Women, with the exception of Marfisa and Brandiamante, fare but ill at Boiardo's hands. He seems to have conceived of female character as a compound of fickleness, infidelity, malice, falsehood, and light love. Angelica is little better than a seductive witch, who dotes on Rinaldo, and yet contrives to make use of Orlando, luring him to do her purpose by false promises.[574]Falerina and Dragontina are sorceresses, apt for all iniquity and guile. Morgana and Alcina display the capricious loves and inhuman spites of fairies. Origille is a subtle traitress, beautiful enough to deceive Orlando, but as poisonous as a serpent. Even the ladies who are intended to be amiable, showbut a low standard of morality.[575]Leodilla, princess of the Far Isles, glories in adultery, and hates Orlando for his constancy to Angelica in absence.[576]Fiordelisa is false in thought to Brandimarte, when she sees Rinaldo sleeping in the twilight. The picture, however, of the slumbering warrior and the watchful maiden is so fresh and true to Boiardo's genius that it deserves quotation[577]:
Love, as conceived by Boiardo, though a powerful and steadfast passion, is not spiritual. The knights love like centaurs, and fight like bulls for the privilege of paying suit to their ladies. Rinaldo and Orlando meet in deadly duel for Angelica; Rodamonte and Ferraguto dispute Doralice, though the latter does not care for her, and only asserts his right to dwell in thought upon her charms. Orlando and Agricane break their courteous discourse outside Albracca to fight till one of them is killed, merely because the name of Angelica has intervened. For Boiardo's descriptions of love returned, and crowned with full fruition, the reader may be referred to two magnificent passages in the episodes of Leodilla and Fiordelisa.[578]Poetically noble in spite of their indelicacy, these pictures of sensuous and natural enjoyment might be paralleled with the grand frankness of Venetian painting. It is to be regretted for Boiardo's credit as an artist in expression, that more than a bare reference to them is here impossible.
Boiardo's conception of friendship or fraternity in arms is finer. The delineation of affection generated by mutual courtesy under the most trying conditions of intercourse, which binds together the old rivals Iroldo and Prasildo, has something in it truly touching.[579]The same passion of comradeship finds noble expression in the stanzas uttered by Orlando, when he recognizes Rinaldo's shield suspended by Aridano near Morgana's Lake.[580]It must be remembered that the cousins had recently parted as foes, after a fierce battle for Angelica before Albracca:
Scarcely less beautiful is the feeling which binds Brandimarte to the great Count, the inferior to the superior hero, making him ready to release his master from Manodante's prison at the price of his own liberty.[581]Boiardo devotes the exordium of the seventh Canto of the third Book to a panegyric of chivalrous friendship:
Next to bravery the poet's favorite virtue is courtesy. It is enough to mention Orlando's gentle forbearance with Agricane at Albracca, their evening conversation in the midst of a bloody duel, and the hero's sorrow when he has wounded his opponent to the death.[582]Of the same quality is the courteous behavior of Rinaldo and Gradasso before a deadly encounter, the aid afforded to Marfisa by Rinaldo in the midst of their duel, and the graceful sympathy of Astolfo for Brandimarte, whom he has unhorsed.[583]But the two passages which illustrate Boiardo's ideal of the chivalrous character, as blent of bravery and courtesy, of intelligence and love, are Orlando's discourse with Agricane and his speech to Morgana's maiden. In the first of these the Count and King had fought till nightfall. Then they agree to sleep together side by side, and to resume the combat at daybreak. Before they settle for the night, they talk[584]:
This unlucky mention of Angelica stirs the rage of Agricane, and the two men fight in the moonlight beneath the forest-trees till the young King is wounded to the death—a splendid subject for some imaginative painter's pencil. We may notice in this dialogue the modification of chivalry occasioned by Italian respect for culture. Boiardo exalts the courage of the educated gentleman above the valor of a man-at-arms. In the conversation between Orlando and Morgana's maiden he depicts another aspect of the knightly ideal. The fairy has made Orlando offer of inestimable treasures, but he answers that indifference to riches is the sign of a noble heart[585]:
Having seen the knights in their more generousmoments, we ought to bear in mind that they are capable of blustering, boasting, and exchanging foul abuse like humanists. One reference will suffice. Orlando and Rinaldo quarrel at Albracca and defy each other to combat. Before fighting they indulge in elaborate caricatures and vilifications, from which it would appear, to say the least, that these champions of Christendom were the subject of much scandalous gossip.[586]
Human nature, unsophisticated and unqualified, with the crude impulses and the contradictions proper to an unreflective age, has been studied by Boiardo for his men and women. His power of expressing the passions by natural signs might win for him the title of the Homer of Chivalry. The love lamentations of Prasildo, the love-languors of Angelica, the frenzy of Marfisa, the wrath of Ferraguto, the truculency of Rodamonte, the impish craft of Brunello, Origille's cunning, Brandimarte's fervor, Ruggiero's impatience to try his strength in the tournament, and his sudden ecstasy of love for Brandiamante—these and a hundred other instances of vigorous dramatic presentation could be mentioned. In his pictures of scenery and descriptions Boiardo follows nature no less faithfully—and this, be it remembered, in an age which refined on nature and admitted into art only certain chosen phases of her loveliness. Of affectation and elaboration he has none. The freshness of authentic vision gives peculiar vividness to the storm that overtakes Rodamonte in mid-channel; to the garden of Falerina, where Orlando stuffs his cask with roses inorder to stop his ears against a Siren's song; to the picture of Morgana combing Ziliante's hair in the midst of her enchanted meadows, and to the scene in which Angelica greets Orlando with a perfumed bath after the battle.