Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/161

Rh enlarged from forty to forty-six cantos. The last edition published under his own inspection appeared in 1532, and was not regarded by him as definitive. He also began a continuation, intended to narrate the death of Ruggiero by the treachery of Gano, of which only five cantos were written.

So great is the variety of the Orlando Furioso, that it appears difficult at first to discover a clue to a main action among its thronging and complicated adventures. Ginguené and Panizzi, however, have shown that one exists, and that this is the union of Ruggiero and Bradamante, the fabulous ancestors of the house of Este. All the poet's skill is exerted to keep them apart, that he may bring them together at last. Orlando, Rinaldo, Angelica, the chief personages of the Innamorato, have become subordinate characters; and, notwithstanding the title of the poem, Orlando's madness is but an episode. The unfortunate consequence is the transfer of the main interest from personages whom Boiardo had made highly attractive, to Ruggiero and Bradamante, less impressive in the hands of Ariosto, whose forte is rather in depicting tender or humorous than heroic character. It would not be just to say that this occasions the chief disadvantage of the poem in comparison with the Innamorato, the loss of the elder poet's delightful naïveté. Rather the change of plan and the falling off in simplicity spring from the same root, the taste and character of the author.

Ariosto was more of a courtier than a knight, and thought more of the house of Este than of the paladins of Charlemagne. He wrought upon Boiardo in the spirit of Dryden adapting Chaucer; while his predecessor, though himself courtly, may rather be likened to