The first three years after his father"s death were spent by Ariosto in the neighborhood of Reggio, and to this period of his life we may perhaps refer some of the love-affairs celebrated in his Latin poems. He held the Captaincy of Canossa, a small sinecure involving no important duties, since the Castle of Canossa was even in those days a ruin. In 1503 he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d"Este, with whom he remained until 1517. He was placed upon the list of the Cardinal"s extraordinary servants, to be employed in matters of confidence and delicacy, involving frequent journeys to all parts of Italy and ceremonial emba.s.sies. His pay seems to have been fixed at 240 _lire marchesane_, corresponding to about 1200 francs, charged upon the Archiepiscopal Chancery of Milan.[597] This salary, had it been regularly paid, would have suffered to maintain the poet in decent comfort; but he had considerable difficulty from time to time in realizing the sums due to him. Ippolito urged him to take orders, no doubt with a view of securing better emoluments from benefices that could only be conferred upon a member of the priesthood. But Ariosto refused to enter a state of life for which he felt no vocation.[598] The Cardinal Deacon of S. Lucia in Silice was one of those secular princes of the Church, addicted to worldly pleasures, profuse in personal expenditure, with more inclination for the camp and the hunting-field than for the duties of his station, who since the days of Sixtus IV. had played a prominent part in the society of the Italian Courts. He was of distinguished beauty; and his military courage, like that of the Cardinal Ippolito de" Medici, was displayed in the Hungarian campaign against the Turks. With regard to his character and temper, it may suffice to remind the reader how, in a fit of jealous pa.s.sion, he hired a.s.sa.s.sins to put out his natural brother Giulio"s eyes. That Ippolito d"Este did not share the prevailing enthusiasm of his age for literary culture, seems pretty clear; and he failed to discern the unique genius of the man whom he had chosen for his confidential agent. Ariosto complains that he was turned into a common courier and forced to spend his days and nights upon the road by the master upon whom, at the expense of truth and reason, he conferred an immortality of fame in his great poem. Yet it would not be fair to echo the commonplace invectives against the Cardinal for illiberality and ingrat.i.tude. Ariosto knew the nature of his patron when he entered his service, and Ippolito did not hire a student but an active man of business for his work. It was an arrangement of convenience on both sides, to which the poet would never have stooped had his private means sufficed, or had the conditions of Italian society offered any decent career for a gentleman outside the circle of the Court. Moreover, it was not until after their final rupture, caused by Ariosto"s refusal to undertake the Hungarian expedition in his master"s train, that the true greatness of the author of the _Furioso_ was revealed. How should a dissolute and ill-conditioned Cardinal have discerned that a dreamy poem in MS. on the madness of Orlando would live as long as the _aeneid_, or that the flattering lies invented by his courier would in after ages turn the fierce glare of criticism and celebrity upon the darkest corners of his own history? The old legend about his brutal reception of the _Orlando Furioso_ has been now in part disproved.[599] We know that he defrayed the expenses of its publication, and secured the right and profits of its sale to Ariosto.[600] There is even an entry in his memoranda of expenditure proving that he bought a copy for the sum of one _lira marchesana_.[601] While deploring the waste of Ariosto"s time and strength in the uncongenial service of this patron, we must acknowledge that his choice of Ippolito was a mistake for which he alone was responsible, and that the panegyrics showered on such a man are wholly inexcusable.[602] When all the circ.u.mstances of their connection are taken into account, there is nothing but the extreme irritation caused by incompatibility of temper, and divergence of aims and interests, to condone the poet"s private censure of the master whom publicly he loaded with praises.[603] The whole unhappy story ill.u.s.trates the real conditions of that Court-life, so glowingly described by Castiglione, which proved the ruin of Ta.s.so and the disgrace of Guarini. Could anything justify the brigandlike brutalities of Pietro Aretino, _il flagello de" Principi_, we might base his apology upon the dreary histories of these Italian poets, soured, impoverished, and broken because they had been forced to put their trust in princes. When there lay no choice between levying blackmail by menaces and coaxing crumbs by flatteries, it accorded better with the Italian ideal _virtu_ to fatten upon the former kind of infamy than to starve upon the latter.
