To aggravate the poet's misfortune, about this time, or, in the words of his first English translator, sir John Harrington, "to mend the matter, one taking occasion of this eclipse of the cardinal's favour put him in suit for a piece of land of his ancient inheritance, which was not only a great vexation to his mind, but a charge to his purse and travail to his body; for undoubtedly the clattering of armour, the noise of great ordnance, the sound of the trumpet and drum, and the neighing of horses, do not so much trouble the sweet Muses, as the brabbling of lawyers, the pattering of attorneys, and the civil war, or rather most uncivil disagreeing, of foresworn jurors."

After the death of Hippolito, who was never reconciled to him, Ariosto was persuaded to enter into the service of the cardinal's brother, Alfonso the duke, who, if he neither exalted nor enriched the poet greatly, honoured him for his genius, delighted in his society, and enabled him to build a house to his own fancy in the midst of an ample garden. This gave him an opportunity of indulging in one of his peculiar tastes, in which, however, it was not easy to please himself, for the pleasure rather consisted in trying to do so by modelling and remodelling, and making experiment after experiment on whatever he had in hand. Thus his mansion was constructed by piecemeal, pulled down in like manner, enlarged, reduced, amended over and over again before he permitted it to stand, or deemed it worthy of the following quaint inscription, which he placed over the entrance:—

"A verse," says sir John Harrington, with an emphasis as though he spoke from experience, "which few of the builders of this latter day could truly write, or, at least, if they could, I would lay that their houses were strongly built, indeed, for more than the third heir." When asked by a friend how it happened that he who, in "building the lofty rhyme," had reared so many superb palaces, could submit to dwell under so humble a roof, he very ingenuously replied, "Words are sooner put together than bricks and mortar." Yet in constructing his verse he was equally fastidious; no poet probably ever bestowed more patience and pains in weighing syllables, collocating sounds, balancing periods, and adjusting the nicest points that bore upon the harmony, splendour, or fluency of his compositions; yet it is the charm of his style that the whole seems as natural as if the thoughts had told themselves in their own words. In stocking his garden, and, training his flowers, Ariosto is said to have been not less fickle and capricious than in framing his habitation and adapting his poetical numbers; but with far less felicity; for, like a child impatient to witness the growth of his plants, he would pull them up from time to time to see how the roots were thriving below ground, as well as how they shot upwards. This plan, however it might suit masonry to practise on dead materials, or poetry to weave and disentangle rhythmical cadences, was ill adapted to gardening.

It was still, however, and to his life's end, the misfortune of Ariosto to struggle against the solicitudes, discomforts, and mortifications of narrow and precarious circumstances. His own family were long dependent upon him for entire subsistence, or occasional aid; yet he seems to have kept his inheritance, small as it was, unimpaired, otherwise he could not have looked to it as a last resource, when courtly favour, whether of prelate or prince, should be withdrawn. What regular stipends he might receive for his services from Hippolito and Alfonso, is nowhere recorded, beyond the five and twenty crowns every four months, bestowed by the former, when he could get them, by fair means or foul, from those who were to pay them; and according to some of his biographers, withdrawn from him by his patron, after their quarrel. But it appears that he enjoyed the revenues of some ecclesiastical benefices, though not in priest's orders, and that, though not married, he had two sons, whom he educated liberally. In his third satire, he assigns a very equivocal reason for this not very equivocal conduct; for who will pretend that both circumstances were not greatly to his discredit, though countenanced in simony and licentiousness by the shameless practices of many of his most honourable contemporaries:—"I will not take orders, because then I can never take a wife; I will not take a wife because then I can never take orders, and I am shy of tying a knot, which, if I repent, I cannot loose." From popes, cardinals, and princes, both native and foreign, he is said to have received large gifts, in return for copies of his poems, and in compliment to those rare talents, by which he furnished the most popular, as well as the most fashionable reading of all who spoke the Italian tongue, or understood it: yet few of these are so authenticated as to confer unquestionable credit on the presumed donors.

