misrepresent. We respect his sincerity too much, ferocious and arrogant
though it be; and we like to give him the full benefit of the recoil of
his curses and maledictions. I hope I have not omitted one. On the
other hand, as little have I closed my feelings against the lovely
and enchanting sweetness which this great semi-barbarian sometimes so
affectingly utters. On those occasions he is like an angel enclosed
for penance in some furious giant, and permitted to weep through the
creature's eyes.

The stories from goodnatured Pulci I have been obliged to compress for
other reasons--chiefly their excessive diffuseness. A paragraph of the
version will sometimes comprise many pages. Those of Boiardo and Ariosto
are more exact; and the reader will be good enough to bear in mind, that
nothing is added to any of the poets, different as the case might seem
here and there on comparison with the originals. An equivalent for
whatever is said is to be found in some part of the context--generally
in letter, always in spirit. The least characteristically exact passages
are some in the love-scenes of Tasso; for I have omitted the plays upon
words and other corruptions in style, in which that poet permitted
himself to indulge. But I have noticed the circumstance in the comment.
In other respects, I have endeavoured to make my version convey some
idea of the different styles and genius of the writers,--of the severe
passion of Dante; of the overflowing gaiety and affecting sympathies
of Pulci, several of whose passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles are
masterpieces of pathos; of the romantic and inventive elegance of
Boiardo; the great cheerful universality of Ariosto, like a healthy
_anima mundi_; and the ambitious irritability, the fairy imagination,
and tender but somewhat effeminate voluptuousness of the poet of Armida
and Rinaldo. I do not pretend that prose versions of passages from these
writers can supersede the necessity of metrical ones, supposing proper