Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese, io canto."

The connections of his stories are admirable, his reflections just, his
sneers and ironies incomparable, and his painting excellent. When
Angelica, after having wandered over half the world alone with Orlando,
pretends, notwithstanding,

"---ch'el fior virginal cosi avea salvo,
Come selo porto dal matern' alvo."

The author adds, very gravely,--

"Forse era ver, ma non pero credibile
A chi del senso suo fosse Signore."

Astolpho's being carried to the moon by St. John, in order to look for
Orlando's lost wits, at the end of the 34th book, and the many lost
things that he finds there, is a most happy extravagancy, and contains,
at the same time, a great deal of sense. I would advise you to read this
poem with attention. It is, also, the source of half the tales, novels,
and plays, that have been written since.

The 'Pastor Fido' of Guarini is so celebrated, that you should read it;
but in reading it, you will judge of the great propriety of the
characters. A parcel of shepherds and shepherdesses, with the TRUE
PASTORAL' SIMPLICITY, talk metaphysics, epigrams, 'concetti', and
quibbles, by the hour to each other.

The Aminto del Tasso, is much more what it is intended to be, a pastoral:
the shepherds, indeed, have their 'concetti' and their antitheses; but
are not quite so sublime and abstracted as those in Pastor Fido. I think
that you will like it much the best of the two.

Petrarca is, in my mind, a sing-song, love-sick poet; much admired,
however, by the Italians: but an Italian who should think no better of
him than I do, would certainly say that he deserved his 'Laura' better
than his 'Lauro'; and that wretched quibble would be reckoned an
excellent piece of Italian wit.

The Italian prose-writers (of invention I mean) which I would recommend
to your acquaintance, are Machiavello and Boccacio; the former, for the
established reputation which he has acquired, of a consummate politician
(whatever my own private sentiments may be of either his politics or his
morality): the latter, for his great invention, and for his natural and
agreeable manner of telling his stories.

Guicciardini, Bentivoglio, Davila, etc., are excellent historians, and
deserved being read with attention. The nature of history checks, a
little, the flights of Italian imaginations; which, in works of
invention, are very high indeed. Translations curb them still more: and
thei