The _Orlando Furioso_ was conceived and begun in the year 1505. It was sent to press in 1515. Giovanni Mazzocchi del Bondeno published it in April, 1516. A large portion of the poet"s life was subsequently spent in correcting and improving it. In 1518, having freed himself from Ippolito"s bondage, Ariosto entered the service of Duke Alfonso I. He was termed _cameriere_ or _famigliare_, and his stipend was fixed at eighty-four golden crowns per annum, with maintenance for three servants and two horses, paid in kind.[604] He occupied his own house in Ferrara; and the Duke, who recognized his great literary qualities and appreciated the new l.u.s.ter conferred upon his family by the publication of the _Furioso_, left him in the undisturbed possession of his leisure.[605] The next four years were probably the happiest of Ariosto"s life; for he had now at last secured independence and had entered upon the enjoyment of his fame. The Medici of Florence and Rome, and the ducal families of Urbino and Mantua, were pleased to number him among their intimate friends, and he received flattering acknowledgments of his poem from the most ill.u.s.trious men of Italy. The few journeys he made at the request of Alfonso carried him to Florence, the head-quarters of literary and artistic activity. At home the time he spared from the revision of the _Furioso_, was partly devoted to the love-affairs he carried on with jealous secrecy, and partly to the superintendence of the ducal theater. The criticism of Ariosto"s comedies must be reserved for another chapter. It is enough to remark here that their composition amused him from his boyhood to his latest years. So early as 1493 he had accompanied Ercole I. to Pavia in order to play before Lodovico Sforza, and in the same year he witnessed the famous representation of the _Menaechmi_ at Ferrara. Some of his earliest essays in literature were translations of Latin comedies, now unfortunately lost. They were intended for representation; and, as exercises in the playwright"s art, they strongly influenced his style.
His own _Ca.s.saria_ appeared for the first time at Ferrara in 1508; the _Suppositi_ followed in 1509, and was reproduced at the Vatican in 1519.
It took Leo"s fancy so much that he besought the author for another comedy. Ariosto, in compliance with this request, completed the _Negromante_, which he had already had in hand during the previous ten years. The _Lena_ was first represented at Ferrara in 1528, and the _Scolastica_ was left unfinished at the poet"s death. What part Ariosto took in the presentation of his comedies, is uncertain; but it is probable that he helped in their performance, besides directing the stage and reciting the prologue. He thus acquired a practical acquaintance with theatrical management, and it was by his advice, and on plans furnished by him, that Alfonso built the first permanent stage at Ferrara in 1532. On the last day of that year, not long after its erection, the theater was burned down. These dates are important; since they prove that Ariosto"s connection with the stage, as actor, playwright, and manager, was continuous throughout his lifetime.
Ariosto"s peaceful occupations at Ferrara were interrupted early in 1522 by what must be reckoned the strangest episode of his career. On February 7 in that year, he was nominated Ducal Commissary for the government of Garf.a.gnana, a wild upland district stretching under Monte Pellegrino almost across the Apennines from the Lucchese to the Modenese frontiers. We find that the salary allowed him by Alfonso had never been very regularly paid, and that in 1521 the Duke, straitened in means by his warfare with the Papacy, was compelled to suspend it altogether.[606] At the same period the Communes forming what is known as Garf.a.gnana (who had placed themselves beneath the Marquises of Ferrara in the first half of the fifteenth century, but had lately suffered from Florentine and Papal incursions) besought Alfonso to a.s.sert his suzerainty of their district and to take measures for securing its internal quiet. The emoluments of the Commissary amounted to about 930 _lire marchesane_, estimated at something like 2,300 francs of present value; and it was undoubtedly the pecuniary profits of the office which induced the Duke to offer it, and the poet to accept it.
We may think it strange that so acute a judge of men as Alfonso should have selected the author of the _Furioso_, a confirmed student, almost a recluse in his habits, and already broken in health, for the governorship of a district half-ruined by foreign raids and domestic feuds, which had become the haunt of brigands and the asylum of bandits from surrounding provinces. Yet we must remember that Ariosto had already given ample proof of his good sense and business-like qualities, not only in the administration of his own affairs, but in numerous emba.s.sies undertaken for the Cardinal and Duke, his masters. At that epoch of Italian history the name and fame of an ill.u.s.trious writer were themselves a power in politics: and it is said that during Ariosto"s first journey into Garf.a.gnana, he owed his liberation from the hands of brigands to the celebrity of the _Orlando Furioso_.[607] Alfonso knew, moreover, that the poet was well qualified for negotiating with princes; and what was of grave practical importance, he stood in excellent personal relations to the Medici, from whom as the rulers of Florence the Garf.a.gnana was menaced with invasion. These considerations are sufficient to explain Alfonso"s choice. Nothing but necessity would probably have induced Ariosto to quit Ferrara for the intolerable seclusion of those barbarous mountains; where it was his duty to issue edicts against brigands, to hunt outlaws, to punish murderers and robbers, to exact fines for rape and infamous offenses, to see that the hangman did his duty, and to sit in judgment daily upon suits that proved the savage immorality of the entire population. The hopelessness of the task might have been enough to break a sterner heart than Ariosto"s, and his loathing of his life at Castelnovo found vent in the most powerful of his satires. He managed to endure this uncongenial existence for three years, from February 20, 1522, till June, 1525, sustaining his spirits with correspondence and composition, and varying the monotony of his life by visits to Ferrara. It was during his Garf.a.gnana residence in all probability that he composed the _Cinque Canti_. The society of his dearly-loved son, Virginio--whose education he superintended and for whom he wrote the charming seventh Satire to Pietro Bembo--also served to diminish the dreariness of his exile from love, leisure, and the society of friends.
