"Ecco non lungi un bel cespuglio vede Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rôse, Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede, Chiuso dal Sol fra l' alte quercie ombrose; ]
"E fuor di quel cespuglio oscuro e cieco Fa di se bella et improvvisa mostra, Come di selva o fuor d'ombroso speco Diana in scena, o Citerea si mostra," &c.
[Footnote 5: How admirable is the suddenness, brevity, and force of this scene! And it is as artful and dramatic as off-hand; for this Amazon, Bradamante, is the future heroine of the warlike part of the poem, and the beauty from whose marriage with Ruggiero is to spring the house of Este. Nor without her appearance at this moment, as Panizzi has shewn (vol. i. p. cvi.), could a variety of subsequent events have taken place necessary to the greatest interests of the story. All the previous passages in romance about Amazons are nothing compared with this flash of a thunderbolt.]
[Footnote 6: From _bayard_, old French; _bay-colour._]
Footnote 7: His famous sword, vide p. 48.]
[Footnote 8: To richness and rarity, how much is added by remoteness! It adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it.]
"Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro Mezo ascoso ne l'onda, e mezo sorto. Come sospinto suol da Borca o d'Ostro Venir lungo navilio a pigliar porto," Canto x. st. 100.
Improved from Ovid, _Metamorph_. lib. iv. 706
"Ecce velut navis præfixo concita rostro Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis; Sic fera," &c.
As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce, Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar.
Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far as the combat is concerned, is imitated from Ovid's story of Perseus and Andromeda.]
"Sul lito un bosco era di querce ombrose, Dove ogn' or par che Filomena piagna; Ch'in mezo avea un pratel con una fonte,
E quinci e quindi un solitario monte. Quivi il bramoso cavalier ritenne L'audace corso, e nel pratel discese." St. 113.
What a landscape! and what a charm beyond painting he has put into it with his nightingales! and then what figures besides! A knight on a winged steed descending with a naked beauty into a meadow in the thick of woods, with "here and there a solitary mountain." The mountains make no formal circle; they keep their separate distances, with their various intervals of light and shade. And what a heart of solitude is given to the meadow by the loneliness of these its waiters aloof!]