Ludovico Ariosto was born at Reggio, near Modena, in September, 1474.
From boyhood he showed a turn for versifying, and a distaste for the
severer study of the law, to which he was destined. This repugnance
triumphed over the wishes of his father, an Officer in the Duke of
Ferrara’s service, and obtained license for him to pursue his own
inclinations. His father died about the year 1500, leaving a small
inheritance, and ten children, of whom Ludovico was the eldest. Thus,
the care of the family, and the education and establishment of its
younger branches, devolved upon him; and this onerous and important duty
he faithfully performed, while to his mother, who survived his other
parent many years, he ever manifested a filial affection.
In the midst of his domestic cares he still found time to cultivate
literature, and he composed several lyric pieces; among others, a Latin
epithalamium on the marriage of Alfonso d’Este, son of the reigning Duke
of Ferrara, with the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope
Alexander VI. Ariosto was then but a young man, and probably little
acquainted with the political and domestic history of the Borgias; the
praises therefore which he bestows on Lucrezia, not merely for her
beauty, but for her moral qualities, ought not to be too severely
criticised; the same excuse, however, cannot be made for a repetition of
the same eulogium in his subsequent great poem, when he must certainly
have become acquainted with the contemporary chronicles. But all poets
were in that age tainted with court flattery, and Ariosto’s object was
to gain the favour of his sovereigns and patrons, the princes of Este.
Princely patronage was then absolutely necessary to a literary man who
was not himself rich, as there was no reading public upon which to
depend. Italy was divided into principalities, and distracted by foreign
war and intestine dissensions, and the notice of the courts could alone
bestow fame upon an author, and save him from neglect and distress.
These compositions attracted the favourable notice of Cardinal Ippolito
d’Este, Alfonso’s younger brother, a man of information and abilities.
Upon personal acquaintance, he was pleased with Ariosto’s manners, and
received him as one of the gentlemen of his retinue about the year 1503.
Ippolito was a busy politician, and deeply concerned in all the
intrigues of that most busy period of Italian politics. He soon
perceived that Ariosto’s talents might be turned to account, and
employed him in various missions, to Florence, Urbino, and other Italian
courts; in the course of which the poet became acquainted with many
persons of rank and consequence, and especially with Cardinal Giovanni
de’ Medici, afterwards Leo X., who took a particular liking to him, and
admitted him to his familiar society.
Ariosto was recommended by his first patron, Cardinal Ippolito, to
Alfonso d’Este, who succeeded to the ducal crown of Ferrara in 1505; and
from that time he enjoyed the confidence of both the brothers.
In 1509, Alfonso joined in the league of Cambray with the Pope, the
French, and the Emperor Maximilian, against the Venetians; and Ippolito,
who was a soldier as well as a statesman, took the command of his
brother’s troops. Ariosto accompanied his master to the field, and was
present at the campaign of that year on the banks of the Po. He has
described, in the thirty-sixth canto of his Furioso, the atrocities
perpetrated by the Sclavonian mercenaries in the Venetian service.
It is not our province to follow the operations of this war, farther
than to state, that Ariosto was present in several battles, and employed
in two political missions to Pope Julius II. The second time, he was
compelled to make a hasty retreat from Rome, as Julius had publicly
threatened to have him thrown into the Tiber. In 1513, Leo X. succeeded
to the Papal throne. Ariosto soon after repaired to Rome to congratulate
the new Pope. Leo received him as an old and intimate acquaintance. “He
stooped graciously from his holy chair towards me, took me by the hand,
and saluted me on both the cheeks. From that moment my credulous hopes
were raised to the unknown regions of heaven.” In short, Ariosto now
thought his fortune was made. But he had not sufficient patience; he
soon grew tired of waiting at Rome without receiving any more
substantial proofs of Leo’s benevolence, and, too independent to be
importunate at levees and audiences, he turned his back upon all his
prospects from that quarter. Having returned to Ferrara, he applied
himself with renewed earnestness to his favourite studies. He had long
since formed the plan of a great poem on the subject of the wars of
Charlemagne against the Saracens, a traditional theme derived from the
fabulous chronicle of Turpin, in which some truth was intermixed with a
mass of exaggerations, anachronisms, and wondrous tales of paladins,
knights-errant, and giants, the offspring of older traditions of Welch
or Armorican invention. (See Warton’s “History of English Poetry,”
Ellis’s “Specimens of early English Metrical Romances,” etc.) Many
French, Spanish, and Italian ballad and romance writers had treated this
fanciful theme, each adding something to the common stock of the
marvellous from his own imagination. In Italy, three poets of
considerable genius, Pulci, Boiardo, and Bello, had composed long poems
on the subject, in which the celebrated Orlando or Roland, figured as
the great champion of Christendom. Boiardo, departing from his
predecessors, gave a new interest to his poem by making Orlando fall in
love with Angelica, a Pagan or Saracen (the two are often taken as
synonymous in all these romances) princess, of supernatural beauty, and
possessed of magical powers, who had come from the farthest Asia to
Charlemagne’s camp for the express purpose of exciting the jealousy of
the Christian leaders, and thus, by spreading dissension among them,
rendering them unable to cope successfully with the infidels. Boiardo
did not complete his poem, which he called “Orlando Innamorato;” and he
left off the story of Angelica, where Charlemagne, weary of the discord
which raged in his camp since Angelica’s appearance, gives her in charge
to Namo, one of his squires, until such time as he shall have decided
upon the rival claims of Rinaldo and Orlando, his two bravest paladins,
to her hand. It is from this point that Ariosto took up the thread of
his story, and in consonance with the proverb that from love to madness
there is but one step, he determined to make Orlando run mad with
jealousy, on discovering that Angelica had eloped with a young and
handsome, but obscure squire, of the name of Medoro, for whom she
forgets all the objects of her journey to the west, and despises the
sighs of Orlando and the other renowned paladins of Charlemagne’s court.
Ariosto styled his poem “Orlando Furioso,” and he wrote it at first in
forty cantos, which he afterwards increased to forty-six. Orlando’s
madness runs through the greater part of the poem, until he is restored
to reason by his cousin Astolpho, who brings back his wits in a phial
from the moon. Meantime the principal action of the poem, namely, the
war between Charlemagne and the Saracens, continues throughout, and ends
with the final expulsion of the Moors from France, and the death of
their great champion Rodomonte, whose death, like that of Turnus in the
Æneid, closes the poem. But it would be idle to look for the unity and
the consecutiveness of epic action, as some critics have done, in a poem
which is not an epic. There are many actions in the Furioso, all
skilfully interwoven together, and making in the end an harmonious
whole; but during their progress, the reader finds himself often lost as
in a labyrinth, and perplexed how to recover the thread of his
recollections. And yet the beauties of description, the fine touches of
character and feeling, are so many, that we wander on delighted, as
pilgrims who have strayed into an enchanted world, and then gaze, and
wonder, and idle along, thoughtless of the end or purport of their
journey.
Ariosto was employed for ten years about his poem, from his first
beginning to the completion of it in forty cantos. It was printed at his
own expense, at Ferrara, in April, 1516, by Mazocco del Bondeno, in one
volume quarto. He sold one hundred copies of this first edition to the
bookseller, Gigli, for twenty-eight scudi, being at the rate of about
fifteen pence a copy, on condition that the bookseller should not sell
the copies for more than twenty pence each. This edition is now
extremely rare.
