youthful passion.

The only false acid insipid fiction I can call to mind in the _Orlando
Furioso_ is that of the "swans" who rescue "medals" from the river of
oblivion (canto xxxv.). It betrays a singular forgetfulness of the poet's
wonted verisimilitude; for what metaphor can reconcile us to swans taking
an interest in medals? Popular belief had made them singers; but it was
not a wise step to convert them into antiquaries.

Ariosto's animal spirits, and the brilliant hurry and abundance of his
incidents, blind a careless reader to his endless particular beauties,
which, though he may too often "describe instead of paint" (on account,
as Foscolo says, of his writing to the many), spew that no man could
paint better when he chose. The bosoms of his females "come and go, like
the waves on the sea-coast in summer airs."[47] His witches draw the fish
out of the water

"With simple words and a pure warbled spell."[48]

He borrows the word "painting" itself,--like a true Italian and friend
of Raphael and Titian, to express the commiseration in the faces of the
blest for the sufferings of mortality

"Dipinte di pietade il viso pio."[49]

Their pious looks painted with tenderness.

Jesus is very finely called, in the same passage, "il sempiterno Amante,"
the eternal Lover. The female sex are the