Virginio was Ariosto"s natural son by a woman of Reggio. He collected the Latin poems after his father"s death, and prepared the _Cinque Canti_ for Manuzio"s press in 1545. He also helped his uncle Gabriele to finish _La Scolastica_, and wrote a few brief recollections of his father. Ariosto had a second illegitimate son, named Giovanni Battista, who distinguished himself in a military career.
The last eight years of Ariosto"s life were spent in great tranquillity at Ferrara. Soon after his return from Garf.a.gnana he built his house in the Contrada Mirasol, and placed upon it the following characteristic inscription[608]:
Parva sed apta mihi sed nulli obnoxia sed non Sordida parta meo sed tamen aere domus.
About this time, too, he married the lady to whom for many years he had been tenderly attached.[609] She was the Florentine Alessandra Benucci, widow of t.i.to Strozzi, whom he first saw at Florence in the year 1513.
The marriage was kept strictly secret, probably because the poet did not choose to relinquish the income he derived from certain minor benefices.
Nor did it prove fruitful of offspring, for Ariosto left no legitimate heirs. His life of tranquil study was varied only by short journeys to Venice, Abano, and Mantua. In 1531 he was sent to negotiate certain matters for his master in the camp of the Marquis del Vasto at Correggio. On this occasion he received from Alfonso Davalos a pension of one hundred golden ducats, by a deed which sets forth in its preamble the duty of princes to recompense poets who immortalize the acts of heroes. This is the only instance of reward bestowed on Ariosto for his purely literary merits. The poet repaid his benefactor by magnificent eulogies inserted in the last edition of the _Furioso_.[610] Between the year 1525, when he left Garf.a.gnana, and 1532, when his poem issued from the press, he devoted himself with unceasing labor to its revision and improvement. The edition of 1516 consisted of forty cantos. That of 1532 contained forty-six, and the whole text had been subjected in the interval to minute alterations.[611] Not long after the publication of the revised edition Ariosto"s health gave way. His const.i.tution had never been robust, for he suffered habitually from a catarrh of the lungs which made his old life as Ippolito d"Este"s courier not only distasteful but dangerous.[612] Toward the close of 1532 this complaint took the form of a consumption, which ended his days on the sixth of June, 1533. Great pains have been bestowed by his biographers on proving that he died a good Catholic; nor is there any reason to suppose that he neglected the consolations of the Church in his last hours. He was by no means a man to break abruptly with tradition or to make an indecorous display of doubts that may have haunted him. Yet the best Latin verses he ever penned were a half-humorous copy of hendecasyllables for his own epitaph, which seem to prove that he applied Montaigne"s _peut-etre_ even to the grave.[613]
Of Ariosto"s personal habits and opinions we know unfortunately but little, beyond what may be gathered from the incomparably transparent self-revelation of his satires. His son, Virginio, who might have amply satisfied our curiosity, confined himself to the fewest and briefest details in the notes transcribed and published by Barotti. Some of these, however, are so characteristic that it may not be inopportune to translate them. With regard to his method of composition, Virginio writes: "He was never satisfied with his verses, but altered them again and again, so that he could not keep his lines in his memory, and consequently lost many of his compositions.... In horticulture he followed the same system as in composition, for he would not leave anything he planted for more than three months in one place; and if he sowed peaches or any kind of seed, he went so often to see if they were sprouting, that at last he broke the shoots. He had but small knowledge of herbs, and used to think that whatever grew near the things he had sown, were the plants themselves, and watched them diligently till his mistake was proved beyond all doubt. I remember once, when he had planted capers, he went every day to see them and was greatly delighted at their luxuriance. At last he discerned that they were but elders, and that the capers had not come up at all.... He was not much given to study, and cared to see but few books. Virgil gave him pleasure, and Tibullus for his diction; but he greatly commended Horace and Catullus, Propertius not much.... He ate fast and much, and made no distinction of food. So soon as he came home, if he found the bread set out, he would eat one piece walking, while the meats were being brought to table. When he saw them spread, he had water poured upon his hands and then began to eat whatever was nearest to him.... He was fond of turnips."
