, a man of letters, who in early life was a disciple of the deceased, seeing no memorial worthy of his master's fame erected, at his own expense caused a tablet (worthy at least of himself) to be placed in the aforesaid church of the Benedictines, with a bust upon the tomb beneath, and a Latin inscription by Lorenzo Fiesoli. A monument more superb was erected, nearly a century later, by Ludovico his grand-nephew, bearing also a Latin inscription. Neither of these, nor even that which the poet composed in the same language for himself, need be inserted here; the two former being in the common-place style of posthumous panegyric, and the latter quaint and puerile, though of sufficient significance to have been imitated by Pope, with reckless profaneness, in the ribald lines which he wrote for himself.
"Under this stone, or under this sill," &c.
The house which he built (as formerly mentioned), with its humble inscription, is yet shown as a monument more interesting to the eye of the enthusiastic admirer of the poet, than any marble effigies, however gorgeously or exquisitely wrought, could be: it brings the spectator into personal contact with himself, by local and domestic association. But in this respect, the chair in which he was wont to meditate; and the inkstand from which he filled his pen to disburthen his thoughts, when they flowed, as they did at times, like the juice of full ripe grapes from their own pressure,—if these relics are genuine,—must be incomparably the most touching and inspiring memorials of his life and his labours.
Of Ariosto's grand performance, it would be vain to sketch the outline, or enter into formal criticism here: sufficient indications of the present biographer's estimate of the author's powers and style of composition have been already given. It would be idle and hopeless to censure or carp at particulars, where little can be commended beyond the talent with which a web of wonders and horrors (the easiest and cheapest products of invention) has been so skilfully woven into poetical tapestry, as not only to invest the most preposterous fictions with the vividness of reality, but to charm or conciliate readers of all classes, from those of the severest taste to those most akin to mere animal appetite; disarming the indignation of the former by exquisite playfulness, and transporting the latter by that marvellous intrepidity of fibbing to which many a minstrel and romancer was formerly indebted for his popularity. The fact is, that though, with inimitable gravity, Ariosto tells story after story (or rather story within story), deserving no better appellation than that which his patron Hippolito bestowed upon his fictions when he asked, "Messer Ludovico, dove avete cogliate tante coglionere?" "Where, master Ludovico, have you picked up so many fooleries?" yet Cervantes himself had not a keener sense of ridicule, nor in his happiest sallies was he more expert in humour or irony, than this "prince of liars," as the curate in "Don Quixote" designates a certain traveller. He describes, indeed, every scene, event, and character throughout his world of nonentities, as they might have been described, had they been actual and not imaginary: yet it is frequently manifest, that, while he appears to be writing romance, he is composing satire; and though he delights in prodigies for their own sake, yet, wherever they exceed the probable of the marvellous, he is not only alive to their absurdity, but rejoices to expose it, and turn extravagance itself into pleasantry.
In canto XXVI., Rinaldo, Ricciardetto, and Ruggiero, assisted by Marphisa (whom, in her martial accoutrements, they do not perceive to be a woman of war), massacre, without let or hindrance, two bodies of Moors and Magauzes, whom they surprise at market together. This, in plain prose, is the style in which the butchery is described:—"Marphisa, as she fought by their side, often turned her eyes towards her companions in arms; and witnessing with wonder their rival achievements, she extolled them all in turn: but the stupendous prowess of Ruggiero, especially, appeared to her without example in the world; so that she was ready to imagine him Mars, who had descended from the fifth heaven to that quarter. She beheld his terrible strokes; she beheld them falling never in vain: it seemed as though, against Balisarda (his sword), iron was paper, and not hard metal; for it split helmets and strong cuirasses; it cleft riders down to their saddles, throwing one half of the man on the right hand, the other on the left; and not stopping there, the same blow slew the horse with his lord. Heads from their shoulders it hurled into the air, and often cut sheer the trunk from the loins; five, and even more, with one motion it sometimes despatched; and if I did not fear that truth would not find credit, but be taken for a lie, I could tell greater things: it is, therefore, expedient rather to tell less than I might. The good archbishop Turpin, who knows very well that he speaks the truth, and leaves every one to believe it or not as he pleases, relates such marvellous feats of Ruggiero, that, hearing them repeated, you would say they were falsehoods. Before Marphisa, every warrior seemed to be ice, and she consuming flame: nor did she less attract the eyes of Ruggiero towards herself, than he had won hers to him; and if she deemed him to be Mars, he might have thought her to be Bellona, had he as well known her to be a lady as her appearance indicated the contrary. Perhaps the emulation then begotten between them, was no good thing for those miserable people, on whose flesh, blood, bones, and sinews, proof was made how much each could do."
Now, what sympathy can be felt in such unequal conflicts? No more, verily, than with the fate and fortunes of the elephants and castles, the kings, queens, bishops, knights, and commonalty on a chess-board, in a game between an adept and a novice, which is up in a few moments, neither exalting the winner nor disparaging the loser, nor affecting life, limb, character, or feeling in regard to one of the puppets employed in the play. Of the same class are all the combats between invulnerable heroes, and those who wield weapons of enchantment: the irresistible spear of Bradamante, that unhorsed every antagonist whom it touched; the magic horn of Astolpho, that routed armies with a blast; Ruggiero's veiled shield, the dazzling splendour of which, when suddenly disclosed, struck with blindness and astonishment all eyes that beheld it. Of the latter, the author himself grows weary or ashamed, and makes his hero so too; though, with remarkable dexterity, he turns into a glorious act of heroic virtue, the voluntary riddance of it by the indignant Ruggiero, who throws it into a hidden well, in a nameless forest in an undiscovered land, after having won too cheap a victory by its accidental exposure. In these two instances (and many others might be quoted), Ariosto laughs at his own extravagances, with as much pleasantry as Cervantes himself at those of others: and it may, perhaps, be affirmed that he does it with more tact and good sense, for it must be acknowledged that few outrages upon nature in the tales of chivalry, which the Spaniard justly ridicules, are felt by the reader to be more improbable than the crazy imitations of them by the knight of La Mancha, whose pranks could only be attempted by one absolutely insane, and therefore were as little a fair mark for satire as for censure. Ariosto has this advantage over Cervantes,—that whatever is great, glorious, or admirable in romance, he can seriously set forth in all the pomp and eloquence of verse of the highest species; while whatever is mean, farcical, or monstrous, he can exhibit in strains of facetiousness, at once as grave and as poignant as those in which the celebrated assault on the windmills, the rout of the sheep, or the gross sensuality of Sancho Panza, are given, without descending into caricature; though no small portion of his whole poem belongs to the grotesque, and happily the plan admits of every variety of style from Homer to Lucian.
Neither the dulness nor the licence of allegory can be pleaded in extenuation of those unnatural circumstances, in which absurdity is at once exemplified and ridiculed, as though the caprice of genius delighted as much in the offence against taste as in the castigation of it. Allegorical, indeed, some of his fancies notoriously are; but those who have attempted to "moralise" the "fierce wars and faithful loves" of his song, as many have done (and few more egregiously than sir John Harrington, in the quaint essay annexed to his barbarous translation), might have employed their time as profitably in raking moonshine out of water, which flies off into millions of sparkles the moment it is disturbed, but is no sooner let alone than it subsides into the quiet and beautiful image of the orb above, which it showed before. It cannot be said of Ariosto, as Addison, in a miserable couplet, says of Spenser—