“Mr. Gardner takes a good deal of pains with his authorities, and puts his information together as well as can be expected of any one except a highly trained historian in dealing with that complicated time. The main fault of the book is a certain tendency to verbosity.”
| + − | Ath. 1907, 1: 69. Ja. 19. 1510w. |
“The chapters dealing with the poetry of Ariosto are pleasing, but on the whole rather inconclusive. The style of the book is without distinction, and it occasionally lapses into elegance.”
| − + | Dial. 42: 84. F. 1, ’07. 150w. |
“The work of Mr. Gardner is not only a biography of Ariosto, and the finest biography of the author of the ‘Orlando furioso’ that has yet appeared in English, but it contains a complete and luminous picture of the political and literary condition of Ferrara from 1500 to 1530.”
| + + | Ind. 62: 803. Ap. 4, ’07. 430w. |
“The work is admirably done, most useful for reference; but it is laboured, and there are barren spaces in which the dry bones of history do not live.”
| + − | Lond. Times. 5: 350. O. 19, ’06. 2270w. |
“Different portions of the book, as they deal with political or literary history, read as if they belonged to different studies, and were bound together by mistake.”
| + − | Nation. 84: 593. Je. 27. ’07. 1010w. | |
| + − | N. Y. Times. 11: 701. O. 27. ’06. 1830w. (Reprinted from Lond. Times.) |