From the bare details of Ariosto"s biography it is satisfactory to turn to the living picture of the man himself revealed in his Satires. These compositions rank next to the _Orlando Furioso_ in the literary canon of his works, and have the highest value for the light they cast upon his temperament and mode of feeling. Though they are commonly called Satires, they rather deserve the name of Epistles; for while a satiric element gives distinct flavor to each of the seven poems, this is subordinated to personal and familiar topics of correspondence. We learn from them what the great artist of the golden age thought and felt about the times in which he lived; what moved his indignation or aroused his sympathy; how he strove to meet the troubles of his checkered life; and where, amid the carnival of that mad century, he laid his finger upon hidden social maladies. Reading them, we come to know the man himself, and are better able to understand how, while Italy was distracted with wars and trampled on by foreign armies, he could withdraw himself from the tumult, and spend his years in polishing the stanzas of _Orlando_.
The Satires do not reveal a hero or a sage, a poet pa.s.sionate like Dante with the sense of wrong, or like Petrarch aspiring after an impossible ideal. It is rather the type of Boccaccio"s character, refined and purged of sensuality, with delicate touches of irony and a more fastidious taste, that meets us in this portrait of Ariosto painted by himself. His mental vision is more lucid, his judgment more acute, his philosophy less indulgent, and his ideal of art more exacting; yet he, too, might be nicknamed _Lodovico della Tranquillita_. With his head in Philiroe"s lap beside a limpid rivulet, he basks away the summer hours, and cares not whether French or German get the upper hand in Italy.[614]
Does it greatly signify, he asks Ercole Strozzi in one of his Latin poems, whether we serve a French or an Italian tyrant? Servitude is the same, if the despot be a barbarian only in manners, like our princelings, or in name too, like these foreigners.[615]
Left alone to study and to polish verses, Ariosto is content. He is content to flatter and confer immortality on the master he despises. He is content to rest in one place, turning his maps over when he fain would take a journey into foreign lands. Only let him be, and give him enough to live upon, and he will trouble no man, dispute no pretender"s claims, raise no inconvenient questions of right and wrong, inflame the world with no far-reaching thoughts, but gild the refined gold of his purest phrases and paint the lilies of his loveliest thoughts in placid ease. Italy has grown old, and Ariosto is the genius of a tired, world-weary, disillusioned age. What is there worth a struggle? At the same time he preserves his independence as a private gentleman. He pa.s.ses free judgment upon society; and the patron he has praised officially in his epic, receives hard justice in his Satires. He is frank and honest, free from hypocrisy and guile, genial and loyal toward his friends, upright in his dealings and manly in his instincts.
We respect his candor, his contempt for worldly honors, and his love of liberty. We admire his intellectual sagacity, his deep and wise philosophy of life, the knowledge of the world so easily communicated, the irony so pungent yet so free from bitterness, which gives piquancy to these familiar discourses. Still both respect and admiration are tempered with some regret that the greatest poet of the sixteenth century should have been so easy-going. Such is the Ariosto revealed to us by the Satires--not a n.o.ble or sublime being: by no means the man to save the State if safety had been possible. Throughout the tragedy of Italy"s last years of freedom he moves, an essentially comic character, only redeemed by genius and by _Weltweisheit_ from the ridicule attaching to a man whose aims are commonplace, and whose complaints against the world are petty. He is not servile enough to accept the humiliations of a courtier"s lot without a murmur. He is not proud enough to break his chains and live in haughty isolation. Hence in these incomparable records of his private opinion, we find him at one moment painting the discomforts of his position with a _navete_ that provokes our laughter, at another a.n.a.lyzing the vices of society with luminous ac.u.men, then shrugging his shoulders and summoning philosophy to his aid with a final cry of _Pazienza!_
The motive of the first Epistle is a proposed journey to Rome.[616] The second enumerates the reasons why the poet will not accompany Ippolito d"Este to Hungary. The subject of the third is the choice of a wife.
The fourth discusses the vanity of honors and wealth in comparison with a contented mind. The fifth describes the poet"s isolation in the Garf.a.gnana, and contains a confession of his love. In the sixth he explains why he does not wish to go to Rome and seek advancement from Clement VII. The seventh is devoted to the education of youth in the humanities, and contains a retrospect of his own early life. The satire of the first is directed against the ambition and avarice of priests, the pride of Roman prelates, and the nepotism of the Popes. The pa.s.sage describing an ecclesiastic"s levee is justly famous for its humor; and the diatribe on Papal vices for its force. The second shows how the dependents upon princes are forced to flatter, and how they exchange their freedom for the empty honor of sitting near great men at table.
Ariosto takes occasion to describe the character of Ippolito d"Este, who cared for his hawks and hounds more than for the Muses, and who paid his body-servants better than the poet of Orlando.[617] "I owe you nothing, Phoebus, nor you, holy college of the Muses! From you I never got enough to buy myself a cloak. "Indeed? your lord has given you...." More than the price of several cloaks, I grant. But not for your sake, Muses, I am certain. He has told me, and I do not mind repeating it, that my verses are just worth the price of their waste paper. He will not give a penny for my praises, but pays me for courier"s service. His followers in the barge or villa, his _valet-de-chambre_ and butler, his lackeys who out.w.a.tch the night, get paid. But when I set his name with honor in my verse, he tells me I have whiled my time away in ease and pleasure--I had pleased him better by attendance on his person. If you remind me that I owe to him a third of the Chancery dues at Milan, I answer that he gave me this because I ply both spur and whip, change beasts and guides, and hurry over hills and precipices, risking my life upon his business."
The third Epistle is a masterpiece of sound counsel and ripe knowledge of the world. Better rules could not be given about the precautions to be taken in selecting a wife, the qualities a man should seek in her, and the conduct he should use toward her after marriage. The satire consists in that poor opinion of female honesty which the author of the _Furioso_ had conceived, not without much experience of women, and after mature reflection upon social inst.i.tutions. It is not envenomed like the invectives of the _Corbaccio_, or exaggerated like the abuse in Alberti"s dialogues. Leaning back in his arm-chair with an amused and quiet smile, the indulgent satirist enunciates truths that are biting only because they condense the wisdom of an observant lifetime. He never ceases to be kindly; and we feel, while listening to him, that his epigrams are double-edged. The poet who has learned thus much of women, gives the measure of his limited capacity for n.o.ble feeling; for while he paints them as he finds them, he leaves an impression of his own emotional ba.n.a.lity. After making due allowance for this defect in Ariosto"s point of view, we may rank the third Epistle among the ripest products of his intellect. The fourth resumes the theme of Court-life and place-hunting. "You ask me, friend Annibale, how I fare with Duke Alfonso, and whether I find his service lighter than the Cardinal"s. To tell the truth, I do not like one burden better than the other; and were I rich enough, I certainly would be no man"s servant. But I was not born an only son, and Mercury was never generous to my race. So I am forced to live at a patron"s charge, and it is better to owe my maintenance to the Duke than to beg bread from door to door. I know that most people think it a grand thing to be a courtier, but I count Court-life as mere slavery. A nightingale is ill at ease in a cage, and a swallow dies after a day"s imprisonment. If a man wants to be decorated with the spurs or the red hat, let him serve kings or popes. For my part, I care for neither; a turnip in my own house tastes sweeter to me than a banquet in a master"s.[618] I would rather stretch my lazy limbs in my armchair than be able to boast that I had traveled over half the globe.
I have seen Tuscany, Lombardy, Romagna, the Apennines and Alps, the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. That is enough for me. The rest of the world I can visit at my leisure with Ptolemy for guide. The Duke"s service has this advantage, that it does not interrupt my studies, or take me far from Ferrara, where my heart is always. I think I hear you laughing at this point, and saying that neither love of study nor of country, but a woman ties me to my home. Well: I will confess it frankly. But suppose I had gone to Rome to fish for benefices, says some one, I should certainly have netted more than one, especially as I was Leo"s friend before his merits or his luck raised him to the highest earthly station. I knew him at Urbino when he cheered his exile with Castiglione and Bembo; and afterwards when he returned to Florence, he bade me count upon him like a brother. All this is true; but listen to a fable I will tell you.[619] In time of drought, when there was no water to be had in all the country, a shepherd found a scanty spring. He drank of it first, and next his wife, and then his children, and afterwards his servants and his cattle. Last of all there came a magpie he had petted in old days; but the bird saw that she had no right to drink of the fountain, for she was neither wife nor child nor hind, nor could she bring wealth to the household.[620] It is just the same with me. Leo has all the Medici, and all his friends in exile, who risked their lives and fortunes for him, and all the priests who made him pope, to recompense.
What is there left for me? It is true that he has not forgotten me. When I went to Rome and kissed his foot, he bent down from the holy seat, and took my hand and saluted me on both cheeks. Besides, he made me free of half the stamp-dues I was bound to pay; and then, breast-full of hope but soaked with rain and smirched with mud, I went and had my supper at the Ram![621] But supposing the Pope kept all his promises and put as many miters on my head as Michelangelo"s Jonah sees beneath him in the Sistine Chapel, what would this profit me? No amount of wealth can satisfy desire. Honors and riches do not bring tranquillity of mind.
