Mr. Hoole supposes these lines to have been taken from the Paradiso, canto XIX verse 129, and so they probably were. If so, however, we must admit that Ariosto has given us the husk without the kernel of Dante. The lines of Dante are thus spiritedly given by Mr. Carey:
The lame one of Jerusalem shall see
A unit for his virtue, for his vices
No less a mark than millions.
The town is Ferrara. ↩
Another allusion to the white eagle of the house of Este. ↩
It is impossible to read these lines without thinking of something like a corresponding passage in the fifth book of The Paradise Lost, where Raphael, addressing Adam, as St. John does Astolpho, says,
Though what if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like more than on Earth is thought?
The followers of the mystic philosophers in the age of Ariosto and that of Milton seem to have believed in the existence of two worlds, one of things and the other of types, perhaps from too literal an interpretation of doctrines which were purely allegorical; and it appears that some of the interpreters of the Pythagorean philosophy imagined the seventh sphere of their master to be the moon (Ariosto’s land of types). It is, at any rate, clear, that much of the mystery of the present canto, the preexistent souls, “the sisters three, and such branches of learning,” savour strongly of Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines. ↩
A town situated at the roots of Parnassus. ↩
This took its rise from a storybook narration
Of “the tale of Troy divine,”
an ignis fatuus which misled many. Hence the attempt to give a different colouring to the Trojan war in the Troilus and Cressida of Shakespeare. For the charge that
Penelope was but a courtezan,
Ariosto has older authorities. Her intrigue with Pan was said to have been manifested by its fruits, and more scandal is reported of her in the Classical Dictionary. ↩
In rescuing the character of Dido, Ariosto has yet better foundation; since it is agreed that Virgil has overleapt a space of 300 years in order to bring her and Aeneas together. Ariosto probably eulogizes her chastity on the ground of the story of her having killed herself to avoid marrying Iarbas. Hence Petrarch in his triumph of chastity places her among his examples of chaste women. ↩
The characterising St. John as an author is to be sure as ridiculous as making St. James a Moor-slayer; but we must recollect that every age, every country, and every sect, entertains motions of persons which must be monstrous in the eyes of those who are not swayed by their partialities. ↩
Brandimart. ↩
Serpentine. ↩
Ferraù. ↩
Rinaldo and Orlando. ↩
Here again we have more after-inventions about Troy. Respecting the rest of the story, I shall give such scattered lights as I find in Harrington and Hoole, without following the example of the noble founder of an antiquarian book-club, who devoted his time to correcting, or reconciling, the contradictions in Duten’s Genealogy of the Heroes of Romance.
Harrington only says that his “author here follows not any true story, but a work entitled Almontes, which, notwithstanding, hath some credit, though not much:” but Hoole finds the dramatis personae among those of the Innamorato, and those that “jousted in Aspramont;” and gives the following account of them: “After the Grecians had taken Troy, and put most of their prisoners to the sword, among whom was Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, who was sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles; in order entirely to extirpate the race of Hector, they sought for Astyanax, but Andromache, to preserve his life, concealed him in a sepulchre, and took another child in her arms, with whom being found, they were both put to death. In the meantime the real Astyanax was safely conveyed, by a friend of his father, to the island of Sicily, when, being grown to man’s estate, he conquered Corinth and Argos; he established a government at Messina, and married the queen of Syracuse, but was afterward killed by treachery, and his widow being driven from the city by the Greeks, took shelter in Risa, where she was delivered of a son named Polydore, from whom descended Clovis and Constantius. Constantius was the head of the line of Pepin, father of Charlemagne; and from Clovis came Rogero, who married Galaciëlla, daughter of Agolant. Rogero being cruelly murdered and his city destroyed, his wife fled to the coast of Africa, where she was delivered of two children, a boy and a girl, and died soon after; the boy, called Rogero, was brought up by Atlantes, a magician.”—See Orlando Innam. b. II c. I etc.
Take his further account of Rogero of Risa and Galaciëlla, the father and mother of Ariosto’s hero:
“When Almontes left the dominions of his father Agolant to revenge the death of King Garnieri on the Christians, he took with him his sister Galaciëlla, a female warrior of great courage, but his brother Troyano remained behind with his father. Almontes and Galaciëlla alternately fought with Rogero of Risa, without victory to any party. Galaciëlla turned Christian and married Rogero; but Bertram, elder natural brother to Rogero, having conceived a passion for his sister-in-law, but unable to corrupt her chastity, he in revenge betrayed the town of Risa to Almontes, who entering by night, put all to the sword. Rogero and his father Rampaldo were killed: but Almontes afterward, repenting of the part which he had acted, caused Bertram to be put to death. Galaciëlla, then big with child, was put on board a vessel with eight attendants, whom