Among Ariosto's patrons, next to Hippolito, Pope Leo X. seems to have most excited and most disappointed his reasonable expectations, not to call them his positive claims; for in some instances at least, where promises have been made to the hope, the iniquity of breaking them to the heart is only not felony, because the law cannot punish it. It is said by one (Gabriele Simeoni in his Satire on Avarice), that "to Leo, the light and mirror of courtesy, we are primarily indebted for the pleasure of hearkening to the lays of Ariosto, that pontiff having given him several hundred crowns to perfect his work." Another apocryphal authority affirms, that pope Leo X. issued a bull in favour of the "Orlando Furioso," denouncing excommunication against any one who should presume to censure its poetry or its morals. This has been explained into a mere matter of form, namely, a licence to print and publish the work, with a denunciation against those who should defraud the author of the lawful profits arising from the sale;—a licence, by the way, of little value; since we have learned already from himself long after the publication of the poem, that from "Apollo and the sacred college of the Muses,"—a palpable hit at the pope and the sacred college of cardinals, against whom he seldom spares a stroke of raillery,—he never received so much as would buy him a cloak. A bull of some kind or other was granted to him by Leo, according to his own confession in Satire VII.; but if that which is once well done is twice done, that which is only half done must be next to nothing: he received only a moiety of the sum raised by it, which seems to have been as little productive as some of our church briefs, or those letters of royal licence to beg, which have been granted in this country to recompense learned men for their labours, as in the case of Stow the antiquary. Paulo Rolli, himself a poet of no mean rank (who translated "Paradise Lost" into Italian), in his note on a passage in the sixth Satire, says that Leo, "otherwise the great friend of the learned, did not promote Ariosto, because his holiness inherited from Julius II. implacable hatred against Alfonso duke of Ferrara, and a greedy desire to possess that city. It did not, therefore, agree with his policy to give Ariosto a cardinal's hat, because, being a subject of Alfonso's, the poet would not only do no wrong to the duke; but, on the contrary, honoured as he was by his sovereign, he would employ all his influence to thwart the injurious designs of the pontiff against the latter. What marvel, then, that Leo, like mighty men in every age, should prefer his own ambition to the great friendship and esteem in which he held Ariosto; since ambition, when united with personal interest, swallows up all other passions!"

But what claims had Ariosto on the bounty of Leo X.? The fact is certain, that, previous to the elevation of Giovanni de' Medici, under that name, to the papal chair (not in prosperity only, but in exile and captivity after the battle of Ravenna), Ariosto had been on terms of the most cordial intimacy that can be supposed to have subsisted between persons so unequally circumstanced with regard to birth, but having in common one passionate attachment to elegant literature. In Ariosto this was supreme, in Leo it was only secondary; hence the heartless ingratitude of the priest on the one hand, and the wormwood and gall of chagrin, that exasperated the poet on the other. But his own authority on the subject is the best; and if not the most correct, it has the merit of being the most amusing representation of the game of self-delusion at which both played and both lost (the one his honour, and the other his reward); for there is no reason to doubt of Giovanni de' Medici's affection towards his friend, and his purpose to serve him being as sincere—till he had the means of doing so—as the poets hopes were natural and ingenuous. Time has avenged the injured party, and Ariosto's fourth Satire adds little to the glory of the golden days of Leo. While the latter was a whelp, he fondled his playmate the spaniel; when he came to lion's estate, he had too many foxes and wolves about his den to care for his former companion. "Until the time" when he went to Rome to be made lion[101] (Leo), "I was always agreeable to him, and apparently he loved few persons more than me. Often hath he said, when he was legate and in Florence, that if need were, he would make no difference between me and his own brother. Hence some might imagine, that being at Rome, it would have been easy for me to have slipt my head out of a black hood into a green one. I answer those who may think so with an example; read it, for it will cost you less to read than me to write."

This, as well as some former and following extracts from the Satires, are given, for variety's sake, in slipshod verse:—

The poet, alluding in direct terms to his visit to Rome, and his specious reception by Leo, says, "I had better remain in my accustomed quiet, than try whether it be true, that whomsoever fortune exalts, she first dips in Lethe." The subtle irony that follows cannot be mistaken in the original, while the indignant satirist, with the most unaffected gravity, and in right good faith, seems to acquit his patron of forgetfulness and ingratitude,—the very things with which it is certain that he means to charge him. Ariosto can keep his countenance like the Spartan boy, who, having stolen a fox, and hidden it under his cloak, suffered the animal to worry its way into his heart, without betraying, by any contortion, the secret of his theft. "Nevertheless, if it be the fact that she (Fortune) does plunge others there (in Lethe), so that all remembrances of the past are washed out, I can testify that he (Leo) had not lost his memory when I first kissed his foot; he bowed himself towards me from the blessed seat, took me by the hand, and gave me a holy kiss on either cheek; he likewise granted me most graciously one half of that same bull of which my friend Bebiena lately remitted me the balance, at my own expense; wherefore, with skirts and bosom full of hopes, but splashed from head to foot with rain and mud, I returned to supper at my inn the same night. But even if it be true that the pope means to make good all his former promises, and now intends me to reap fruit of the seed which I have sown through so many years; if it be true that he will bestow upon me as many mitres and coronets as the master of his chapel ever saw assembled when his holiness says mass; if it be true that he will fill my sleeves, my pockets, and my lap with gold, and, lest that should not be enough, cram me bodily with it up to the chin (la gola, il ventre e le budella); would all this glut my enormous voracity for wealth? or would the fierce thirst of my cerastes[103] be appeased with this? From Morocco to China, from the Nile to the Danube, and not merely to Home, I must travel, if I would find means to satiate the unnatural cravings of avarice. Were I a cardinal, or even the great servant of servants, and yet could not find bounds to my inordinate desires, what good should I get by wearying myself with such huge leaps? I had better lie still, and tire myself less."

The fable which follows, typifies the mournful but ludicrous fact, that, while all who reach the heights they aim at are disappointed,—that for which they aim at these being as unapproachable at the top of the hill as from the bottom,—others are continually aspiring, through all the stages of the wearisome ascent, towards the very prize which the successful have not gained, though to those beneath it appears to be actually in their possession:—

With equal spleen and pleasantry, in the seventh Satire, the author, as an experienced hand, ridicules the favourite game of mankind,—climbing the wheel of Fortune, and never finding themselves complete fools till they are quite at the top. The allusion (scarcely intelligible in this country, where it is played in earnest only, and not for pastime) is to a game of cards, of which a pack is called tarrochi (trumps): these are painted expressly in the manner described below, namely, the transmigration, by instalments, of climbing men into asses; and they are used for the purpose of playing at minchiate (blockhead),—a common recreation at Florence, and—wherever else the reader pleases:—

that is, till having reached the summit, the man has the felicity to find himself an accomplished ass. The poet, immediately afterwards, applies this unlucky hieroglyphic to himself and his journey to Rome, to congratulate Leo X. on his accession to the triple crown. His services, expectations, and disappointments, while a worshipper of that golden calf of literary idolatry (whose rites have not yet ceased), are humorously but vindictively recapitulated. Illustrative of these, he introduces another fable in his own free and easy manner. La Fontaine himself might have borrowed from Ariosto the idea of that simple yet facetious style which distinguishes his fables. To the disgrace of both, the Frenchman seems likewise to have borrowed from the Italian the model, as well as some of the materials, for his profligate tales. "My hope," says the forlorn satirist, "came with the first leaves and blossoms of spring, but withered without waiting for September. It came on the day when the church was given for a spouse to Leo, when I saw so many of my friends clad in scarlet at the nuptials. It came with the calends, and fled with the ides: remembering this, I can never again put confidence in man. My silly hope shot up to heaven, and spread over unknown lands, when the holy father took me by the hand and kissed me on the cheeks; but high as it rose, so low it fell, and oh! in how short space of time!"

Notwithstanding the neglect which he experienced at Rome, Ariosto was now enjoying ease and dignity at the court of Alfonso, compared with the servitude, or rather the servility, which Hippolito formerly exacted of his retainers. During this prosperous period of his life, he was appointed by his patron to a post of honour and difficulty, if not of emolument, which required the exercise of certain politic talents rarely possessed by poets, but which he must have possessed in no inconsiderable measure, judging by the trusts so repeatedly reposed in him. Graffagnana, a mountainous district lying between Modena and Lucca, and which had been wrested some years before by the pope from the duke of Ferrara, threw off the yoke, and returned to its former lord, upon the demise of Leo X. This tract of debateable land was occupied by a people proverbially rude, factious, and turbulent among themselves, as well as refractory towards the ill-established authorities set over them from time to time by their temporary sovereigns. Hence the woodlands and glens on the Apennine slopes, where their country was situated, were infested with banditti; and the inhabitants were embroiled in perpetual lawsuits before tribunals where little justice was to be obtained, or else at open variance with their own bands, determining right by might. To that dreary province, in such a hideous state of affairs, Ariosto was sent to redress grievances, restore quiet, and advance the semi-barbarians a step or two in civilisation. This task,—on the face of it more fitted to the talents of an Orpheus or Amphion, than those of a modern minstrel; unless, like the one, he was master of the lost art of teaching stones to build themselves into temples and palaces, or, like the other, could draw rocks and forests, with their population of lions and tigers, after him, by the enchantment of his lyre,—he seems to have accomplished with moderate success among a tribe already acquainted with his romantic poetry, and prepared to honour the author. Sir John Harrington says, that "he so orderly governed, and so well quieted," these riotous hordes by his wisdom and equity, that "he left them all in good peace and concord; winning not only the love of the better sort, but also a wonderful reverence of the wilder people, and a great awe even in robbers and thieves." The latter phrase alludes to a story which has been differently told, but may be received as substantially true, of a rencontre which he had with some of his more uncouth neighbours. One day traversing a forest, accompanied by five or six horsemen, the little party was startled by the appearance of a body of armed men breaking cover, and coming suddenly upon them; these belonged to one of the gangs of brigands, which, under two audacious leaders—Domenico Marotto and Philippo Pachione—divided the peace of the country between them, allowing none to each other, and depriving every one else of it. The expected assailants, however, after curiously eying the governor and his train, permitted them to pass; which his excellency was very willing to do, though, as chief magistrate, he had found a whole nest of outlaws. Having formerly signalised himself in the river fight with the Venetians, and there being no occasion to exercise any other than "the better part of valour—discretion"—in this affair, Ariosto felt his honour as safe as his life, in riding on without offering molestation where he experienced none. But the captain of the band, being struck with his superior presence, demanded of the hindmost of his attendants what was his master's name. "Ludovico Ariosto," replied the other: whereupon, galloping up to him, the freebooter hailed the poet (who expected a very different salutation) with the most profound respect and courtesy, introducing himself as Philippo Pachione, and regretting that, from not having previously known his person, he and his troop had not done due honour to him in passing. He then launched out into vehement praises of the "Orlando Furioso" (a poem likely enough to be the delight of such adventurers), and with all humility and frankness offered his most devoted services to its author. Baretti's version of the anecdote is to the following effect:—Ariosto one morning happened to take a walk in his night-gown and slippers beyond the castle where he resided, fell into a fit of thought, and forgot himself so much, that step after step he found himself, when he recovered, already far from home, and surrounded on a sudden by a troop of desperadoes; who certainly would have ill used, and perhaps murdered him, had not his face been known by one of the gang, who, informing his comrades that it was signor Ariosto, the chief of the banditti addressed him with intrepid gallantry, and told him, that since his excellency was the author of "Orlando Furioso," he might be sure that none of his company would injure him, but would see him, on the contrary, safe to the castle. This they did, entertaining him all the way with the passages which they most admired in his poem." Ariosto himself seems to allude to some such circumstance in the Epistle to S. Maleguccio (Satire V.), written during his residence in Graffagnana.

