should have only a string of
_novelle_, and not the picture he desired to paint,--that of the world
of chivalry, with its knights-errant in search of adventures, its
damsels in distress, its beautiful gardens and lordly palaces, its
hermits and magicians, its hippogriffs and dragons, and all the
paraphernalia of magic art.

Ariosto's treatment of chivalry is peculiar to himself. Spenser in the
sixteenth century, and Lord Tennyson in our own day, pictured its
virtues and noble aspirations. In his immortal 'Don Quixote,' Cervantes
held its extravagances up to ridicule. In Ariosto's day no one believed
any longer in the heroes or the ideals of chivalry, nor did the poet
himself; hence there is an air of unreality about the poem. The figures
that pass before us, although they have certain characteristics of their
own, are not real beings, but those that dwell in a land of fancy. As
the poet tells these stories of a bygone age, a smile of irony plays
upon his face; he cannot take them seriously; and while he never goes so
far as to turn into ridicule the ideals of chivalry, yet, in such
episodes as the prodigious exploits of Rodomonte within the walls of
Paris, and the voyage of Astolfo to the moon, he does approach
dangerously near to the burlesque.

We are not inspired by large and noble thoughts in reading the 'Orlando
Furioso.' We are not deeply stirred by pity or terror. No lofty
principles are inculcated. Even the pathetic scenes, such as the death
of Zerbino and Isabella, stir no real emotion in us, but we experience a
sense of the artistic effect of a poetic death.

It is not often, in these days of the making of many books of which
there is no end, that one has time to read a poem which is longer than
the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' together. But there is a compelling charm
about the 'Orlando,' and he who sits down to read it with serious
purpose will soon find himself under the spell of an attraction which
comes from unflagging interest and from perfection of style and
construction. No translation can convey an adequate sense of this beauty
of color and form; but the versions of William Stewart Rose, here cited,
suggest the energy, invention, and intensity of the epic.

In 1532 Ariosto published his final edition of the poem, now enlarged to
forty-six cantos, and retouched from beginning to end. He died not long
afterward, in 1533, and was buried in the church of San Benedetto, where
a magnificent monument marks