ost
curious facts respecting Berni's _rifacimento_, declares himself unable
to pronounce which of the two poems is the better one, the original
Boiardo, or the re-modelled. It would therefore not very well become a
foreigner to give a verdict, even if he were able; and I confess, after
no little consideration (and apart, of course, from questions of dialect,
which I cannot pretend to look into), I feel myself almost entirely at a
loss to conjecture on which side the superiority lies, except in point
of invention and a certain early simplicity. The advantage in those two
respects unquestionably belongs to Boiardo; and a great one it is, and
may not unreasonably be supposed to settle the rest of the question in
his favour; and yet Berni's fancy, during a more sophisticate period of
Italian manners, exhibited itself so abundantly in his own witty poems,
his pen at all times has such a charming facility, and he proved himself,
in his version of Boiardo, to have so strong a sympathy with the
earnestness and sentiment of his original in his gravest moments, that I
cannot help thinking the two men would have been each what the other was
in their respective times;--the Lombard the comparative idler, given more
to witty than serious invention, under a corrupt Roman court; and the
Tuscan the originator of romantic fictions, in a court more suited to him
than the one he avowedly despised. I look upon them as two men singularly
well matched. The nature of the present work does not require, and the
limits to which it is confined do not permit, me to indulge myself in a
comparison between them corroborated by proofs; but it is impossible not
to notice the connexion: and therefore, begging the reader's pardon for
the sorry substitute of affirmative for demonstrative criticism, I may be
allowed to say, that if Boiardo has the praise of invention to himself,
Berni thoroughly appreciated and even enriched it; that if Boiardo has
sometimes a more thoroughly charming simplicity, Berni still appreciates
it so well, that the difference of their times is sufficient to restore
the claim of equality of feeling; and finally, that if Berni strengthens
and adorns the interest of the composition with more felicitous
expressions, and with a variety of lively and beautiful trains of
thought, you feel that Boiardo was quite capable of them all, and might
have done precisely the same had he lived in Berni's age. In the greater
part of the poem the origin