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Rh graceful introductions to the respective cantos. Both these objects have been achieved with taste and success; and although Boiardo's comparatively artless composition is still the best, as nearest to Nature, it cannot be denied that Berni's alterations must have appeared to his contemporaries great improvements, and that his embellishments may be read with abundant pleasure. Conscious of his lack of poetical invention, he has abstained from interfering with the narrative. His work was not published until after his death, and there is reason to suspect that it was considerably adulterated by or at the instance of the great literary bullv of the day, Pietro Aretino.

It does not appear that Berni had any intention of parodying the Orlando Innamorato in his rifacimento; he simply wished to bring it, in his conception, nearer to the literary level of the continuation which had superseded it, and deemed that this could be best effected by an infusion of humour and satire. It would be a still greater error to assume, with some modern Italian critics, an intention on the part of Boiardo and Ariosto of parodying the old chivalric romance. They merely desired to adapt it to the spirit of their own age, as Tennyson has adapted the Morte d'Arthur to ours, and their sprightliness is the correlative of his moral earnestness. Ariosto is less reverent of his original than Boiardo, but he keeps within bounds. The great success of his poem, however, was sure to evolve a bona-fide parodist, as in our day Mark Twain has capered with cap and bells in the wake of Tennyson. The Italian Mark Twain was (1491–1544), known under his pseudonym of Merlinus Cocaius as a distinguished cultivator of macaronic poetry, a by-path of literature which we