Who now, not seeing beauty, feels no scorn;
And wanting pleasure, is exempt from pain.
When she with flowers Lord Arnold’s grave shall strew,
And hears why Hugo’s life was thrown away,
She on that rival’s hearse will drop a few,
Which merits all that April gives to May.
The Duke now draws off his remaining friends towards Bergamo: but on the journey, overcome by fatigue and loss of blood, he falls into a deadly swoon. His attendants, amidst their anxiety and confusion upon this event, are surprised, in the sixth canto, with the approach of a squadron of horse. This, however, proves to be a friendly body, led by old Ulfin, who, after recovering the Duke by a cordial, declares himself to have been a page to his grandsire, and gives a noble relation of the character and exploits of his great master. The rumour of Oswald’s attack brought him to the relief of Gondibert; and we have a description, which will be thought too much bordering upon the ludicrous, of the strange confusion among his maimed veterans, who in their haste had seized upon each other’s artificial limbs. This unsightly troop, with the deficiencies of hands, arms, legs and eyes, can scarcely, with all the poet’s art, be rendered a respectable object. Such instances of faulty judgment are frequent in the writings of an age which was characterized by vigour of imagination rather than correctness of taste. Ulfin leads the Duke to the house of the sage Astragon, where, with the approach of night, the canto and the first book conclude.
In the beginning of the second book, the poet carries us with Hurgonil and Tybalt and their noble dead, to Verona. The distant turrets first appearing, and then the great objects opening, one by one; the river, the palace, the temple, and the amphitheatre of Flaminius, form a landscape truly noble and picturesque. The view of the temple gives occasion to one of those elevated religious sentiments which dignify this poem.
This to soothe heaven the bloody Clephes built;
As if heaven’s king so soft and easy were,