He was one of the most furious of her lovers in the Innamorato. ↩
This is also a reference to a story in the Innamorato. ↩
Limissò, a city of Cyprus, by Ptolemy called Cario, and Satalia, a royal city, situated upon the shore of Pamphilia, formerly called Attalia. ↩
An electric flame, said to be often visible in the Mediterranean, and the warrant of fine weather, when assuming a particular figure. It lights upon the masts and yards. I never saw it in that sea, but have seen it upon the beach in England, flaming on a sailor’s woollen cap, at the first beginning of a thunderstorm, and thus justifying the story of Castor and Pollux. The flame descended upon the boat, as the most natural place to light upon, in the absence of masts and yards. ↩
The manoeuvre expressed in these lines would appear to have been a nautical usage in the time of Ariosto, and possibly may be practised still. For the way of a light vessel, with a shallow draft of water, as ships were then constructed, and as many Mediterranean vessels are now, might assuredly be at least somewhat impeded by such a drag as is described. “From him,” meaning St. Elmo, before alluded to, a saint of great Mediterranean, and particularly of great Neapolitan, reputation; to which he has a more especial claim, as the town of Gaeta in that territory possesses his bones. ↩
Astolpho. ↩
Chace is in tennis somewhat of an equivalent to hazards at billiards, and is a term sanctioned by Shakespeare in his Henry V. ↩
Gryphon and Aquilant. ↩
Harpalicé was a Thracian virago, who freed her father, made prisoner by the Getae. Virgil, speaking of her, Aeneid XI, 316, says,
“With such array Harpalicé bestrode
Dryden.
Her Thracian courser, and outstripp’d the rapid flood.”
Camilla has been made too notorious by him in Aeneas’s Italian Wars to require further mention. Sappho has as little need of it. Of the Corinnas (there were three) it is not clear to which Ariosto alludes; probably to her who was the supposed mistress of Ovid, or to the yet more famous woman of that name, who vanquished Pindar in a poetic contest. ↩
As we have seen Ariosto, in the preceding canto, making up his fable of the Amazons out of different classical stories, so we may here detect him in the same species of manufacture. We have a jumble and alteration of stories, Messenian, Scythian, and Trojan. Phalantus, who led off the youth that were the offspring of the Spartan ladies’ gallantries, though not during the Trojan war, went straight to Italy, where he founded, or where he restored Tarentum, as stated by the poet. ↩
Calisto, daughter of Lycaon, who having been violated by Jupiter, was, by Juno, metamorphosed into a she-bear, and again by Jupiter into the constellation called the Bear, or Bootes’ Wain; and as this constellation only disappears towards morning, the poet designates the dawn by the retreat of Calisto, whom he decribes as turning her plough, instead of her wain, in order to depart: for this constellation taking its name from the position of some of its stars resembling that of oxen in harness, might perhaps as fairly be likened to one as to the other. This story of the Amazons (more especially Guido’s relation) may serve as a specimen of that tone of prosing and repetition with which Ariosto has been reproached. I cannot, however, at all agree with those who condemn him for the “lungaggini” which are usually objected to the Italian writers. I suspect him of much cunning and design in many of his apparent defects, especially in his prosing, and am much pleased to find that I am supported in this opinion by high authority, the late Mr. Fox. ↩
Gryphon and Aquilant. ↩
Zerbino. ↩
Ariosto has taken this incident from the Golden Ass of Apuleius, whom he has copied in many of his details. ↩
“Unless you take the say,” is an idiom which shows the occasional necessity for resorting to the time of Elizabeth in search of equivalents for phrases relating to customs now disused. The phrase of to take the ’say (a taste of the meat as a precaution against poison) is common in our old writers. ↩
In this stanza, Ariosto has again followed closely in the footsteps of Apuleius. There are, however, many circumstances of invention in this episode, such as the simile of the hawk and dog, etc., which, giving his peculiarity of touch to the picture, show how well he could assimilate and make his own, whatever foreign graces he thought worthy of adoption. I may here remark with what felicity and discrimination he always paints the character of woman; the fidelity and fondness of Isabella, the coquetry of Angelica, the exalted character of Olympia, uncompromising in her love or hate, and the abandoned wickedness of Gabrina, a true though fearful picture of what woman is, when she utterly abandons the reins to her passions. This discrimination appears to me strikingly exemplified in the character of his two viragos. Bradamant and Marphisa, though equally brave, and, by the vagrant and unfeminine life which they lead, equally subjected to the same coarse suspicions, always appear to us in very different lights. The mere circumstance of his having armed one with a golden spear, with which she tilts her enemies out of their saddles, and the other with a sabre to hack and hew, makes all the difference. If one could love an Amazon, it would be Bradamant; but one might as well think of falling in
