Far more than health, far more than strength is worth,
Nay more than pleasure, more than honor vain,
Is friendship tried alike in dole and mirth:
For when one love doth join the hearts of twain,
Their woes are halved, their joys give double birth
To joy, by interchange of grief and pain;
And when doubts rise, with free and open heart
Each calls his friend, who gladly bears a part.
What profit is there in much pearls and gold,
Or power, or proud estate, or royal reign?
Lacking a friend, mere wealth is frosty cold:
He who loves not, and is not loved again,
From him true joys their perfect grace withhold:
And this I say, since now across the main
Brave Brandimarte drives his flying ship
To help Orlando, drawn by comradeship.

Next to bravery the poet's favorite virtue is courtesy. It is enough to mention Orlando's gentle forbearance with Agricane at Albracca, their evening conversation in the midst of a bloody duel, and the hero's sorrow when he has wounded his opponent to the death.[582] Of the same quality is the courteous behavior of Rinaldo and Gradasso before a deadly encounter, the aid afforded to Marfisa by Rinaldo in the midst of their duel, and the graceful sympathy of Astolfo for Brandimarte, whom he has unhorsed.[583] But the two passages which illustrate Boiardo's ideal of the chivalrous character, as blent of bravery and courtesy, of intelligence and love, are Orlando's discourse with Agricane and his speech to Morgana's maiden. In the first of these the Count and King had fought till nightfall. Then they agree to sleep together side by side, and to resume the combat at daybreak. Before they settle for the night, they talk[584]:

After the sun below the hills was laid,
And with bright stars the sky began to glow,
Unto the King these words Orlando said:
"What shall we do, now that the day is low?"
Then Agrican made answer, "Make our bed
Together here, amid the herbs that grow;
And then to-morrow with the dawn of light
We can return and recommence the fight."
No sooner said, than straight they were agreed:
Each tied his horse to trees that near them grew;
Then down they lay upon the grassy mead—
You might have thought they were old friends and true,
So close and careless couched they in the reed.
Orlando nigh unto the fountain drew,
And Agrican hard by the forest laid
His length beneath a mighty pine-tree's shade.
Herewith the twain began to hold debate
Of fitting things and meet for noble knights.
The Count looked up to heaven and cried, "How great
And fair is yonder frame of glittering lights,
Which God, the mighty monarch, did create;
The silvery moon, and stars that gem our nights,
The light of day, yea, and the lustrous sun,
For us poor men God made them every one!"
But Agrican: "Full well I apprehend
It is your wish toward faith our talk to turn:
Of science less than naught I comprehend;
Nay, when I was a boy, I would not learn,
But broke my master's head to make amend
For his much prating; no one since did yearn
To teach me book or writing, such the dread
Wherewith I filled them for my hardihead.
"And so I let my boyish days flow by,
In hunting, feats of arms, and horsemanship;
Nor is it meet, meseems, for chivalry
To pore the livelong day on scholarship.
True knights should strive to prove their skill, say I,
And strength of limb in noble fellowship;
Leave priests and teaching men from books to learn.
I know enough, thank God, to serve my turn."
Then spake the Count: "Thus far we both agree;
Arms are the chief prime honor of a knight.
Yet knowledge brings no shame that I can see,
But rather fame, as fields with flowers are bright;
More like an ox, a stock, a stone is he
Who never thinks of God's eternal light;
Nor without learning can we rightly dwell
On his high majesty adorable."
Then Agrican, "Small courtesy it were,
War with advantage so complete to wage!
My nature I have laid before you bare;
I know full well that you are learned and sage;
Therefore to answer you I do not care.
Sleep if you like; in sleep your soul assuage;
Or if you choose with me to hold discourse,
I look for talk of love, and deeds of force.
"Now, I beseech you, answer me the truth
Of what I ask, upon a brave man's faith:
Are you the great Orlando, in good sooth,
Whose name and fame the whole world echoeth?
Whence are you come, and why? And since your youth
Were you by love inthralled? For story saith
That any knight who loves not, though he seem
To sight alive, yet lives but in a dream."
Then spake the Count: "Orlando sure am I
Who both Almonte and his brother slew.
Imperious love hath lost me utterly,
And made me journey to strange lands and new;
And, for I fain would thus in amity
Prolong discourse, therefore I tell you true,
She who now lies within Albracca's wall,
Gallafron's daughter, holds my heart in thrall."

