"L' Ariosto Con quel _Furioso_ suo the piace al volgo."
"_His_ poem," adds Panizzi, "has the merit of not having pleased any body[57]." A sullen critic, Sperone (the same that afterwards plagued Tasso), was so disappointed at being left out, that he became the poet's bitter enemy. He talked of Ariosto taking himself for a swan and "dying like a goose" (the allusion was to the fragment he left called the _Five Cantos_). What has become of the swan Sperone? Bernardo Tasso, Torquato's father, made a more reasonable (but which turned out to be an unfounded) complaint, that Ariosto had established a precedent which poets would find inconvenient. And Macchiavelli, like the true genius he was, expressed a good-natured and flattering regret that his friend Ariosto had left him out of his list of congratulators, in a work which was "fine throughout," and in some places "wonderful[58]."
The great Galileo knew Ariosto nearly by heart[59].
He is a poet whom it may require a certain amount of animal spirits to relish thoroughly. The _air_ of his verse must agree with you before you can perceive all its freshness and vitality. But if read with any thing like Italian sympathy, with allowance for times and manners, and with a _sense_ as well as _admittance_ of the different kinds of the beautiful in poetry (two very different things), you will be almost as much charmed with the "divine Ariosto" as his countrymen have been for ages.
[Footnote 1: The materials for this notice have been chiefly collected from the poet's own writings (rich in autobiographical intimation) and from his latest editor Panizzi. I was unable to see this writer's principal authority, Baruffaldi, till I corrected the proofs and the press was waiting; otherwise I might have added two or three more particulars, not, however, of any great consequence. Panizzi is, as usual, copious and to the purpose; and has, for the first time I believe, critically proved the regularity and connectedness of Ariosto's plots, as well as the hollowness of the pretensions of the house of Este to be considered patrons of literature. It is only a pity that his _Life of Ariosto is_ not better arranged. I have, of course, drawn my own conclusions respecting particulars, and sometimes have thought I had reason to differ with those who have preceded me; but not, I hope, with a presumption unbecoming a foreigner.]