Ariosto hastened to present a copy to Cardinal Ippolito, to whom there
is an affectionate dedication in the third stanza of the first canto,
besides several other passages throughout the work which are highly
laudatory of him, of his brother Alfonso, and of the house of Este in
general. The Cardinal, after perusing the poem, seems to have been
puzzled about the meaning and purpose of it, and he is said to have
asked the author “Where in the devil’s name he had picked up so many
absurdities?” But whether this story be true or not, it is certain that
Ippolito did not relish the work, and that Ariosto gained by it no
additional favour with him. Cardinal Ippolito was a busy worldly man;
his mind was anything but poetical, his tastes and pursuits were matter
of fact; his abilities—and he had abilities—were in a different line,
and he told Ariosto that “he would have been better pleased, if, instead
of praising him in idle verse, he had exerted himself more earnestly in
his service.” This remark we have from Ariosto himself, in his second
satire. Much declamation has been wasted on the Cardinal for his want of
taste, and for what has been called his ungenerous conduct towards the
great poet. But a want of taste for poetry is no ground for moral
censure; and if the Cardinal thought no better of Ariosto for exerting a
talent which he could not appreciate, at least it does not appear that
he esteemed him the less. He retained him in his service as before,
until the end of 1517, when being on the point of setting off for his
diocese of Gran in Hungary, of which he was Archbishop, he requested
Ariosto to follow him; but Ariosto excused himself on the plea of his
delicate health and the rudeness of the Hungarian climate. His brother
Alessandro, however, accompanied the Cardinal. Ippolito was certainly
displeased at Ariosto’s refusal, but he did not stop his pension in
consequence of it. It was not until a year or two after that the small
pension of twenty-five scudi every four months, of which Ariosto speaks,
was stopped, during the Cardinal’s absence; and it is stated by Barotti,
in his life of Ariosto, that this took place in consequence of the
Duke’s abolishing a local tax, on the produce of which Ariosto’s pension
was assigned. Besides this pension, Ariosto enjoyed one-third of the
fees paid to the Notarial Chancery for every deed registered, which
brought him about one hundred scudi per annum. This he did not lose
after the Cardinal’s departure. He seems to have enjoyed some other
perquisites, which were, of course, the fruits of his connection with
the princes of Este. He was not rich, but, at the same time, he was not
in distress. Although he sometimes indulges in outbreakings of poetical
querulousness in his satires, which are the best authority for his
biography, yet, in the very midst of these, we find expressions of
sincere regard and grateful affection for both the Cardinal and the
Duke, for Ariosto was a right-hearted man.
After the Cardinal’s death, which happened in 1520, Ariosto was taken by
Duke Alfonso into his own service, as one of his gentlemen attendants.
The duties of this office, we are told by the poet himself, were merely
nominal, and left him ample leisure to pursue his favourite studies. Yet
the Duke was very fond of his company, and willingly granted those
favours which he requested for himself or his friends. (See Ariosto’s
Seventh Satire.) From the general character of Ariosto, however, we may
conclude that he was not an indiscreet or importunate petitioner. In
1521, he published a second edition of his great poem, with many
corrections, but still in forty cantos only: this edition is as scarce
as the first. As he expressed a wish to be more actively employed,
Alfonso, in 1522, appointed him Governor of the province of Garfagnana,
bordering on the Modenese territory, and situated on the western slope
of the Apennines, on the side of Lucca. This country had just been
restored to the house of Este, after having been for years occupied by
the Florentines and the Pope. The people were divided into factions,
which openly defied the law. Ariosto humorously describes in his fifth
satire the difficulties of his new office. He remained about three years
at Castelnuovo, the chief town of this mountain district, and seems to
have succeeded by his firm, yet liberal and conciliatory conduct, in
restoring order among that turbulent and rude population, who showed him
marked proofs of esteem on several occasions. In 1523, the Duke’s
secretary, Pistofilo, wrote to offer him the appointment of ambassador
to the new Pope, Clement VII.; but Ariosto declined the honour, saying,
that he had already had enough of Rome and the Medici, alluding to his
disappointment which he had experienced from Leo X. In 1524, he returned
from his government to Ferrara, which he does not seem to have ever
quitted afterwards. He had there long before formed an attachment to a
lady, whose name he has carefully concealed; and this appears, from his
own hints, to have been an additional reason, on several occasions above
mentioned, for his not wishing to remove far from Ferrara. By this lady
he had a son, Virginio, whom he legitimated by a regular act done before
Cardinal Campeggio, in April, 1530. Virginio was then twenty-one years
of age. The deed still exists in the archives of the house of Ariosti.