This unlucky mention of Angelica stirs the rage of Agricane, and the two men fight in the moonlight beneath the forest-trees till the young King is wounded to the death—a splendid subject for some imaginative painter's pencil. We may notice in this dialogue the modification of chivalry occasioned by Italian respect for culture. Boiardo exalts the courage of the educated gentleman above the valor of a man-at-arms. In the conversation between Orlando and Morgana's maiden he depicts another aspect of the knightly ideal. The fairy has made Orlando offer of inestimable treasures, but he answers that indifference to riches is the sign of a noble heart[585]:

Orlando smiling heard what she would say,
But scarce allowed her time her speech to end,
Seeing toward riches of the sort the fay
Proffered, his haughty soul he would not bend;
Wherefore he spake: "It irked me not to-day
My very life unto the death to spend;
For only perils and great toils sustain
Honor of chivalry without a stain.
"But for the sake of gold or silver gear,
I would not once have drawn my brand so bright;
For he who holds mere gain of money dear
Hath set himself to labor infinite;
The more he gets the less his gains appear;
Nor can he ever sate his appetite;
They who most have, still care for more to spend,
Wherefore this way of life hath ne'er an end."

Having seen the knights in their more generous moments, we ought to bear in mind that they are capable of blustering, boasting, and exchanging foul abuse like humanists. One reference will suffice. Orlando and Rinaldo quarrel at Albracca and defy each other to combat. Before fighting they indulge in elaborate caricatures and vilifications, from which it would appear, to say the least, that these champions of Christendom were the subject of much scandalous gossip.[586]

Human nature, unsophisticated and unqualified, with the crude impulses and the contradictions proper to an unreflective age, has been studied by Boiardo for his men and women. His power of expressing the passions by natural signs might win for him the title of the Homer of Chivalry. The love lamentations of Prasildo, the love-languors of Angelica, the frenzy of Marfisa, the wrath of Ferraguto, the truculency of Rodamonte, the impish craft of Brunello, Origille's cunning, Brandimarte's fervor, Ruggiero's impatience to try his strength in the tournament, and his sudden ecstasy of love for Brandiamante—these and a hundred other instances of vigorous dramatic presentation could be mentioned. In his pictures of scenery and descriptions Boiardo follows nature no less faithfully—and this, be it remembered, in an age which refined on nature and admitted into art only certain chosen phases of her loveliness. Of affectation and elaboration he has none. The freshness of authentic vision gives peculiar vividness to the storm that overtakes Rodamonte in mid-channel; to the garden of Falerina, where Orlando stuffs his cask with roses in order to stop his ears against a Siren's song; to the picture of Morgana combing Ziliante's hair in the midst of her enchanted meadows, and to the scene in which Angelica greets Orlando with a perfumed bath after the battle.[587] The charm of Boiardo's poetry consists in its firm grasp on truth and nature, the spontaneity and immediateness of its painting. He has none of Poliziano's richness, no Virgilian dignity or sweetness, no smooth and sparkling fluency like that of Ariosto. But all that he writes has in it the perfume of the soil, the freedom of the open air; the spirits of the woods and sea and stars are in it. Of his style the most striking merit is rapidity. Almost always unpolished, sometimes even coarse, but invariably spirited and masculine, his verse leaps onward like a grayhound in its swiftness. Story succeeds story with extraordinary speed; and whether of love or arms, they are equally well told. The pathetic novel of Tisbina, Rinaldo's wondrous combat with the griffins and the giants, the lion-hunt at Biserta, the mustering of Agramante's lieges, and the flux and reflux of battle before Montalbano tax the vivid and elastic vigor of Boiardo in five distinct species of rapid narration; and in all of them he proves himself more than adequate to the strain. For ornaments he cared but little, nor did he wait to elaborate similes. A lion at bay, a furious bull, a river foaming to the sea, a swollen torrent, two battling winds, a storm of hail, the clash of thunderclouds, an earthquake, are the figures he is apt to use. The descriptions of Rinaldo, Marfisa and Orlando, may be cited as favorable specimens of his illustrative metaphors.[588] Short phrases like a guisa di leone, a guisa di colomba, a guisa di serpente, a guisa d'uno drago, a guisa di castello, indicate in outline images that aid the poet's thought. But nothing like the polish or minuteness of Ariosto's highly-wrought comparisons can be found in the Innamorato. Boiardo's study of the classics had not roused him to the emulation of their decorative beauties. Nor, again, did he attend to cadence in his versification. He would have wondered at the limæ labor of the poets who came after him. His own stanzas are forcible, swift, fiery, never pompous or voluptuous, liquid or sonorous. The changes wrought by Poliziano in the structure of ottava rima, his majesty and "linked sweetness long drawn out," were unknown to Boiardo. Yet those rugged octaves, in spite of their halting pauses at the end of the fifth line, in spite of their frequent repetitions and inequalities of volume, are better adapted to the spirit of his medieval subject-matter than the sumptuous splendor of more polished versifiers. His diction, in like manner, judged by the standard of the cinque cento, is far from choice—loaded with Lombardisms, gaining energy and vividness at the expense of refinement and precision. Thus style and spirit alike removed him from the sympathies of the correct and classic age that followed.

For the student of the earlier Renaissance Boiardo's art has one commanding point of interest. In the romantic treatment of antique motives he is unique. It was the aim of Italian poets after Boccaccio to effect a fusion between the classical and modern styles, and to ingraft the beauties of antique literature upon their own language. Boiardo, far more a child of nature than either Boccaccio or Poliziano, with deeper sympathy for feudal traditions and chivalrous modes of feeling, attacked this problem from a point of view directly opposite to theirs. His comprehensive study of Greek and Roman authors had stored his mind with legends which gave an impulse to the freedom of his own imagination. He did not imitate the ancients; but used the myths with so much novelty and delicate perception of their charm, that beneath his touch they assumed a fresh and fascinating quality. There is nothing grotesque in his presentation of Hellenic fancy, nothing corresponding to the medieval transformation of deities into devils; and yet his spirit is not classical. His Sphinx, his Cyclops, and his Circe-Dragontina, his Medusa, his Pegasus, his Centaur, his Atalanta, his Satyr, are living creatures of romantic wonderland, with just enough of classic gracefulness to remove them from the murky atmosphere of medieval superstition into the serene ether of a neo-pagan mythology. Nothing can be more dissimilar from Ovid, more unlike the forms of Græco-Roman sculpture. With his firm grasp upon reality, Boiardo succeeded in naturalizing these classic fancies. They are not copied, but drawn from the life of the poet's imagination. A good instance of this creative faculty is the description of the Faun, who haunts the woodland in the shade of leaves, and lives on fruits and drinks the stream, and weeps when the sky is fair, because he then fears bad weather, but laughs when it rains, because he knows the sun will shine again.[589] It is not easy to find an exact analogue in the sister arts to this poetry, though some points in the work of Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo, some early engravings by Robeta and the Master of the Caduceus, some bass-reliefs of Amadeo or incrustations on the chapel-walls of S. Francesco at Rimini, a Circe by Dosso Dossi in the Borghese palace at Rome, an etching of Mantegna here or there, might be quoted in illustration of its spirit.[590] Better justice can be done to Boiardo's achievement by citation than by critical description. The following stanzas are a picture of Love attended by the Graces, punishing Rinaldo for his rudeness near the Font of Merlin[591]:

When to the leafy wood his feet were brought,
Towards Merlin's Font at once he took his way;
Unto the font that changes amorous thought
Journeyed the Paladin without delay;
But a new sight, the which he had not sought,
Caused him upon the path his feet to stay.
Within the wood there is a little close
Full of pink flowers, and white, and various:
And in the midst thereof a naked boy,
Singing, took solace with surpassing cheer;
Three ladies round him, as around their joy,
Danced naked in the light so soft and clear.
No sword, no shield, hath been his wonted toy;
Brown are his eyes; yellow his curls appear;
His downy beard hath scarce begun to grow:
One saith 'tis there, and one might answer, No!
With violets, roses, flowers of every dye,
Baskets they filled and eke their beauteous hands:
Then as they dance in joy and amity,
The Lord of Montalbano near them stands:
Whereat, "Behold the traitor!" loud they cry,
Soon as they mark the foe within their bands;
"Behold the thief, the scorner of delight,
Caught in the trap at last in sorry plight!"
Then with their baskets all with one consent
Upon Rinaldo like a tempest bore:
One flings red roses, one with violets blent
Showers lilies, hyacinths, fast as she can pour:
Each flower in falling with strange pain hath rent
His heart and pricked his marrow to the core,
Lighting a flame in every smitten part,
As though the flowers concealed a fiery dart.
The boy who, naked, coursed along the sod,
Emptied his basket first, and then began,
Wielding a long-grown leafy lily rod,
To scourge the helmet of the tortured man:
No aid Rinaldo found against the god,
But fell to earth as helpless children can;
The youth who saw him fallen, by the feet
Seized him, and dragged him through the meadow sweet.
And those three dames had each a garland rare
Of roses; one was red and one was white:
These from their snowy brows and foreheads fair
They tore in haste, to beat the writhing knight:
In vain he cried and raised his hands in prayer;
For still they struck till they were tired quite:
And round about him on the sward they went,
Nor ceased from striking till the morn was spent.
Nor massy cuirass, nor stout plate of steel,
Could yield defense against those bitter blows:
His flesh was swollen with many a livid weal
Beneath his mail, and with such fiery woes
Inflamed as spirits damned in hell may feel;
Yet theirs, upon my troth, are fainter throes:
Wherefore that Baron, sore, and scant of breath,
For pain and fear was well-nigh brought to death.
Nor whether they were gods or men he knew;
Nor prayer, nor courage, nor defense availed,
Till suddenly upon their shoulders grew
And budded wings with gleaming gold engrailed,
Radiant with crimson, white, and azure blue;
And with a living-eye each plume was tailed,
Not like a peacock's or a bird's, but bright
And tender as a girl's with love's delight.
Then after small delay their flight they took,
And one by one soared upward to the sky,
Leaving Rinaldo sole beside the brook.
Full bitterly that Baron 'gan to cry,
For grief and dole so great his bosom shook
That still it seemed that he must surely die;
And in the end so fiercely raged his pain
That like a corpse he fell along the plain.

This is a fine painting in the style I have attempted to characterize—the imagery of the Greek mythology taking a new and natural form of fanciful romance. It is alien to anything in antique poetry or sculpture. Yet the poet's imagination had been touched to finest issues by the spirit of the Greeks before he wrote it. Incapable of transplanting the flowers of antiquity like delicate exotics into the conservatory of studied art, he acclimatized them to the air of thought and feeling in which his own romantic spirit breathed. This distinguishes him from Poliziano, whose stately poem, like the palm-house in Kew Gardens, contains specimens of all the fairest species gathered from the art of Greece and Rome. Even more exquisitely instinct with the first April freshness of Renaissance feeling is another episode, where Boiardo presents the old tale of Narcissus under a wholly new and original aspect. By what strange freak of fancy has he converted Echo into an Empress of the East and added the pathos of the fairy Silvanella, whose petulance amid her hopeless love throws magic on the well! We are far away indeed from the Pompeian frescoes here[592]: