Sopra ogni altro caval savio ed umano.2
1 RICCIARDETTO.
2 ORLANDO INAMORATO.
When the good Magician Atlante against his will sent his pupil Ruggiero forth, and provided him with arms and horse, he gave him this courser which Sacripante had lost, saying to him
certamente so che potrai dire
Che'l principe Rinaldo e'l conte Orlando
Non ha miglior caval.3
Avendo altro signore, ebbe altro nome;
His new master called him Frontino
Il mondo non avea più bel destriero,
* * * * *
Or sopra avendo il giovane Ruggiero,
Piu vaga cosa nun si vide mai.
Chi guardasse il cavallo e'l cavaliero
Starebbe a dar giudicio in dubbio assai,
Se fusser vivi, o fatti col pennello,
Tanto era l'un e l'altro egregio e bello.3
3 ORLANDO INAMORATO.
Nobs was not like that horse now living at Brussels, who is fond of raw flesh, and getting one day out of his stable found his way to a butcher's shop and devoured two breasts of mutton, mutton it seems being his favourite meat. If his pedigree could be traced we might expect to find that he was descended from the anthropophagous stud of that abominable Thracian King whom Hercules so properly threw to his own horses for food.
Nor was he like that other horse of the same execrable extraction, whom in an evil day Rinaldo, having won him in battle, sent as a present by the damsel Hipalca to Ruggiero,—that Clarion