True honor is, to be esteemed an honest man, and to be this in good earnest; for if you are not really one, you will be detected. What is the advantage of wearing fine clothes and being bowed to in the market-place, if people point you out behind your back as thief and traitor? There are dignities which are notorious disgraces; and the richer and greater a man is who has gained his rank dishonorably, the more he calls attention to his shame."
Quante collane, quante cappe nove Per dignita si comprano, che sono Pubblici vituperi in Roma e altrove!
In the sixth Epistle written in the Garf.a.gnana, Ariosto still further develops the same theme. His friend, Pistofilo, had advised him to go to Rome and seek preferment from Clement VII. "What would be the use?" he argues. "I have as much of worldly honor as I care for; and if Leo did not find it in his power to help me, I cannot expect anything from the other Medici. Nay, my friend, bait your hook with more enticing dainties: remind me of Bembo, Sadoleto, Giovio, Vida, Molza, Tibaldeo; in whose company I might wander over the seven hills: or speak to me about the libraries of Rome. Not even these allurements would move me; for if I had to live away from Ferrara, I should not be happy in the lap of Jove. Existence is only made endurable by occasional visits to the town I love; and if the Duke wishes to fulfill my desires, he must recall me to himself and make me stationary at Ferrara. Why do I cling so to that place, you ask me? I would as lief tell you as confess my worst crimes to a friar. I am forty-nine years of age, and too old to be the slave of love." The conclusion of the sixth Epistle makes it clear that his residence at Castelnovo was irksome to the poet because it forced him to be absent from the woman he loved. But the fifth is even more explicit. "This day completes the first year of my exile among these barbarous mountains, dead to the Muses, divided by snows, fells, forests, rivers, from the mistress of my soul![622] I am nearly fifty, and yet love rules me like a beardless boy. Well: this weakness is at least pardonable. I do not commit murder; I do not smite or stab, or vex my neighbors. I am not consumed with avarice, ambition, prodigality, or monstrous l.u.s.t. But in this doleful place my heart fails me. I cannot write poetry as I used to do at Reggio when life was young. Imprisoned between the naked heights of Pania and Pellegrino"s precipices, the wild steeps of these woody Apennines inclose me in a living grave. Here in the castle, or out there in the open air, my ears are deafened with continual law-suits, accusations, brawls. Theft, murder, hatred, vengeance, anger, furnish me with occupation day and night. My time is spent in threatening, punishing, persuading, or acquitting. I write dispatches daily to the Duke for counsel or for aid against the bandits that encompa.s.s me. The whole province is disorganized with brigandage, and its eighty-three villages are in a state of chronic discord. Is it likely then that Phoebus, when I call him, will quit Delphi for this den? You ask me why I left my mistress and my studies for so dolorous a cave of care. I was never greedy of money, and my stipend at Ferrara satisfied me, until the war stopped it altogether, as well as my profits from the Chancery at Milan. When I asked the Duke for help, it so happened that the Garf.a.gnana wanted a Governor, and he sent me here with more regard for my necessities than for the needs of the people under my care. I am grateful to him for his good will; but though his gift is costly, it is not to my mind. So I am like the c.o.c.k who found a jewel on his dungheap, or like the Venetian who had a fine horse given him and could not ride it."
The satirical pa.s.sages in this Epistle can be separated from its autobiography, and furnish striking specimens of Ariosto"s style. In order to show how ill the world judges of the faults and follies of great men, he draws a series of portraits with a few but telling touches. Though furnished with fict.i.tious names, they suit the persons of the time to a nicety. This, for example, is Francesco Guicciardini, as Pitti represented him:
Ermilian s del denajo ardente Come di Alessio il Gianfa, e che lo brama Ogn"ora, in ogni loco, da ogni gente, Ne amico ne fratel ne se stesso ama; Uomo d"industria, uomo di grande ingegno, Di gran governo e gran valor si chiama.
And here, without doubt, is the elder Lorenzo de" Medici[623]:
Laurin si fa della sua patria capo, Ed in privato il pubblico converte; Tre ne confina, a sei ne taglia il capo; Comincia volpe, indi con forze aperte Esce leon, poi c"ha "l popol sedutto Con licenze, con doni e con offerte.
Gl"iniqui alzando, e deprimendo in lutto Gli buoni, acquista t.i.tolo di saggio, Di furti, stupri e d"omicidi brutto.
