The excessive "wildness" attributed to Ariosto is not wilder than many things in Homer, or even than some things in Virgil (such as the transformation of ships into sea-nymphs). The reason why it has been thought so is, that he rendered them more popular by mixing them with satire, and thus brought them more universally into notice. One main secret of the delight they give us is their being poetical comments, as it were, on fancies and metaphors of our own. Thus, we say of a suspicious man, that he is suspicion itself; Ariosto turns him accordingly into an actual being of that name. We speak of the flights of the poets; Ariosto makes them literally flights—flights on a hippogriff, and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty; therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; so Angelica, queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and marries a common soldier.
And what a creature is this Angelica! what effect has she not had upon the world in spite of all her faults, nay, probably by very reason of them! I know not whether it has been remarked before, but it appears to me, that the charm which every body has felt in the story of Angelica consists mainly in that very fact of her being nothing but a beauty and a woman, dashed even with coquetry, which renders her so inferior in character to most heroines of romance. Her interest is founded on nothing exclusive or prejudiced. It is not addressed to any special class. She might or might not have been liked by this person or that; but the world in general will adore her, because nature has made them to adore beauty and the sex, apart from prejudices right or wrong. Youth will attribute virtues to her, whether she has them or not; middle-age be unable to help gazing on her; old-age dote on her. She is womankind itself, in form and substance; and that is a stronger thing, for the most part, than all our figments about it. Two musical names, "Angelica and Medoro," have become identified in the minds of poetical readers with the honeymoon of youthful passion.
The only false acid insipid fiction I can call to mind in the Orlando Furioso is that of the "swans" who rescue "medals" from the river of oblivion (canto xxxv.). It betrays a singular forgetfulness of the poet's wonted verisimilitude; for what metaphor can reconcile us to swans taking an interest in medals? Popular belief had made them singers; but it was not a wise step to convert them into antiquaries.
Ariosto's animal spirits, and the brilliant hurry and abundance of his incidents, blind a careless reader to his endless particular beauties, which, though he may too often "describe instead of paint" (on account, as Foscolo says, of his writing to the many), spew that no man could paint better when he chose. The bosoms of his females "come and go, like the waves on the sea-coast in summer airs."[47] His witches draw the fish out of the water
"With simple words and a pure warbled spell."[48]
He borrows the word "painting" itself,—like a true Italian and friend of Raphael and Titian, to express the commiseration in the faces of the blest for the sufferings of mortality
"Dipinte di pietade il viso pio."[49]
Their pious looks painted with tenderness.
Jesus is very finely called, in the same passage, "il sempiterno Amante," the eternal Lover. The female sex are the
"Schiera gentil the pur adorna il mondo."[50]