o and
Duke Ercole were wont to retire for amusement, the Ferrarese have given
the further name of Schifanoia, which means, "fly from cares." This
little coincidence of Scandiano the feudal castle in the Apennines, and
Scandiano the little pleasure palace at Ferrara, seems to give, by
accidental allegory, a fair idea of the double nature of Matteo Boiardo,
of the Ferrarese court to which he belonged, and of the school of poetry
(including the more notable but less original work of Ariosto) which the
genius of the man and the character of the court succeeded together in
producing.

To understand Boiardo we must compare him with Ariosto; and to
understand Ariosto we must compare him with Boiardo; both belong to the
same school, and are men of very similar genius, and where the one
leaves off the other begins. But first, in order to understand the
character of this poetry which, in the main, is identical in Boiardo and
in his more successful but less fascinating pupil Ariosto, let us
understand Ferrara. It was, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, a chivalric town of Ariostesque chivalry: feudalism turned
courtly and elegant, and moreover, very liberal and comfortable by
preponderance of democratic and industrial habits; a military court, of
brave mercenary captains full of dash and adventure, not mere brigands
and marauders having studied strategy, like the little Umbrian
chieftains; a court orderly, elegant, and brilliant: a prince not risen
from behind a counter like Medicis and Petruccis, nor out of blood like
Baglionis and Sforzas, but of a noble old house whose beginnings are
lost in the mist of real chivalry and real paladinism; a duke with a
pretence of feudal honour and decorum, at whose court men were all brave
and ladies all chaste--with the little licenses of baseness and
gallantry admitted by Renaissance chivalry. A bright, brilliant court at
the close of the fifteenth century; and more stable than the only one
which might have rivalled it, the Feltrian court of Urbino, too small
and lost among the Umbrian bandits. A bright, brilliant town, also, this
Ferrara: not mercantile like Florence, not mere barracks like Perugia; a
capital, essentially, in its rich green plain by the widened Po, with
its broad handsome streets (so different from the mediaeval exchanges of
Bologna, and the feudal alleys of Perugia), its well-built houses, so
safe and modern, needing neither _bravi_ nor iron window bars, p