Di che debbo temer, dicea, s'io v'entro?
Chè mi posso aiutar sempre col corno.
Farò fuggir Plutone e Satanasso,
E 'l can trifauce leverò dal passo.

This light-hearted reliance in a perfectly practical spirit upon his magic horn is wholly in keeping with Ariosto's genius. The terrible situation, the good sense of the adventurer, and the enchantment which protects him are so combined as to be prosaically natural. Astolfo gropes his way into the cavern and is immediately suffocated by dense smoke. In the midst of it above his head he sees a body hanging and swinging to and fro like a corpse on a gibbet. He cuts at this object with his sword, and wakes the melancholy voice of Lidia, who tells him that in the smoke are punished obdurate and faithless lovers. The tale of her falseness to Alceste is very beautiful, and shows great knowledge of the heart. But it leads to nothing in the action of the poem, and Astolfo goes out of Hell as he came in—except that the smoke has befouled both face and armor, and he has to scrub himself in a fountain before he can get clean again. Meanwhile Ariosto has parodied the opening of Dante's Inferno with its sublime:

Mi mise dentro alle segrete cose.

Lidia is the inversion of Francesca; for her sin was, not compliance with the impulses of nature, but unkindness to her lover. This travesty is wrought with no deliberate purpose, but by a mere caprice of fancy, to entertain his audience with a novel while he flouts the faiths and fears of a more earnest age. For Ariosto, the child of the Renaissance, there remained nothing to affirm or to deny about the future of the soul. The Inferno of the middle ages had become a plaything of romance. Astolfo now pursues his journey, looks in on Prester John, and scales the mountain of the Earthly Paradise. There he finds a palace wrought of precious stones, and in the vestibule an ancient man with venerable beard and snowy hair. This is no other than S. John the Evangelist, who hastens to feed the knight's horse with good corn, and sets before him a table spread with fruits which make the sin of Adam seem excusable:

Con accoglienza grata il cavaliero
Fu dai santi alloggiato in una stanza:
Fu provvisto in un'altra al suo destriero
Di buona biada, che gli fu abbastanza.
De' frutti a lui del paradiso diero,
Di tal sapor, ch'a suo giudicio, sanza
Scusa non sono i duo primi parenti,
Se per quei fur sì poco ubbidienti!

S. John, delighted with his courteous guest, discourses many things about Orlando, his lost wits, and the moon where they have been stored with other rubbish. At the close of their conversation, he remarks that it is a fine night for a journey to the moon; and orders out the fiery chariot which erewhile took Elijah up to heaven. It holds two passengers with comfort; and after a short voyage through the air, Astolfo and the Evangelist land upon the lunar shores. The stanzas which describe the valley of vain things and useless lumber lost to earth, are justly famous for their satire and their pathos.[12] There are found the presents made to kings in hope of rich reward, the flatteries of poets, shameful loves, the services of courtiers, the false beauties of women, and bottles filled with the lost sense of men. The list is long; nor was Milton unmindful of it when he wrote his lines upon the Paradise of Fools.[13] The passage illustrates certain qualities in Ariosto's imagination. He has no dread of the prosaic and the simple. Inexhaustibly various alike in thought, in rhythm, in imagery, and in melody of phrase, he yet keeps close to reality, and passes without modulation from seriousness to extravagant fun, returning again to the sadness of profound reflection. His poetry is like the picture of his own face—a large and handsome man with sleepy eyes and epicurean mouth, over whose broad forehead and open features, plowed by no wrinkles of old age or care, float subtle smiles and misty multitudes of thoughts half lost in dreams. Human life to Ariosto was a comedy such as Menander put upon the Attic stage; and the critic may ask of him, too, whether he or nature were the plagiarist.

Meanwhile S. John is waiting at Astolfo's elbow to point out the Fates, spinning their web of human destinies, and Time carrying the records of history to the river of oblivion. It is a sad picture, did not Ariosto enliven the most somber matter with his incorrigible humor. By the river bank of Lethe wait cormorants and swans. The former aid Time in his labor of destruction. The latter, who symbolize great poets, save chosen names from undeserved neglect. This leads to a discourse on the services rendered by writers to their patrons, which is marked by Ariosto's levity. He has just been penning praises for Ippolito.[14] Yet here he frankly confesses that the eulogies of poets are distortions of the truth, that history is a lie, and that the whole pageant of humanity conceals a sorry sham. S. John is even made to hint that his good place in Paradise is the guerdon of a panegyric written on his Master:

Gli scrittori amo, e fo il debito mio;
Ch'al vostro mondo fui scrittore anch'io:
E sopra tutti gli altri io feci acquisto
Che non mi può levar tempo nè morte;
E ben convenne al mio lodato Cristo
Rendermi guidardon di sì gran sorte.

The episode of Astolfo's journey to the moon abounds in satire upon human weakness in general. Another celebrated passage has satire of a more direct kind, and is, moreover, valuable for illustrating Ariosto's conduct of his poem. Paris is besieged by the assembled forces of the Saracens. The chief Paladins are absent, and Charlemagne, in his sore need addresses a prayer to Heaven.[15] It is just such a prayer as the Israelites offer up in Rossini's Mosè in Egitto—very resonant, very rhetorical, but without sincerity of feeling. Ariosto selects a number of decorous phrases redolent of Reniassance humanism, tolte agl'inimici stigi, al maggior tempio, gli occhi al ciel supini, and combines them with melodramatic effect. God accepts the Emperor's prayer, and sends Michael down to earth to find Discord and Silence, in order that the former may sow strife in the Saracen camp, and the latter lead re-enforcements into Paris. Michael starts upon his errand: