The poem is the work of a practical poet, one who could govern a province. It is marred by an over-profusion of ornament, and contains no such lofty flights of fancy as are to be found in the Jerusalem Delivered. To this, no doubt, it owes, in part at least, its great popularity, for the poet's poem is never the people's poem.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE ORLANDO FURIOSO.
Dublin University Magazine, 1845, xxvi., 187-201, 581-601, xxvii., 90-104;
Retrospective Review, 1823, viii., 145-170, ix., 263-291;
William T. Dobson's Classic Poets, 1879, pp. 186-238;
Leigh Hunt's Stories from the Italian Poets, n. d. vol. ii., pp. 134-151;
William Hickling Prescott's Italian Narrative Poetry. (See his Biographical and Critical Miscellanies, 1873, pp. 441-454);
M. W. Shelley's Lives of the most eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, 1835, pp. 239-255. (In Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia, vol. i.);