Lodovico, one of the greatest poets of Italy, was born at Reggio in Lombardy, on the 8th day of September 1474. His father was Niccolò Ariosto, commander of the citadel of Reggio, and his mother Dana Malaguzzi of that city, where the family still exists. He showed a strong inclination to poetry from his earliest years, but was obliged by his father to study the law—a pursuit in which he lost five of the best years of his life. Having obtained liberty to follow his inclination, he applied himself to literature; and he intended to peruse the classics under Gregorio da Spoleto. But after having had the benefit of this learned man's instructions for a short time, during which he read the best Latin authors, he was deprived of it, Gregorio having gone to France as tutor of Prince Sforza; and he thus lost the opportunity of learning Greek, as he intended. His father dying soon after, he was compelled to forego his literary occupations to undertake the management of the family, whose affairs were embarrassed, and to provide for the subsistence and education of his nine brothers and sisters, one of whom was a cripple. He, however, wrote some comedies in prose, and some lyrical pieces, about this time; and was then appointed one of the gentlemen of the cardinal Ippolito of Este. This prince usurped the character of a patron of literature, whilst the only reward which the poet received for having dedicated to him the Orlando Furioso, was the question, Where did you find so many stories, Master Ludovic? The poet himself tells us that the cardinal was ungrateful; depletes the time which he spent under his yoke; and adds, that if he received some miserable pension, it was not to reward him for his poetry, which that prelate despised, but to make some just compensation for the poet's running like a messenger, with risk of life, at his eminence's pleasure. Nor was even this miserable pittance regularly paid during the period that the poet enjoyed it. The cardinal went to Hungary in 1518, and wished Ariosto to accompany him. The poet excused himself, pleading ill health, his love of study, the care of his private affairs, and the age of his mother, whom it would have been disgraceful to leave. His excuses were not received, and even an interview denied to him. Ariosto then boldly said, that if his eminence thought to have bought a slave by assigning him the scanty pension of seventy-five crowns a year, he was mistaken, and that he might withdraw his boon, which it seems that prelate did. Alfonso, duke of Ferrara, then received Ariosto among his courtiers, which was an act of pure justice, that poet having distinguished himself as a diplomatist, chiefly on being sent twice to Rome as ambassador to the Pope Giulio II. The fatigue of one of these hurried journeys brought upon him a complaint from which he never recovered; and on his second mission he was nearly killed by orders of that violent pope, at that time much enraged against the duke of Ferrara. On account of the war, his salary of only 84 crowns a year was suspended, and withdrawn altogether after the peace; in consequence of which Ariosto asked the duke either to provide for him, or to allow him to go to seek employment elsewhere. A province belonging to that sovereign, situated on the wildest heights of the Apennines, being then without a governor, Ariosto was sent thither in that character, and remained there for three years. This was not a sinecure. The province was distracted by factions and banditti, the governor had not the requisite means to enforce his authority, and the duke did not support his minister as he ought. Yet it is said that Ariosto's government satisfied both his sovereign and the people confided to his care; and a story is added of his having fallen in, when walking out alone, with a party of banditti, whose chief apologized to the governor for not having immediately shown him that respect which his rank required.

Although he was dissatisfied with his office, he would not accept an embassy to Pope Clement VII., which the secretary of the duke offered him; and spent the remainder of his life at Ferrara, writing comedies, superintending their performance, as well as the construction of a theatre, and correcting his Orlando Furioso, of which the complete edition was published only in 1532. He died of a consumption on the 6th of June 1538.

That he was honoured and respected by the first men of his age is a fact; that most of the princes of Italy showed him great partiality is equally true; but they limited their patronage to kind words. It is not known that he ever received any substantial mark of their love for literature; he lived and died poor. He proudly wrote, on the entrance of a house built by himself:

Parva, sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non Sordida, parte meo sed tamen ore domus;

which serves to show the incorrectness of the assertion of flatterers, followed by Tiraboschi, that the duke of Ferrara built that house for him. The only one who seems to have given anything to Ariosto as a reward for his poetical talent is the marquess del Vasto, who assigned him an annuity of one hundred crowns on the revenues of Casteleone in Lombardy; but it was only paid, if ever, from the end of 1531. That he was crowned as poet by Charles V. seems untrue, although a diploma may have been issued to that effect by the emperor.

