The Ghetto was in itself indifferent to us; it was merely our way to
the Library, whither the great memory of Ariosto invited us to see his
famous relics treasured there.
We found that the dead _literati_ of Ferrara had the place wholly to
themselves; not a living soul disputed the solitude of the halls with
the custodians, and the bust of Ariosto looked down from his monument
upon rows of empty tables, idle chairs, and dusty inkstands.
The poet, who was painted by Titian, has a tomb of abandoned ugliness,
and sleeps under three epitaphs; while cherubs frescoed on the
wall behind affect to disclose the mausoleum, by lifting a frescoed
curtain, but deceive no one who cares to consider how impossible it
would be for them to perform this service, and caper so ignobly as
they do at the same time. In fact this tomb of Ariosto shocks with
its hideousness and levity. It stood formerly in the Church of San
Benedetto, where it was erected shortly after the poet's death, and it
was brought to the Library by the French, when they turned the church
into a barracks for their troops. The poet's dust, therefore, rests
here, where the worm, working silently through the vellum volumes on
the shelves, feeds upon the immortality of many other poets. In the
adjoining hall are the famed and precious manuscripts of Ariosto and
of Tasso. A special application must be made to the librarian, in
order to see the fragment of the _Furioso_ in Ariosto's hand, and the
manuscript copy of the _Gerusalemma_, with the corrections by Tasso.
There are some pages of Ariosto's Satires, framed and glazed for the
satisfaction of the less curious; as well as a letter of Tasso's,
written from the Hospital of St. Anna, which the poet sends to a
friend, with twelve shirts, and in which he begs that his friend will
have the shirts mended, and cautions him "not to let them be mixed
with others." But when the slow custodian had at last unlocked that
more costly fragment of the _Furioso_, and placed it in my hands, the
other manuscripts had no value for me. It seems to me that the one
privilege which travel has reserved to itself, is that of making
each traveller, in presence of its treasures, forget whatever other
travellers have said or written about them. I had read so much of
Ariosto's industry, and of the proof of it in this manuscript, that I
doubted if I should at last marvel at it. But the wonder remains
with the relic, and I paid it my homage devoutly and humbly, and was
disconcerted afterward to read again in my Valery how sensibly all
others had felt the preciousness of that famous page, which, filled
with half a score of previous failures, contains in a little open
space near the margin, the poet's final triumph in a clearly written
stanza. Scarcely less touching and interesting than Ariosto's painful
work on these yellow leaves, is the grand and simple tribute which
another Italian poet was allowed to inscribe on one of them: "Vittorio
Alfieri beheld and venerated;" and I think, counting over the many
memorable things I saw on the road to Rome and the way home
again, this manuscript was the noblest thing and best worthy to be
remembered.
When at last I turned from it, however, I saw that the custodian had
another relic of Messer Lodovico, which he was not ashamed to match
with the manuscript in my interest. This was the bone of one of the
poet's fingers, which the pious care of Ferrara had picked up from his
dust (when it was removed from the church to the Library), and
neatly bottled and labeled. In like manner, they keep a great deal
of sanctity in bottles with the bones of saints in Italy; but I found
very little savor of poesy hanging about this literary relic.
As if the melancholy fragment of mortality had marshaled us the way,
we went from the Library to the house of Ariosto, which stands at the
end of a long, long street, not far from the railway station. There
was not a Christian soul, not a boy, not a cat nor a dog to be seen
in all that long street, at high noon, as we looked down its narrowing
perspective, and if the poet and his friends have ever a mind for a
posthumous meeting in his little reddish brick house, there is nothing
to prevent their assembly, in broad daylight, from any part of the
neighborhood. There was no presence, however, more spiritual than a
comely country girl to respond to our summons at the door, and nothing
but a tub of corn-meal disputed our passage inside. Directly I found
the house inhabited by living people, I began to be sorry that it was
not as empty as the Library and the street. Indeed, it is much better
with Petrarch's house at Arquà, where the grandeur of the past
is never molested by the small household joys and troubles of the
present. That house is vacant, and no eyes less tender and fond than
the poet's visitors may look down from its windows over the slope of
vines and olives which it crowns; and it seemed hard, here in Ferrara,
where the houses are so many and the people are so few, that Ariosto's
house could not be left to him. _Parva sed apta mihi_, he has
contentedly written upon the front; but I doubt if he finds it large
enough for another family, though his modern housekeeper reserves him
certain rooms for visitors. To gain these, you go up to the second
story--there are but two floors--and cross to the rear of the
building, where Ariosto's chamber opens out of an ante-room, and looks
down upon a pinched and faded bit of garden. [In this garden the poet
spent much of his time--chiefly in plucking up and transplanting the
unlucky shrubbery, which was never suffered to grow three months
in the same place,--such was the poet's rage for revision. It was
probably never a very large or splendid garden, for the reason that
Ariosto gave when reproached that he who knew so well how to describe
magnificent palaces should have built such a poor little house: "It
was easier to make verses than houses, and the fine palaces in his
poem cost him no money."] In this chamber they say the poet died. It
is oblong, and not large. I should think the windows and roof were
of the poet's time, and that every thing else had been restored; I am
quite sure the chairs and inkstand are kindly-meant inventions;
for the poet's burly great arm-chair and graceful inkstand are both
preserved in the Library. But the house is otherwise decent and
probable; and I do not question but it was in the hall where we
encountered the meal-tub that the poet kept a copy of his "_Furioso_,"
subject to the corrections and advice of his visitors.
The ancestral house of the Ariosti has been within a few years
restored out of all memory and semblance of itself; and my wish to see
the place in which the poet was born and spent his childhood resulted,
after infinite search, in finding a building faced newly with stucco
and newly French-windowed.
Our _portier_ said it was the work of the late English Vice-Consul,
who had bought the house. When I complained of the sacrilege, he said:
"Yes, it is true. But then, you must know, the Ariosti were not one of
the noble families of Ferrara."