"You are not to take for granted," said he, "that Æneas was so pious as fame reports him, or Achilles and Hector so brave. Thousands and thousands of warriors have excelled them; but their descendents bestowed fine houses and estates on great writers, and it is from their honoured pages that all the glory has proceeded. Augustus was no such religious or clement prince as the trumpet of Virgil has proclaimed him. It was his good taste in poetry that got him pardoned his iniquitous proscription. Nero himself might have fared as well as Augustus, had he possessed as much wit. Heaven and earth might have been his enemies to no purpose, had he known how to keep friends with good authors. Homer makes the Greeks victorious, the Trojans a poor set, and Penelope undergo a thousand wrongs rather than be unfaithful to her husband; and yet, if you would have the real truth of the matter, the Greeks were beaten, and the Trojans the conquerors, and Penelope was a --. [16] See, on the other hand, what infamy has become the portion of Dido. She was honest to her heart's core; and yet, because Virgil was no friend of hers, she is looked upon as a baggage.
"Be not surprised," concluded the good saint, "if I have expressed myself with warmth on this subject. I love writers, and look upon their cause as my own, for I was a writer myself when I lived among you; and I succeeded so well in the vocation, that time and death will never prevail against me. Just therefore is it, that I should be thankful to my beloved Master, who procured me so great a lot. I grieve for writers who have fallen on evil times--men that, with pale and hungry faces, find the doors of courtesy closed against all their hardships. This is the reason there are so few poets now, and why nobody cares to study. Why should he study? The very beasts abandon places where there is nothing to feed them."
At these words the eyes of the blessed old man grew so inflamed with anger, that they sparkled like two fires. But he presently suppressed what he felt; and, turning with a sage and gracious smile to the Paladin, prepared to accompany him back to earth with his wonted serenity.
He accordingly did so in the sacred car: and Astolfo, after receiving his gentle benediction, descended on his hippogriff from the mountain, and, joining the delighted Paladins with the vial, his wits were restored, as you have heard, to the noble Orlando.