"L' Ariosto
Con quel _Furioso_ suo the piace al volgo."

"_His_ poem," adds Panizzi, "has the merit of not having pleased any
body[57]." A sullen critic, Sperone (the same that afterwards plagued
Tasso), was so disappointed at being left out, that he became the poet's
bitter enemy. He talked of Ariosto taking himself for a swan and "dying
like a goose" (the allusion was to the fragment he left called the _Five
Cantos_). What has become of the swan Sperone? Bernardo Tasso, Torquato's
father, made a more reasonable (but which turned out to be an unfounded)
complaint, that Ariosto had established a precedent which poets would
find inconvenient. And Macchiavelli, like the true genius he was,
expressed a good-natured and flattering regret that his friend Ariosto
had left him out of his list of congratulators, in a work which was "fine
throughout," and in some places "wonderful[58]."

The great Galileo knew Ariosto nearly by heart[59].

He is a poet whom it may require a certain amount of animal spirits to
relish thoroughly. The _air_ of his verse must agree with you before you
can perceive all its freshness and vitality. But if read with any thing
like Italian sympathy, with allowance for times and manners, and with a
_sense_ as well as _admittance_ of the different kinds of the beautiful
in poetry (two very different things), you will be almost as much charmed
with the "divine Ariosto" as his countrymen have been for ages.


[Footnote 1: The materials for this notice have been chiefly collected
from the poet's own writings (rich in autobiographical intimation)
and from his latest editor Panizzi. I was unable to see this writer's