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Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 2 by Leigh Hunt
page 17 of 371 (04%)
his pen at all times has such a charming facility, and he proved himself,
in his version of Boiardo, to have so strong a sympathy with the
earnestness and sentiment of his original in his gravest moments, that I
cannot help thinking the two men would have been each what the other was
in their respective times;--the Lombard the comparative idler, given more
to witty than serious invention, under a corrupt Roman court; and the
Tuscan the originator of romantic fictions, in a court more suited to him
than the one he avowedly despised. I look upon them as two men singularly
well matched. The nature of the present work does not require, and the
limits to which it is confined do not permit, me to indulge myself in a
comparison between them corroborated by proofs; but it is impossible not
to notice the connexion: and therefore, begging the reader's pardon for
the sorry substitute of affirmative for demonstrative criticism, I may be
allowed to say, that if Boiardo has the praise of invention to himself,
Berni thoroughly appreciated and even enriched it; that if Boiardo has
sometimes a more thoroughly charming simplicity, Berni still appreciates
it so well, that the difference of their times is sufficient to restore
the claim of equality of feeling; and finally, that if Berni strengthens
and adorns the interest of the composition with more felicitous
expressions, and with a variety of lively and beautiful trains of
thought, you feel that Boiardo was quite capable of them all, and might
have done precisely the same had he lived in Berni's age. In the greater
part of the poem the original is altered in nothing except diction,
and often (so at least it seems to me) for no other reason than the
requirements of the Tuscan manner. And this is the case with most of the
noblest, and even the liveliest passages. My first acquaintance, for
example, with the _Orlando Innamorato_ was through the medium of Berni;
and on turning to those stories in his version, which I have translated
from his original for the present volume, I found that every passage but
one, to which I had given a mark of admiration, was the property of the
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