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Cornell University Library PQ 4587.G22 3 1924 027 447 014 MaBa=jaB^g6;^3i& The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027447014 i-SIl DATE DUE '.."j w^rrv ^^m- 44- wicm-.: W 2 2 m- i& CAVLORD PRrNTED IN U.S.A. — WORKS BY EDMUND G. GARDNER, M.A. Dukes and Poets in Ferrara. A study in the Poetry, Religion, and Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries. Demy Sioo. Illustraied. 18s. net, Dante's Ten Heavens. A Study of the Paradiso. Second Edition, Revised, 5s, net, ' As a help to the minuter study, not of Dante only, hut of what has always heen regarded as the most obscure part of Dante's writings, it is hardly too much to say that no , more raluahle work has appeared in English.' AtheTKSwm, ' Will be foimd most helpful by all students of the im- mortal Tuscan poet.'—S^ertofor. WITH PHILIP H, WIQKSTEEB, M.A. Dante and Giovanni Del Virgilio. Demy 8to. 12s. Includes a Critical Edition of the text of Dante's 'Bclogae Latinae,' and of the poetic remains of Giovanni del Virgilio. LONDON : A. CONSTABLE AND CO., LTD. THE KING OF COUET POETS x:i3^ ^P^ THE KING OF COURT POETS A STUDY OF THE WORK LIFE AND TIMES OF LODOVICO ARIOSTO BY p*: :*ifi EDMUND G. GARDNER. LONDON, ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY. LIMITED, MCMVI. "Z-*/^;7 / 0*2. \ ^^'^^V f\.Q. I lL.o"S> A^' vV TO MY FEIENDS SIDNEY JEKEOLD AKD MAUD F. JEKROLD I DEDICATE THIS BOOK PKEFACE My intention in the following pages has been to combine a sequel to my book entitled Dukes and Poets in Ferrara with a somewhat full study of the life and works of Messer Lodovico Ariosto. Seeing that, in the former volume, I gave as complete a picture as I could of the political and literary conditions of Ferrara, down to the years that immediately preceded the first League of Cambrai and tlie wars ensuing upon it, I have not thought necessary to describe again the history of the times in which the poet's youth and early manhood were passed, nor to reintroduce the persons with whom he was brought into contact, since I must assume that my readers have already made their acquaintance in my previous book. In my first two chapters, therefore, I deal mainly with the poet's own life during this period—repeating, for the sake of completeness, a few things touching the evolution of the Drama in Ferrara, while reserving, until a later chapter, the production of Ariosto's first and second comedies; but, for the rest, venturing to refer my readers back to the other volume. Then, in the third chapter, I take up the thread of the history where I had left it, with the opening of a fresh epoch ^n Ferrarese affairs at the conclusion of the League of Cambrai in 1508. The first and chief of all Messer Lodovico's biographers was himself. The Satires contain as admirable a miniature autobiography as the world of letters possesses. His son, Virginio Ariosti, appears to have contemplated writing the life of his father ; for he has left us a fragmentary series of prefatory notes, which he probably intended to expand xii THE KING OF COUET POETS into a regular biography, and which were first published by Giovanni Andrea Barotti. But, before the sixteenth century closed, Ariosto had three excellent biographers—though their works were hardly intended to be taken as complete biographies in our modern sense of the word—who may be regarded, more or less, as his contemporaries, or who, at least, were in direct communication with the poet's descendants and those who had actually known him. The first of these was Simone Fornari of Eeggio in Calabria, who had studied in northern Italy and derived information from Virginio Ariosti. 'I saw the latter in Ferrara,' he writes, ' when I had left the Paduan University and was hastening towards the worthy and flourishing schools of Pisa ; and, verily, I found him right courteous and affable, and he informed me of many things touching the life of his honoured father; as also Messer Gabriele Ariosto, who of the brothers alone liveth—he, too, although oppressed by his continuous infirmities, still managed to hold out until I had read a long and learned epicedium of some two hundred heroic verses that he, impelled by fraternal desire, had sung in lamentable wise upon the death of Messer Lodovico his brother.' Fornari's work was published in 1549, as a preface to his exposition of the Orlando Furioso. Immediately after Fornari, came the learned Giovan Battista Pigna—destined to be the secretary of Duke Alfonso ii. and the Elpino of Tasso's Aminta—in the second book of his work entitled / Bomanzi, published in 1554. Although a pedant of the deepest dye, Pigna was a man of solid erudition and critical insight, and his remarks upon Ariosto's works are frequently genuinely