[Footnote 7:
"Stava disciolto, senza guardia alcuna,
Ed intorno a la fonte sollazzava;
Angelica nel lume de la luna,
Quanto potea nascosa, lo mirava."
There is something wonderfully soft and lunar in the liquid monotony of the third line.]
[Footnote 8:
"La qual dormiva in atto tanto adorno,
Che pensar non si può, non ch'io lo scriva
Parea che l'erba a lei fiorisse intorno,
E d'amor ragionasse quella riva."
Her posture, as she lay, was exquisite
Above all words—nay, thought itself above:
The grass seemed flowering round her in delight,
And the soft river murmuring of love.]
[Footnote 9: Supremely elegant all this appears to me.]
[Footnote 10: Sometimes called in the romances Frusberta (query, from fourbir, to burnish; or, froisser, to crush?). The meaning does not seem to be known. I ought to have observed, in the notes to Pulci, that the name of Orlando's sword, Durlindana (called also Durindana, Durandal, &c.), is understood to mean Hardhitter.]
[Footnote 11: The force of aversion was surely never better imagined than in this scene of the opened arms of beauty, and the knight's preference of the most odious death.]
[Footnote 12: Legalised, I presume, by a divorce from the hero's wife, the fair Alda; who, though she is generally designated by that epithet, seems never to have had much of his attention.]