Chapter 10

--Nature made him, and then broke the mould.

(The word is generally printed _ruppe_; but I use the primitive text of Mr. Pannizi's edition.) Boiardo's handsomest man, Astolfo, was an Englishman; Ariosto's is a Scotchman. See, in the present volume, the note on the character of Astolfo, p. 41.]

[Footnote 14:

"Come orsa, che l'alpestre cacciatore Ne la pietrosa tana assalita abbia, Sta sopra i figli con incerto core, E freme in suono di pieta e di rabbia: Ira la 'nvita e natural furore A spiegar l'ugne, e a insanguinar le labbia; Amor la 'ntenerisce, e la ritira A riguardare a i figli in mezo l'ira."

Like as a bear, whom men in mountains start In her old stony den, and dare, and goad, Stands o'er her children with uncertain heart, And roars for rage and sorrow in one mood; Anger impels her, and her natural part, To use her nails, and bathe her lips in blood; Love melts her, and, for all her angry roar, Holds back her eyes to look on those she bore.

This stanza in Ariosto has become famous as a beautiful transcript of a beautiful passage in Statius, which, indeed, it surpasses in style, but not in feeling, especially when we consider with whom the comparison originates:

"Ut lea, quam saevo foetam pressere cubili Venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat Mente sub incerta, torvum ac miserabile frendens Illa quidem turbare globes, et frangere morsu Tela queat; sed prolis amor crudelia vincit Pectora, et in media catulos circumspicit ira."

_Thebais_, x. 414.]

[Footnote 15: This adventure of Cloridan and Medoro is imitated from the Nisus and Euryalus of Virgil. An Italian critic, quoted by Panizzi, says, that the way in which Cloridan exposes himself to the enemy is inferior to the Latin poet's famous

"Me, me (adsum qui feci), in me convertite ferrum."

Me, me ('tis I who did the deed), slay me.

And the reader will agree with Panizzi, that he is right. The circumstance, also, of Euryalus's bequeathing his aged mother to the care of his prince, in case he fails in his enterprise, is very touching; and the main honour, both of the invention of the whole episode and its particulars, remains with Virgil. On the other hand, the enterprise of the friends in the Italian poet, which is that of burying their dead master, and not merely of communicating with an absent general, is more affecting, though it may be less patriotic; the inability of Zerbino to kill him, when he looked on his face, is extremely so; and, as Panizzi has shewn, the adventure is made of importance to the whole story of the poem, and is not simply an episode, like that in the Æneid. It serves, too, in a very particular manner to introduce Medoro worthily to the affection of Angelica; for, mere female though she be, we should hardly have gone along with her passion as we do, in a poem of any seriousness, had it been founded merely on his beauty.]

[Footnote 16: Canto xix. st. 34, &c. All the world have felt this to be a true picture of first love. The inscription may be said to be that of every other pair of lovers that ever existed, who knew how to write their names. How musical, too, are the words "Angelica and Medoro!" Boiardo invented the one; Ariosto found the match for it. One has no end to the pleasure of repeating them. All hail to the moment when I first became aware of their existence, more than fifty years ago, in the house of the gentle artist Benjamin West! (Let the reader indulge me with this recollection.) I sighed with pleasure to look on them at that time; I sigh now, with far more pleasure than pain, to look back on them, for they never come across me but with delight; and poetry is a world in which nothing beautiful ever thoroughly forsakes us.]

[Footnote 17:

"Scritti, qual con carbone e qual con gesso."