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Updated: May 1, 2025
In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world, amidst things as strange as any that are described in the Arabian Tales, or in those romances on which the curate and barber of Don Quixote's village performed so cruel an auto-de-fe, amidst buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras.
As to desires, they are so numerous that they shadow the whole place. Astolfo went round among the different heaps, asking what they were. His eyes were first struck with a huge one of bladders which seemed to contain mighty sounds and the voices of multitudes. These he found were the Assyrian and Persian monarchies, together with those of Greece and Lydia.
And so the captains of the little troop and of the great array sat looking at one another, and singling one another out, as the latter came on; and then either side began raising their war-cries, and the mob of the infidels halted, and the knights put spear in rest, and ran for a while, two and two in succession, each one against the other. Astolfo was the first to move.
It shows a power, on the part of the former, such as we ascribe to the winding of the magic horn of Astolfo, which few commanders of militia have ever had the skill to produce. Evidently, the personal and patriotic influences were very equally strong, to occasion such prompt fidelity, in his case, on the part of his followers.
All hail to the moment when I first became aware of their existence, more than fifty years ago, in the house of the gentle artist Benjamin West! Argument. The Paladin Astolfo ascends on the hippogriff to the top of one of the mountains at the source of the Nile, called the Mountains of the Moon, where he discovers the Terrestrial Paradise, and is welcomed by St. John the Evangelist.
Now it was written in the magic book carried by Astolfo, the knight who had been changed by Alcina into a myrtle tree and restored by Melissa, that if a stone on the threshold were raised, the whole palace would vanish into smoke as the other castle had done before.
In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world amid things as strange as any that are described in the "Arabian Tales" . . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras.
He accordingly did so in the sacred car: and Astolfo, after receiving his gentle benediction, descended on his hippogriff from the mountain, and, joining the delighted Paladins with the vial, his wits were restored, as you have heard, to the noble Orlando. The figure which is here cut by St. John gives this remarkable satire a most remarkable close.
In due time the enamoured knights, according to agreement, came to the spot, for the purpose of jousting with the supposed Uberto, each anxious to have the first encounter, particularly Orlando, in order that he might not see the beauty carried off by another. But they were obliged to draw lots; and thirty other names appeared before his, the first of which was that of Astolfo the Englishman.
I expressed regret, and asked for particulars. "She will die of grief for the loss of her husband, Ruggiero da Risa, who has been killed by the treachery of Conte Gano." Then I saw my fellow-countryman, Astolfo d'Inghilterra; he it was that brought back from the moon the lost wits of Orlando when he became furioso because Angelica would have nothing to say to him and married Medoro.
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