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Updated: June 11, 2025
Over the solemn portals are ancient mystic escutcheons vast shields of princes and cardinals, such as Ariosto's knights might take down; and every figure about them is a picture by himself. At every turn there is a temple: in every court a brawling fountain. Besides the people of the streets and houses, and the army of priests black and brown, there's a great silent population of marble.
There was Lancino di Corte, or, as he preferred to style himself, Lancinus Curtius, the writer of Latin epigrams; and Antonio di Fregoso, the noble Genoese youth who, like Niccolo, won Calmeta and Ariosto's praises, and whose poetic disputes with Lancinus were a feature of Cecilia Gallerani's entertainments; and Baldassare Taccone of Alessandria; and Pietro Lazzarone of the Valtellina.
D'Israeli reminds us that one of the Popes repaid the translation of a Greek treatise with a few pence that might just have paid for the binding, and of Cardinal Este receiving Ariosto's work with the question 'Where on earth all that rubbish had been collected? This was but a temporary phase, and literature became free from the burden as soon as the public had learned to read.
Alessandra's most effective charm was her wonderful hair, of that color which had been made famous by the pictures of Titian and Giorgione, and it really seems that in Ariosto's time this color was so ardently desired that hair dyes were in common use, especially in Venice.
In Ariosto's life Mary, as ever, delights in showing the filial affection and fine traits of the poet's nature. She quotes his lines Our mother's years with pity fill my heart, For without infamy she could not be By all of us at once forsaken. But with these commendations she strongly denounces the profligacy of his writing as presumably of his life.
Guarino of Verona was instructing the heir of Ferrara, and Vittorino da Feltre was educating the children of the Marquis of Mantua. Lionardo was delighting Milan with his music and his magic world of painting. Poliziano was pouring forth honeyed eloquence at Florence. Ficino was expounding Plato. Boiardo was singing the prelude to Ariosto's melodies at Ferrara.
But Ariosto's success in this mission was nearly being the death of him in another; for Alfonso having accompanied the French the year following in their attack on Vicenza, where they committed cruelties of the same horrible kind as have shocked Europe within a few months past, the poet's tongue, it was thought, might be equally efficacious a second time; but Julius, worn out of patience with his too independent vassal, who maintained an alliance with the French when the pope had ceased to desire it, was to be appeased no longer.
"I," said Don Quixote, "have some little smattering of Italian, and I plume myself on singing some of Ariosto's stanzas; but tell me, senor I do not say this to test your ability, but merely out of curiosity have you ever met with the word pignatta in your book?" "Yes, often," said the author. "And how do you render that in Spanish?" "How should I render it," returned the author, "but by olla?"
Italian mediæval literature is rich in the Roland romances, founded on the fabulous "Chronicle of John Turpin" and the "Chansons de Gestes," of which the "Song of Roland" is one. Of the Italian romances the "Morgante Maggiore" of Pulci was published as early as 1488, Boyardo's "Orlando Innamorata" in 1496, and Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" in 1515.
Herein lies the secret of Ariosto's greatness; which is great, not because it has the intensity of Dante, or the incessant thought and passion of Shakspeare, or the dignified imagination of Milton, to all of whom he is far inferior in sustained excellence, but because he is like very Nature herself.
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