Two of his epistolary Satires are dated from that province; where he seems to have been as little at home as Ovid in Pontus. In that first quoted, to Sigismondo Maleguccio, at the end of the first year of his honourable exile, he says,—

Sancho Panza, in his island of Barataria, neither administered justice more wisely, nor was interrupted more provokingly in his personal indulgences, than Ariosto in his government of Graffagnana; and, unfortunately for his comfort, the stronghold of Castelnuovo was not stormed at midnight by some friendly enemy, nor himself ejected by violence, to his heart's content. The poet's miserable reign lasted three long years; while the squire of Don Quixote had the happiness to be relieved from the cares of state in less than as many days. How unfit for the management of a brute people he deemed himself, may be judged from the story with which he closes this epistle.

While he was here, M. Bonaventura Pistolfo, secretary to Alfonso, wrote to invite Ariosto to accept a third embassy to Rome; not on a perilous and temporary errand, but to reside there as the representative of his sovereign, "for a year or two," at the court of Clement VII. The poet, however, had sagacity enough to decline putting himself again in the way of Fortune, where, instead of taking him by the hand, on former occasions, she had only splashed him with the mud from her wheel as it rolled through the streets, encumbered with aspiring asses in every stage of transmigration.[106] His correspondent having intimated that, besides complying with the duke's pleasure at Rome, he might stand a chance of obtaining great and fat preferments by favour of a member of the house of Medici, with which he had been so long and courteously acquainted, then filling the papal chair; since it was more probable that he should catch, if he fished in a great river, than in an ordinary stream; he thus replies, in the seventh Satire:—"I thank you, that the desire is ever fresh with you to promote my interest, and to change me from a plough-ox into a Barbary steed. You might command me with fire and sword to serve the duke, not in Rome only, but in France, Spain, or India; but if you would fain persuade me that honour and riches may be got in the way you propose, you must find a different bait, to lure your bird into that net. As for honour, I have already as much as my heart could wish: it is enough for me that, at home, I can see more then half a dozen of my neighbours doff their caps when they meet me, because they know that I sometimes sit at table with the duke, and obtain a trifling favour which I seek for myself or a friend. Then, if I have honour enough to satisfy me, I should have abundance of wealth also; and my desires, which sometimes wander, would be at rest, if I had just so much that I could live, and be at liberty, without having to ask any thing of any one: more than this I never hope to attain. But, since so many of my friends have had the power to do thus much for me, and I still remain in poverty and dependence, I will not let her[107], who was so backward to fly out of the box of the imprudent Epimeteus, to lead me by the muzzle like a buffalo." Towards the close of this epistle, he intimates that it is some unconfessed affection which draws him so tenderly and irresistibly towards his native nest; and adds—"It is well for me that I can hide myself among these mountains, and that your eyes cannot run a hundred miles after me, to see whether my cheeks be pale or red at this acknowledgment. Certainly, if you saw my face at the moment I am writing, far away as I am, it would appear to you as deeply crimsoned as that of the father canon was, when he let fall, in the market-place, the wine-flask which he had stolen from a brother, besides the two that he had drunk. If I were at your elbow, perhaps you would snatch up a cudgel to bastinado me, for alleging such a crazy reason why I wish not to live at a distance from you."

The attachment insinuated in the enigmatical lines, of which the above is a prose version, is with equal ambiguity alluded to in the fourth Satire, addressed to Annibale Maleguccio, where, excusing himself from going abroad, on the ground that he preferred pursuing his studies at home, and confining his voyages and travels, though they extended all over the world, to the maps and charts of Ptolemy, he breaks off thus:—"Methinks you smile and say, 'Neither the love of country nor study, but of a lady, is the cause why you will not move.' I frankly confess it: now shut your mouth; for I will neither take up sword nor shield to defend a fib." This jest has been taken in earnest, though no man in his senses would swear on the word of a poet so uttered. Be that as it may, it is generally understood that his life was sufficiently dissolute to warrant his correspondent's suspicion; and to require him, when so charged, to escape with a pleasantry, though it were accompanied by a blush.

