eresting. I remember a vision of this sort at
Carrara, on a bright but not too hot day (I fancied that the marble
mountains there cooled it). It resembled one of Titian's women, with its
broad shoulders, and boddice and sleeves differently coloured from the
petticoat; and seemed literally framed in the unsashed window. But I am
digressing.]

[Footnote 13: Ariosto elsewhere represents him as the handsomest man in
the world; saying of him, in a line that has become famous,

"Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa."

Canto x. st. 84.

--Nature made him, and then broke the mould.

(The word is generally printed _ruppe_; but I use the primitive text
of Mr. Pannizi's edition.) Boiardo's handsomest man, Astolfo, was an
Englishman; Ariosto's is a Scotchman. See, in the present volume, the
note on the character of Astolfo, p. 41.]

[Footnote 14:

"Come orsa, che l'alpestre cacciatore
Ne la pietrosa tana assalita abbia,
Sta sopra i figli con incerto core,
E freme in suono di pieta e di rabbia:
Ira la 'nvita e natural furore
A spiegar l'ugne, e a insanguinar le labbia;
Amor la 'ntenerisce, e la ritira
A riguardare a i figli in mezo l'ira."

Like as a bear, whom men in mountains start
In her old stony den, and dare, and goad,
Stands o'er her children with uncertain heart,
And roars for rage and sorrow in one mood;
Anger impels her, and her natural part,
To use her nails, and bathe her lips in blood;
Love melts her, and, for all her angry roar,
Holds back her eyes to look on those she bore.

This stanza in Ariosto has become famous as a beautiful transcript of a
beautiful passage in Statius, which, indeed, it surpasses in style, but
not in feeling, especially when we consider with whom the comparison
originates:

"Ut lea, quam saevo foetam pressere cubili
Venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat
Mente sub incerta, torvum ac miserabile frendens
Illa quidem turbare globes, et frangere morsu
Tela queat; sed prolis amor crudelia vincit
Pectora, et in media catulos circumspicit ira."

_Thebais_, x. 414.]

[Footnote 15: This adventure of Cloridan and Medoro is imitated from the
Nisus and Euryalus of Virgil. An Italian critic, quoted by Panizzi, says,
that the way in which Cloridan exposes himself to the enemy is inferior
to the Latin poet's famous