ness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci."[5] And all minds, in
which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.

The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
weak.[6]

The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid