That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)—Variorum edition of Dante, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373.]
[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the original passage, with another version, in the Appendix.]
[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman, of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so, Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved Cæsar;—that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks.]
[Footnote 17:
"Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,Più è tacer che ragionare onesto."
Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts (see the opening of canto xvi., Paradise, in the original), that while he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto xv. 73, &c.), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic, may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a harbinger.
All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on the Cross!]
[Footnote 18: TheColumn, Verrey(vair, variegated, checkered with argent and azure), and theBallsor (Palle d'oro), were arms of old families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names, of which nothing else is recorded.]
[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his engagement, and was assassinated.Historie Fiorentine, lib. ii.]
[Footnote 20:
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa dilettaPiù caramente; e questo e quello straleChe l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di saleLo pane altrui, e com'è duro calleLo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempiaCon la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empiaSi farà contra te: ma poco appressoElla, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.
Di sua bestialitate il suo processoFarà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia belloAverti fatta parte per te stesso."
[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers ofVerona.]
[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who had received Dante at his court.]
[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paléo"]
[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne, or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin?) seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante) might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples.]
[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
"Prima cantando, e poi tace contentaDe l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia."
In thePentameron and Pentalogia, Petrarch is made to say, "All the verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented.
"Boccaccio.—I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is notcontentaquite enough without _che la sazia?_The picture is before us, the sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
"Petrarch.—I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as blemishes, and even more."—p. 92.
Perhaps Dante would have argued thatsaziaexpresses the satiety itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety.]
[Footnote 30:
"E come a buon cantor buon citaristaFa seguitar to guizzo de la cordaIn che più di piacer lo canto acquista;
Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda,Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
Con le parole muover le fiammette." ]
[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal, and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age." Petrarch also makes honourable mention of him. SeeCary, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem there.—Lombardi in loc.vol. III. p. 547.]
[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat.]
[Footnote 33: "Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle."]
[Footnote 34:
"Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,E fero un grido di sì alto suono,Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono."
Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonderKnoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage into his treatise on the Sublime.]
[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of theCamaldoli.]
[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage in Cowley
"Lo, I mount; and lo,How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!Where shall I find the noble British land?Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,Which in the sea does lie,And seems a grain o' the sand.For this will any sin, or bleed?Of civil wars is this the meed?And is it this, alas, which we,Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie?"
And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,—
"Where am I now? angels and God is here."
All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full of grandeur and loveliness.]
[Footnote 37:
"Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,Posato al nido de' suoi dolci natiLa notte che le cose ci nasconde,
Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
Così la donna mia si stava erettaE attenta, involta in ver la plagaSotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
Sì the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,Fecimi quale è quei che disiandoAltro vorria, e sperando s'appaga." ]
[Footnote 38:
"Quale ne' plenilunii sereniTrivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni."
[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person.]
[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary.]
[Footnote 41:
"Mi rendeiA la battaglia de' debili cigli."]
[Footnote 42:
"Ambo le luci mi dipinse."
[Footnote 43:
"Qualunque melodia più dolce suonaQua giù, e più a se l'anima tira,Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
Comparata al sonar di quella liraOnde si coronava il bel zaffiroDel quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira." ]
[Footnote 44:
"Benedicendomi cantandoTre volte cinse me, sì com' io tacqui,L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui."
It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See hisDiscorso sul Testo, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,—Opere Minori, 12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist!]
[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
"Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacroAl quale ha posto mano e cielo e terraSì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serraDel bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnelloNimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
Con altra voce omai, con altro velloRitornerò poeta, ed in sul fonteDel mio battesmo prenderò 'l capello:
Perocchè ne la fede che fa conteL' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poiPietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte." ]
[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te."Psalmix. 10. The English version says,"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee."]
[Footnote 47:
"Tal volta un animal coverto brogliaSì che l' affetto convien che si paiaPer lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia."
A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles to one's imagination.]
[Footnote 48:
"Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e MarteFossero augelli e cambiassersi penne."
Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the tremendous passage that ensues!]
[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush, and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,—this scene altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy invective awful.
A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic?—I am afraid, all things considered, we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine Church-hymns he would have written!]
[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence!) that for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings them into Heaven!]
[Footnote 51:
"Certo io credoChe solo il suo fattor tutta la goda." ]
[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of restoration to his country were at an end.]
[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had prepared for him.]
[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical!]
[Footnote 55: David.]
[Footnote 56: The Trinity.]
[Footnote 57: The Incarnation.]
[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p. 845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention, however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations terminated.]
Critical Notice
of
Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most laughable sallies.
Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo, the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and Lucca wrote a romance called theCiriffo Calvaneo, and is commended for hisHeroic Epistles. Little else is known of these brothers; and not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens. Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little credit (ZilioliOn the Italian Poets), and an earlier printed book, which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (ScardeoneDe Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinæ), say that he died miserably in Padua, and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther, calling them both the greatest villains (sceleratissimi); and adding, that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good humour—sport to amuse their friends—a perilous speculation. Besides his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems, and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel,La Beca, in emulation of the charming poemLa Nencia, the first of its kind, written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo, who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind. Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the latter's youth, probably from his birth—is spoken of in a tone of domestic intimacy by his wife—and is enumerated by him among his companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on Hawking(La Caccia col Falcone), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a sonnet:
"'Luigi Pulci ov' è, che non si sente?' 'Egli se n' andò dianzi in quel boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr à fantasticar forse un sonetto.'"
"And where's Luigi Pulci? I sawhim." "Oh, in the wood there. Gone, depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain—some whim, That will not let him rest till it's a sonnet."
In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here—he who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it." Such is the first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of Lorenzo.
"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia, Che questa non è storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la via,
Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la pazzia;
Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi è infinita.
La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E così fuggo mille urban dispetti: Sì ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to know 'em.
Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites."
He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his "refuge." TheMorgante Maggiore, the work which has rendered the name of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points. The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome. The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think, and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect. Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors; second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding; third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics, "sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly, a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question, as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind, which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi, who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of profane derision." [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively and impassioned people of the south take what may be called household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others, perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to, ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse, if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends, and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.
If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest woman, herself a poetess, who wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. TheMorganteconcludes with an address respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with a hope that her "devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him in Paradise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his mother as to a jest?
I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived, Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry spheres." He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a fellow-creature.
Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the appearance of Columbus.[3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;—of that Galileo, whose hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
Like theCommediaof Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to render it. The editor of theParnaso Italianohad reason to notice this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci."[5] And all minds, in which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
TheMorgante Maggioreis a history of the fabulous exploits and death of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (Morgante the Great) seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented, for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and weak.[6]
The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins, his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne; and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious; and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a halter.
There is, perhaps, no pure invention in the whole of this enlargement of old ballads and chronicles, except the characters of another giant, and of a rebel angel; for even Morgante's history, though told in a very different manner, has its prototype in the fictions of the pretended archbishop.[7] The Paladins are well distinguished from one another; Orlando as foremost alike in prowess and magnanimity, Rinaldo by his vehemence, Ricciardetto by his amours, Astolfo by an ostentatious rashness and self-committal; but in all these respects they appear to have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular idiomatic phraseology; still less, though it has plenty of infernal magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring order, as in Ariosto; or with love-stories as good as Boiardo's, or even with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be found in both of those poets; albeit, in the fourteenth canto, there is a longcatalogue raisonnéof the whole animal creation, which a lady has worked for Rinaldo on a pavilion of silk and gold.
To these negative faults must be added the positive ones of too many trifling, unconnected, and uninteresting incidents (at least to readers who cannot taste the flavour of the racy Tuscan idiom); great occasional prolixity, even in the best as well as worst passages, not excepting Orlando's dying speeches; harshness in spite of his fluency (according to Foscolo), and even bad grammar; too many low or over-familiar forms of speech (so the graver critics allege, though, perhaps, from want of animal spirits or a more comprehensive discernment); and lastly (to say nothing of the question as to the gravity or levity of the theology), the strange exhibition of whole successive stanzas, containing as many questions or affirmations as lines, and commencing each line with the same words. They meet the eye like palisadoes, or a file of soldiers, and turn truth and pathos itself into a jest. They were most likely imitated from the popular ballads. The following is the order of words in which a young lady thinks fit to complain of a desert, into which she has been carried away by a giant. After seven initiatory O's addressed to her friends and to life in general, she changes the key into E:
"E' questa, la mia patria dov' io nacqui? E' questo il mio palagio e 'l mio castello? E' questo il nido ov' alcun tempo giacqui? E' questo il padre e 'l mio dolce fratello? E' questo il popol dov' io tanto piacqui? E' questo il regno giusto antico e bello? E' questo il porto de la mia salute? E' questo il premio d' ogni mia virtute?
Ove son or le mie purpuree veste? Ove son or le gemme e le ricchezze? Ove son or già le notturne feste? Ove son or le mie delicatezze? Ove son or le mie compagne oneste? Ove son or le fuggite dolcezze? Ove son or le damigelle mie? Ove son, dice? omè, non son già quie."[8]
Is this the country, then, where I was born? Is this my palace, and my castle this? Is this the nest I woke in, every morn? Is this my father's and my brother's kiss? Is this the land they bred me to adorn? Is this the good old bower of all my bliss? Is this the haven of my youth and beauty? Is this the sure reward of all my duty?
Where now are all my wardrobes and their treasures? Where now are all my riches and my rights? Where now are all the midnight feasts and measures? Where now are all the delicate delights? Where now are all the partners of my pleasures? Where now are all the sweets of sounds and sights? Where now are all my maidens ever near? Where, do I say? Alas, alas, not here!
There are seven more "where nows," including lovers, and "proffered husbands," and "romances," and ending with the startling question and answer,—the counterpoint of the former close,—
"Ove son l' aspre selve e i lupi adesso, E gli orsi, e i draghi, e i tigri? Son qui presso."
Where now are all the woods and forests drear, Wolves, tigers, bears, and dragons? Alas, here!
These are all very natural thoughts, and such, no doubt, as would actually pass through the mind of the young lady, in the candour of desolation; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by the poor queen in the play ofRichard the Second, when she overhears the discourse of the gardener:
"My wretchednessunto a roar of pins, They'll talk of state."
Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during the recital of these passages? Or did he flatter himself, that the comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new one?[9]
The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external nature, in theMorgante, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion. The fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to accept; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that "she wishes she could give him the sun;" and that if she were to say, after all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his lips. The way also in which another of these loving admirers of Paladins conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with a ring and a graceful speech, is in a taste as high as any thing in Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their great successor.[10] Yet the tenderness of Pulci rather shews itself in the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little escapes of generous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great charms of theMorgante. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he discovers a kinsman; and this goodness and relationship combined move the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without peril out of the clutches of a devil, he longs to go and set free the whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his affection for him. Rinaldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part with him without manifesting a tenderness proportionate to their valour,—the old Homeric candour of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (gentilezza) even in hell; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, answers that he has no doubt of it, or of the capability of "friendship" in that quarter; and he says he is as "sorry to part with him as with a brother." The passage will be found in our abstract. There are no such devils as these in Dante; though Milton has something like them:
"Devil with devil damn'dFirm concord holds: men only disagree."
It is supposed that the character of Ashtaroth, which is a very new and extraordinary one, and does great honour to the daring goodness of Pulci's imagination, was not lost upon Milton, who was not only acquainted with the poem, but expressly intimates the pleasure he took in it.[11] Rinaldo advises this devil, as Burns did Lucifer, to "take a thought and mend." Ashtaroth, who had been a seraph, takes no notice of the advice, except with a waving of the recollection of happier times. He bids the hero farewell, and says he has only to summon him in order to receive his aid. This retention of a sense of his former angelical dignity has been noticed by Foscolo and Panizzi, the two best writers on these Italian poems.[12] A Calvinist would call the expression of the sympathy "hardened." A humanist knows it to be the result of a spirit exquisitely softened. An unbounded tenderness is the secret of all that is beautiful in the serious portion of our author's genius. Orlando's good-natured giant weeps even for the death of the scoundrel Margutte; and the awful hero himself, at whose death nature is convulsed and the heavens open, begs his dying horse to forgive him if ever he has wronged it.
A charm of another sort in Pulci, and yet in most instances, perhaps, owing the best part of its charmingness to its being connected with the same feeling, is his wit. Foscolo, it is true, says it is, in general, more severe than refined; and it is perilous to differ with such a critic on such a point; for much of it, unfortunately, is lost to a foreign reader, in consequence of its dependance on the piquant old Tuscan idiom, and on popular sayings and allusions. Yet I should think it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some more agreeable quality; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most obvious to a foreigner may claim, if not to have originated, at least to have been very like the style of one who was among its declared admirers,—and who was a very polished writer,—Voltaire. It consists in treating an absurdity with an air as if it were none; or as if it had been a pure matter of course, erroneously mistaken for an absurdity. Thus the good abbot, whose monastery is blockaded by the giants (for the virtue and simplicity of his character must be borne in mind), after observing that the ancient fathers in the desert had not only locusts to eat, but manna, which he has no doubt was rained down on purpose from heaven, laments that the "relishes" provided for himself and his brethren should have consisted of "showers of stones." The stones, while the abbot is speaking, come thundering down, and he exclaims, "For God's sake, knight, come in, for the manna is falling!" This is exactly in the style of theDictionnaire Philosophique. So when Margutte is asked what he believes in, and says he believes in "neither black nor blue," but in a good capon, "whether roast or boiled," the reader is forcibly reminded of Voltaire's Traveller,Scarmentado, who, when he is desired by the Tartars to declare which of their two parties he is for, the party of the black-mutton or the white-mutton, answers, that the dish is "equally indifferent to him, provided it is tender." Voltaire, however, does injustice to Pulci, when he pretends that in matters of belief he is like himself,—a mere scoffer. The friend of Lucrezia Tornabuoni has evidently the tenderest veneration for all that is good and lovely in the Catholic faith; and whatever liberties he might have allowed himself in professedextravaganzas, when an age without Church-authority encouraged them, and a reverend canon could take part in those (it must be acknowledged) unseemly "high jinks," he never, in theMorgante, when speaking in his own person, and not in that of the worst characters, intimates disrespect towards any opinion which he did not hold to be irrelevant to a right faith. It is observable that his freest expressions are put in the mouth of the giant Margutte, the lowest of these characters, who is an invention of the author's, and a most extraordinary personage. He is the first unmitigated blackguard in fiction, and is the greatest as well as first. Pulci is conjectured, with great probability, to have designed him as a caricature of some real person; for Margutte is a Greek who, in point of morals, has been horribly brought up, and some of the Greek refugees in Italy were greatly disliked for the cynicism of their manners and the grossness of their lives. Margutte is a glutton, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and a blasphemer. He boasts of having every vice, and no virtue except fidelity; which is meant to reconcile Morgante to his company; but though the latter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt of a merely and grossly anti-serious mode of existence, and his consideration, nevertheless, towards the poor selfish wretch who had had no better training.
To this wit and this pathos let the reader add a style of singular ease and fluency,—rhymes often the most unexpected, but never at a loss,—a purity of Tuscan acknowledged by every body, and ranking him among the authorities of the language,—and a modesty in speaking of his own pretensions equalled only by his enthusiastic extolments of genius in others; and the reader has before him the lively and affecting, hopeful, charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci, the precursor, and in some respects exemplar, of Ariosto, and, in Milton's opinion, a poet worth reading for the "good use" that may be made of him. It has been strangely supposed that his friend Politian, and Ficino the Platonist, not merely helped him with their books (as he takes a pride in telling us), but wrote a good deal of the latter part of the Morgante, particularly the speculations in matters of opinion. As if (to say nothing of the difference of style) a man of genius, however lively, did not go through the gravest reflections in the course of his life, or could not enter into any theological or metaphysical question, to which he chose to direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy; and one fit of jaundice or hypochondria might have enabled the poet to see more visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the disciple of Plato.