Autobiography and satire are mingled in the same unequal proportions in the seventh Epistle, which is perhaps the most interesting poem of the series. "Bembo," so begins the letter, "I want my son Virginio to be well taught in the arts that elevate a man. You possess them all: I therefore ask you to recommend me a good Greek tutor at Venice or Padua, in whose house the youth may live and study. The Greek must be learned, but also of sound principles, for erudition without morality is worse than worthless. Unhappily, in these days it is difficult to find a teacher of this sort. Few humanists are free from the most infamous of vices, and intellectual vanity makes most of them skeptics also. Why is it that learning and infidelity go hand in hand? Why do our scholars Latinize their names of baptism, changing Peter into Pierius, and John into Ja.n.u.s, or Jovia.n.u.s? Plato was right when he expelled such poets from his State. Little have they in common with Phoebus and Amphion who taught civil life to barbarous races. For myself, it stings me to the quick when men of my own profession are proved thus vain and vicious.
Find, then, an honest tutor to instruct Virginio in Greek. I have already taught him Latin; but the difficulties of my early manhood deprived me of Greek learning. My father drove me at the spear"s point into legal studies. I wasted five years in that trifling, and it was not till I was twenty that I found a teacher in Gregorio da Spoleto. He began by grounding me in Latin; but before we had advanced to Greek, the good man was summoned to Milan. His pupil, Francesco Sforza, went with Il Moro, a prisoner, into France. Gregorio followed him, and died there.
Then my father died and left me the charge of my younger brothers and sisters. I had to neglect study and become a strict economist. Next my dear relative Pandolfo Ariosto, the best and ablest of our house, died; and, as if these losses were not enough, I found myself beneath the yoke of Ippolito d"Este. All through the reign of Julius II. and for seven years of Leo"s pontificate he kept me on the move from place to place, and made me courier instead of poet. Small chance had I of learning Greek or Hebrew on those mountain roads."
These abstracts of Ariosto"s so-called Satires will not be reckoned superfluous when we consider the clear light they cast upon his personal character and philosophy. The note of sincerity throughout is unmistakable. No one can read the pure and simple language of the poet without feeling that his mind was as transparent as his style, his character as ingenuous as his diction was perspicuous. When he tells us, for example, that he does not care for honors, that he prefers his study to the halls of princes, and that a turnip in his own house tastes better than the pheasants of a ducal table, we believe him. His confession of unseasonable love, and his acknowledgment that he has none of the qualities of judge or ruler, are a security for equal frankness when he professes himself free from avarice and the common vices of his age. His satire upon women, his picture of the Roman prelates, his portraits of great men, and his condemnation of the humanists are convincing by their very moderation. Like Horace, he plays about the heart instead of wielding the whip of Lucilius. This parsimony of expression adds weight to his censure, and renders these epistles more decisive than the invectives in which contemporary authors indulged. We doubt the calumnies of Poggio and Filelfo until we read the well-considered pa.s.sage of the seventh Epistle, which includes them all.[624] In like manner the last lines of the fourth Epistle confirm the Diaries of Burchard and Infessura, while the first contains an epitome of all that could be said of Alexander"s nepotism. These familiar poems have, therefore, a singular value for the ill.u.s.tration of the Italian Renaissance in general no less than for that of Ariosto"s own life. Furthermore, they are unique in the annals of Italian literature. The _terza rima_ of Dante"s vision has here become a vehicle for poetry separated by the narrowest interval from prose. It no longer lends itself to parody, as in the _Beoni_ of Lorenzo de" Medici.
It is not contaminated by the foul frivolities of the Bernesque _Capitoli_. It takes with accuracy the impress of the writer"s common thought and feeling. The meter designed to express a sublime belief, adapts itself to the discursive utterance of a man of sense and culture in a disillusioned age; and thus we might use the varying fortunes of _terza rima_ to symbolize the pa.s.sage from the _trecento_ to the _cinque cento_, from Dante to Ariosto, from faith and inspiration to art and reflection.
Ariosto"s minor poems, with but one or two exceptions, have direct reference to the circ.u.mstances of his life. They consist of Elegies, Capitoli, and an Eclogue composed in _terza rima_, with Canzoni, Sonnets, and Madrigals of the type made obligatory by Petrarch. The poet of the _Orlando_ was not great in lyric verse. These lesser compositions show his mastery of simple and perspicuous style; but the specific qualities of his best work, its color and imagery and pointed humor, are absent. The language is sometimes pedestrian in directness, sometimes enc.u.mbered with conceits that antic.i.p.ate the taste of the seventeenth century.[625] Where it is plainest, we lack the seasoning of epigram and ill.u.s.tration which enlivens the Satires; and though the sincere feeling and Ovidian fluency of the more ambitious lyrics render them delightful reading, we acknowledge that a wider channel of description or narrative or reflection was needed for the full tide of the poet"s eloquence. The purely subjective style was hardly suited to his genius.
