Critical Notice of his Life and Genius.
CRITICAL NOTICE
OF
ARIOSTO'S LIFE AND GENIUS.[1]
The congenial spirits of Pulci and Boiardo may be said to have attained to their height in the person of Ariosto, upon the principle of a transmigration of souls, or after the fashion of that hero in romance, who was heir to the bodily strengths of all whom he conquered.
Lodovico Giovanni Ariosto was born on the 8th of September, 1474, in the fortress at Reggio, in Lombardy, and was the son of Niccolò Ariosto, captain of that citadel (as Boiardo had been), and Daria Maleguzzi, whose family still exists. The race was transplanted from Bologna in the century previous, when Obizzo the Third of Este, Marquess of Ferrara, married a lady belonging to it, whose Christian name was Lippa. Niccolò Ariosto, besides holding the same office as Boiardo had done, at Modena as well as at Reggio, was master of the household to his two successive patrons, the Dukes Borso and Ercole. He was also employed, like him, in diplomacy; and was made a count by the Emperor Frederick the Third, though not, it seems, with remainder to his heirs.
Lodovico was the eldest of ten children, five sons and five daughters. During his boyhood, theatrical entertainments were in great vogue at court, as we have seen in the life of Boiardo; and at the age of twelve, a year after the decease of that poet (who must have been well known to him, and probably encouraged his attempts), his successor is understood to have dramatised, after his infant fashion, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and to have got his brothers and sisters to perform it. Panizzi doubts the possibility of these precocious private theatricals; but considering what is called "writing" on the part of children, and that only one other performer was required in the piece, or at best a third for the lion (which some little brother might have "roared like any sucking-dove"), I cannot see good reason for disbelieving the story. Pope was not twelve years old when he turned the siege of Troy into a play, and got his school-fellows to perform it, the part of Ajax being given to the gardener. Man is a theatrical animal ([Greek: zoon mimaetikon]), and the instinct is developed at a very early period, as almost every family can witness that has taken its children to the "playhouse."
At fifteen the young poet, like so many others of his class, was consigned to the study of the law, and took a great dislike to it. The extreme mobility of his nature, and the wish to please his father, appear to have made him enter on it willingly enough in the first instance;[2] but as soon as he betrayed symptoms of disgust, Niccolò, whose affairs were in a bad way, drove him back to it with a vehemence which must have made bad worse.[3] At the expiration of five years he was allowed to give it up.
There is reason to believe that Ariosto was "theatricalising" during no little portion of this time; for, in his nineteenth year, he is understood to have been taken by Duke Ercole to Pavia and to Milan, either as a writer or performer of comedies, probably both, since the courtiers and ducal family themselves occasionally appeared on the stage; and one of the poet's brothers mentions his having frequently seen him dressed in character.[4]
On being delivered from the study of the law, the young poet appears to have led a cheerful and unrestrained life for the next four or five years.