illuminating. Ariosto's third biographer was like- wise a Ferrarese— Girolamo Garofolo or Garofalo, the son of the famous painter, Benvenuto Tisio—who has preserved highly some picturesque and probably veracious episodes of the poet's life. Garofolo's work was first published with the Venetian edition of the Orlando of 1584, to which was also PEEFACE xiii prefixed a fresh edition of Pigna's life of Ariosto, which contains some interesting additions not to be found in the Bomami nor in the extract published with Euscelli's edition of the poem in 1556. Between Pigna and Garofolo, a Florentine, Francesco Sansovino (a son of the architect, Jacopo Sansovino), had written a short sketch of Ariosto's life for an edition of the Orlando published at Venice in 1562; it is, however, simply based upon Simone Fornari and the Satires, and has not the slightest independent value. The modern epoch in the study of Ariosto opens with the labours of Barotti and Girolamo Baruffaldi the younger, of whom the latter's Vita di Lodovico Ariosto still stands as the most complete and thorough yet written, though naturally not corresponding in all respects to the present state of scholarship. English readers need not be reminded of the name of Antonio Panizzi—surely not the least of the many literary links of gold that bind Italy and England together. More lately, every writer who deals with the literature of the Italian Eenaissance has, naturally, been bound to study Ariosto ; but, of more special works, we have the exhaustive investigations of the sources of the Orlando by Pio Eajna, the invaluable researches of Giuseppe Campori and Antonio Cappelli in connection with the life and letters, the brilliant study of Giosu^ Carducci on the poet's youth and Latin poetry. The researches of Alessandro Luzio and Eodolfo Eenier, throwing light upon all the Court life of the Eenaissance in Italy, have naturally not left Messer Lodovico unUlumined; while, for the Ferrara of his latter days, the first volume of Bartolommeo Fontana's masterly biography of the Duchess Eenata is of the first importance. To these, and other writers mentioned in my pages, I have the pleasant duty of acknowledging myself greatly indebted. I have followed Gappelli's text and numeration of the poet's letters, save in the case of the two that are preserved in the British Museum. For the minor poems (with the exception xiv THE KING OF COURT POETS of the Satires) and the comedies, while retaining for con- venience of reference the order and numeration adopted in Polidori's well-known edition of the minor works, I have preferred in most cases the text and orthography of the Venetian editions of the sixteenth century, as these un- doubtedly come much more near to the poet's own diction. In the case of the Satires, while taking account of the early editions and of the researches of Giovanni Tambara, recently published, I have more closely followed the text of the Ferrarese manuscript as reproduced in the admirable Bolognese facsimile of 1875, and, for reasons stated in the book, have gone back to the Giolitine arrangement of these poems. My quotations from the Orlando Furioso are, in all cases, direct from Ariosto's own personally superintended edition of October, 1532, and I have ventured upon the extreme conservatism of adhering to the poet's own ortho- graphy, and even of retaining the H's in words derived from the Latin, as this undoubtedly was a matter of principle with him. Giovan Battista Giraldi tells us that, in conversation with him, Ariosto would lay great stress upon this, and make merry at the expense of those who did not follow this practice. ' He who takes the H from huomo, he would say, is inhuman ; and he who mutilates honore deserves no honour ; if Sercole saw his name thus robbed, he would take vengeance upon the thief with his club. And so he would never lift' the H from words that by their nature should have it, like huomo, honore, humile, honesto, hoggi, hora, and the like; nor did he only keep to this, but he would never write Febo, Filosofo, and such words that come down from Latin and Greek, but he always wrote Phebo, Philosopho' In the preface to his edition of the Orlando, against which Giraldi may be said to hold a brief, Girolamo Euscelli defends himself for having removed the H from many words that have it in the Latin, and mocks those 'che fan tanti romori per quella loro benedetta H ; but in his ' Annotationi — PREFACE XV et Awertimewti, at the end of the volume, he admits that, in the famous copy of the poem that Galasso Ariosti had shown him with Lodovico's last marks and corrections, the poet had, with a very few exceptions, left the letter of contention practically untouched.

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