ARIOSTO

Ludovico Ariosto was born in the castle of Reggio, a city of Lombardy,

on the 8th of September, 1474. Both his parents were of ancient and

honourable lineage: the Ariosti had long been distinguished in Bologna,

when a daughter of their house, Lippa Ariosta, a lady of great beauty

and address, being married to Obizzo III., marquis of Este, brought a

number of her relatives to Ferrara: these, by her influence, she so

fortunately established in offices of power and emolument, that they

flourished for several generations among the grandees of that petty but

splendid principality.

The poet's mother. Madonna Daria, belonged to a branch of the Malegucci,

one of the wealthiest and noblest families in the north of Italy. Nicolo

Ariosto, his father, held various places of trust and authority under

the dukes of Ferrara. In youth he had been the companion of Borso, and

steward of the household of Hercules, besides being occasionally

employed on embassies to the pope and the king of France; in which he is

said to have received more substantial recompence than barren dignities,

in ample official salaries, and rich presents for special services. At

the birth of the poet he was governor of the castle and territory of

Reggio, and afterwards advanced to those of Modena; but as emolument

came easily, and there were abundant temptations, besides heavy family

expenses, to spend it lavishly, wealth never accumulated in his hands:

wherefore, having nine younger children born to him, his views with

respect to the eldest, Ludovico, were prudently directed towards

establishing him in some profession, whereby he might acquire riches and

rank for himself by perseverance in honourable labour. At the age of

fourteen or fifteen years,--when he had already signalised himself by

composing a drama on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which was

performed by his little brothers and sisters,--no doubt as happily as

the same subject in the Midsummer Night's Dream (whenever that happened)

was enacted by Bottom the weaver and his comrades, or, rather, as

happily as Oberon, Titania, and their train could have done it in

fairy-land,--the young poet was sent, grievously against his will, to

study civil law at Padua under two eminent practitioners, Angelo

Castrinse and Il Maino. With them, like Ovid, Petrarch, Tasso, Marino,

or our own Milton and Cowper, he spent five years to little profit,

hating his profession, and studying so listlessly, that it became more

and more manifest, the longer he drawled at it, that he never would

excel in the strife of words and tournaments of tongues, by which the

ample fortunes and broad lands of many families, whose founders the gods

had fortunately not made poetical, were then, as now, like the prizes at

hardier exercises, acquired. Nicolo Ariosto, therefore, at length

abandoned the folly of spoiling a good poet to make a bad lawyer, and

permitted his son to return to those learned studies and exercises of

native talent, which had been either suspended, or indulged in by

stealth, after his parent, "with spears and lances," had driven him from

them into the toils of pleadings and precedents. Released from these

trammels, (strewed as they were to his loathing eye with the mangled

remains of causes, like cobwebs with sculls, wings, and fragments of

flies,) Ludovico, at the age of twenty, found himself free to expatiate

in that fields of classic literature, whose buried treasures, in his

age, continued still to be dug up and brought to light from time to.

time; or to roam abroad seeking adventures suited to his youthful

imagination, in the wilds of French and Spanish romance, then recently

thrown open to their countrymen by Pulci and Boiardo.

However enriched his mind in earlier youth might have been with

knowledge of the dead languages--and we are required to believe that he

had made a very promising Latin oration while he was a mere boy--he

found, on returning to them, that he had lost so much as to need the

help of a master to construe a fable of Æsop. But what he lost at law,

he recovered at leisure, and added so much more to his stock; that he

speedily became eminent among his contemporaries (at a time when Latin

was more cultivated than Italian) for the critical skill; or, more

probably; the quickness of apprehension and delicacy of taste; with

which he elecidated obscure passages in Horace and Ovid. These appear to

have been his favourite authors; and each of them; in the sequel; he not

a little resembled; in their very dissimilar excellences. Under the

tuition of Gregorio da Spoleti; a scholar of high repute; whom he has

gratefully celebrated in the epistle to Bembo (Satire VI.); he so far

perfected himself in the language of ancient Rome; that his verses in it

were admired and commended by the greatest adepts in that factitious

style of composition. It was the folly of the learned of that age and

the preceding, to make Latin the universal language of writers who aimed

at the honours of literature; a scheme so preposterous, that none but

the learned could ever have stumbled upon it in their ignorance of every

thing but what the relics of ancient books could teach them. To men of

practical knowledge, it must have occurred, that all the fragments of

Roman authors could, at the most, furnish a vocabulary comparatively

small, and utterly inadequate to meet the demands of extending science,

through new and ever-changing forms of society. Under such a servitude

as made the Roman tongue itself pass under the Roman yoke, no phrase

unauthorised by classic precedent could be hazarded, nor might a foreign

word be engrafted upon the pure stock without appearing a barbarism.

Meanwhile the very rhythm, accent, and pronunciation of the original

being lost, scholars in every country were obliged to adapt these to the

vernacular sounds of vowels and consonants among themselves; so that an

Oxonian and a Tuscan, though they might understand each other by the eye

on paper, would be nearly unintelligible by the ear and the living

voice. It is manifest that nothing better than everlasting patchwork, of

the same unchangeable materials, how diversely soever combined (like the

patterns produced by the kaleidoscope, ever variable, yet little

distinguishable from another), would have constituted the eloquence,

poetry, and polite literature of modern Europe. No people would have

suffered more than the Italians themselves, by employing a defunct and

unimproveable tongue, in which their brightest geniuses must have been

but secondary planets, dimly reflecting, through a hazy atmosphere, the

borrowed beams of luminaries, themselves obscured by distance, as well

as imperfectly seen from partial eclipses. It would then have been the

glory of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, to have written what Virgil,

Cicero, and Horace would have as little relished in diction as they

could have comprehended in substance, where things, persons, customs,

and arts, un existent in their time, were the burthen of every original

theme. On the other hand, equally simple, obvious, and beautiful, was

the only living use that could be made of the dead languages (beyond the

profit and delight of studying them in their surviving models); namely,

that which time has made of them by transmutation and transfusion into

modern tongues of such terms as were congenial to the latter, or could

be rendered so by being employed, first, in technical or peculiar, and

afterwards in elegant and familiar senses, to obviate the necessity of

inventing new and inexpressive words, as the occasion of science and

taste required. The Italian, French, Spanish, and English languages have

thus been enriched and adorned with classical interpolations, so

gradually adopted, that they seemed to grow naturally out of their

respective stocks, as the sphere of knowledge increased, and its details

became more multiform.

This golden age of Ariosto's life was shortened by the death of his

father; who left to his eldest son, with means exceedingly small, the

responsibility of supporting his mother, and training up his nine

brothers and sisters. In the sixth of his Satires,--satires which are

almost wholly personal and autobiographic,--he says, that on this

occasion he was obliged, at four and twenty years of age, to abandon

Thalia, Euterpe, and all the nine Muses; to turn from quiet studies to

active duties, and exchange Homer for waste-books and ledgers, (_squarci

e vacchette_). These trusts, the young, ambitious, fiery-minded poet

faithfully and self-denyingly fulfilled; and he who, under parental

injunction, at the most docile period of life, would not submit to the

profitable drudgery of the law, now, in the very flower and pride of his

genius, with filial piety and fraternal affection, yielded to a domestic

yoke, and became the father of his family. In this honourable character

he so well husbanded his narrow patrimony, that he portioned off now

one, then another sister, and provided education for his four brothers,

who, as they grew up, entered into the service of sundry princes and

nobles, as was the custom with the minor gentry in that half-feudal age.

Gabriele cultivated literature, and excelled in the composition of Latin

verse; but, making Statius his model, he was never worthy to compete,

even in this respect, with his more illustrious brother. Galasso entered

into the church, which was then the wealthy and lavish patroness of

those, who, by their subserviency to her domination, or their able

advocacy of it, sought the good things of the present life under the

guise of having their affections fixed on higher, holier, and eternal

things. Yet the latter could hardly be said to be used as a pretence for

the purpose of deceiving; so lax, shameless, mercenary, and ambitious

was the hierarchy of that age. Such profligacy, however, must not be

laid to the charge of Galasso, of whom nothing bad is known. "Galasso,

in the city of Evander, is seeking a surplice to put over his

night-gown," says Ludovico in his second Satire; meaning, to obtain a

bishop's robe and rochet--to become a prelate or a canon. Alexander was

of a more enterprising disposition; and delighting in foreign travel,

lie attached himself to the train of the cardinal Hippolito d'Este,

brother to Alfonso duke of Ferrara, whom he accompanied into Hungary;

and, according to his brother's description of that imperious patron's

court, appears to have fretted away his hour upon a stage of artificial

manners, dissipated pleasures, and emasculating duties. Carlo, of whom

nothing particular is recorded, took up his abode in the kingdom of

Naples, where he died. These particulars are gathered chiefly from the

sixth Satire, with the additional intelligence, in the second, that, at

the time of writing it, the author had to furnish a dowry to his fifth

and last sister, then about to be married. Though this must have been

twenty years after the death of their father, the mother was still

living with him. The allusion to her in the context has often been

quoted, but it is so simply and purely beautiful, that it cannot be

quoted amiss here. Excusing himself by many reasons for not going

abroad; and having mentioned, in the foregoing lines, the dispersion of

all the other members of the family from their common home, except

himself and her; he says,

"L'età di nostra madre mi percote

Di pietà il core, che da tutti, a un tratto,

Senza infamia lasciata esser non puote."

"Our mother's years with pity pierce my heart,

For, without infamy, she could not be

By all of us, at once, forsaken."

_Satire II._

But while Ariosto, from his twenty-fourth to his forty-fifth year, was

thus humbly, yet honourably, nourishing his mother and training up his

brothers and sisters--though his studies were much interrupted at first,

and he was obliged to abandon the Greek language altogether (which he

had recently been recovering)--he maintained his reputation among the

first Latin scholars; and in the same busy interval achieved his

greatest triumph in the literature of his own land. Under the voluntary

burthen of domestic cares, the buoyancy of irrepressible genius bore him

up from obscurity; and whatever might have been the secret misgivings,

or the generous forecastings, of undeveloped but conscious powers, he

found himself, at nine and twenty years of age, in the first circles of

Italian society, courted, admired, applauded, and of course envied, both

for his conversation, his learning, and his poetry. In the latter,

indeed (judging by what remains), he seems to have produced nothing but

two or three indifferent dramas, certain loose love elegies, with a few

middling sonnets and madrigals,--all fantastic and pleasant enough in

their way, but the best of them affording no great promise that their

writer would ere long surpass all predecessors in one wide field of

invention, and leave to successors nothing to do in it but--not to

imitate him: so late and slowly, often, are the most extraordinary

talents brought into exercise. It is difficult to imagine, in our cold

clime, with our refractory tongue, and accustomed as we are to the

phlegm of our countrymen, how such performances as the above could raise

a man to celebrity: but verse was not then the pastime of every lover of

verse; and reputations were not so numerous as they are in these days,

when there are a thousand avenues to the temple of fame not then

opened,--and quite as many out of it,--while candidates are seen

crowding in such throngs as to tread on one another's heels, those

behind forcing onward those in front; so that our literary ephemera

resemble a procession of spectators through a palace, when a royal

corpse lies in state; multitudes coming in, passing on, going out

continually, a few pausing, none stopping. The Italian language,

however, it must be observed, for all the minor and more exquisite forms

of verse, is not less felicitously and inimitably adapted, than is the

French to the _badinage_ of prose. Ariosto gained credit for these

_bagatelles_, in an age when Bembo, Molza, and many others were his

contemporaries, who, to this hour, are chiefly known by such things, and

nothing better. But, for some reason or other which is not apparent,

Ariosto was certainly looked up to, and renowned by anticipation, for a

long contemplated achievement of equal daring to any of the knights'

adventures which in due course he celebrated, and which proved not less

successful in the issue than his own "Astolpho's Journey to the Moon:"

for in this (the "Orlando Furioso"), the madness of his hero covered him

with more glory than the restoring of the Paladin's lost wits did the

rider of the hippogriff. Ariosto, indeed, was the very Astolpho of song,

and both his Paladins and their countries must be sought in the moon, or

nowhere.

He was, during the greater portion of this eventful period of his life,

in the service of cardinal Hippolito d'Este, who affected to be a

Mæcenas, and who, at least as much from vanity and ostentation as from

genuine taste or delight in their compositions, assembled round him the

prime scholars and wits of the age. By some of his biographers, the poet

is said to have received munificent proofs that the princely

ecclesiastic knew how to value the endowments of the Muses more than

personages of his rank are wont to do. But this seems very questionable,

from the poet's own account of his patron's bounty in his second Satire,

which may be noticed hereafter. Leisure and competence, however, he must

have enjoyed during this irksome and almost menial servitude, under

which, with all its debasements, he produced his "Orlando Furioso."

Having commenced the poem, he communicated the specimen and plan to his

friend cardinal Bembo, who, influenced by the pedantic prejudice

formerly alluded to, seriously advised him to compose it in Latin; a

language in which, with all the mastery that a modern could attain over

it, the licentious fables of chivalry--licentious in every sense, in

diction, sentiment, plot, narrative, and morals,--would have appeared as

heterogeneous and outlandish as the wrath of Achilles in Chinese, or the

piety of Æneas in Sanscrit. Mr. Roscoe says of Sanazzaro and Bembo, who

were brother rivals for the honours of Parnassus, that while the former

"turned all his talents for the improvement of Latin poesy, the latter

persevered in cultivating his native tongue."[94] Most people can give

better advice than they take: Bembo, it seems, took better than he gave;

and Ariosto had sagacity enough to follow his counsellor's example

rather than his precept, nobly answering, "I would rather stand among

the first of writers in my own tongue, than below Ovid or Virgil himself

in theirs."

This task, therefore, for fifteen years, he pursued, with occasional

external interruptions, but none probably from within; for, his mind

being impregnated with the great conception, he could not help brooding

over it by day and by night, amidst business and pleasure, in crowds and

in solitude, at Rome as ambassador from the duke to the pope, and at

Ferrara as a courtier in the palace of cardinal Hippolito; but

especially at his birth-place, Reggio, in the retirement of a villa

belonging to one of his maternal relatives, Sigismondo Malegucci. Here,

in one of the chambers of an ancient tower within the domain, he

elaborated canto after canto of that most anomalous yet impressive poem,

which, while it appears as unconnected as a tissue of dreams in its

details, (as it resembles the stuff which dreams are made of in its

materials,) is nevertheless one of the most perfect webs of narrative

that fancy ever spun, or genius wove, from the silkworm produce of a

poet's brain. No rival composition of the same or any other class of

heroic verse has yet proved equally attractive to Italian readers in

every rank of life; though, in the "Gerusalemme Liberata" of Tasso,

consummate skill and genius of the highest order have constructed an

epic according to the strictest rules of art, to conciliate the learned,

and at the same time embellished it with all the graces of romance, to

charm the multitude, who love to be pleased, because they cannot help

it, and care not by what means, so that these be but "rich and strange."

Meanwhile the duke of Ferrara, wishing to pacify the wrath of Julius

II., who threatened him not only with the thunders of the Vatican (which

were no impotent artillery in those days), but with "force and arms," in

the strongest sense of the legal verbiage, so terribly illustrated in

appeals to the sword; it is no small proof of the ability and address in

worldly affairs of one who lived amidst a creation of ideals of his own

rearing, that Ariosto was despatched as ambassador to Rome on this

occasion. Though in the sequel he did not effect his purpose of

appeasing the ferocious pontiff; yet, by his eloquence; he persuaded him

to feign a milder mood; and send an answer which meant less favour than

the words seemed to imply. For soon afterwards, Julius, who had set his

heart upon adding Ferrara to the ecclesiastical states, entered into a

league with the Venetians, who coveted Padua as the quarter adjacent to

their territories; and, while his holiness furnished an army, the doge

sent a fleet up the Po, to attack the capital of Alfonso at once by land

and by water. The papal forces, however, were defeated at the battle of

Ravenna, and the republican squadron was beaten, dispersed, or captured

on the river. On this occasion, Ariosto, unlike Horace (his master in

verse, but not in arms), fought gallantly, and made prize of one of the

enemy's richest vessels, laden with military stores. This appears to be

authenticated, though he himself never alludes to the circumstance in

his Satires (when he is boasting of his services, and murmuring at their

ill requital), and notwithstanding his reputed timidity on the water. At

the same time, the proof usually given of the latter, it must be

allowed, is too equivocal to establish the fact; namely, that when he

had occasion to disembark, he would pertinaciously wait till every body

else had landed, before he would venture to descend from the deck, using

the phrase, de "_puppe novissimus exi_:" but the coolest captain, when

his ship is wrecked or foundering, makes it a point of honour and duty

to be the last to abandon it. He is likewise said to have been as

indifferent a horseman, as _good_ seamen often are (though he was none),

riding slowly and cautiously, and alighting on the least appearance of

peril or inconvenience in his way. Personally a coward he may have been,

but mentally courageous he undoubtedly was: there is no deficiency of

spirit traceable in his conduct on some trying occasions, any more than

there is in his verses at any time. Indeed, one who had not the keenest

intellectual delight in the boldest enterprises, the most appalling

dangers, and difficulties insurmountable except by magic intervention,

would hardly have written "Orlando Furioso;" for in no work of

imagination does the author more effectually dispossess himself of

himself, and become for the time being the knight or the giant whose

exploits he is celebrating.

After his victories, Alfonso, still anxious to conciliate the pope,

proposed a second embassy to Rome; but none of his other diplomatists

being willing to hazard themselves in the presence of tire fiery Julius,

Ariosto was again induced to accept the charge,--no mean proof of

constitutional intrepidity, or else an ascendancy of mind over nerves

which few philosophers have attained. Accordingly he set out; but (as he

tells us himself in one of his Satires) after escaping all the hazards

of the way, every where infested by brigands in those troublous times,

he met with so uncourteous a reception from the chafed pontiff, that he

was glad to escape as quietly and secretly as he could, having received

information that, as Alfonso's proxy, he ran no small risk of being

treated as the holy father would have been happy to have treated his

master, had he presented himself at the Vatican. Indeed, Julius is said

to have openly threatened to throw the poet into the sea, if he did not

make his way back as speedily as he might; a hint of which Ariosto

promptly availed himself, not presuming to entertain a hope, had he been

cast upon the mercy of the waves, that he should have the good fortune

of Arion, to charm the dolphins with his minstrelsy, after finding that

the sacred laurel, which even the lightning spares[95], could not make

his head inviolable at Rome. Alfonso himself, in one of his fruitless

negotiations with the implacable Julius, being at Rome, and under safe

conduct, was so alarmed by the perfidious treatment which he experienced

from the pontiff (who in the mean time, during a truce, had seized

Reggio, and demanded Ferrara in exchange for his unjust capture), that

he deemed it prudent to make his retreat in the various disguises of a

huntsman, a livery servant, and a friar, under the protection of the

family of Colonna, who by force rescued him from state-confinement in

the Vatican, under the abused name of hospitality.

But the duke retaliated in a singular manner for the indignity shown to

himself and his representative. The French having taken Bologna, a

superb bronze statue of the military pope, by Michel Angelo, was pulled

down from its pedestal, and dragged by the populace through the mire

about the city, after which it was sent as a present to Alfonso. The

indignant duke (a reckless barbarian in this instance), showing as

little respect for the exquisite workmanship of the sculptor as he felt

for the piety of the pope, with a felicity of revenge almost to be

forgiven for its appropriateness, ordered the rich metal to be sent to

the furnace, and re-cast into a cannon, to which he gave the name of

Julio. The head, however, was spared, and placed as a trophy in the

state museum. Julius never forgave the duke, either for the fault of his

ancestors in bequeathing to him a territory which the see of Rome

coveted, or for his own sin in defending that territory so successfully

against both spiritual and secular violence, that he himself (the

greatest warrior who ever wore the triple crown) could not wrest it from

him. The disappointed pope expired, exclaiming, in his delirium, "Out of

Italy, ye French! Out, Alfonso of Este!"[96]

The first edition of the "Orlando Furioso" appeared in 1515; eleven

years after its commencement; a second and third; highly improved;

followed in the course of six years; and the last from his hand; in

1532, the year of the poet's death. In each succeeding reprint; so many

and such large amendments; exclusions; and variations of the original

text were adopted; that the example has been very properly held up to

young writers as worthy of their diligent imitation--never to think

their best performances perfect while a touch is wanting which they can

give to heighten their beauty, or a blemish remaining to lower it, which

they can remove. In fact, Ariosto ceased not to elaborate his apparently

completed work to the latest period of his life. Long after it had

attained its full standard of bulk, this sole tree of his fancy

continued to flourish, by the perpetuation of the same process which had

reared it, putting forth fairer leaves and richer fruit, in perennial

course, till the failure of further supply, from his own decay, left it

to survive him in imperishable maturity. The principal interruptions of

his literary labours seem to have been the necessary dissipation of mind

during the aforementioned unfortunate embassies to Rome, his brief

government of the disturbed province of Graffagnana, and occasional fits

of silence which came upon him when his heart was wrung and his pride

wounded by the inconsiderate neglect or the more flagrant ingratitude of

mean-spirited patrons. Of the latter, cardinal Hippolito was the chief;

and the cause of their mutual estrangement was the refusal of the poet

to accompany the haughty priest as one of his retinue on a journey to

Hungary to visit his archbishopric of Segovia, which had been bestowed

upon him when he was not more than eighteen years old, by king Matteo

Corvino, whose queen Beatrice was sister to Leonora of Aragon,

Hippolito's mother. This spoiled child of fortune was not only cardinal,

priest, statesman, and warrior (in each of which characters he greatly

signalised himself, according to the lax notions of morality then

prevalent); but in one instance, at least, he was a lover also, and a

rejected one, who wreaked upon his favoured rival a revenge which has

made his memory infamous. It appears that Hippolito, and his

illegitimate brother don Giulio, both paid their addresses

(dishonourable ones they must have been on the cardinal's part) to a

lady of Ferrara, of singularly attractive accomplishments, who (if

marriage were the question to be decided by the courtship of either), it

may be presumed, very naturally preferred him with whom a virtuous

alliance might be formed. Hippolito, pressing her one day to acknowledge

the ground of her preference, she laid the blame of her love on Giulio's

beautiful eyes. The cardinal secretly determined to dissolve that charm;

and soon after, accompanying his brother on the chase, in a solitary

situation, he led him into an ambush of assassins, who sprang upon the

unsuspecting youth, dragged him from his horse, and tore out his eyes,

while Hippolito stood by, directing the operation, and exulting in the

extinction of those fatal luminaries that stood in his light.

Guicciardini, indeed, says, that though Giulio's eyes were plucked out

(_tratti_) by the cardinal, they were replaced, without the loss of

sight (_riposti senza perdita del lume nel luogo loro_), by the prompt

and careful skill of the chirurgeons. Be this as it might, the man

concerning whom such a story could be told, and believed by

contemporaries, must have had a character for cruelty and selfishness,

which renders probable the arrogance, vindictiveness, and tyranny

towards his dependents, of which Ariosto so bitterly, yet so humbly and

playfully, complains in his Satires, whenever he alludes to his

connection with Hippolito. The magnanimous conduct of Alfonso towards

the same unfortunate youth was strikingly contrasted with the treachery

and barbarity of Hippolito: for the duke not punishing the cardinal or

his accomplices for this outrage, Giulio and his brother Ferdinand

conspired against his life. The plot was discovered; and the brothers,

having confessed their criminal purpose, were adjudged to lose their

heads on the scaffold; but while the axe Avas suspended over them, their

sentence was changed into one of perpetual imprisonment. Ferdinand,

after suffering this for thirty years, died; but Giulio, at the

expiration of fifty-two years, was set at liberty.[97]

The poet was, no doubt, proud of his own ancient blood, and jealous of

his personal independence, while he coveted that leisure for the

pursuits of literature, on which the felicity of his existence, and the

glory of his name, in a great measure depended; feelings little

understood or little regarded by superficial grandees, whether in church

or state, in respect to those over whom they held authority or

influence. A poet, more than any other man, lives within himself; and to

do this he must have freedom, ease, and competence, however small: nor

is it less for the benefit of others that he should enjoy these

necessaries of literary life; since they are to reap the harvest of his

hermit-thoughts, sown in secret and cherished in solitude, till they

grow into beauty, like plants undistinguished till their blossoms

appear, or till they shine through obscurity like stars that come out

between light and darkness, because they can no longer be hidden. To

writers of every other class, valuable as self-searching,

self-knowledge, and self-gratification may be, for their various

exercises and undertakings, they draw or collect the greater portion of

their materials for study and composition from their converse with

ordinary and public affairs, the records of the dead or the living, past

or contemporary characters, manners, and events. The historian, the

moralist, or the philosopher, may please and profit his own generation,

and bequeath intellectual stores of wealth to posterity, by representing

the images, tastes, and employments of his own times; but the poet, the

perpetual poet, he who alone is a poet in the highest sense, whatever be

his theme, and how similar soever his materials may be to those of

others, must mould his subject according to the archetypes in his own

mind, and yet cause such an universal and undying spirit to pervade it,

as shall by sympathy make his thoughts understood and enjoyed in all

ages and countries, among all people who can read his language.[98]

Hippolito, praised as he has been for his patronage of letters and arts,

and poetically canonised by Ariosto himself, throughout the "Orlando

Furioso," in strains as unworthy of his genius as they were unmerited by

the hero of it, seems to have been a jackdaw patron, who loved to prank

himself with the peacock-feathers of court-poets, and strut before them,

well plucked, in his train. It is clear that he very indifferently

appreciated those talents which were the admiration of all Italy, and as

little understood the temper of their possessor. The proud cardinal

scarcely rated them any higher than inasmuch as they afforded him the

insolent gratification of saying (to exalt himself) that such rare

endowments belonged to one of the creatures whom he affected to keep

about him, who would fetch and carry for their patron, while they dare

not call their souls their own--if souls they had, who could sell them

for the luxury of eating toads, with pleasant countenances, in the great

man's presence, and deserving the contempt with which they were treated

by submitting to it. To the honour of Ariosto he was not one of this

reptile species, though his narrow circumstances through life compelled

him to eat hitter bread at tables where he would have loved to sit, if

he could have found a place there otherwise than as a dependant. In his

second satire he expatiates on the degradation of that bondage, from

which his own high spirit, and the cardinal's mean one, had freed him.

Writing to his brother Alessandro, who had followed his highness into

Hungary, he inquires whether the latter ever names him, or alludes to

his pertinacity in remaining behind: he then breaks into indignant

complaints against the cardinal's courtiers, for misrepresenting the

motives of his conduct:--"Oh! ye, profoundly learned in adulation! the

art which you most cultivate and study still countenances him to blame

me beyond measure. Mad is the man who dares to contradict his master,

even though he say that he has seen the stars at noon, the sun at

midnight. When he commends or censures, every voice, on either hand, is

heard with one accord approving; and if there be a solitary one that has

not hardihood, from downright baseness, to open a mouth, with his whole

visage he applauds, and every feature says,--'I too agree with that.'"

The writer proceeds to recapitulate the reasons, "many and true," which

he had stated to the cardinal himself, face to face, without disguise,

why he should stay at home. Several of these are whimsical enough, but

they show the humour of the man; and may be comprised thus summarily:--

"I have no wish to make my life shorter than fortune and my stars shall

please. Now every change, however slight, would aggravate my malady (an

inveterate asthma), and I should either die of it, or my two physicians

are mistaken. But over and above what they may say, I understand my own

case best, and what is good and what is bad for me. My constitution ill

endures hard winters, and theirs beneath the pole (Hungary beneath the

pole! the poet was always a strange geographer, but here he is playing)

are more intense than ours in Italy. And if the cold should not blast

me, the heat would, from stoves which I abominate so much, that I shun

them more than the plague. Besides all this, the folks so dress, and eat

and drink, and play; in short, do every thing but sleep, in that strange

land in winter, that, were I forced to gulp the air, so difficult to

breathe, from the Riphean mountains, what with the vapours arising from

my stomach, and the rheum falling on my lungs, I certainly should die

some night of suffocation. Then heady wines, which are prohibited to me

as mortal poison, are by the guests swilled down in monstrous draughts,

for not to drink much and undiluted is sacrilege there. All their food

too is high seasoned with pepper and spices, which my doctor condemns as

pernicious for me. Here you may say, that I might sit down below stairs

in a snug chimney corner, far from the ill savour of the company, where

the cook would prepare my victuals to my own liking, and I might water

my wine at my will, and drink little or none at all. What J while you

are all well and feasting above, must I sit from morning till night

alone in my cell, alone at my board, like a Carthusian? Then pots and

pans for kitchen and chamber would be wanted, and I must have a dower of

household furniture settled on me like a new married bride. Supposing,

nevertheless, that master Pasquin, the cook, were pleased to dress

dinner for me apart; once or twice he might do it, but assuredly the

fourth or sixth time, he would set all his face in arms against me (_mi

farà 'l viso dell' arme_). * * * * You will reply, 'begin housekeeping

then in your own way, at your own expense; your footman may be your

caterer, and you can cook and eat your pullets at your own

fireside!'--Mighty well! but by my unlucky servitude under the cardinal,

I have not got enough to set up an hotel for myself in his palace. And

thanks to thee, Apollo! thanks to you, ye sacred college of the Muses!

from your bounty I have not received so much as would buy me a cloak.

'Oh, but your patron has given you something!'[99]--I grant it;

something more than would buy me a cloak; but that it was given me for

your sake, I don't believe. He has said, and I am free to tell it to

every body, that I may put my verses (there is an untranslatable quibble

in the original) where I like. His praises composed by me are not the

kind of services which he deems worthy of recompence; he doles out his

rewards to those who ride post for him, follow him in the park and the

city; who don and doff his clothes, and put his wine flasks in the well

that they may be cool at the nones; he recompenses those who watch for

him at nights, till the smiths rise in the morning to make nails, so

that they often fall asleep with the torches burning in their hands.

When I have made verses in honour of him, he says, I have done so for my

own pleasure and idleness; whereas it would be far more agreeable to him

to have me about his own person." After further complaints against his

patron, scorn of that patron's flatterers, and vindication of himself

for not being one of these, the angry poet exclaims, "What could I do in

such a case? I have no skill to shoot partridges flying; nor to hold a

hawk or a greyhound in leash. Let lads learn such arts, who wish to

practise them. Nor can I conveniently stoop to draw on or pull off his

boots and spurs, seeing I am somewhat tall. I have not much taste for

victuals, and as for carvings I might very well have served that office

in the age of the world when men fed on acorns. I would not choose to

superintend Gismondi's[100] housekeeping accounts; nor does it fall to

my lot to gallop again to Rome to appease the fury of the second Julius;

but even if it did; at my time of life; with this cough, which I

probably caught on such an occasion; it does not suit me any longer to

run about the streets. If then to perform such drudgery, and seldom to

go out of his presence, but stand there like Bootes by the Great

Bear,--if this be required of the man who thirsts for gold, rather than

enrich myself thus, I choose repose; repose, rather than to occupy

myself with cares for which my studies must be abandoned and plunged

into Lethe,--studies that do not, indeed, furnish pasture for the body,

but feast the mind with food so noble that they deserve not to be

neglected. And thus they do for me,--they make poverty less painful, and

wealth to be so little desired, that for the love of it I will not part

with my freedom: they cause me not to want that which I hope not to

obtain; and that neither envy nor spleen consume me when my lord invites

Celio and Marone, while I cannot expect to be seen at supper with his

highness at Midsummer; amidst a blaze of torches, blinded with their

smoke. Here I walk alone and on foot wherever I please, and when I

choose to ride, I throw my saddle bags over my horse's back and mount:

and this I hold to be a lesser sin than taking a bribe to recommend the

cause of a vassal to the prince; or harassing a parish by iniquitous

lawsuits, till the people offer pensions to stay proceedings. Wherefore

I lift up both hands to heaven, and pray, that either among citizens or

countrymen, I may live in peace under my own roof, and that by means of

my small patrimony, I may be enabled to spend the remainder of my days

without learning a new craft, or making my family blush for me." In the

sequel of the epistle, the relenting poet (a freeman at heart, a slave

by court habit) condescends to make an offer of certain honorary

services which he could render to the cardinal at home (not having "felt

himself so stout and nimble as to leap from the hanks of the Po to those

of the Danube"), but before he has well concluded his humiliating

overture, the exasperation, of which neither scorn, philosophy, nor

poetic pride could rid his wounded spirit, returns like an access of

disease upon him, and he breaks out into a rhodomontade of defiance. In

this passage it is hard to know whether the unhappy writer be most

entitled to pity, censure, or admiration: pity for unmerited harshness

from his patron; censure for a manifest hankering towards sycophancy;

and admiration for his magnanimous resolve, at any rate, to choose

freedom and penury rather than abundance and bondage. "If," he says,

"for a benefice bestowed on me of five and twenty crowns every four

months (yet not so well secured but that they are often litigated), his

highness has a right to make me wear a chain, hold me as a bondman, and

oblige me to sweat and tremble before him, without any regard, till I

break down and die,--let him not imagine such a thing, but tell him

plainly that, rather than be a slave, I will bear poverty in patience."

He goes on:--

"An ass, all bones and gristle with hard fare,

Entering a granary through a broken wall,

Made such enormous havoc with the corn,

That his thin flanks were rounded like a tun,

And he had had enough,--which was not soon.

