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Berni, who rewrote the "Orlando Innamorato" in choice Tuscan, and who underlined every faintly marked jest of Boiardo's, with evident preoccupation of the ludicrous effects of the "Morgante Maggiore" Berni even could not keep up his spirits; into the middle of Boiardo's serene fairyland adventures he inserted a description of the sack of Rome which is simply harrowing.
"The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to whom I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the signora had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed; and the maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato."
The Orlando Innamorato may be divided into three principal portions:-the search for Angelica by Orlando and her other lovers; the siege of her father's city Albracca by the Tartars; and that of Paris and Charlemagne by the Moors. These, however, are all more or less intermingled, and with the greatest art; and there are numerous episodes of a like intertexture.
At the same time he practised against the earl, that he might become impotent, at least towards his wife. This however did not satisfy the lady; and having gone the utmost lengths towards her innamorato, she insisted on a divorce in all the forms, and a legal marriage with the youth she loved.
The "Orlando Innamorato" of Boiardo contains, part i, canto 8, a story too horrible and grotesque for me to narrate, of a monster born of Marchino and his murdered sister-in-law, which forms a strange exception to my rule, even as does, for instance, Matteo di Giovanni's massacre of the Innocents.
One day, says Matteo Boiardo, in the fifteenth canto of the second part of his "Orlando Innamorato," as Rinaldo of Montalbano, the contemner of love, was riding in the Ardennes, he came to a clearing in the forest, where, close to the fountain of Merlin, a wonderful sight met his eyes.
She was Eleonora, daughter of the King of Naples; and the newly-married poet was among the noblemen who were sent to escort her to Ferrara. For several years afterwards, his time was probably filled up with the composition of the Orlando Innamorato, and the entertainments given by a splendid court. He was appointed Governor of Reggio, probably in 1478.
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.
Of the editions of 1543, of Boiardo's "Innamorato" only one other copy is known, that in the Royal Library at Stuttgart. The 1527 edition of the "Orlando Furioso" was unknown until 1821, when Count Nilzi described the copy in his collection. Of the "Gigante Moronte", Wellesley has an absolutely unique copy.
At times he was ready to burst into laughter, and with a certain vexation he did laugh at himself. But the woman, the cards, her dry, reassuring words, and her good-bye "Go, go, ragazzo innamorato," and finally, that farewell barcarolle, so lively and gracious, such were the new elements which, together with the old, formed within him a new and abiding faith.
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