e sky looking in between their spreading branches; at
most they lose their way in the intricacies of some seaside pineta,
where the feet slip on the fallen needles, and the sun slants along the
vistas of serried, red, scaly trunks, among the juniper and gorse and
dry grass and flowers growing in the sea sand. Into the vast mediaeval
forests of Germany and France, Boiardo and Ariosto's fancy never
penetrated.

Such is the school: a school represented in its typical character only
by Boiardo and Ariosto, but to which belong, nevertheless, with whatever
differences, Tasso, Spenser, Camoens, all the poets of Renaissance
romance. Now of the two leaders thereof. Here I feel that I can speak
only personally; tell only of my own personal impressions and
preferences. Comparing together Boiardo and Ariosto, I am, of course,
aware of the infinite advantages of the latter. Ariosto is a man of far
more varied genius; he is an artist, while Boiardo is an amateur; he is
learned in arranging and ornamenting; he knows how to alternate various
styles, how to begin and how to end. Moreover, he is a scholarly person
of a more scholarly time: he is familiar with the classics, and, what is
more important, he is familiar with the language in which he is writing.
He writes exquisitely harmonious, supple, and brilliant Tuscan verse,
with an infinite richness of diction; while poor Boiardo jogs along in a
language which is not the Lombard dialect in which he speaks, and which
is very uncouth and awkward, as is every pure language for a provincial;
indeed, so much so, that the pedantic Tuscans require Berni to make
Tuscan, elegant, to _ingentilire_, with infinite loss to quaintness and
charm, the "Orlando Innamorato" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo. Moreover,
Ariosto has many qualities unknown to Boiardo; wit, malice, stateliness,
decided eloquence and power of simile and apostrophe; he is a symphony
for full orchestra, and Boiardo a mere melody played on a single fiddle,
which good authorities (and no one dare contest with Italians when they
condemn anything not Tuscan as jargon) pronounce to be no Cremona. All
these advantages Ariosto certainly has; and I do not quarrel with those
who prefer him for them. But many of them distinctly take away from my
pleasure. I confess that I am bored by the beautifully written moral and
allegorical preludes of Ariosto's cantos; I would willingly give all his
aphorism and all his mythology to get quickly to the story