"Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, le audaci imprese, io canto,"
is Ariosto's commencement;
Ladies, and cavaliers, and loves, and arms,
And courtesies, and daring deeds, I sing.
In Dante's Purgatory (canto xiv.), a noble Romagnese, lamenting the degeneracy of his country, calls to mind with graceful and touching regret,
"Le donne, i cavalier, gli affanni e gli agi,
Che inspiravano amore e cortesia."
The ladies and the knights, the cares and leisures,
Breathing around them love and courtesy.]
[Footnote 34: The original is much pithier, but I cannot find equivalents for the alliteration. He said, "Porvi le pietre e porvi le parole non è il medesimo."—Pigna, p. 119. According to his son, however, his remark was, that "palaces could be made in poems without money." He probably expressed the same thing in different ways to different people.]
[Footnote 35: Vide Sat. iii. "Mi sia un tempo," &c. and the passage in
Sat. vii. beginning "Di libri antiqui.">[
[Footnote 36: The inkstand which Shelley saw at Ferrara (Essays and Letters, p. 149) could not have been this; probably his eye was caught by a wrong one. Doubts also, after what we know of the tricks practised upon visitors of Stratford-upon-Avon, may unfortunately be entertained of the "plain old wooden piece of furniture," the arm-chair. Shelley describes the handwriting of Ariosto as "a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as he should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind." Every one of Shelley s words is always worth consideration; but handwritings are surely equivocal testimonies of character; they depend so much on education, on times and seasons and moods, conscious and unconscious wills, &c. What would be said by an autographist to the strange old, ungraceful, slovenly handwriting of Shakspeare?]
[Footnote 37: See vol. i. of the present work, pp. 30, 202, and 216.]