In it the Christian name alone of Virginio’s mother, Orsolina, is
mentioned, and she is qualified as a spinster; but her family name and
rank are left out, _honestatis causâ_, as it is there stated. This
Virginio took orders, and became afterwards a canon of the Cathedral of
Ferrara. Ariosto had another natural son, Giovanbattista, who rose to
the rank of captain in the Duke’s service.
After his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto recast some comedies which he
had composed in youth, and wrote others, making in all five comedies in
blank verse, which pleased the Duke so much upon perusal that he
resolved on having them performed, and for this purpose had a theatre
constructed in a wing of the ducal palace. No pains or expense were
spared to add to the splendour of the representation, which the Duke and
his court attended. These plays are modelled upon Plautus and Terence;
the unities are preserved, and the plot is made to turn upon the shifts
and stratagems of dissipated and needy young men, aided by base
domestics or panders, to deceive their parents, or the parents or
guardians of their mistresses. And, like the contemporary comedies of
Bibbiena and Machiavelli (co-founders with Ariosto of Italian comedy,)
they are stained by frequent indecency of allusion and language.
In the division of his father’s scanty property, Ludovico had for his
share the house at Ferrara, which stands, or stood till lately, in the
street of Santa Maria di Bocche, and on the door of which was seen the
marble escutcheon of the Ariosti. He purchased, in 1526, a small house
of a person of the name of Pistoja, near the street Mirasole. He
afterwards bought several adjoining lots of ground, and built himself a
commodious house, which he surrounded by a garden and trees. This is
still seen in the street Mirasole, with an inscription to commemorate
its former inmate. There he spent, in studious and pleasant retirement,
the latter years of his life, continuing to enjoy the favour of Duke
Alfonso, and of his son Prince Ercole d’Este, afterwards Duke Hercules
II., to whom he gave instruction in literature.
In October, 1532, Ariosto, after sixteen years passed, since its first
publication, in the continual and almost daily revision of his great
poem, published a third edition in forty-six cantos, which,
notwithstanding some misprints, has remained the legitimate text of the
Orlando Furioso. This was the last edition which he published himself.
The six additional cantos are the 33d, 37th, 39th, 42d, 44th, and 45th;
and in the others, stanzas are added or altered from time to time. Soon
after Ariosto had thus completed his work, he fell ill of a painful
internal complaint, which, after several months of lingering sufferings,
terminated in death, June 6, 1533. He was then in his fifty-ninth year.
He was buried privately in the church of San Benedetto, near his house,
and his funeral was attended by the monks, who volunteered to pay this
honour to his remains. Forty years later, the church having been
rebuilt, a monument was raised to him on the right of the great altar by
Agostino Mosti of Ferrara, who in his youth had studied under Ariosto,
to which the poet’s bones were transferred with great ceremony. In 1612,
Ludovico Ariosto, the poet’s grand-nephew, raised another monument, more
splendid than the first, and placed it in the chapel to the left of the
great altar; and thither Ariosto’s remains underwent removal for the
second time. They were then left in peace for nearly two centuries,
until the French took possession of the country at the beginning of the
present century, when they removed the monument (we believe the last of
the two, though we cannot positively say) to the Lyceum or University;
where Ariosto’s chair and his ink-stand are also preserved, as well as
the autographs of the Furioso. In the convent of San Benedetto is a
painting, representing paradise, by Garofalo, who had known Ariosto
personally, in which the poet is seen between St. Catherine and St.
Sebastian.
Virginio Ariosto left several curious memoranda of his father’s habits,
which are given by Barotti. He was tall, of a robust and naturally
healthy frame, and a good pedestrian. One summer’s morning he strayed
out of Carpi, near Reggio, where he then resided, in his morning gown
and slippers, to take a walk. Being absent in thought, he had gone more
than half way to Ferrara before he recollected himself; and then
continued his route, and arrived at Ferrara in the evening, having
walked a distance of at least forty miles. He was generally frugal, and
not choice in his meals, though at times he ate much and hurriedly,
because, his son says, he was not then thinking of what he was doing,
being busy in his mind about his verses or about his plans for building.
One day a visiter appeared just after he had dined. While they were
conversing, the servant brought up dinner for the stranger; and, as the
latter was engaged in talking, Ariosto fell on the viands laid on the
table, and ate all himself, the guest of course not presuming to
interrupt him. After the visiter was gone, Ariosto’s brother
remonstrated with him on his inhospitable behaviour, when the poet,
coming to himself, exclaimed, “Well, it is his fault, after all; why did
he not begin to eat his dinner at once?”
The Italians have bestowed on Ariosto the epithet of “the Divine,” and
they also call him “the Homer of Ferrara.”
The character of Ariosto may be easily gathered from this brief sketch
of his life. He was trustworthy, loyal, and sincere, free from envy or
jealousy, and a warm friend; he was fond of meditation and retirement,
often absent and absorbed in thought, and yet he could be very pleasant
and jovial in company. He was not a great reader, and he selected the
Latin classics in preference to other authors. He studied men and nature
more than books. Of Greek he acquired some knowledge late in life. He
was very fond of architecture, and regretted that his means did not
permit him to satisfy his passion for building. He also took pleasure in
gardening, but he was too absent and impatient to prosper in that
occupation. His character, by his own confession, was stained by
licentious amours: and his works are tainted by impure passages, which
render them unfit for indiscriminate perusal. Still this is the fault of
detached passages, not of the general spirit or object of his
compositions; and if judged in comparison with his contemporaries, he
will not be severely censured as an immoral writer.
Ariosto’s great poem, the Orlando Furioso, is too generally known to
require a long discussion of its merits. It is by universal consent the
first of all poems of chivalry and romance. It is a wonderful creation
of man’s imaginative powers, extending far beyond the limits of the
natural world. But the poet in his wildest flights takes care not to
fall into too palpable extravagance or absurdity. He has the art of
endowing the creatures of his fancy with features and attributes
apparently so appropriate to their supposed nature, as to remove from
his readers the feeling of the improbability of their existence. There
are also other merits in the poem besides those of imagination and
description. There is often a vein of moral allusion half concealed
within Ariosto’s fanciful strains, the evidence of a mind deeply
acquainted with the mysteries of the human heart, fully alive to the
beauty of virtue, and imbued with sound notions of moral philosophy. At
other times he tries to cast off his pensive mood and to appear careless
and satirical, and he succeeds in exciting laughter at men’s follies and
even vices; a laughter which we doubt whether the writer felt in his own
heart. In his satire, however, although rather broad and licentious, he
was not bitter or misanthropical. His is the humour of a good-tempered
_poco curante_, who has no intention to break with mankind on account of
its faults, and who wishes to make the best of the present world, such
as it is. His touches of the pathetic, though not many, are exquisite of
their kind: we will only mention, as instances, the story of Ginevra,
that of Zerbino and Isabella, and the death of Brandimarte. His
acquaintance with history, geography, and other sciences, was
respectable, considering the time he lived in. His language is generally
natural and flowing, and the justness and clearness of his expressions
render the perusal of his poem of great use even to prose writers.
Galileo used to say that he had formed his style chiefly by assiduous
study of the Furioso. Ariosto has been accused of using trivial
expressions, borrowed from popular use rather than from books. Many of
these, however, have been since adopted by the best Italian writers.
Several of his lines certainly are harsh and inharmonious, but it is not
improbable that this was intentional, for the sake of expression, or to
give variety to the sound of his verse, as it is well known that Ariosto
was not a negligent writer; he corrected and recorrected his poem with
the greatest care, and his apparent facility is the result of much study
and labour. It is said that he altered not less than twenty times the
142d stanza of the eighteenth canto, in which he describes the beginning
of a storm at sea, before he fixed on the text as it how stands.
After the three editions of the Furioso superintended by Ariosto
himself, numerous editions appeared in various parts of Italy during the
sixteenth century, all however more or less incorrect, and some of
them—for instance, the one of 1556, by Ruscelli—deliberately mutilated
or interpolated, either by editorial presumption, or through scruples of
morality. The Aldine edition of 1545 is one of the best of that age; it
is also the first that contains five additional cantos, which are the
beginning of a new chivalric poem, left in MS. by the author, and given
by his son Virginio to Antonio Manuzio. The edition of 1584, by
Franceschi of Venice, is rich in comments and illustrations, but the
text is often incorrect. The editions of the seventeenth century are all
likewise imperfect. The edition of Orlandini, 2 vols. folio, Venice,
1731, contains all the works of Ariosto, with three biographies by
Pigna, Fornari, and Garofalo, and several comments and illustrations.
The learned Barotti of Ferrara brought out an edition of all Ariosto’s
works, Venice, 6 vols. 12mo., 1766, in which he restored in many places
the original reading, and added a life of Ariosto, which is still
considered the best extant. The Birmingham edition of the Furioso, 4
vols. 4to., with plates, some of which are by Bartolozzi, is remarkably
handsome, and one of the most correct. But the best text of the Furioso
is that of the edition of Pirotta, Milan, 1818, in 4to., in which the
editor, Morali, has succeeded in faithfully restoring the original text
of Ariosto’s last edition of 1532, which has been since adopted by
Molini in his edition, Florence, 2 vols. 12mo., 1823, by the Padua
edition of 1827 in 4to., and by other later Italian editors. Ciardetti
has published all the works of Ariosto, Florence, 8 vols. large 8vo.,
1823–4.
The Orlando Furioso has been translated into most European languages. Of
the English translations, Harrington’s is spirited, but far from
faithful; it is in reality rather an imitation than a translation. That
by T. H. Croker, 1755, has the merit of being faithful and literal,
stanza for stanza. The recent translation by Mr. S. Rose is considered
the best.
The Satires of Ariosto are seven in number; they are addressed to his
brothers and other friends. As the author did not intend them for
publication in his lifetime, he expressed himself freely in them, and
related many curious particulars of his history. They were first
published in 1534, and have been often reprinted, both separately and
with the rest of his works. They have been twice translated into
English, by Robert Toft in 1608, and by Croker in 1759. Ariosto is one
of the best Italian satirists. He has followed the Horatian model; he
corrects without too much bitterness or scurrility. He reprobates the
vices of his age and country, and they were many and great. He speaks of
popes, princes, and cardinals, of the learned and the unlearned, of
clergymen and laymen, of nobles and plebeians, with great freedom, but
without violence or exaggeration, and in language generally, though not
always, decorous. Ariosto’s satires deserve to be more generally read
than they are, both as a mirror of the times, and as a model of that
species of composition which, from the pens of ill-tempered or vulgar
men, has too often assumed a tone of malignancy and licentiousness
equally remote from justice and truth.
Besides the Orlando Furioso, his comedies, and his satires, Ariosto left
some minor works, in Italian and in Latin verse, such as epigrams,
canzoni, sonnets, capitoli in terza rima, and other lyrics; and a
curious Latin eclogue, which long remained inedited, composed in 1506,
on the occasion of a conspiracy against the life of Duke Alfonso by his
two brothers, Ferrante and Giulio. He also wrote a dialogue in Italian
prose, called “l’Erboleto,” on medicine and philosophy. We have no other
works of his in prose, except one or two letters; his correspondence,
which probably was extensive, has never been collected.
The number of commentators, critics, and biographers of Ariosto is very
great: a complete collection of them would form a considerable library.
Some of the best have been mentioned in this sketch. We must add
Baruffaldi, junior, who wrote a life of Ariosto, Ferrara, 1807, and
Count Mazzuchelli, who has given a good biography of him in his
“Scrittori d’Italia.”
[Illustration:
[House of Ariosto at Ferrara.]
]
[Illustration]