Then, fearing lest his hide must pay the cost,

He struggled to get back the way he came,

But found the chink too narrow now to let him.

Thus, while he fretted, pushed, and squeez'd in vain,

A rat addressed him: 'Sir, if you would pass,

You must make friends with that great paunch of yours;

Behoves you to disgorge what you have swallow'd,

And e'en grow lean again, or never hope

To thread the needle's eye of that small hole.'

--So, in conclusion, if his Eminence

Imagines he has bought me with his gifts,

'T will be no hard or bitter thing to me

Straight to return them, and reclaim my freedom."

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:--

"Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non

Sordida, parta meo sed tamen fere domus."

"'T is small but fit for me, gives none offence,

Not mean, yet builded at my own expense."

"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 ground, one summer, was so parch'd with drought,

It seem'd as though Apollo had resign'd

His horses' reins to Phaëton again:

Dry every well, and every fountain dry;

Lakes, streams, and rivers most renown'd, might then

Be forded without bridges.

"In that time,

There lived a pastor, rich I do not say,

Nor overstock'd with herds and woolly flocks,

Who, among others, press'd by want of water,

And having search'd in vain through every cave,

Turn'd to that Lord who never disappoints

The man that trusts in him;--and light was given,

And inspiration to his heart, that he,

Far thence, should in a valley's bottom find

The long-desired supply.

"Off, with his wife,

Children, and all that in the world he had,

He hasten'd thither, and with spade and mattock

Delved to the spring,--nor had he deep to dig.

But having nothing wherewithal to draw,

Save one scant narrow pitcher, thus he spake:

'Let none take dudgeon, if the earliest draught

Be for myself; the second for my dame;

And't is but right my children have the third,

The fourth, and on, till all have slaked their thirst;

Then, one by one, I will the rest should drink,

According to their work and labour done,

Who sunk the well; to flocks and cattle next

Refreshment must be forth distributed,

First to the feeblest and the nearest death.'

"According to this equitable rule,

All came to drink; while each, that he might not

Be last, made most of his small services.

This, a poor magpie, once his master's pet,

Seeing and hearing, cried, "Ah! well-a-day!

I'm no relation, I've not help'd to sink

The well, nor am of any further use

To be to him what I have been; 't is plain

That if I wait my turn, I'm in the lurch,

And must drop dead with thirst unless

I seek Relief elsewhere.'

"Cousin[102], with this example

I furnish you, to stop the mouths of those

Who think his holiness might have preferr'd

Me to the _Neri, Vanni, Lotti, Bacci_,

Nephews and kin so numerous, claiming right

To drink in the first year; then those that help'd

To robe him with the best of mantles, &c. &c. &c.

* * * *

If till all these have drunk their fill I wait,

I know not which will be the first dried up,

The well of water, or myself by thirst."

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:--

"Once on a time,--'t was when the world was young,

And the first race of men were inexperienced,

For there were no such knaveries then as now,--

A certain people, whom I need not name,

Dwelt at the foot of an enormous hill,

Whose summit from the valley seem'd to touch

The sky itself.

"These simple folks, observing

How oft the inconstant moon, now with a horn,

And now without, now waxing, and now waning,

Held through the firmament her natural course,

Supposed that on the top they might find out

How she enlarged, then shrunk into herself.

One with a bag, another with a basket,

Began to scale the precipice amain,

Each eager in the strife to outclimb the rest;

But finding at the peak they were no nearer,

All fell down weary on the earth, and wish'd

Most heartily that they had stay'd below.

Their neighbours from the bottom seeing them

Aloof, believed that they had reach'd the moon,

And hurried breathless up to share the spoil.

--This mountain is the mighty wheel of Fortune,

Upon whose rim the stupid vulgar think

All is tranquillity, though ne'er a bit."[104]

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 pictured wheel, I own, annoys me sorely,

Which every master paints in the same way,

And such agreement cannot be a lie,

--When that which sits aloft they make an ass.

Now every one may understand this riddle,

Without the sphinx to interpret;--for, mark well,

Each, as he climbs, begins to _assify_

From top to toe; head, shoulders, arms, thence downward;

The limbs below remaining human still:"[105]

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!"

"There was a gourd which grew so lustily,

That in few days its foliage over-ran

The loftiest branches of a neighbouring pear-tree.

One morn, the latter, opening wide its eyes

After a long sound nap, beheld new fruits

Clustering luxuriantly around its head.

'Holla!' it cried; 'who _are_ you? and how _came_ you?

Where _were_ you when these wretched eyes of mine

To slumber I resign'd?' The gourd replied

Frankly; declared its name and kindred; show'd

How it was planted at his honour's foot,

And in three months had thriven to that height.

'And I,' the pear-tree answer'd, 'hardly climb'd

To this pre-eminence, through heat and cold,

And wars with all the winds, in thirty years!

But you, who in the twinkling of an eye

Have sprung to heaven, shall, with the self-same speed

As you have risen, down dwindle to the root.'"