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Updated: June 19, 2025
When the poet of the Orlando Furioso discovered that Cardinal Ippolito was beginning to treat him coldly, he thought to strike out everything he had said in his praise.
During a long illness which succeeded, my mother, amongst other books past all counting, read to me, in Hoole's translation, the whole of the "Orlando Furioso;" meaning by the whole the entire twenty-four books into which Hoole had condensed the original forty-six of Ariosto; and, from my own experience at that time, I am disposed to think that the homeliness of this version is an advantage, from not calling off the attention at all from the narration to the narrator.
Sir John, our author, had the honour to be her god-son, and both in respect to his father's merit, and his own, he was so happy to possess her esteem to the last . He had the rudiments of his education at Eaton; thence removing to Cambridge, he there commenced master of arts, and before he arrived at his 30th year, he favoured the world with a translation of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, by which he acquired some reputation.
Herdman, who, being a practical man of business, and having a sense of responsibility, would only talk common-sense, and would promise no more than he could hope to perform. Mr. O'Connor speaks in the epic style. He reminds you of Bombastes Furioso, or Ancient Pistol, with a subtle admixture of Falstaff and Parolles.
We have his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song". And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting.
Nature is so lavish of her grace to these people that grow near her heart the sun! Infinite study could not have taught one northern-born the charm of oratory as this old man displayed it. I listened, and heard that he was speaking Tuscan. Do you guess with what he was enchanting his simple auditors? Nothing less than "Orlando Furioso."
In the tales, or pamphlets as they were then called, he turns to account his wide knowledge of city vices. His plays, including The Scottish History of James IV., and Orlando Furioso, which are now little read, contain some fine poetry among a good deal of bombast; but his fame rests, perhaps, chiefly on the poems scattered through his writings, which are full of grace and tenderness.
Where will you find a worthy companion to the Orlando Furioso? There is none, and this great work is incapable of transalation. The finest and truest panegyric of Ariosto was written by Voltaire when he was sixty. If he had not made this apology for the rash judgement of his youthful days, he would not have enjoyed, in Italy at all events, that immortality which is so justly his due.
Memorable, too, in this branch of literature is Harington's Apologie for Poetry , prefixed to his translation of the Orlando Furioso. But it was not criticism only which had been advancing. The publication of the first part of Lyly's Euphues and of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar in 1579 may be said to have initiated the golden age of our literature.
Not otherwise than praiseworthy, also, were the figures that Gabriele Giolito, a printer of books, placed in the Orlando Furioso, for they were executed in a beautiful manner of engraving.
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