[Born at Reggio, in Italy, 1474. Died at Ferrara, 1533. Aged 59.]
A poet from the cradle: constrained by his father to bestow five years
on the study of the law: then released to literature. He was Gentleman
of the Court to two princes: from both he received scanty pay: from the
one 75 crowns (or about £15 a year), from the other 84 crowns. He lived
and died poor, having enjoyed great independence of spirit, and the
barren respect of Italian princes. His talents for business were
remarkable. His great poem the “Orlando Furioso” is of a species which
then deluged Italian literature. It is a web of adventures of knight
errantry. These turn round the person of Charlemagne, and the invasion
of France by the Moors--poetically misdated to his reign. The copious
flow and untiring spirit of the narrative is without comparison. The
skill with which Ariosto carries on a labyrinth of separate adventures,
and brings them to meet, is peculiar to himself. The variety in the
invention of the characters, and the flexibility of the pure and musical
style to the humorous or the pathetic, the warlike or the tender, the
natural and the marvellous, are singularly characteristic of the power
of this poet; who grasps his subject meanwhile like a man of business
and of the world, and whose tone is, on the whole, rather that of
intellectual superiority to his subject than of passionate absorption by
it. A vein even of irony breaks through; and the enthusiastic lover of
romance suffers a pang of scepticism from the suggested incredulity of
his priest. They tell, how, when governor of a wild Appenine province,
he fell, on a solitary walk, into the hands of banditti. The captain, on
recognising the poet of the Orlando Furioso, apologized for the rudeness
of his men, and set his captive at liberty.
[By Carlo Finelli. There is a life-size bust upon his monument in the
Benedictine Monastery at Ferrara, where he is buried.]