Footnote 7: His famous sword, vide p. 48.]
[Footnote 8: To richness and rarity, how much is added by remoteness! It adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it.]
[Footnote 9:
"Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro
Mezo ascoso ne l'onda, e mezo sorto.
Come sospinto suol da Borca o d'Ostro
Venir lungo navilio a pigliar porto,"
Canto x. st. 100.
Improved from Ovid, Metamorph. lib. iv. 706
"Ecce velut navis præfixo concita rostro
Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis;
Sic fera," &c.
As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce,
Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar.
Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far as the combat is concerned, is imitated from Ovid's story of Perseus and Andromeda.]
[Footnote 10:
"Sul lito un bosco era di querce ombrose,
Dove ogn' or par che Filomena piagna;
Ch'in mezo avea un pratel con una fonte,