Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/125

Rh thinnest of shades; nor were they less insubstantial to most of the poets of the golden age than to us. The people gave the Carolingian myth to them as the burden of their stories; but, leaving Boiardo out of the account, they could not accept the conditions of that imaginative world and believe in it; nor could Boiardo, who had without doubt a real enthusiasm for chivalry, believe with Spenser's faith. Italy had no feudal past; how could the citizen Pulci feel any living sympathy with feudal ideals? The myth was emptied of its moral contents; how could Ariosto be earnest as Tennyson is? In dealing with deeds of knight-errantry, adventures in the lists and the forest, wizard springs and invincible armor, all the poets were conscious of something quixotic; to Ariosto it was the main element. He could not be serious; the mock gravity of irony was the most he could compass. This sense of unreality in the legend was not all that led the last poets of the age especially to play with their art. A more powerful reason was the hopelessness of society in their age, deep as that which in earlier times fell on their ancestors, who witnessed the barbarian incursions on Roman soil. Politically,