Skip three or four pages, and read not a word;
Or, if you will read it, pray deem it absurd,
As a story in credit not better or worse
Than the foolish old tales you were told by the nurse.
I do not mean to defend my doggrel; but I think Ariosto has not yet had an adequate translator in English, or indeed in any language; nor, in my opinion, will he easily find one. The poem is too long, and requires the aid of the music of the original language to carry the reader through. I do not know what metre in English could contend against the prolixity; but I do know that Ariosto sadly wants—as what classic in the vernacular languages does not?—a better critic of his text than he has yet found, in Italian.
In the above passage it is somewhat amusing to find Ariosto assuring his readers that they might pass this particular canto, because without it "puo star l'istoria;" as if there were a canto in the whole poem of which the same might not be said.
[36] Henry V. act i. sc. 2. Archbishop Chicheley's argument is
"The land Salique lies in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe,
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,