Complete Poetical Works of Ludovico Ariosto Read online

  These are worked up with singular powers of diction, set off by great apparent facility of style, and are no less remarkable for music of rythm, richness of rhyme, and a happy boldness of expression. In this respect there is some analogy, though no likeness, between Berni and Dryden; and the real merits of both are therefore imperfectly estimated by foreigners, and even by the generality of their own countrymen. Many Italians, indeed, consider Berni as a mere buffoon, which the English reader will think less extraordinary, when he hears (as Lord Glenbervie4 observes, I think, in his notes to Ricciardetto,) that such an opinion has been entertained in Italy, even with regard to Ariosto.

  4 I state this on Lord Glenbervie’s sole authority, which is, however, a weighty one. Such an opinion was probably current when he first knew Italy; but I should imagine it could hardly be entertained at present.

  Better reasons may seem to palliate such a mistake of the real poetical character of Berni, than of that of Ariosto. Some of these are of a general description, and others of a nature more peculiarly applicable to his case. We may observe, as to the first, that whoever indulges his wit, in whatever species of composition, is usually misjudged; for wit, in the sight of the world, overlays all the other qualities of an author, in whatever act or pursuit he may be engaged. Thus a great English painter, single in his walk, and distinguished by his various powers, is looked upon by the multitude as a mere caricaturist, even where caricature is intended by him only as a foil to beauty; and orators have for the same reason sunk into jesters in the opinion of the mob, though they may have been equally distinguished for argumentative discussion or pathetic effect.

  But other and more particular circumstances have tended to fix this character upon Berni. Few men have a delicate perception of familiar expression, and still fewer yet have a nice feeling of the delicacies of prosody,

  Untwisting all the links that tie

  The secret chain of harmony.

  Now it is for the bold, however dexterous, use of language, and rythm, that Berni is principally distinguished; and hence, as the means through which he works are imperfectly understood by the majority of his readers, his object has been frequently mistaken. I should cite, in illustration of this, his description of a storm at sea, which has been often deemed burlesque, but in which the poet would be more justly considered as working a fine effect by unwonted means.

  Let us try this question by the rules of analogy. Men in all countries resemble one another in the main, and where they are not guided by a natural taste and judgment, lean upon some rule, which is to direct them as an infallible guide. Depending upon this, they seldom consider that it may be narrow, or of insufficient support. Thus an Englishman who has learned to think about verse, by the help of a few simple precepts5, which he believes to be absolute, is taught to look upon the double rhyme as suited only to burlesque poetry. Yet Drummond’s

  “Methought desponding nightingales did borrow,

  Plaint of my plaint, and sorrow of my sorrow;”

  and the description of him, who

  “Saw with wonder,

  Vast magazines of ice and piles of thunder,”6

  might be cited to prove what widely different effects are produced by the same weapon, as it s differently wielded. But, impressed with the notions of the laws of verse which I have specified, that is, not knowing that almost all such metrical rules as have been alluded to, are merely conditional, some Italians7, and certainly, almost all English readers of Italian poetry, suppose the triple rhyme, (la rima sdrucciola] or dactyl, as it is called by us, to be as exclusively applied to ludicrous composition in Italian, as the double rhyme is imagined to be in English; and this is perhaps one cause why some of Berni’s stanzas, which abound in triple rhymes, have been so utterly misconceived in England. Yet Berni and Ariosto have frequently employed the versi sdruccioli where they have aimed at a bold or pathetic effect, though they have also undoubtedly been used by them to heighten that of comic or satirical composition. Caro the cotemporary of Berni is even profuse of triple rhymes in his translation of the AEneid; lyric poets, after the example of Chiabrera, often insert them in the sublimest of their odes; and one, who lately died full of years, managed the rime sdrucciole so easily, as to compose whole poems with them, and with such dignity, both of versification and expression, as (in the opinion of a distinguished Italian friend already cited) to vie with Tasso and Petrarch.

  5 For example, there is no rule deemed more absolute, and yet there is none which admits more exceptions than the maxim forbidding a line of ten monosyllables. For monosyllables, in French and English, are often such only to the eye, such words being frequently, in both languages, melted into each other. Hence many good English verses consist of ten words, as that of Dryden, which will be in the recollection of every body,

  “Arms and the man I sing, &c.”

  and the French cite as beautiful a line of Racine, which is composed of twelve,

  6 I quote from memory.

  7 Thus Goldoni in one of his comedies introduces a man improvising in triple rhymes for the sake of producing a ludicrous effect. Goldoui, however, it must be confessed, is no authority in questions of language or of versification.

  Now let a man keep such doctrines in mind; let him come to the consideration of Berni’s storm with a memory imbued with the sights and sounds seen and heard in one; let him consider all circumstances of metre, not absolutely, but conditionally; that is, in their relation to each other and the thing described, and he will then, I believe, enter into the real spirit in which the poet executed this description, and contemplate him with very different eyes from those with which he viewed him before.

  Another cause of misconception, to which I have already alluded, has probably more misled the mob of readers of Italian poetry, natives as well as foreigners. I mean the language of Berni; and as to this, certainly few very few, are capable of appreciating his skill, or even of making out his track. There is indeed, I believe, no poet of any country, who has attempted so difficult a flight; a flight of unwearied wing, struck out with courage, and maintained only by the most incessant exertion and care.

  Traces of these are seen in what may be called the charts on which he has pricked out his course, and which, I understand, witness as much to his diligence, as Ariosto’s attest the care with which he accomplished his most extraordinary voyage. The documents to which I allude, are the original MSS. of the Innamorato, preserved at Brescia. As I was ignorant of the existence of these, during two residences which I made in Italy, I can only speak of them on the testimony of others; but an Italian critic, whom I have often quoted, and from whose authority upon such points I would almost say there was no appeal, once assured me these are as much blotted as those of Ariosto at Ferrara; and that Berni seems to have usually clothed his thoughts in ornate language at first, which he rejected on after-consideration, simplifying, but at the same time improving, his diction, as he proceeded, till he arrived at that exquisite happiness of expression, that curiosa felicitas, which makes his principal charm. It is hence that he is the most untranslatable of authors; since in copying him, it is not only a question of imitating colours, but the fine and more elaborate touches of a peculiar pencil.

  While, however, it is clear that the versification and diction make the great charms of the Innamorato) these beauties should not throw his other excellencies into shade; and the openings of the different cantos, which he has engrafted on the original work of Boiardo, sometimes original, and sometimes imitated from the older poets, are not greatly inferior to those which Ariosto has prefixed to the several cantos of the Furioso, in imitation of him; no, not even in the higher claims of poetical merit.

  These sometimes consist of moral reflections, arising out of the narrative; and the following may remind the reader of one of those little gems scattered through the plays of Shakspeare:

  Who steals a bugle-horn, a ring, a steed,

  Or such like worthless thing, has some discretion.

  ’T
is petty larceny. Not such his deed

  Who robs us of our fame, our best possession;

  And he who takes our labour’s worthiest meed,

  May well be deemed a felon by profession;

  Who so much more our hate and scourge de — serves,

  As from the rule of right he wider swerves.

  Sometimes indulging in a declamation against vices or follies, he makes his satire more poignant by allusions to some prevalent practice of the day: thus, in a sally against avarice, he attacks those who masqued it under the disguise of hypocrisy in the following stanza:

  This other, under show of an adviser

  And practiser of what is strict and right;

  But being in effect a rogue and miser,

  Cloisters a dozen daughters out of sight:

  And fain would have the pretty creatures wiser

  Than their frail sisters; but mistakes them quite;

  For they are like the rest, and set the group

  Of monks, and priests, and abbots, cock-a-hoop.

  The following extract, illustrating a philosophical dogma of his age, taken from the opening of the forty-sixth canto, is of another description, and may serve as a specimen of the variety of his vein, and the odd ingenuity with which he winds in and out of his argument; sometimes bearing up for his harbour when in the middle of a digression; and then, when he seems to feel himself sure of a retreat, indulging in a new sally, in which he however never entirely loses sight of his port.

  1.

  He who the name of little world applied

  To man, in this approved his subtle wit:

  Since, save it is not round, all things beside

  Exactly with this happy symbol fit;

  And I may say that long and deep, and wide

  And middling, good and bad, are found in it.

  Here too, the various elements combined

  Are dominant; snow, rain, and mist and wind.

  2.

  Now clear, now overcast. ’Tis there its land

  Will yield no fruit; here bears a rich supply:

  As the mixt soil is marie, or barren sand;

  And haply here too moist, or there too dry.

  Here foaming hoarse, and there with murmur bland,

  Streams glide, or torrents tumble from on high.

  Such of man’s appetites convey the notion:

  Since these are infinite, and still in motion.

  3.

  Two solid dikes the invading streams repel,

  The one is Reason, and the other Shame.

  The torrents, if above their banks they swell,

  Wit and discretion are too weak to tame.

  The crystal waters, which so smoothly well,

  Are appetites of things, devoid of blame.

  Those winds, and rains, and snows, and night, and day,

  Ye learned clerks, divine them as ye may.

  4.

  Among these elements, misfortune wills

  Our nature should have most of earth: for she,

  Moved by what influence heaven or sun instils,

  Is subject to their power; nor less are we.

  In her, this star or that, in barren hills

  Produces mines in rich variety:

  And those who human nature wisely scan

  May this discern peculiarly in man.

  5.

  Who would believe that various minerals grew,

  And many metals, in our rugged mind;

  From gold to nitre? Yet the thing is true;

  But, out, alas! the rub is how to find

  This ore. Some letters and some wealth pursue,

  Some fancy steeds, some dream, at ease reclined;

  These song delights, and those the cittern’s sound,

  Such are the mines which in our world abound.

  6.

  As these are worthier, more or less, so they

  Abound with lead or gold; and practised wight,

  The various soil accustomed to survey,

  Is fitted best to find the substance bright.

  And such in our Apulia is the way

  They heal those suffering from the spider’s bite;

  Who strange vagaries play, like men possessed;

  Tarantulated8, as ’tis there express’d.

  7.

  For this, ’tis needful, touching sharp or flat,

  To seek a sound which may the patients please;

  Who, when they find the merry music pat,

  Dance till they sweat away the foul disease.

  And thus who should allure this man or that,

  And still with various offer tempt and tease,

  I wot, in little time, would ascertain

  And sound each different mortal’s mine and vein.

  8 The Tarantula is now known to be harmless. The cause of its supposed mischievous effects, and the efficacy of the mode of curing them are perhaps easily explained. People are in all countries (though they are imagined to be peculiarly so in England) exposed to attacks of melancholy, which arise out of some physical cause, whether indigestion, or other bodily complaint. The doctors of Calabria attributed this to the sting of the tarantula, which is assuredly not more extravagant than a popular English medical author’s ascribing jaundice to the bite of a mad dog. The patient, delighted to find a cause for his complaint, was easily, by leading questions, brought to recollect that he had, at some time or other, felt a prick, which probably proceeded from the sting of a tarantula. Dancing was the remedy prescribed; and this, as exciting the animal spirits, fee. may very well have operated a cure of the real disease. The patients were to be played to, as Berni states, till a tune was struck which pleased their fancy, and animated them to exertion. The Tarantella, an air supposed to be particularly stimulating in such a case, is still a popular dance in the south of Italy. Modern philosophers have found out that the tarantula has no venom.

  8.

  ‘Twos so Brunello with Rogero wrought,

  Who offered him the armour and the steed.

  Thus by the cunning Greek his aid was bought,

  Who laid fair Ilion smoking on the mead.

  Which was of yore in clearer numbers taught;

  Nor shall I now repeat upon my reed,

  Who from the furrow let my plough-share stray,

  Unheeding how the moments glide away.

  9.

  As the first pilot by the shore did creep,

  Who launched his boat upon the billows dark,

  And where the liquid ocean was least deep,

  And without sails impelled his humble barque;

  But seaward next, where foaming waters leap,

  By little and by little steered his ark,

  With nothing but the wind and stars to guide,

  And round about him glorious wonders spied.

  10.

  Thus I, who still have sung a humble strain,

  And kept my little barque within its bounds,

  Now find it fit to launch into the main,

  And sing the fearful warfare, which resounds

  Where Africa pours out her swarthy train,

  And the wide world with mustered troops abounds;

  And, fanning fire and forge, each land and nation

  Sends forth the dreadful note of preparation.

  THE next extract I shall give, though it commences with his favourite figure of the barque, will serve as a specimen of a different style. It forms the opening of the second book. The two first lines the reader will trace to Dante, and will find in the remainder a translation of the Æneadum Genetrix of Lucretius.

  1.

  Launched on a deeper sea, my pinnace, rear

  Thy sail, prepared to plough the billows dark;

  And you, ye lucid stars, by whom I steer

  My feeble vessel to its destined mark,

  Shine forth upon her course benign and clear,

  And beam propitious on the daring barque

  About to stem an ocean so profound:

>   While I your praises and your works resound.

  2.

  O, holy mother of AEneas! O,

  Daughter of Jove! thou bliss of gods above

  And men beneath; VENUS, who makest grow

  Green herb and plant, and fillest all with love;

  Thou creatures that would else be cold and slow,

  Dost with thy sovereign instinct warm and move,

  Thou dost all jarring things in peace unite

  The world’s eternal spirit, life and light.

  3.

  At thine appearance storm and rain have ceased,

  And zephyr has unlocked the genial ground;

  Leap the wild herds; ’tis wanton nature’s feast,

  And the green woods with singing birds resound;

  While by strange pleasure stung, the savage beast

  Lives but for love; what time their greenwood round