Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/155

Rh The fastidious refinement of the Italians of the sixteenth century for a time obscured the fame of one of their most dehghtful authors. We have seen that Boiardo was a native of the district of Reggio; we have also seen that Reggio was among the places which, in the opinion of no less eminent a judge than Dante, were disqualified by their dialect from ever producing a poet. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Orlando Innamorato should teem with inelegances of diction, scarcely perceptible to a foreigner, but which seemed most flagrant in an age when priests pocketed their breviaries for fear of contaminating their style. Two other poets independently addressed themselves to the task of making Boiardct presentable. Domenichi, "a literary gentleman by trade," did little good or harm; he neither added nor omitted a stanza, except in the first canto, and as he went on his emendations fell off. Berni, a great writer in his way, of whonj much must be said when we treat of comic and familiar poetry, inserted many stanzas of his own, and altered so many throughout as to metamorphose the spirit no less than the diction of the poem. Chivalry and humour are nicely balanced throughout the original; the poet occasionally smiles at the extravagance of his own imaginations, but his irony never broadens into burlesque. In Berni's rifacimento the element of humour greatly preponderates, and the elegance and grace of the adulteration make no sufficient amends for the transposition of a noble poem from an heroic into a familiar key. Although his rifacimento was not frequently reprinted, it attained such celebrity in literary circles that Boiardo was almost forgotten, and the Orlando Innamorato commonly passed under Berni's name. No edition of the