After three years, being released from the cares of his government, Ariosto returned, with entire devotion of his time and talents, to the "sacred college of the Muses;" perfecting his "Orlando" by almost daily touches, the fruits of habitual meditation upon its multifarious subjects, to the last year of his life. He likewise revised several comedies written in his youth, turning them from prose into metre; and composing others. These were so much admired, that they were often acted in the court of Alfonso; persons of the highest rank representing the characters. His earliest and his latest works, therefore, were dramatic, but certainly not his best: that, indeed, could not be expected; theatrical performances being comparatively new in Italy, and, in general, exceedingly crude or exceedingly pedantic. It is said that Ariosto's plays are yet read with delight by his countrymen: the titles of them are,—the "Menechini," borrowed from Plautus; "La Cassaria," "I Suppositi," "La Lena," "Il Negromante," and "La Scholastica;" of which latter, his brother Gabriele furnished the concluding act, Ludovico having left it incomplete. A curious anecdote is told of him when a youth, which is characteristic at once of his phlegm and his acuteness in the practice of his art.—His father, being displeased by some juvenile inadvertence, very severely reprimanded him in the presence of the rest of the family. Ludovico bore the infliction with perfect composure, neither expressing contrition, nor attempting to justify himself. When Nicolo had retired, his brother Gabriele remonstrated with him, both on the imputed fault, and his apparent insensibility of shame or rebuke. Thereupon the poet so promptly and effectually cleared his conduct, that his brother, in great astonishment, asked him why he had not given the same explanation of it to their father. "Because," said the young dramatist, "I was so busily thinking, all the while, how to make the best use of what my father said, in my new comedy, in which I have just such a scene of an old man scolding his boy, that in the ideal, I forgot the real incident."

His seven Satires were also composed during the latter years of his life; but, on account of their irreverence towards high personages both in church and state, they were not published till a convenient time after his death. They are in the form of epistles; and, in fact, were written as such, on real occasions, to the several friends addressed in them. These pieces allude so much to personal and family circumstances, that Ariosto's biographers are more indebted to them than to any other equally authentic source for their materials; and it has been for the like reason, principally, that such copious extracts have been made from the same valuable documents in the foregoing pages. In these remarkable effusions of spleen and pleasantry, there is nothing gaudy or superficial, to attract ordinary readers; nothing forced or unnatural, to produce ostentatious effect. The thoughts are thick-sown; the diction seems to be without effort (the result, no doubt, of consummate art), being pungent and simple, like the best style of conversation, except when the subject, at rare intervals, becomes poetical—when at once the swan of Castaly launches upon the stream, swells into beauty, and rows in gallant state till the water runs shallow again. There is none of the stern indignation of Juvenal, nor the harshness and obscurity of Persius, in these productions; yet, lively, sarcastic, and urbane as they are, there is almost as little resemblance in them to those fine but high-toned compositions of Horace, which were, unquestionably, our author's models—though less for imitation than for rivalry. Like every other species of literature which Ariosto tried, how much soever he may have adorned all, these bosom-communications to his intimate friends are not exempt from occasional obscenities, so repulsive and abominable, that they cannot be commended and dismissed without this mark of infamy, which no merits can efface.

Whether Ariosto, who, according to all accounts, and the lewdness of his writings, led no very chaste life, were married or not; and, if married, to whom; are questions which have puzzled his biographers, and are now of little moment to be settled: no proof of marriage would redeem his character, or purify his most beautiful poems from the moral defilement that cleaves to them. His Muse had the plague, and all her offspring are diseased. An author is not answerable to posterity for the evil of his mortal life, but for the profligacy of that life which he lives through after ages, contaminating by irrepressible and incurable infection the minds of millions—it may be, till the day of judgment,—he is amenable even in his grave. It is not necessary to enter further into judgment with the offender before us in this place.

Married, or not married, Ariosto had two sons, whom he not only openly avowed as such, but faithfully and affectionately educated them, according to his knowledge and views of what is good and honourable in society, for scholars and gentlemen, as he intended them to be. His epistle to cardinal Bembo (the sixth Satire) is highly creditable to his parental solicitude for the welfare of his children in this respect: indeed, he seems to have been exemplary in every relationship of life, except that which requires personal purity,—a virtue little regarded either by laymen or ecclesiastics in his day; and, judging by the deeper taint of their writings, as well as the evidence of their lives, often held in less esteem by the latter than the former.

