the very silence shews he must have thought the mention of his name
superfluous. Still it is curious that he never should have alluded to it
in the course of the poem. It could not have been from any dislike to the
name itself, or the family; for in his Latin poems he has eulogised the
hospitality of the house of Boiardo[43].

The _Furioso_ continued not only what Boiardo did, but what he intended
to do; for as its subject is Orlando's love, and knight-errantry in
general, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it from
its fabulous ancestor Ruggiero. Orlando is the open, Ruggiero the covert
hero; and almost all the incidents of this supposed irregular poem,
which, as Panizzi has shewn, is one of the most regular in the world, go
to crown with triumph and wedlock the originator of that unworthy race.
This is done on the old groundwork of Charlemagne and his Paladins, of
the treacheries of the house of Gan of Maganza, and of the wars of the
Saracens against Christendom. Bradamante, the Amazonian _intended_ of
Ruggiero, is of the same race as Orlando, and a great overthrower of
infidels. Ruggiero begins with being an infidel himself, and is kept from
the wars, like a second Achilles, by the devices of an anxious guardian,
but ultimately fights, is converted, and marries; and Orlando all the
while slays his thousands, as of old, loves, goes mad for jealousy, is
the foolishest and wisest of mankind (somewhat like the poet himself);
and crowns the glory of Ruggiero, not only by being present at his
marriage, but putting on his spurs with his own hand when he goes forth
to conclude the war by the death of the king of Algiers.

The great charm, however, of the _Orlando Furioso_ is not in its
knight-errantry, or its main plot, or the cunning interweavement of its
minor ones, but in its endless variety, truth, force, and animal spirits;
in its fidelity to actual nature while it keeps within the bounds of the