But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought, He was so wasted and forpinèd quite, That all his substance was consumed to nought, And nothing left but like an airy sprite; That on the rocks he fell so flit and light, That he thereby received no hurt at all; But chancèd on a craggy cliff to light; Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl, That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.
Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there Resolved to build his baleful mansion, In dreary darkness, and continual fear Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon, That he dare never sleep, but that one eye Still ope he keeps for that occasion; Nor ever rests he in tranquillity, The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.
Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous, Which in his cold complexion do breed A filthy blood, or humour rancorous, Matter of doubt and dread suspicious, That doth with cureless care consume the heart, Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious, Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart, And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.
Yet can he never die, but dying lives, And doth himself with sorrow new sustain, That death and life at once unto him gives, And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain; There dwells he ever, miserable swain, Hateful both to himself and every wight; Where he, through privy grief and horror vain, Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight."
Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's; but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.
[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the _Furioso_, but in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name of the _Five Cantos_. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious one, especially as it seems to have been written after the _Furioso_; for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,--a whale _inhabited_ by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.