Only three _Canzoni_ are admitted into the canon of Ariosto"s works. The first relates the origin of his love for Alessandra Benucci, wife of t.i.to Strozzi, whom he admired as wife and married as widow. It was on S.
John"s Day in the year 1513 that he saw her at Florence among the gay crowd of the midsummer festival. She was dressed in black silk embroidered with two vines, her golden hair twisted into heavy braids, and her forehead overshadowed with a jeweled laurel-wreath. The brightness of the scene was blotted out for the poet, and swallowed in the intense l.u.s.ter of her beauty:
D"altro ch"io vidi, tenni Poco ricordo, e poco me ne cale: Sol mi rest immortale Memoria, ch"io non vidi in tutta quella Bella citta, di voi cosa piu bella.
How much he admired Florence, he tells us in the fourteenth elegy, where this famous compliment occurs:
Se dentro un mur, sotto un medesmo nome Fosser raccolti i tuoi palazzi sparsi, Non ti sarian da pareggiar due Rome.
The second _Canzone_ is supposed to be spoken by the soul of Giuliano de" Medici, Duke of Nemours, to his widow, Filiberta of Savoy. Elevation of conception raises the language of this poem to occasional sublimity, as in the pa.s.sage where he speaks of immortality:
Di me t"incresca, ma non altrimente Che, s"io vivessi ancor, t"incresceria D"una part.i.ta mia Che tu avessi a seguir fra pochi giorni: E se qualche e qualch"anno anco soggiorni Col tuo mortale a patir caldo e verno, Lo dei stimar per un momento breve, Verso quel altro, che mai non riceve Ne termine ne fin, viver eterno.
The undulation of rhythm obeying the thought renders these lines in a high sense musical.
Some of the Elegies have been already used in ill.u.s.tration of other poems. There remain a group apart, which seem to have been directly modeled upon Ovid. Of these the sixth, describing a night of love, and the seventh, when the lover dares not enter his lady"s door in moonlight lest he should be seen, are among the finest. The ninth, upon fidelity in love, contains these n.o.ble lines:
La fede mai non debbe esser corrotta, O data a un sol o data ancor a cento, Data in palese o data in una grotta.
Per la vil plebe e fatto il giuramento; Ma tra gli spirti piu elevati sono Le semplici promesse un sagramento.
The second is written on the famous black pen fringed with gold, which Ariosto adopted for his device and wore embroidered on his clothes. He declines to explain the meaning of this bearing; but it is commonly believed to have referred in some way to his love for Alessandra Strozzi. Baruffaldi conjectures that her black dress and golden hair suggested the two colors. But since this elegy threatens curious inquirers with Actaeon"s fate, we may leave his device to the obscurity he sought. Secrecy in respect to the great pa.s.sion of his life was jealously maintained by Ariosto. His ink-stand at Ferrara still bears a Cupid with one finger on his lip, as though to bid posterity observe the reticence adopted by the poet in his lifetime.
The Madrigals and Sonnets do not add much to our conception of Ariosto"s genius. It has been well remarked that while his Latin love-poems echo the style of Horace, these are imitations of Petrarch"s manner.[626] In the former he celebrates the facile attractions of Lydia and Megilla, or confesses that he is inconstant in every thing except in always varying his loves.[627] In the latter he professes to admire a beautiful soul and eloquent lips more than physical charms, praises the spiritual excellences of his mistress, and writes complimentary sonnets on her golden hair.[628] In neither case is there any insincerity. Ariosto never pretended to be a platonic lover, nor did he credit women with great n.o.bility of nature. Yet on the other hand it is certain that he was no less tenderly than pa.s.sionately attached to Alessandra; and this serious love, of which the Sonnets are perhaps the record, triumphed over the volatility of his earlier affections.
It is enough in this chapter to have dealt with Ariosto"s life and minor writings. The _Orlando Furioso_, considered both as the masterpiece of his genius and also as the representative poem of the Italian Renaissance, must form the subject of a separate study.
FOOTNOTES:
[597] See _Satire_, i. 100-102; ii. 109-111.
[598] See _Satire_, i. 113-123, for his reasons. He seems chiefly to have dreaded the loss of personal liberty, if he took orders.
[599] Ippolito is said to have asked the poet: "Dove avete trovato, messer Lodovico, tante corbellerie?" That he did in effect say something of the kind is proved by _Satire_, ii. 94-99.
[600] Campori, _Notizie per la Vita di L. Ariosto_ (Modena, Vincenzi, 1871), pp. 55-58.
[601] _Ibid._ p. 58.
[602] He penned the following couplet in 1503, when it is to be hoped he had yet not learned to know his master"s real qualities: