se
to the earth. From shoulder to hip was Agrican cut through his weary
soul, and he turned as white as ashes, and felt death upon him. He called
Orlando to come close to him with a gentle voice, and said, as well as he
could, "I believe in Him who died on the Cross. Baptise me, I pray thee,
with the fountain, before my senses are gone. I have lived an evil life,
but need not be rebellious to God in death also. May He who came to save
all the rest of the world, save me! He is a God of great mercy."

And he shed tears, did that king, though he had been so lofty and fierce.

Orlando dismounted quickly, with his own face in tears. He gathered the
king tenderly in his arms, and took and laid him by the fountain, on
a marble cirque which it had; and then he wept in concert with him
heartily, and asked his pardon, and so baptised him in the water of the
fountain, and knelt and prayed to God for him with joined hands.

He then paused and looked at him; and when he perceived his countenance
changed, and that his whole person was cold, he left him there on the
marble cirque by the fountain, all armed as he was, with the sword by his
side, and the crown upon his head.

* * * * *

I think I may anticipate the warm admiration of the reader for the whole
of this beautiful episode, particularly its close. "I think," says
Panizzi, "that Tasso had this passage particularly in view when he wrote
the duel of Clorinda and Tancredi, and her conversion and baptism before
dying. The whole passage, from stanza xii. (where Agrican receives his
mortal blow) to this, is beautiful; and the delicate proceeding of
Orlando in leaving Agrican's body armed, even with the sword in his hand,
is in the noblest spirit of chivalry."--Edition of _Boiardo and Ariosto_,
vol. iii. page 357.

The reader will find the original in the Appendix No. I.

In the course of the poem (canto xix. stanza xxvi.) a knight, with the
same noble delicacy, who is in distress for a set of arms, borrows those
belonging to the dead body, with many excuses, and a kiss on its face.

[Footnote 1:

"Che tutti insieme, e 'l suo Re Galafrone,
Non li stimava quanto un vil bottone."]

[Footnote 2: Berni has here introduced the touching words, "Would I were
not so!" (Cosi non foss'io!)]

[Footnote 3: This proposal is in the highest ingenuous spirit of the
absurd wilfulness of passion, thinking that every thing is to give way
before it, not