es to take pleasure with us, and compare old
notes; and we are delighted that he does us so much honour, and makes, as
it were, Ariostos of us all. He is Shakspearian in going all lengths with
Nature as he found her, not blinking the fact of evil, yet finding a
"soul of goodness" in it, and, at the same time, never compromising the
worth of noble and generous qualities. His young and handsome Medoro is a
pitiless slayer of his enemies; but they were his master's enemies, and
he would have lost his life, even to preserve his dead body. His Orlando,
for all his wisdom and greatness, runs mad for love of a coquette, who
triumphs over warriors and kings, only to fall in love herself with an
obscure lad. His kings laugh with all their hearts, like common people;
his mourners weep like such unaffected children of sorrow, that they must
needs "swallow some of their tears."[45] His heroes, on the arrival of
intelligence that excites them, leap out of bed and write letters before
they dress, from natural impatience, thinking nothing of their "dignity."
When Astolfo blows the magic horn which drives every body out of the
castle of Atlantes, "not a mouse" stays behind;--not, as Hoole and such
critics think, because the poet is here writing ludicrously, but because
he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as
Shakspeare in _Hamlet_ does to give that of silence, when "not a mouse is
stirring." Instead of being mere comic writing, such incidents are in the
highest epic taste of the meeting of extremes,--of the impartial eye with
which Nature regards high and low. So, give Ariosto his hippogriff, and
other marvels with which he has enriched the stock of romance, and Nature
takes as much care of the verisimilitude of their actions, as if she had
made them herself. His hippogriff returns, like a common horse, to the
stable to which he has been accustomed. His enchanter, who is gifted with
the power of surviving decapitation and pursuing the decapitator so long
as a fated hair remains on his head, turns deadly pale in the face when
it is scalped, and falls lifeless from his horse. His truth, indeed, is
so genuine, and at the same time his style is so unaffected, sometimes so
familiar in its grace, and sets us so much at ease in his company, that
the familiarity is in danger of bringing him into contempt with the
inexperienced, and the truth of being considered old and obvious, because
the mode of its introduction make