Towards the close of the year 1532, Ariosto was seized with illness, brought on, it was said, by agitation, when the sumptuous theatre erected by the duke of Ferrara, for the exhibition of his comedies, was consumed by fire; or, as his physicians, with more probability, conjectured, by indigestion, from the habit of eating fast, and bolting his food almost unmasticated. Whatever might have been the cause, the disorder terminated in his death about the midsummer following.

In the same year that he was thus mortally stricken, he had put his last hand to the "Orlando Furioso," and left the poem in that form in which it appears, in forty-six cantos; the five additional ones, which have always been deemed unworthy of such a connection, having been published for the first time in 1545, twelve years afterwards. Among what may be deemed the apocryphal traditions concerning Ariosto, it has been affirmed and contradicted, with very questionable evidence on either side, that he received the laurel from the hands of the emperor Charles V., in the city of Mantua, twelve months before his death. The very circumstance of a reasonable doubt being raised respecting a fact, which, if it had occurred, must have been known throughout all Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, seems almost sufficient to invalidate the story. One of his biographers (Minchino) says, that when Ariosto felt the crown upon his brows, placed there by so august a personage, he went beside himself for joy; and ran about the streets as much out of his wits, for the time, as his own hero. It may be remarked, that nothing could have been more out of character than such extravagance in a person of Ariosto's temperament, who (whatever licence he granted to his Muse in his writings, or to his passions in secret), in public, always maintained a dignity and manliness of demeanour, which commanded respect, and showed that he never forgot his honourable birth, or waved the consciousness of intellectual superiority; though he was careful that neither of these advantages should encroach upon the jealous or vindictive sensibility of others.

Ariosto in person was tall and strong-boned, but stooping a little, and slow in his gait as well as in all his motions. His countenance, judging from Titian's portrait,—the lofty forehead a little bald, the black curled locks behind, and corresponding beard upon a jutting chin, the elevated brows above the dark bright eyes, the Roman nose, lips eloquently moulded, teeth "passing even and white," thin cheeks, complexion slightly olive, long visage, well-proportioned neck, and shoulders square,—his countenance, with features such as these, might altogether have been deemed the beau idéal which the first painter had conceived of the first poet of the age, had not contemporary testimonies assured us that the whole was not more happily than correctly copied from the living model.

There is little of tenderness, and less of stern sublimity, in any of his poems; and yet it is uniformly affirmed that his aspect and manner were grave, melancholic, and contemplative,—from habit, probably, more than from nature; for in company he was affable, and his conversation peculiarly captivating to women, whom, no doubt, he laid himself out to please, and with whom he was no small favourite. So far, also, as they could appreciate his merit, and endure that aristocracy of mind which pressed hard upon the heels of hereditary rank, or mushroom vanity raised from stercorarious heaps in ecclesiastical hotbeds, his society was courted by the greatest personages in church and state, including popes, cardinals, and sovereign princes. Unassuming, but not indifferent to slights or wrongs from the highest with whom he was associated, he led, on the whole, a feverish life between resolute poverty and precarious dependence, with the continual temptation to rise to wealth by means which he abhorred, and for which he must have abhorred himself had he stooped to employ them.

Of persons of the other sex, who, from time to time, caught his wandering affections, the names of two (whether real or disguised) have been preserved—Alexandra and Guenevra. It is understood that the former (to whom he may have been privately married) was the mother of his two sons,—Giambattista, who devoted himself to a military life, and Virginio, who obtained distinction in literature. For the other lady, his passion might be no more than a poetical one—she being married, and a mother, in an honourable family of Florence akin to his own. Finding her one day adorning a silk coat for one of her children, so as to resemble armour by the devices—the ground silver, and the embroidery purple—against a festival spectacle, at which the lad was to figure in it on Midsummer Eve, he was so inspired by the hand and the needle, that he celebrated their performance in the twenty-fourth book of the "Orlando Furioso;" where, describing a wound, "not deep but long," received in combat with Mandricardo by Zerbino, from which the blood trickled over his splendid panoply, the poet introduces the following admired but frigid simile:—