[587]The charm of Boiardo's poetry consists in its firm grasp on truth and nature, the spontaneity and immediateness of its painting. He has none of Poliziano's richness, no Virgilian dignity or sweetness, no smooth and sparkling fluency like that of Ariosto. But all that he writes has in it the perfume of the soil, the freedom of the open air; the spirits of the woods and sea and stars are in it. Of his style the most striking merit is rapidity. Almost always unpolished, sometimes even coarse, but invariably spirited and masculine, his verse leaps onward like a grayhound in its swiftness. Story succeeds story with extraordinary speed; and whether of love or arms, they are equally well told. The pathetic novel of Tisbina, Rinaldo's wondrous combat with the griffins and the giants, the lion-hunt at Biserta, the mustering of Agramante's lieges, and the flux and reflux of battle before Montalbano tax the vivid and elastic vigor of Boiardo in five distinct species of rapid narration; and in all of them he proves himself more than adequate to the strain. For ornaments he cared but little, nor did he wait to elaborate similes. A lion at bay, a furious bull, a river foaming to the sea, a swollen torrent, two battling winds, a storm of hail, the clash of thunderclouds, an earthquake, are the figures he is apt to use. The descriptions of Rinaldo, Marfisa and Orlando, may be cited as favorable specimens of his illustrative metaphors.[588]Short phrases likea guisa di leone,a guisa di colomba,a guisa di serpente,a guisa d'uno drago,a guisa di castello, indicate in outline images that aid the poet's thought. But nothing like the polish or minuteness of Ariosto's highly-wrought comparisons can be found in theInnamorato. Boiardo's study of the classics had not roused him to the emulation of their decorative beauties. Nor, again, did he attend to cadence in his versification. He would have wondered at thelimæ laborof the poets who came after him. His own stanzas are forcible, swift, fiery, never pompous or voluptuous, liquid or sonorous. The changes wrought by Poliziano in the structure ofottava rima, his majesty and "linked sweetness long drawn out," were unknown to Boiardo. Yet those rugged octaves, in spite of their halting pauses at the end of the fifth line, in spite of their frequent repetitions and inequalities of volume, are better adapted to the spirit of his medieval subject-matter than the sumptuous splendor of more polished versifiers. His diction, in like manner, judged by the standard of thecinque cento, is far from choice—loaded with Lombardisms, gaining energy and vividness at the expense of refinement and precision. Thus style and spirit alike removed him from the sympathies of the correct and classic age that followed.
For the student of the earlier Renaissance Boiardo's art has one commanding point of interest. In the romantic treatment of antique motives he is unique. It was the aim of Italian poets after Boccaccio to effecta fusion between the classical and modern styles, and to ingraft the beauties of antique literature upon their own language. Boiardo, far more a child of nature than either Boccaccio or Poliziano, with deeper sympathy for feudal traditions and chivalrous modes of feeling, attacked this problem from a point of view directly opposite to theirs. His comprehensive study of Greek and Roman authors had stored his mind with legends which gave an impulse to the freedom of his own imagination. He did not imitate the ancients; but used the myths with so much novelty and delicate perception of their charm, that beneath his touch they assumed a fresh and fascinating quality. There is nothing grotesque in his presentation of Hellenic fancy, nothing corresponding to the medieval transformation of deities into devils; and yet his spirit is not classical. His Sphinx, his Cyclops, and his Circe-Dragontina, his Medusa, his Pegasus, his Centaur, his Atalanta, his Satyr, are living creatures of romantic wonderland, with just enough of classic gracefulness to remove them from the murky atmosphere of medieval superstition into the serene ether of a neo-pagan mythology. Nothing can be more dissimilar from Ovid, more unlike the forms of Græco-Roman sculpture. With his firm grasp upon reality, Boiardo succeeded in naturalizing these classic fancies. They are not copied, but drawn from the life of the poet's imagination. A good instance of this creative faculty is the description of the Faun, who haunts the woodland in the shade of leaves, and lives on fruits and drinks the stream, and weeps when the sky is fair, because he then fears bad weather, but laughs when itrains, because he knows the sun will shine again.[589]It is not easy to find an exact analogue in the sister arts to this poetry, though some points in the work of Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo, some early engravings by Robeta and the Master of the Caduceus, some bass-reliefs of Amadeo or incrustations on the chapel-walls of S. Francesco at Rimini, a Circe by Dosso Dossi in the Borghese palace at Rome, an etching of Mantegna here or there, might be quoted in illustration of its spirit.[590]Better justice can be done to Boiardo's achievement by citation than by critical description. The following stanzas are a picture of Love attended by the Graces, punishing Rinaldo for his rudeness near the Font of Merlin[591]:
This is a fine painting in the style I have attempted to characterize—the imagery of the Greek mythology taking a new and natural form of fanciful romance. It is alien to anything in antique poetry or sculpture. Yet the poet's imagination had been touched to finest issues by the spirit of the Greeks before he wrote it. Incapable of transplanting the flowers of antiquity like delicate exotics into the conservatory of studied art, he acclimatized them to the air of thought and feeling in which his own romantic spirit breathed. This distinguishes him from Poliziano, whose stately poem, like the palm-house in Kew Gardens, contains specimens of all the fairest species gathered from the art of Greece and Rome. Even more exquisitely instinct with the first April freshness of Renaissance feeling is another episode, where Boiardo presents the old tale of Narcissus under a wholly new and original aspect. By what strange freak of fancy has he converted Echo into an Empress of the East and added the pathos of the fairy Silvanella, whose petulance amid her hopeless love throws magic on the well! We are far away indeed from the Pompeian frescoes here[592]:
In these stanzas the old vain passion of Narcissus for his own beauty lives again a new life of romantic poetry. That the enchantment of the boy's fascination, prolonged through Silvanella's mourning for his death, should linger for ever after in the font that was his tomb, is a peculiarly modern touch of mysterious fancy. This part of the romance has little in common with the classic tale of Salmacis; it is far more fragile and refined. The Greeks did not carry their human sympathy with nature, deep and loyal as indeed it was, so far into the border-land of sensual and spiritual things. Haunted hills, like the Venusberg of Tannhäuser's legend; haunted waters, like Morgana's lake in Boiardo's poem; the charmed rivers and fountains of naiads, where knights lose their memory and are inclosed in crystal prison-caves; these are essentially modern, the final flower and blossom of the medieval fancy, unfolding stores of old mythology and half-forgotten emblems to the light of day in art.[593]For their perfection it was needful that the gods of Hellas should have died, and that the phantoms of old-world divinities should linger in dreams and reveries about the shores of young romance.
Boiardo's treatment of magic is complementary to his use of classical mythology. He does not employ this important element of medieval art in its simplicity, but adapts it to the nature of his own imagination, adding, as it were, a new quality by the process of assimilation. Some of his machinery belongs, indeed, to the poems of his predecessors, or is framed in harmony with their spirit. The enchantment of Durlindana and Baiardo; the invulnerability of Orlando, Ferraguto, and other heroes; the wizardry of Malagise, Mambrino's helmet, Morgana's stag, the horse Rabicano, Argalia's lance, Angelica's ring, and the countless dragons and giants which Boiardo creates at pleasure, may be mentioned in this category. But it is otherwise with the gardens of Falerina and Dragontina, the sublacustrine domain of Fata Morgana, and the caverns of the Naiades. These, however much they may have once belonged to medieval tradition, have been alchemized by the imagination of the poet of the Renaissance. They are glimpses into ideal fairyland, which Ariosto and Tasso could but refine upon and vary in their famous gardens of Alcina and Armida. Boiardo's use of the old tradition of Merlin's fountain, and the other well of Cupid feigned by him beside it, might again be chosen to illustrate his free poetic treatment of magical motives. Whenhe trespasses on these enchanted regions, then and then only does he approach allegory. The quest of the tree guarded by Medusa in Tisbina's story; the achievement by Orlando of Morgana's garden, where Penitence and Fortune play their parts; and Rinaldo's encounter with Cupid in the forest of Ardennes, have obviously allegorical elements. Yet the hidden meaning is in each case less important than the adventure; and the same may be said about the highly tragic symbolism of the monster in the Rocca Crudele.[594]Boiardo had too vivid a sympathy with nature and humanity to appreciate the mysteries which allured the Northern poets ofParzival, theSangraal, and theFaery Queen. When he lapses into allegory, it is with him a sign of weakness. Akin, perhaps, to this disregard for parable is the freedom of his spirit from all superstition. The religion of his knights is bluff, simple, and sincere, in no sense savoring of the cloister and the cowl. A high sense of truth and personal honor, indifference to life for life's sake, profound humility in danger, charity impelling men of power to succor the oppressed and feeble, are the fruits of their piety. But of penance for sins of the flesh, of ceremonial observances, of visions and fasts, of ascetic discipline and wonder-working images, of all the ecclesiastical trumpery with which the pseudo-Turpin is filled, and which contaminates even theMort d'Arthurof our heroic Mallory, we read nothing.
In taking up the thread of Boiardo's narrative, Ariosto made use of all his predecessor had invented. He adopted the machinery of the two fountains, the lance of Argalia, Angelica's ring, Rabicane, and the magic arts of Atalante. The characters of theInnamoratoreappear with slight but subtle changes and with somewhat softened names in theFurioso.[595]Ariosto, again, followed Boiardo closely in his peculiar method of interweavingnovellewith the main narrative; of suspending one story to resume another at a critical moment; of prefacing his cantos with reflections, and of concluding them with a courteous license.[596]Lastly, Ariosto is at great pains, while connecting his poem with theInnamorato, to make it intelligible by giving short abstracts at intervals of the previous action. Yet throughout this long laborious work of continuation he preserves a studied silence respecting the poet to whom he owed so much. Was this due to the desire of burying Boiardo's fame beneath his own? Did he so contrive that the contemporary repute of theInnamoratoshould serve to float hisFuriosoand then be forgotten by posterity? If so, he calculatedwisely; for this is what almost immediately happened. Though theOrlando Innamoratowas printed four times before 1513—once at Venice in 1486, once at Scandiano in 1495, and again at Venice in 1506, 1511, and 1513—and though it continued to be reprinted at Venice through the first half of the sixteenth century, yet the sudden silence of the press after this period shows that theFuriosohad eclipsed Boiardo's fame. Still the integral connection between the two poems could not be overlooked; and just about the period of Ariosto's death, Francesco Berni conceived the notion of rewriting Boiardo's epic with the expressed intention of correcting its diction and rendering it more equal in style to theOrlando Furioso. Thisrifacimentowas published in 1541, after his death. The mysterious circumstances that attended its publication, and the nature of the changes introduced by Berni into the substance of Boiardo's poem, will be touched upon when we arrive at this illustrious writer of burlesque verse. It is enough to mention here that Berni's version was printed twice between 1541 and 1545, and that then, like the original, it fell into comparative oblivion till the end of the last century. Meanwhile the secondrifacimentoby Domenichi appeared in 1545; and though this new issue was a mere piece of impudent book-making, it superseded Berni's masterpiece during the next two hundred years. The critics of the last century rediscovered Berni'srifacimento, and began to quote Boiardo's poem under his name, treating the real author as an ignorant and uncouth writer of a barbarous dialect. Thus one of the most original poets of the fifteenth century, to whomItaly owes the form and substance of theFurioso, has been thrust aside and covered with contempt, by a curious irony of fortune, owing to the very qualities that ought to have insured his immortality. Used by Ariosto as the ladder for ascending to Parnassus; by Berni as an exercising ground for the display of style; by Domenichi as the means of getting his name widely known, theOrlando Innamoratoserved any purposes but that of its great author's fame. Panizzi, by reprinting the original poem along with theOrlando Furioso, restored Boiardo at length to his right place in Italian literature. From that time forward it has been impossible to overlook his merits or to underestimate Ariosto's obligations to so gifted and original a master.
Ancestry and Birth of Ariosto—His Education—His Father's Death—Life at Reggio—Enters Ippolito d'Este's Service—Character of the Cardinal—Court Life—Composition and Publication of theFurioso—Quiet Life at Ferrara—Comedies—Governorship of Garfagnana—His Son Virginio—Last Eight Years—Death—Character and Habits—The Satires—Latin Elegies and Lyrics—Analysis of the Satires—Ippolito's Service—Choice of a Wife—Life at Court and Place-hunting—Miseries at Garfagnana—Virginio's Education—Autobiographical and Satirical Elements—Ariosto's Philosophy of Life—Minor Poems—Alessandra Benucci—Ovidian Elegies—Madrigals and Sonnets—Ariosto's Conception of Love.
Ancestry and Birth of Ariosto—His Education—His Father's Death—Life at Reggio—Enters Ippolito d'Este's Service—Character of the Cardinal—Court Life—Composition and Publication of theFurioso—Quiet Life at Ferrara—Comedies—Governorship of Garfagnana—His Son Virginio—Last Eight Years—Death—Character and Habits—The Satires—Latin Elegies and Lyrics—Analysis of the Satires—Ippolito's Service—Choice of a Wife—Life at Court and Place-hunting—Miseries at Garfagnana—Virginio's Education—Autobiographical and Satirical Elements—Ariosto's Philosophy of Life—Minor Poems—Alessandra Benucci—Ovidian Elegies—Madrigals and Sonnets—Ariosto's Conception of Love.
Ariosto’sfamily was ancient and of honorable station in the Duchy of Ferrara. His father, Nicolò, held offices of trust under Ercole I., and in the year 1472 was made Governor of Reggio, where he acquired property and married. His wife, Daria Maleguzzi, gave birth at Reggio in 1474 to their first-born, Lodovico, the poet. At Reggio the boy spent seven years of childhood, removing with his father in 1481 to Rovigo. His education appears to have been carried on at Ferrara, where he learned Latin but no Greek. This ignorance of Greek literature placed him, like Machiavelli, somewhat at a disadvantage among men of culture in an age that set great store upon the knowledge of both ancient languages. He was destined for a legal career; but, like Petrarch and Boccaccio, after spending some useless years in uncongenial studies, Ariosto prevailed upon his father to allow him to follow his strong bent for literature. In 1500 Nicolò Ariosto died, leaving a family of five sons and five daughters, with property sufficient for the honor of his house but scarcely adequate to the needs of his numerous children. Lodovico was the eldest. He therefore found himself at the age of twenty-six in the position of father to nine brothers and sisters, for whose education, start in life, and suitable settlement, he was called on to arrange. The administration of his father's estate, and the cares thus early thrust upon him, made the poet an exact man of business, and brought him acquainted with real life under its most serious aspects. He discharged his duties with prudence and fidelity; managing by economy to provide portions for his sisters and honorable maintenance for his brothers out of their joint patrimony.
The first three years after his father's death were spent by Ariosto in the neighborhood of Reggio, and to this period of his life we may perhaps refer some of the love-affairs celebrated in his Latin poems. He held the Captaincy of Canossa, a small sinecure involving no important duties, since the Castle of Canossa was even in those days a ruin. In 1503 he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, with whom he remained until 1517. He was placed upon the list of the Cardinal's extraordinary servants, to be employed in matters of confidence and delicacy, involving frequent journeys to all parts of Italy and ceremonial embassies. His pay seems to have been fixed at 240lire marchesane, corresponding to about 1200 francs, charged uponthe Archiepiscopal Chancery of Milan.[597]This salary, had it been regularly paid, would have suffered to maintain the poet in decent comfort; but he had considerable difficulty from time to time in realizing the sums due to him. Ippolito urged him to take orders, no doubt with a view of securing better emoluments from benefices that could only be conferred upon a member of the priesthood. But Ariosto refused to enter a state of life for which he felt no vocation.[598]The Cardinal Deacon of S. Lucia in Silice was one of those secular princes of the Church, addicted to worldly pleasures, profuse in personal expenditure, with more inclination for the camp and the hunting-field than for the duties of his station, who since the days of Sixtus IV. had played a prominent part in the society of the Italian Courts. He was of distinguished beauty; and his military courage, like that of the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, was displayed in the Hungarian campaign against the Turks. With regard to his character and temper, it may suffice to remind the reader how, in a fit of jealous passion, he hired assassins to put out his natural brother Giulio's eyes. That Ippolito d'Este did not share the prevailing enthusiasm of his age for literary culture, seems pretty clear; and he failed to discern the unique genius of the man whom he had chosen for his confidential agent. Ariosto complains that he was turned into a common courier and forced to spend his days and nights upon the road by the master upon whom, at the expense of truth and reason,he conferred an immortality of fame in his great poem. Yet it would not be fair to echo the commonplace invectives against the Cardinal for illiberality and ingratitude. Ariosto knew the nature of his patron when he entered his service, and Ippolito did not hire a student but an active man of business for his work. It was an arrangement of convenience on both sides, to which the poet would never have stooped had his private means sufficed, or had the conditions of Italian society offered any decent career for a gentleman outside the circle of the Court. Moreover, it was not until after their final rupture, caused by Ariosto's refusal to undertake the Hungarian expedition in his master's train, that the true greatness of the author of theFuriosowas revealed. How should a dissolute and ill-conditioned Cardinal have discerned that a dreamy poem in MS. on the madness of Orlando would live as long as theÆneid, or that the flattering lies invented by his courier would in after ages turn the fierce glare of criticism and celebrity upon the darkest corners of his own history? The old legend about his brutal reception of theOrlando Furiosohas been now in part disproved.[599]We know that he defrayed the expenses of its publication, and secured the right and profits of its sale to Ariosto.[600]There is even an entry in his memoranda of expenditure proving that he bought a copy for the sum of onelira marchesana.[601]While deploring the waste of Ariosto's time and strength in theuncongenial service of this patron, we must acknowledge that his choice of Ippolito was a mistake for which he alone was responsible, and that the panegyrics showered on such a man are wholly inexcusable.[602]When all the circumstances of their connection are taken into account, there is nothing but the extreme irritation caused by incompatibility of temper, and divergence of aims and interests, to condone the poet's private censure of the master whom publicly he loaded with praises.[603]The whole unhappy story illustrates the real conditions of that Court-life, so glowingly described by Castiglione, which proved the ruin of Tasso and the disgrace of Guarini. Could anything justify the brigandlike brutalities of Pietro Aretino,il flagello de' Principi, we might base his apology upon the dreary histories of these Italian poets, soured, impoverished, and broken because they had been forced to put their trust in princes. When there lay no choice between levying blackmail by menaces and coaxing crumbs by flatteries, it accorded better with the Italian idealvirtùto fatten upon the former kind of infamy than to starve upon the latter.
TheOrlando Furiosowas conceived and begun in the year 1505. It was sent to press in 1515. Giovanni Mazzocchi del Bondeno published it in April,1516. A large portion of the poet's life was subsequently spent in correcting and improving it. In 1518, having freed himself from Ippolito's bondage, Ariosto entered the service of Duke Alfonso I. He was termedcameriereorfamigliare, and his stipend was fixed at eighty-four golden crowns per annum, with maintenance for three servants and two horses, paid in kind.[604]He occupied his own house in Ferrara; and the Duke, who recognized his great literary qualities and appreciated the new luster conferred upon his family by the publication of theFurioso, left him in the undisturbed possession of his leisure.[605]The next four years were probably the happiest of Ariosto's life; for he had now at last secured independence and had entered upon the enjoyment of his fame. The Medici of Florence and Rome, and the ducal families of Urbino and Mantua, were pleased to number him among their intimate friends, and he received flattering acknowledgments of his poem from the most illustrious men of Italy. The few journeys he made at the request of Alfonso carried him to Florence, the head-quarters of literary and artistic activity. At home the time he spared from the revision of theFurioso, was partly devoted to the love-affairs he carried on with jealous secrecy, and partly to the superintendence of the ducal theater. The criticism of Ariosto's comedies must be reserved for another chapter. It is enough to remark here that their composition amused him from his boyhood to his latest years. So early as 1493 he had accompanied Ercole I. to Pavia in order to play before Lodovico Sforza, and in the same year he witnessedthe famous representation of theMenæchmiat Ferrara. Some of his earliest essays in literature were translations of Latin comedies, now unfortunately lost. They were intended for representation; and, as exercises in the playwright's art, they strongly influenced his style. His ownCassariaappeared for the first time at Ferrara in 1508; theSuppositifollowed in 1509, and was reproduced at the Vatican in 1519. It took Leo's fancy so much that he besought the author for another comedy. Ariosto, in compliance with this request, completed theNegromante, which he had already had in hand during the previous ten years. TheLenawas first represented at Ferrara in 1528, and theScolasticawas left unfinished at the poet's death. What part Ariosto took in the presentation of his comedies, is uncertain; but it is probable that he helped in their performance, besides directing the stage and reciting the prologue. He thus acquired a practical acquaintance with theatrical management, and it was by his advice, and on plans furnished by him, that Alfonso built the first permanent stage at Ferrara in 1532. On the last day of that year, not long after its erection, the theater was burned down. These dates are important; since they prove that Ariosto's connection with the stage, as actor, playwright, and manager, was continuous throughout his lifetime.
Ariosto's peaceful occupations at Ferrara were interrupted early in 1522 by what must be reckoned the strangest episode of his career. On February 7 in that year, he was nominated Ducal Commissary for the government of Garfagnana, a wild upland district stretching under Monte Pellegrino almost across theApennines from the Lucchese to the Modenese frontiers. We find that the salary allowed him by Alfonso had never been very regularly paid, and that in 1521 the Duke, straitened in means by his warfare with the Papacy, was compelled to suspend it altogether.[606]At the same period the Communes forming what is known as Garfagnana (who had placed themselves beneath the Marquises of Ferrara in the first half of the fifteenth century, but had lately suffered from Florentine and Papal incursions) besought Alfonso to assert his suzerainty of their district and to take measures for securing its internal quiet. The emoluments of the Commissary amounted to about 930lire marchesane, estimated at something like 2,300 francs of present value; and it was undoubtedly the pecuniary profits of the office which induced the Duke to offer it, and the poet to accept it.
We may think it strange that so acute a judge of men as Alfonso should have selected the author of theFurioso, a confirmed student, almost a recluse in his habits, and already broken in health, for the governorship of a district half-ruined by foreign raids and domestic feuds, which had become the haunt of brigands and the asylum of bandits from surrounding provinces. Yet we must remember that Ariosto had already given ample proof of his good sense and business-like qualities, not only in the administration of his own affairs, but in numerous embassies undertaken for the Cardinal and Duke, his masters. At that epoch of Italian history the name and fame of an illustrious writer were themselves a power in politics:and it is said that during Ariosto's first journey into Garfagnana, he owed his liberation from the hands of brigands to the celebrity of theOrlando Furioso.[607]Alfonso knew, moreover, that the poet was well qualified for negotiating with princes; and what was of grave practical importance, he stood in excellent personal relations to the Medici, from whom as the rulers of Florence the Garfagnana was menaced with invasion. These considerations are sufficient to explain Alfonso's choice. Nothing but necessity would probably have induced Ariosto to quit Ferrara for the intolerable seclusion of those barbarous mountains; where it was his duty to issue edicts against brigands, to hunt outlaws, to punish murderers and robbers, to exact fines for rape and infamous offenses, to see that the hangman did his duty, and to sit in judgment daily upon suits that proved the savage immorality of the entire population. The hopelessness of the task might have been enough to break a sterner heart than Ariosto's, and his loathing of his life at Castelnovo found vent in the most powerful of his satires. He managed to endure this uncongenial existence for three years, from February 20, 1522, till June, 1525, sustaining his spirits with correspondence and composition, and varying the monotony of his life by visits to Ferrara. It was during his Garfagnana residence in all probability that he composed theCinque Canti. The society of his dearly-loved son, Virginio—whose education he superintended and forwhom he wrote the charming seventh Satire to Pietro Bembo—also served to diminish the dreariness of his exile from love, leisure, and the society of friends.
Virginio was Ariosto's natural son by a woman of Reggio. He collected the Latin poems after his father's death, and prepared theCinque Cantifor Manuzio's press in 1545. He also helped his uncle Gabriele to finishLa Scolastica, and wrote a few brief recollections of his father. Ariosto had a second illegitimate son, named Giovanni Battista, who distinguished himself in a military career.
The last eight years of Ariosto's life were spent in great tranquillity at Ferrara. Soon after his return from Garfagnana he built his house in the Contrada Mirasol, and placed upon it the following characteristic inscription[608]:
About this time, too, he married the lady to whom for many years he had been tenderly attached.[609]She was the Florentine Alessandra Benucci, widow of Tito Strozzi, whom he first saw at Florence in the year 1513. The marriage was kept strictly secret, probably because the poet did not choose to relinquish the income he derived from certain minor benefices. Nor did it prove fruitful of offspring, for Ariosto left no legitimate heirs. His life of tranquil study was variedonly by short journeys to Venice, Abano, and Mantua. In 1531 he was sent to negotiate certain matters for his master in the camp of the Marquis del Vasto at Correggio. On this occasion he received from Alfonso Davalos a pension of one hundred golden ducats, by a deed which sets forth in its preamble the duty of princes to recompense poets who immortalize the acts of heroes. This is the only instance of reward bestowed on Ariosto for his purely literary merits. The poet repaid his benefactor by magnificent eulogies inserted in the last edition of theFurioso.[610]Between the year 1525, when he left Garfagnana, and 1532, when his poem issued from the press, he devoted himself with unceasing labor to its revision and improvement. The edition of 1516 consisted of forty cantos. That of 1532 contained forty-six, and the whole text had been subjected in the interval to minute alterations.[611]Not long after the publication of the revised edition Ariosto's health gave way. His constitution had never been robust, for he suffered habitually from a catarrh of the lungs which made his old life as Ippolito d'Este's courier not only distasteful but dangerous.[612]Toward the close of 1532 this complaint took the form of a consumption, which ended his days on the sixth of June, 1533. Great pains have been bestowed by his biographers on proving that he died a good Catholic; nor is there any reason to suppose that he neglected the consolations of the Church in his last hours. He was by no means a manto break abruptly with tradition or to make an indecorous display of doubts that may have haunted him. Yet the best Latin verses he ever penned were a half-humorous copy of hendecasyllables for his own epitaph, which seem to prove that he applied Montaigne'speut-êtreeven to the grave.[613]
Of Ariosto's personal habits and opinions we know unfortunately but little, beyond what may be gathered from the incomparably transparent self-revelation of his satires. His son, Virginio, who might have amply satisfied our curiosity, confined himself to the fewest and briefest details in the notes transcribed and published by Barotti. Some of these, however, are so characteristic that it may not be inopportune to translate them. With regard to his method of composition, Virginio writes: "He was never satisfied with his verses, but altered them again and again, so that he could not keep his lines in his memory, and consequently lost many of his compositions.... In horticulture he followed the same system as in composition, for he would not leave anything he planted for more than three months in one place; and if he sowed peaches or any kind of seed, he went so often to see if they were sprouting, that at last he broke the shoots. He had but small knowledge of herbs, and used to think that whatever grew near the things he had sown, were the plants themselves, and watched them diligently till his mistake was proved beyond all doubt. I remember once, when he had planted capers, he went every day to see them and was greatly delighted at their luxuriance. At last he discerned that they werebut elders, and that the capers had not come up at all.... He was not much given to study, and cared to see but few books. Virgil gave him pleasure, and Tibullus for his diction; but he greatly commended Horace and Catullus, Propertius not much.... He ate fast and much, and made no distinction of food. So soon as he came home, if he found the bread set out, he would eat one piece walking, while the meats were being brought to table. When he saw them spread, he had water poured upon his hands and then began to eat whatever was nearest to him.... He was fond of turnips."
From the bare details of Ariosto's biography it is satisfactory to turn to the living picture of the man himself revealed in his Satires. These compositions rank next to theOrlando Furiosoin the literary canon of his works, and have the highest value for the light they cast upon his temperament and mode of feeling. Though they are commonly called Satires, they rather deserve the name of Epistles; for while a satiric element gives distinct flavor to each of the seven poems, this is subordinated to personal and familiar topics of correspondence. We learn from them what the great artist of the golden age thought and felt about the times in which he lived; what moved his indignation or aroused his sympathy; how he strove to meet the troubles of his checkered life; and where, amid the carnival of that mad century, he laid his finger upon hidden social maladies. Reading them, we come to know the man himself, and are better able to understand how, while Italy was distracted with wars and trampled on by foreign armies, he could withdraw himself from the tumult, and spend his years in polishing the stanzas ofOrlando. The Satires do not reveal a hero or a sage, a poet passionate like Dante with the sense of wrong, or like Petrarch aspiring after an impossible ideal. It is rather the type of Boccaccio's character, refined and purged of sensuality, with delicate touches of irony and a more fastidious taste, that meets us in this portrait of Ariosto painted by himself. His mental vision is more lucid, his judgment more acute, his philosophy less indulgent, and his ideal of art more exacting; yet he, too, might be nicknamedLodovico della Tranquillità. With his head in Philiroe's lap beside a limpid rivulet, he basks away the summer hours, and cares not whether French or German get the upper hand in Italy.[614]Does it greatly signify, he asks Ercole Strozzi in one of his Latin poems, whether we serve a French or an Italian tyrant? Servitude is the same, if the despot be a barbarian only in manners, like our princelings, or in name too, like these foreigners.[615]
Left alone to study and to polish verses, Ariostois content. He is content to flatter and confer immortality on the master he despises. He is content to rest in one place, turning his maps over when he fain would take a journey into foreign lands. Only let him be, and give him enough to live upon, and he will trouble no man, dispute no pretender's claims, raise no inconvenient questions of right and wrong, inflame the world with no far-reaching thoughts, but gild the refined gold of his purest phrases and paint the lilies of his loveliest thoughts in placid ease. Italy has grown old, and Ariosto is the genius of a tired, world-weary, disillusioned age. What is there worth a struggle? At the same time he preserves his independence as a private gentleman. He passes free judgment upon society; and the patron he has praised officially in his epic, receives hard justice in his Satires. He is frank and honest, free from hypocrisy and guile, genial and loyal toward his friends, upright in his dealings and manly in his instincts. We respect his candor, his contempt for worldly honors, and his love of liberty. We admire his intellectual sagacity, his deep and wise philosophy of life, the knowledge of the world so easily communicated, the irony so pungent yet so free from bitterness, which gives piquancy to these familiar discourses. Still both respect and admiration are tempered with someregret that the greatest poet of the sixteenth century should have been so easy-going. Such is the Ariosto revealed to us by the Satires—not a noble or sublime being: by no means the man to save the State if safety had been possible. Throughout the tragedy of Italy's last years of freedom he moves, an essentially comic character, only redeemed by genius and byWeltweisheitfrom the ridicule attaching to a man whose aims are commonplace, and whose complaints against the world are petty. He is not servile enough to accept the humiliations of a courtier's lot without a murmur. He is not proud enough to break his chains and live in haughty isolation. Hence in these incomparable records of his private opinion, we find him at one moment painting the discomforts of his position with anaïvetéthat provokes our laughter, at another analyzing the vices of society with luminous acumen, then shrugging his shoulders and summoning philosophy to his aid with a final cry ofPazienza!
The motive of the first Epistle is a proposed journey to Rome.[616]The second enumerates the reasons why the poet will not accompany Ippolito d'Este to Hungary. The subject of the third is the choice of a wife. The fourth discusses the vanity of honors and wealth in comparison with a contented mind. The fifth describes the poet's isolation in the Garfagnana, and contains a confession of his love. In the sixth he explains why he does not wish to go to Rome and seek advancement from Clement VII. The seventh is devoted to the education of youth in the humanities, and contains a retrospect of his own early life. The satire of the first is directed against the ambition and avarice of priests, the pride of Roman prelates, and the nepotism of the Popes. The passage describing an ecclesiastic's levee is justly famous for its humor; and the diatribe on Papal vices for its force. The second shows how the dependents upon princes are forced to flatter, and how they exchange their freedom for the empty honor of sitting near great men at table. Ariosto takes occasion to describe the character of Ippolito d'Este, who cared for his hawks and hounds more than for the Muses, and who paid his body-servants better than the poet of Orlando.[617]"I owe you nothing, Phœbus, nor you, holy college of the Muses! From you I never got enough to buy myself a cloak. 'Indeed? your lord has given you....' More than the price of several cloaks, I grant. But not for your sake, Muses, I am certain. He has told me, and I do not mind repeating it, that my verses are just worth the price of their waste paper. He will not give a penny for my praises, but pays me for courier's service. His followers inthe barge or villa, hisvalet-de-chambreand butler, his lackeys who outwatch the night, get paid. But when I set his name with honor in my verse, he tells me I have whiled my time away in ease and pleasure—I had pleased him better by attendance on his person. If you remind me that I owe to him a third of the Chancery dues at Milan, I answer that he gave me this because I ply both spur and whip, change beasts and guides, and hurry over hills and precipices, risking my life upon his business."
The third Epistle is a masterpiece of sound counsel and ripe knowledge of the world. Better rules could not be given about the precautions to be taken in selecting a wife, the qualities a man should seek in her, and the conduct he should use toward her after marriage. The satire consists in that poor opinion of female honesty which the author of theFuriosohad conceived, not without much experience of women, and after mature reflection upon social institutions. It is not envenomed like the invectives of theCorbaccio, or exaggerated like the abuse in Alberti's dialogues. Leaning back in his arm-chair with an amused and quiet smile, the indulgent satirist enunciates truths that are biting only because they condense the wisdom of an observant lifetime. He never ceases to be kindly; and we feel, while listening to him, that his epigrams are double-edged. The poet who has learned thus much of women, gives the measure of his limited capacity for noble feeling; for while he paints them as he finds them, he leaves an impression of his own emotional banality. After making due allowance for this defect in Ariosto's point of view, we mayrank the third Epistle among the ripest products of his intellect. The fourth resumes the theme of Court-life and place-hunting. "You ask me, friend Annibale, how I fare with Duke Alfonso, and whether I find his service lighter than the Cardinal's. To tell the truth, I do not like one burden better than the other; and were I rich enough, I certainly would be no man's servant. But I was not born an only son, and Mercury was never generous to my race. So I am forced to live at a patron's charge, and it is better to owe my maintenance to the Duke than to beg bread from door to door. I know that most people think it a grand thing to be a courtier, but I count Court-life as mere slavery. A nightingale is ill at ease in a cage, and a swallow dies after a day's imprisonment. If a man wants to be decorated with the spurs or the red hat, let him serve kings or popes. For my part, I care for neither; a turnip in my own house tastes sweeter to me than a banquet in a master's.[618]I would rather stretch my lazy limbs in my armchair than be able to boast that I had traveled over half the globe. I have seen Tuscany, Lombardy, Romagna, the Apennines and Alps, the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. That is enough for me. The rest of the world I can visit at my leisure with Ptolemy for guide. The Duke's service has this advantage, that it does not interrupt my studies, or take me far from Ferrara, where my heart is always. I think I hear you laughing at this point, and saying that neither love of study nor of country, but a woman ties me to my home. Well:I will confess it frankly. But suppose I had gone to Rome to fish for benefices, says some one, I should certainly have netted more than one, especially as I was Leo's friend before his merits or his luck raised him to the highest earthly station. I knew him at Urbino when he cheered his exile with Castiglione and Bembo; and afterwards when he returned to Florence, he bade me count upon him like a brother. All this is true; but listen to a fable I will tell you.[619]In time of drought, when there was no water to be had in all the country, a shepherd found a scanty spring. He drank of it first, and next his wife, and then his children, and afterwards his servants and his cattle. Last of all there came a magpie he had petted in old days; but the bird saw that she had no right to drink of the fountain, for she was neither wife nor child nor hind, nor could she bring wealth to the household.[620]It is just the same with me. Leo has all the Medici, and all his friends in exile, who risked their lives and fortunes for him, and all the priests who made him pope, to recompense. What is there left for me? It is true that he has not forgotten me. When I went to Rome and kissed his foot, he bent down from the holy seat, and took my hand and saluted me on both cheeks. Besides, he made me free of half the stamp-dues I was bound to pay; and then, breast-full of hope but soaked with rain and smirched with mud, I went and had mysupper at the Ram![621]But supposing the Pope kept all his promises and put as many miters on my head as Michelangelo's Jonah sees beneath him in the Sistine Chapel, what would this profit me? No amount of wealth can satisfy desire. Honors and riches do not bring tranquillity of mind. True honor is, to be esteemed an honest man, and to be this in good earnest; for if you are not really one, you will be detected. What is the advantage of wearing fine clothes and being bowed to in the market-place, if people point you out behind your back as thief and traitor? There are dignities which are notorious disgraces; and the richer and greater a man is who has gained his rank dishonorably, the more he calls attention to his shame."