Charles the Fifth, who was born at Ghent. ↩
The reader will recollect that Columbus expected to reach the East Indies by steering due west, and that America was long considered as the western extremity of the East Indies. ↩
The names of Prospero Colonna and the great Pescara are of too frequent occurrence in the history of Charles the Fifth to require a comment. For the youth of Vasto or Guasto, as he is usually called by tramontanes, I do not know how or when he deserved the praise ascribed to him in the succeeding stanza, though he certainly served with much distinction in those Italian wars. ↩
The poet alludes to the Emperor Charles V having been conducted by Doria’s galleys from Barcelona to Genoa, from whence he was escorted by him to Bologna, in which town he received from Pope Clement the crown of the empire. He might have made himself arbitrary in Genoa by the assistance of Charles. ↩
Meaning England. Astolpho was an Englishman. ↩
I will observe, in illustration of these lines, that Charles V conferred on him the principality of Melsi in Puglia. ↩
Foscari informs us that a gulf in the Persian sea was so called. ↩
The poet must mean Egypt; but I do not know why he styles it the land of heroes: perhaps as the land of the Ptolemies, or perhaps as distinguished by the exploits of the crusaders. ↩
The canal by which Trajan connected the Nile and the Red Sea. ↩
This distinguished city of Cyprus is now called Leukosìa (Αενκοσία), or at least is so called by the modern Greeks. Nicosià was, however, there is no doubt, its classical designation. It probably bore both names, and the colloquial one has remained at home, while the place is known by another abroad. ↩
Immanem velutipecora inter inertia tygrim, etc.
Virgil, Aeneid IX 730.
“Like a fierce tiger pent amid the fold.”
Dryden.
Virgil makes Aetna the mountain under which Typhoeus is buried; but Petrarch supposes him to have been confined under Ischia. ↩
Scotch and English. ↩
Ariosto had read of England’s having suffered from pirates, and could form no other notion of these than that of Moorish corsairs. ↩
Caius Caligula. ↩
“And gilded roofs come tumbling from on high,
Virgil (Dryden, B. II).
The marks of state and ancient royalty.”
Qualis ubì in lucem coluber, etc.
See Virgil’s description of Pyrrhus in the storm of Troy, of which this stanza is a free translation. Aeneid II 471. ↩
So Virgil, Aeneid II 486.
“The house is fill’d with loud laments and cries;
Dryden.
And shrieks of women rend the vaulted skies.
The fearful matrons run from place to place,
And kiss the thresholds and the posts embrace.”
An example of such passionate action, which may appear unnatural to many, was in modern times furnished by the late king and queen of Naples, under circumstances of less excitement, who, when restored by Lord Nelson, ran about their palace at Naples, kissing and embracing the doors. ↩
These are all events described in the romances anterior to the Innamorato, and many of them are referred to in that poem. ↩
Every one who has been on the Continent, and indeed every one who is conversant with old paintings, may acquire a general idea of such a picture; but it is necessary to have been in Italy to orm to oneself a perfect notion of the details of these scenes, in which Ariosto seems so particularly to delight. So studiously elegant are the townspeople of some parts of the Italian peninsula, that at an annual festival held at a burgh near Rome, where the pavement, as in Damascus, is strewed with foliage, beautiful centrepieces for this green ground are composed with leaves of rich flowers on thin deal planks, and inserted in it at such intervals as to produce the effect of figured carpeting. Ariosto paints these scenes in the true spirit of an Italian. ↩
Carpathium, an island between Rhodes and Crete, gave its name to the neighbouring sea. ↩
An orc in Ariosto seems intended to convey the idea of some monster like a buggaboo, whose genus and form are not defined by the name. In the tale of Olympia the orc is a sort of whale. Here he is a Cyclops, in consistence with the account given of him in a story of the Innamorato, of which this episode is a continuation. ↩
“The poet took this custom of the orc from the cannibals,” says an Italian commentator: but I am ignorant upon what authority he grounds his assertion. On the contrary, one of the fathers talks about certain ancient cannibals, who more especially preferred feeding upon the flesh of woman to that of man. The orc, roc, or rukh, figures largely in the Arabian Nights as a monstrous bird. But it is difficult to suppose that Ariosto had access to these tales. ↩
Mandricardo. ↩
He alludes to the enterprise against Africa, undertaken and abandoned by Charles V. ↩
It is hardly necessary to observe, that when Constantine transferred the seat of empire to Constantinople, the riches left by him formed the endowment of the Latin Church. Ariosto is here evidently indulging in one of his quiet sneers; for, though a catholic, he was no more a papist than Dante. ↩
Ogier. ↩
This