[Footnote 1:Literature of the South of Europe, Thomas Roscoe's Translation, vol. ii. p.54. For the opinions of other writers, here and elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him),Storia della Poesia Italiana, cap. v. sect. 25; Gravina, who is more so,Della Ragion Poetica(quoted in Ginguéné, as below); Crescimbeni,Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Poesia, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3 (Mathias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work, 4to, Rome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was perhaps the "modestest sad most temperate writer" of his age ("il pin modesto e moderato"); Ginguéné,Histoire Littéraire d'Italie, tom. iv. p. 214; Foscolo, in theQuarterly Review, as further on; Panizzi on theRomantic Poetry of the Italians, ditto; Stebbing,Lives of the Italian Poets, second edition, vol, i.; and the first volume ofLives of Literary and Scientific Men, inLardner's Cyclopædia.]
[Footnote 2: Canto xxv. The passage will be found in the present volume.]
[Footnote 3: Id. And this also.]
[Footnote 4: Canto xxvii. stanza 2.
"S' altro ajuto qui non si dimostra,Sarà pur tragedía la istoria nostra.
Ed io pur commedía pensato aveaIscriver del mio Carlo finalmente,EdAlcuincosì mi promettea," &c. ]
[Footnote 5:
"In fine to adorerai l'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ma tu amerai ilPulci."—Parn. Ital. vol. ix. p. 344.]
[Footnote 6: Ellis'sSpecimens of Early English Poetical Romances, vol. ii. p. 287; and Panizzi'sEssay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry of the Italians; in his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p. 113.]
[Footnote 7:De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia, &c. cap. xviii. p. 39 (Ciampi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferracutus, or Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had the strength of forty men, and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful beggings of the question; after which the giant stakes the credit of their respective beliefs on the event of their encounter.]
[Footnote 8: Canto xix. st. 21.]
[Footnote 9: When a proper name happens to be a part of the tautology, the look is still more extraordinary. Orlando is remonstrating with Rinaldo on his being unseasonably in love:
"Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gagliardia?Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo sommo potere?Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo senno di pria?Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo antivedere?Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua fantasia?Ov' è, Rinaldo, l' arme e 'l tuo destriere?Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gloria e fama?Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo core? a la dama."
Canto xvi. st. 50.
Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy gagliardize?Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy might indeed?Oh where, Rinaldo, thy repute for wise?Oh where, Rinaldo, thy sagacious heed?Oh where, Rinaldo, thy free-thoughted eyes?Oh where, Rinaldo, thy good arms and steed?Oh where, Rinaldo, thy renown and glory?Oh where, Rinaldo,thou?—In a love-story.
The incessant repetition of the names in the burdens of modern songs is hardly so bad as this. The single line questions and answers in the Greek drama were nothing to it. Yet there is a still more extraordinary play upon words in canto xxiii. st. 49, consisting of the description of a hermitage. It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration mad with envy:—
"Lacasa cosapareabrettaebrutta,Vintadalvento; e lanottae lanotteStillalestelle, ch' atettoeratutto: Delpane appenanedetteta'dotte.Pereaveapure, e qualchefratta frutta; EsvinaesvenadibottounabottePosciaperpesci lascheprese al'esca; Ma illetto allottaa lafrascafufresca."
Thisholy holewas a vilethin-builtthing,Blownby theblast; thenight noughtelse o'erheadButstaring starstherude roofentering;Theirsupofsupperwas nosplendid spread;Poor pearstheir fare, and such-like libellingOf quantum suff;—theirbuttallbut;—bad bread;—Aflashoffishinstead offlushofflesh;Their bed afrisk al-fresco,freezing fresh.
Really, if Sir Philip Sidney and other serious and exquisite gentlemen had not sometimes taken a positively grave interest in the like pastimes of paronomasia, one should hardly conceive it possible to meet with them even in tragi-comedy. Did Pulci find these also in his ballad-authorities? If his Greek-loving critics made objections here, they had the advantage of him: unless indeed they too, in their Alexandrian predilections, had a sneaking regard for certain shapings of verse into altars and hatchets, such as have been charged upon Theocritus himself, and which might be supposed to warrant any other conceit on occasion.]
[Footnote 10: See, in the original, the story of Meridiana, canto vii. King Manfredonio has come in loving hostility against her to endeavour to win her affection by his prowess. He finds her assisted by the Paladins, and engaged by her own heart to Uliviero; and in he despair of his discomfiture, expresses a wish to die by her hand. Meridiana, with graceful pity, begs his acceptance of a jewel, and recommends him to go home with his army; to which he grievingly consents. This indeed is beautiful; and perhaps I ought to have given an abstract of it, as a specimen of what Pulci could have done in this way, had he chosen.]
[Footnote 11: "Perhaps it was from that same politic drift that the devil whipt St. Jerome in a lenten dream for reading Cicero; or else it was a fantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an angel been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading and not the vanity, it had been plainly partial; first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurrile Plautus, whom he confesses to have been reading not long before; next, to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same purpose?"—Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, Prose Works, folio, 1697, p. 378. I quote the passage as extracted by Mr. Merivale in the preface to his "Orlando in Roncesvalles,"—Poems, vol. ii. p. 41.]
[Footnote 12: Ut sup. p. 222. Foscolo's remark is to be found in his admirable article on theNarrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians, in theQuarterly Review, vol. xxi. p. 525.]
* * * * *
Twelve Paladins had the Emperor Charlemagne in his court; and the most wise and famous of them was Orlando. It is of him I am about to speak, and of his friend Morgante, and of Gan the traitor, who beguiled him to his death in Roncesvalles, where he sounded his horn so mightily after the dolorous rout.
It was Easter, and Charles had all his court with him in Paris, making high feast and triumph. There was Orlando, the first among them, and Ogier the Dane, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Ansuigi; and there came Angiolin of Bayonne, and Uliviero, and the gentle Berlinghieri; and there was also Avolio and Avino, and Otho of Normandy, and Richard, and the wise Namo, and the aged Salamon, and Walter of Monlione, and Baldwin who was the son of the wretched Gan. The good emperor was too happy, and oftentimes fairly groaned for joy at seeing all his Paladins together. Now Morgante, the only surviving brother, had a palace made, after giant's fashion, of earth, and boughs, and shingles, in which he shut himself up at night. Orlando knocked, and disturbed him from his sleep, so that he came staring to the door like a madman, for he had had a bewildering dream.
"Who knocks there?" quoth he.
"You will know too soon," answered Orlando; "I am come to make you do penance for your sins, like your brothers. Divine Providence has sent me to avenge the wrongs of the monks upon the whole set of you. Doubt it not; for Passamonte and Alabastro are already as cold as a couple of pilasters.".
"Noble knight," said Morgante, "do me no ill; but if you are aChristian, tell me in courtesy who you are."
"I will satisfy you of my faith," replied Orlando; "I adore Christ; and if you please, you may adore him also."
"I have had a strange vision," replied Morgante, with a low voice was assailed by a dreadful serpent, and called upon Mahomet in vain; then I called upon your God who was crucified, and he succoured me, and I was delivered from the serpent; so I am disposed to become a Christian."
"If you keep in this mind," returned Orlando, "you shall worship the true God, and come with me and be my companion, and I will love you with perfect love. Your idols are false and vain; the true God is the God of the Christians. Deny the unjust and villanous worship of your Mahomet, and be baptised in the name of my God, who alone is worthy."
"I am content," said Morgante.
Then Orlando embraced him, and said, "I will lead you to the abbey."
"Let us go quickly," replied Morgante, for he was impatient to make his peace with the monks.
Orlando rejoiced, saying, "My good brother, and devout withal, you must ask pardon of the abbot; for God has enlightened you, and accepted you, and he would have you practise humility."
"Yes," said Morgante, "thanks to you, your God shall henceforth be my God. Tell me your name, and afterwards dispose of me as you will." And he told him that he was Orlando.
But Fortune stands watching in secret to baffle our designs. While Charles was thus hugging himself with delight, Orlando governed every thing at court, and this made Gan burst with envy; so that he began one day talking with Charles after the following manner—"Are we always to have Orlando for our master? I have thought of speaking to you about it a thousand times. Orlando has a great deal too much presumption. Here are we, counts, dukes, and kings, at your service, but not at his; and we have resolved not to be governed any longer by one so much younger than ourselves. You began in Aspramont to give him to understand how valiant he was, and that he did great things at that fountain; whereas, if it had not been for the good Gerard, I know very well where the victory would have been. The truth is, he has an eye upon the crown. This, Charles, is the worthy who has deserved so much! All your generals are afflicted at it. As for me, I shall repass those mountains over which I came to you with seventy-two counts. Do you take him for a Mars?"
Orlando happened to hear these words as he sat apart, and it displeased him with the lord of Pontiers that he should speak so, but much more that Charles should believe him. He would have killed Gan, if Uliviero had not prevented him and taken his sword out of his hand; nay, he would have killed Charlemagne; but at last he went from Paris by himself, raging with scorn and grief. He borrowed, as he went, of Ermillina the wife of Ogier, the Dane's sword Cortana and his horse Rondel, and proceeded on his way to Brava. His wife, Alda the Fair, hastened to embrace him; but while she was saying, "Welcome, my Orlando," he was going to strike her with his sword, for his head was bewildered, and he took her for the traitor. The fair Alda marvelled greatly, but Orlando recollected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped from his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested himself with her for some days.
He then took his leave, being still carried away by his disdain, and resolved to pass over into Heathendom; and as he rode, he thought, every step of the way, of the traitor Gan; and so, riding on wherever the road took him, he reached the confines between the Christian countries and the Pagan, and came upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert.
Now above the abbey was a great mountain, inhabited by three fierce giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, another Alabastro, and the third Morgante; and these giants used to disturb the abbey by throwing things down upon it from the mountain with slings, so that the poor little monks could not go out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked, but nobody would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot came himself, and opening the door bade him welcome. The good man told him the reason of the delay, and said that since the arrival of the giants they had been so perplexed that they did not know what to do. "Our ancient fathers in the desert," quoth he, "were rewarded according to their holiness. It is not to be supposed that they lived only upon locusts; doubtless, it also rained manna upon them from heaven; but here one is regaled with stones, which the giants pour on us from the mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest of the three, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great trees by the roots, and casts them on us." While they were talking thus in the cemetery, there came a stone which seemed as if it would break Rondel's back.
"For God's sake, cavalier," said the abbot, "come in, for the manna is falling."
"My dear abbot," answered Orlando, "this fellow, methinks, does not wish to let my horse feed; he wants to cure him of being restive; the stone seems as if it came from a good arm." "Yes," replied the holy father, "I did not deceive you. I think, some day or other, they will cast the mountain itself on us."
Orlando quieted his horse, and then sat down to a meal; after which he said, "Abbot, I must go and return the present that has been made to my horse." The abbot with great tenderness endeavoured to dissuade him, but in vain; upon which he crossed him on the forehead, and said, "Go, then; and the blessing of God be with you."
Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would stay with him for a page, promising to make him comfortable. "Stupid Saracen," said Orlando, "I come to you, according to the will of God, to be your death, and not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants here, and are no longer to be endured, dog that you are!"
The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to his weapons; and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, which struck him on the head with such force, as not only made his helmet ring again, but felled him to the earth. Passamonte thought he was dead. "What could have brought that paltry fellow here?" said he, as he turned away. But Christ never forsakes his followers. While Passamonte was going away, Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, "How now, giant? do you fancy you have killed me? Turn back, for unless you have wings, your escape is out of the question, dog of a renegade!" The giant, greatly marvelling, turned back; and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cortana naked in his hand, cleft his skull; upon which, cursing Mahomet, the monster tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blaspheming fell the sour-hearted and cruel wretch; but Orlando, in the mean while, thanked the Father and the Word.
The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant; who, when he saw him, endeavoured to pluck up a great piece of stony earth by the roots. "Ho, ho!" cried Orlando, "you too are for throwing stones, are you?" Then Alabastro took his sling, and flung at him so large a fragment as forced Orlando to defend himself, for if it had struck him, he would no more have needed a surgeon;[1] but collecting his strength, he thrust his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell dead.
"Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, "for I have always heard you called a perfect knight; and as I said, I will follow you all my life long."
And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey; and by the way Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we must submit to the will of God. The doctors of our Church," continued he, "are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in heaven were to feel pity for their miserable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing; and this, you see, would plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of their faith, that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do what he may, they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible for him to err; so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering everlasting punishment, it does not disturb them an atom. This is the custom, I assure you, in the choirs above."[2]
"A word to the wise," said Morgante; "you shall see if I grieve for my brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God, and behave myself like an angel. So dust to dust; and now let us enjoy ourselves. I will cut off their hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy monks, that they may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out alone into the desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has purified me, and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom of heaven." So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, and left their bodies to the beasts and birds.
They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Orlando in great anxiety; but the monks not knowing what had happened, ran to the abbot in great haste and alarm, saying, "Will you suffer this giant to come in?" And when the abbot saw the giant, he changed countenance. Orlando, perceiving him thus disturbed, made haste and said, "Abbot, peace be with you! The giant is a Christian; he believes in Christ, and has renounced his false prophet, Mahomet." And Morgante shewing the hands in proof of his faith, the abbot thanked Heaven with great contentment of mind.
The abbot did much honour to Morgante, comparing him with St. Paul; and they rested there many days. One day, wandering over the house, they entered a room where the abbot kept a quantity of armour; and Morgante saw a bow which pleased him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in the place a great scarcity of water; and Orlando said, like his good brother, "Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water." "Command me as you please," said he; and placing a great tub on his shoulders, he went towards a spring at which he had been accustomed to drink, at the foot of the mountain. Having reached the spring, he suddenly heard a great noise in the forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it in the bow, and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing towards the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in revenge, ran towards the giant, without giving him time to use a second arrow; so he lent him a cuff on the head which broke the bone, and killed him also; which stroke the rest seeing fled in haste through the valley. Morgante then placed the tub full of water upon one of his shoulders, and the two porkers on the other, and returned to the abbey which was at some distance, without spilling a drop.
The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still more the pork; for there is no animal to whom food comes amiss. They let their breviaries therefore go to sleep a while, and fell heartily to work, so that the cats and dogs had reason to lament the polish of the bones.
"But why do we stay here doing nothing?" said Orlando one day to Morgante; and he shook hands with the abbot, and told him he must take his leave. "I must go," said he, "and make up for lost time. I ought to have gone long ago, my good father; but I cannot tell you what I feel within me, at the content I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall bear in mind and in heart with me for ever the abbot, the abbey, and this desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for me, in his own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do not forget us in your prayers."
When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, his heart melted within him for tenderness, and he said, "Knight, if we have failed in any courtesy due to your prowess and great gentleness (and indeed what we have done has been but little), pray put it to the account of our ignorance, and of the place which we inhabit. We are but poor men of the cloister, better able to regale you with masses and orisons and paternosters, than with dinners and suppers. You have so taken this heart of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I shall be with you still wherever you go; and, on the other hand, you will always be present here with me. This seems a contradiction; but you are wise, and will take my meaning discreetly. You have saved the very life and spirit within us; for so much perplexity had those giants cast about our place, that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May He who sent you into these woods reward the justice and piety by which we are delivered from our trouble. Thanks be to him and to you. We shall all be disconsolate at your departure. We shall grieve that we cannot detain you among us for months and years; but you do not wear these weeds; you bear arms and armour; and you may possibly merit as well in carrying those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your virtue has been the means of shewing the giant the way to heaven. Go in peace then, and prosper, whoever you may be. I do not seek your name; but if ever I am asked who it was that came among us, I shall say that it was an angel from God. If there is any armour or other thing that you would have, go into the room where it is, and take it."