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Updated: June 1, 2025
My first acquaintance, for example, with the Orlando Innamorato was through the medium of Berni; and on turning to those stories in his version, which I have translated from his original for the present volume, I found that every passage but one, to which I had given a mark of admiration, was the property of the old poet.
Pasquin made so merry with his name that Adrian vowed he would throw the statue into the Tiber; whereupon the Duke of Sessa wittily replied: 'Throw him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on croaking. Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest Capitoli upon the dunce who could not comprehend his age; and when he died, his doctor's door was ornamented with this inscription: Liberatori patriæ Senatus Populusque Romanus.
There can therefore be no serious question of his partnership in a play wherein the comic achievement is excellent and the poetic attempts are execrable throughout. The recast of it in which a greater than Berni has deigned to play the part of that poet towards a lesser than Bojardo shows tact and delicacy perhaps without a parallel in literature.
All that Leo gave him was a "bull," probably the one securing to him the profits of his Orlando; and the poet's friend Bibbiena wit, cardinal, and kinsman of Berni facilitated the bull, but the receiver discharged the fees. He did not get one penny by promise, pope, or friend.
Fine poet as I think Boiardo, I hold Chaucer to be a far finer; and spirited, and in some respects admirable, as are Dryden's versions of Chaucer, they do not equal that of Boiardo by the Tuscan. Dryden did not apprehend the sentiment of Chaucer in any such degree as Berni did that of his original. Indeed, Mr.
The nature of the present work does not require, and the limits to which it is confined do not permit, me to indulge myself in a comparison between them corroborated by proofs; but it is impossible not to notice the connexion: and therefore, begging the reader's pardon for the sorry substitute of affirmative for demonstrative criticism, I may be allowed to say, that if Boiardo has the praise of invention to himself, Berni thoroughly appreciated and even enriched it; that if Boiardo has sometimes a more thoroughly charming simplicity, Berni still appreciates it so well, that the difference of their times is sufficient to restore the claim of equality of feeling; and finally, that if Berni strengthens and adorns the interest of the composition with more felicitous expressions, and with a variety of lively and beautiful trains of thought, you feel that Boiardo was quite capable of them all, and might have done precisely the same had he lived in Berni's age.
He is the portrait of perpetual irony, the spirit of the golden sixteenth century which delicately laughed at the whole world of thoughts and things, the quintessence of the poetry of Ariosto, the wit of Berni, all condensed into one incarnation and immortalized by truthfullest art.
Italian literature is loud-voiced on this topic. The concluding stanzas of Poliziano's Orfeo, recited before the Cardinal of Mantua, the Capitoli of Berni, Bronzino, La Casa, and some of the Canti Carnasialeschi, might be cited. We might add Varchi's express testimony as to the morals of Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzino de' Medici, Pier Luigi Farnese, and Clement VII. What Segni (lib. x. p. 409) tells us about the brave Giovanni Bandini is also very significant. In the Life of San Bernardino of Siena, Vespasiano (Vite di Illustri Uomini, p. 186) writes: 'L'Italia, ch' era piena di queste tenebre, e aveva lasciata ogni norma di buoni costumi, e non era più chi conoscesse Iddio. Tanto erano sommersi e sepulti ne' maladetti e abbominevoli vizi nefandi! Gli avevano in modo messi in uso, che non temevano nè Iddio nè l'onore del mondo. Maladetta cecit
And Panizzi has observed, with striking and conclusive truth, that "without Berni the Orlando Innamorato will be read and enjoyed; without Boiardo not even the name of the poem remains." Nevertheless this conclusion need not deprive us of either work.
We have already said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains scarcely any references to the Latin orators and historians. We must add, that it contains little, or rather no information, respecting the history and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our remembrance, Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de'Medici, or Machiavelli.
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