The character of Ariosto seems to have been fully and justly delineated by Gabrielle, his brother:

Ornatat pietas et grata modestia Vatem, Sancta filiae, diique memori, munimque recto Justitia, et nullo patientia vieta labore, Et constans virtus animi, et clementia mitis, Ambitione procul palui, fastuque tumore.

His satires, in which we see him before us such as he was, show that there was no flattery in this portrait. From these compositions (the interest of which is only equalled by the elegance as well as naiveté of the poetry, and the shrewdness of observation of human nature which the poet displays), we are highly pleased with a noble sentiment of independence displayed by Ariosto. He seems to have been very fond, and even jealous, of his liberty. He was, moreover, of a changeable disposition, which he very frankly confesses in his Latin verses, as well as in the satires.

Hoc olim ingenio vitales hausimus auras Multa eito ut placet, dislicitura brevi. Non in amore modo mens hæc, sed in omnibus impar Ipsa sibi longa non retinenda mora.

Hence he never would bind himself, either by going into orders or marrying, till towards the end of his life, when he married Alessandra, widow of Tito Strozzi. He had no issue by her, although he left two natural sons by different mothers.

His Latin poems do not perhaps deserve to be noticed, because, in the age of Flaminio, Vida, Fracastoro, and Sanazzaro, and from a poet like Ariosto, we have a right to expect better things. His lyrical compositions show a poet, although they do not seem worthy of Ariosto. His comedies, of which he wrote four, besides one which he left unfinished, are avowedly imitated from Plautus and Terentius; and although natives may admire in them the elegance of the diction, the liveliness of the dialogue, and the novelty of some scenes, few will feel interest either in the subject or in the characters, and none will approve the immoral passages with which they are disfigured—a fault more to be reproached to the audience and the patrons of theatrical representations in those days than to the poet.

Of all the works of Ariosto, however, the most sold and best known monument of his fame is his poem the Orlando Furioso, the extraordinary merits of which have cast into oblivion the numberless romance poems which inundated Italy during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.

The popularity which a poem, now shamefully neglected, the Orlando Innamorato, by Bojardo, enjoyed in Ariosto's time, cannot be well conceived, now that the enthusiasm of the Crusades, and the interest which was attached to a war against the Moslems, are no longer felt. Bojardo wrote and read his poem at the court of Ferrara, but died before he was able to finish it. Many poets undertook the difficult task of completing that magnificent work; but it was reserved to Ariosto both to finish and to surpass his original. Bojardo did not perhaps yield to Ariosto either in vigour or in richness of imagination, but he lived in a less refined age, and died before he was able to put a finishing hand to that part of the poem which he had written yielding to the impulse of his exuberant fancy; but Ariosto united to a powerful imagination a refined taste and an elegant mind. He began to write his poem about 1503; and after having consulted the first men of the age of Leo X., he published it in 1516, in only 40 cantos; and up to the moment of his death never ceased to correct and improve both the subject and the style. It is in this latter quality that he excels, for which Italians gave him the name of Divino Lodovico. When jesting he never forgets that he was a gentleman; when attempting pathetic descriptions or narratives, he searches the reader's deepest feelings. In his machinery he displays a vivacity of fancy with which no other poet can vie; but he never lets his fancy carry him so far as to omit to employ, with an art peculiar to him, those simple and natural pencil-strokes with which he gives to the most extraordinary feats a colour of reality which conciliates our reason without undeceiving our bewildered imagination. The death of Zerbino, the complaints of Isabella, the effects of discord among the Saracens, the flight of Astolfo to the moon, the passion which causes Orlando's madness, teem with beauties of every species. It is to be observed that the supposition that the poem of Ariosto is not connected throughout is utterly unfounded; there is a connection which, with a little attention,