Ludovico Ariosto was born at Reggio, near Modena, in September, 1474. From boyhood he showed a turn for versifying, and a distaste for the severer study of the law, to which he was destined. This repugnance triumphed over the wishes of his father, an Officer in the Duke of Ferrara’s service, and obtained license for him to pursue his own inclinations. His father died about the year 1500, leaving a small inheritance, and ten children, of whom Ludovico was the eldest. Thus, the care of the family, and the education and establishment of its younger branches, devolved upon him; and this onerous and important duty he faithfully performed, while to his mother, who survived his other parent many years, he ever manifested a filial affection.

In the midst of his domestic cares he still found time to cultivate literature, and he composed several lyric pieces; among others, a Latin epithalamium on the marriage of Alfonso d’Este, son of the reigning Duke of Ferrara, with the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Ariosto was then but a young man, and probably little acquainted with the political and domestic history of the Borgias; the praises therefore which he bestows on Lucrezia, not merely for her beauty, but for her moral qualities, ought not to be too severely criticised; the same excuse, however, cannot be made for a repetition of the same eulogium in his subsequent great poem, when he must certainly have become acquainted with the contemporary chronicles. But all poets were in that age tainted with court flattery, and Ariosto’s object was to gain the favour of his sovereigns and patrons, the princes of Este. Princely patronage was then absolutely necessary to a literary man who was not himself rich, as there was no reading public upon which to depend. Italy was divided into principalities, and distracted by foreign war and intestine dissensions, and the notice of the courts could alone bestow fame upon an author, and save him from neglect and distress.

These compositions attracted the favourable notice of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Alfonso’s younger brother, a man of information and abilities. Upon personal acquaintance, he was pleased with Ariosto’s manners, and received him as one of the gentlemen of his retinue about the year 1503. Ippolito was a busy politician, and deeply concerned in all the intrigues of that most busy period of Italian politics. He soon perceived that Ariosto’s talents might be turned to account, and employed him in various missions, to Florence, Urbino, and other Italian courts; in the course of which the poet became acquainted with many persons of rank and consequence, and especially with Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, afterwards Leo X., who took a particular liking to him, and admitted him to his familiar society.

Ariosto was recommended by his first patron, Cardinal Ippolito, to Alfonso d’Este, who succeeded to the ducal crown of Ferrara in 1505; and from that time he enjoyed the confidence of both the brothers.

In 1509, Alfonso joined in the league of Cambray with the Pope, the French, and the Emperor Maximilian, against the Venetians; and Ippolito, who was a soldier as well as a statesman, took the command of his brother’s troops. Ariosto accompanied his master to the field, and was present at the campaign of that year on the banks of the Po. He has described, in the thirty-sixth canto of his Furioso, the atrocities perpetrated by the Sclavonian mercenaries in the Venetian service.

It is not our province to follow the operations of this war, farther than to state, that Ariosto was present in several battles, and employed in two political missions to Pope Julius II. The second time, he was compelled to make a hasty retreat from Rome, as Julius had publicly threatened to have him thrown into the Tiber. In 1513, Leo X. succeeded to the Papal throne. Ariosto soon after repaired to Rome to congratulate the new Pope. Leo received him as an old and intimate acquaintance. “He stooped graciously from his holy chair towards me, took me by the hand, and saluted me on both the cheeks. From that moment my credulous hopes were raised to the unknown regions of heaven.” In short, Ariosto now thought his fortune was made. But he had not sufficient patience; he soon grew tired of waiting at Rome without receiving any more substantial proofs of Leo’s benevolence, and, too independent to be importunate at levees and audiences, he turned his back upon all his prospects from that quarter. Having returned to Ferrara, he applied himself with renewed earnestness to his favourite studies. He had long since formed the plan of a great poem on the subject of the wars of Charlemagne against the Saracens, a traditional theme derived from the fabulous chronicle of Turpin, in which some truth was intermixed with a mass of exaggerations, anachronisms, and wondrous tales of paladins, knights-errant, and giants, the offspring of older traditions of Welch or Armorican invention. (See Warton’s “History of English Poetry,” Ellis’s “Specimens of early English Metrical Romances,” etc.) Many French, Spanish, and Italian ballad and romance writers had treated this fanciful theme, each adding something to the common stock of the marvellous from his own imagination. In Italy, three poets of considerable genius, Pulci, Boiardo, and Bello, had composed long poems on the subject, in which the celebrated Orlando or Roland, figured as the great champion of Christendom. Boiardo, departing from his predecessors, gave a new interest to his poem by making Orlando fall in love with Angelica, a Pagan or Saracen (the two are often taken as synonymous in all these romances) princess, of supernatural beauty, and possessed of magical powers, who had come from the farthest Asia to Charlemagne’s camp for the express purpose of exciting the jealousy of the Christian leaders, and thus, by spreading dissension among them, rendering them unable to cope successfully with the infidels. Boiardo did not complete his poem, which he called “Orlando Innamorato;” and he left off the story of Angelica, where Charlemagne, weary of the discord which raged in his camp since Angelica’s appearance, gives her in charge to Namo, one of his squires, until such time as he shall have decided upon the rival claims of Rinaldo and Orlando, his two bravest paladins, to her hand. It is from this point that Ariosto took up the thread of his story, and in consonance with the proverb that from love to madness there is but one step, he determined to make Orlando run mad with jealousy, on discovering that Angelica had eloped with a young and handsome, but obscure squire, of the name of Medoro, for whom she forgets all the objects of her journey to the west, and despises the sighs of Orlando and the other renowned paladins of Charlemagne’s court. Ariosto styled his poem “Orlando Furioso,” and he wrote it at first in forty cantos, which he afterwards increased to forty-six. Orlando’s madness runs through the greater part of the poem, until he is restored to reason by his cousin Astolpho, who brings back his wits in a phial from the moon. Meantime the principal action of the poem, namely, the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens, continues throughout, and ends with the final expulsion of the Moors from France, and the death of their great champion Rodomonte, whose death, like that of Turnus in the Æneid, closes the poem. But it would be idle to look for the unity and the consecutiveness of epic action, as some critics have done, in a poem which is not an epic. There are many actions in the Furioso, all skilfully interwoven together, and making in the end an harmonious whole; but during their progress, the reader finds himself often lost as in a labyrinth, and perplexed how to recover the thread of his recollections. And yet the beauties of description, the fine touches of character and feeling, are so many, that we wander on delighted, as pilgrims who have strayed into an enchanted world, and then gaze, and wonder, and idle along, thoughtless of the end or purport of their journey.

Ariosto was employed for ten years about his poem, from his first beginning to the completion of it in forty cantos. It was printed at his own expense, at Ferrara, in April, 1516, by Mazocco del Bondeno, in one volume quarto. He sold one hundred copies of this first edition to the bookseller, Gigli, for twenty-eight scudi, being at the rate of about fifteen pence a copy, on condition that the bookseller should not sell the copies for more than twenty pence each. This edition is now extremely rare.

Ariosto hastened to present a copy to Cardinal Ippolito, to whom there is an affectionate dedication in the third stanza of the first canto, besides several other passages throughout the work which are highly laudatory of him, of his brother Alfonso, and of the house of Este in general. The Cardinal, after perusing the poem, seems to have been puzzled about the meaning and purpose of it, and he is said to have asked the author “Where in the devil’s name he had picked up so many absurdities?” But whether this story be true or not, it is certain that Ippolito did not relish the work, and that Ariosto gained by it no additional favour with him. Cardinal Ippolito was a busy worldly man; his mind was anything but poetical, his tastes and pursuits were matter of fact; his abilities—and he had abilities—were in a different line, and he told Ariosto that “he would have been better pleased, if, instead of praising him in idle verse, he had exerted himself more earnestly in his service.” This remark we have from Ariosto himself, in his second satire. Much declamation has been wasted on the Cardinal for his want of taste, and for what has been called his ungenerous conduct towards the great poet. But a want of taste for poetry is no ground for moral censure; and if the Cardinal thought no better of Ariosto for exerting a talent which he could not appreciate, at least it does not appear that he esteemed him the less. He retained him in his service as before, until the end of 1517, when being on the point of setting off for his diocese of Gran in Hungary, of which he was Archbishop, he requested Ariosto to follow him; but Ariosto excused himself on the plea of his delicate health and the rudeness of the Hungarian climate. His brother Alessandro, however, accompanied the Cardinal. Ippolito was certainly displeased at Ariosto’s refusal, but he did not stop his pension in consequence of it. It was not until a year or two after that the small pension of twenty-five scudi every four months, of which Ariosto speaks, was stopped, during the Cardinal’s absence; and it is stated by Barotti, in his life of Ariosto, that this took place in consequence of the Duke’s abolishing a local tax, on the produce of which Ariosto’s pension was assigned. Besides this pension, Ariosto enjoyed one-third of the fees paid to the Notarial Chancery for every deed registered, which brought him about one hundred scudi per annum. This he did not lose after the Cardinal’s departure. He seems to have enjoyed some other perquisites, which were, of course, the fruits of his connection with the princes of Este. He was not rich, but, at the same time, he was not in distress. Although he sometimes indulges in outbreakings of poetical querulousness in his satires, which are the best authority for his biography, yet, in the very midst of these, we find expressions of sincere regard and grateful affection for both the Cardinal and the Duke, for Ariosto was a right-hearted man.

After the Cardinal’s death, which happened in 1520, Ariosto was taken by Duke Alfonso into his own service, as one of his gentlemen attendants. The duties of this office, we are told by the poet himself, were merely nominal, and left him ample leisure to pursue his favourite studies. Yet the Duke was very fond of his company, and willingly granted those favours which he requested for himself or his friends. (See Ariosto’s Seventh Satire.) From the general character of Ariosto, however, we may conclude that he was not an indiscreet or importunate petitioner. In 1521, he published a second edition of his great poem, with many corrections, but still in forty cantos only: this edition is as scarce as the first. As he expressed a wish to be more actively employed, Alfonso, in 1522, appointed him Governor of the province of Garfagnana, bordering on the Modenese territory, and situated on the western slope of the Apennines, on the side of Lucca. This country had just been restored to the house of Este, after having been for years occupied by the Florentines and the Pope. The people were divided into factions, which openly defied the law. Ariosto humorously describes in his fifth satire the difficulties of his new office. He remained about three years at Castelnuovo, the chief town of this mountain district, and seems to have succeeded by his firm, yet liberal and conciliatory conduct, in restoring order among that turbulent and rude population, who showed him marked proofs of esteem on several occasions. In 1523, the Duke’s secretary, Pistofilo, wrote to offer him the appointment of ambassador to the new Pope, Clement VII.; but Ariosto declined the honour, saying, that he had already had enough of Rome and the Medici, alluding to his disappointment which he had experienced from Leo X. In 1524, he returned from his government to Ferrara, which he does not seem to have ever quitted afterwards. He had there long before formed an attachment to a lady, whose name he has carefully concealed; and this appears, from his own hints, to have been an additional reason, on several occasions above mentioned, for his not wishing to remove far from Ferrara. By this lady he had a son, Virginio, whom he legitimated by a regular act done before Cardinal Campeggio, in April, 1530. Virginio was then twenty-one years of age. The deed still exists in the archives of the house of Ariosti. In it the Christian name alone of Virginio’s mother, Orsolina, is mentioned, and she is qualified as a spinster; but her family name and rank are left out, honestatis causÂ, as it is there stated. This Virginio took orders, and became afterwards a canon of the Cathedral of Ferrara. Ariosto had another natural son, Giovanbattista, who rose to the rank of captain in the Duke’s service.

After his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto recast some comedies which he had composed in youth, and wrote others, making in all five comedies in blank verse, which pleased the Duke so much upon perusal that he resolved on having them performed, and for this purpose had a theatre constructed in a wing of the ducal palace. No pains or expense were spared to add to the splendour of the representation, which the Duke and his court attended. These plays are modelled upon Plautus and Terence; the unities are preserved, and the plot is made to turn upon the shifts and stratagems of dissipated and needy young men, aided by base domestics or panders, to deceive their parents, or the parents or guardians of their mistresses. And, like the contemporary comedies of Bibbiena and Machiavelli (co-founders with Ariosto of Italian comedy,) they are stained by frequent indecency of allusion and language.

In the division of his father’s scanty property, Ludovico had for his share the house at Ferrara, which stands, or stood till lately, in the street of Santa Maria di Bocche, and on the door of which was seen the marble escutcheon of the Ariosti. He purchased, in 1526, a small house of a person of the name of Pistoja, near the street Mirasole. He afterwards bought several adjoining lots of ground, and built himself a commodious house, which he surrounded by a garden and trees. This is still seen in the street Mirasole, with an inscription to commemorate its former inmate. There he spent, in studious and pleasant retirement, the latter years of his life, continuing to enjoy the favour of Duke Alfonso, and of his son Prince Ercole d’Este, afterwards Duke Hercules II., to whom he gave instruction in literature.

In October, 1532, Ariosto, after sixteen years passed, since its first publication, in the continual and almost daily revision of his great poem, published a third edition in forty-six cantos, which, notwithstanding some misprints, has remained the legitimate text of the Orlando Furioso. This was the last edition which he published himself. The six additional cantos are the 33d, 37th, 39th, 42d, 44th, and 45th; and in the others, stanzas are added or altered from time to time. Soon after Ariosto had thus completed his work, he fell ill of a painful internal complaint, which, after several months of lingering sufferings, terminated in death, June 6, 1533. He was then in his fifty-ninth year. He was buried privately in the church of San Benedetto, near his house, and his funeral was attended by the monks, who volunteered to pay this honour to his remains. Forty years later, the church having been rebuilt, a monument was raised to him on the right of the great altar by Agostino Mosti of Ferrara, who in his youth had studied under Ariosto, to which the poet’s bones were transferred with great ceremony. In 1612, Ludovico Ariosto, the poet’s grand-nephew, raised another monument, more splendid than the first, and placed it in the chapel to the left of the great altar; and thither Ariosto’s remains underwent removal for the second time. They were then left in peace for nearly two centuries, until the French took possession of the country at the beginning of the present century, when they removed the monument (we believe the last of the two, though we cannot positively say) to the Lyceum or University; where Ariosto’s chair and his ink-stand are also preserved, as well as the autographs of the Furioso. In the convent of San Benedetto is a painting, representing paradise, by Garofalo, who had known Ariosto personally, in which the poet is seen between St. Catherine and St. Sebastian.

Virginio Ariosto left several curious memoranda of his father’s habits, which are given by Barotti. He was tall, of a robust and naturally healthy frame, and a good pedestrian. One summer’s morning he strayed out of Carpi, near Reggio, where he then resided, in his morning gown and slippers, to take a walk. Being absent in thought, he had gone more than half way to Ferrara before he recollected himself; and then continued his route, and arrived at Ferrara in the evening, having walked a distance of at least forty miles. He was generally frugal, and not choice in his meals, though at times he ate much and hurriedly, because, his son says, he was not then thinking of what he was doing, being busy in his mind about his verses or about his plans for building. One day a visiter appeared just after he had dined. While they were conversing, the servant brought up dinner for the stranger; and, as the latter was engaged in talking, Ariosto fell on the viands laid on the table, and ate all himself, the guest of course not presuming to interrupt him. After the visiter was gone, Ariosto’s brother remonstrated with him on his inhospitable behaviour, when the poet, coming to himself, exclaimed, “Well, it is his fault, after all; why did he not begin to eat his dinner at once?”

The Italians have bestowed on Ariosto the epithet of “the Divine,” and they also call him “the Homer of Ferrara.”

The character of Ariosto may be easily gathered from this brief sketch of his life. He was trustworthy, loyal, and sincere, free from envy or jealousy, and a warm friend; he was fond of meditation and retirement, often absent and absorbed in thought, and yet he could be very pleasant and jovial in company. He was not a great reader, and he selected the Latin classics in preference to other authors. He studied men and nature more than books. Of Greek he acquired some knowledge late in life. He was very fond of architecture, and regretted that his means did not permit him to satisfy his passion for building. He also took pleasure in gardening, but he was too absent and impatient to prosper in that occupation. His character, by his own confession, was stained by licentious amours: and his works are tainted by impure passages, which render them unfit for indiscriminate perusal. Still this is the fault of detached passages, not of the general spirit or object of his compositions; and if judged in comparison with his contemporaries, he will not be severely censured as an immoral writer.

Ariosto’s great poem, the Orlando Furioso, is too generally known to require a long discussion of its merits. It is by universal consent the first of all poems of chivalry and romance. It is a wonderful creation of man’s imaginative powers, extending far beyond the limits of the natural world. But the poet in his wildest flights takes care not to fall into too palpable extravagance or absurdity. He has the art of endowing the creatures of his fancy with features and attributes apparently so appropriate to their supposed nature, as to remove from his readers the feeling of the improbability of their existence. There are also other merits in the poem besides those of imagination and description. There is often a vein of moral allusion half concealed within Ariosto’s fanciful strains, the evidence of a mind deeply acquainted with the mysteries of the human heart, fully alive to the beauty of virtue, and imbued with sound notions of moral philosophy. At other times he tries to cast off his pensive mood and to appear careless and satirical, and he succeeds in exciting laughter at men’s follies and even vices; a laughter which we doubt whether the writer felt in his own heart. In his satire, however, although rather broad and licentious, he was not bitter or misanthropical. His is the humour of a good-tempered poco curante, who has no intention to break with mankind on account of its faults, and who wishes to make the best of the present world, such as it is. His touches of the pathetic, though not many, are exquisite of their kind: we will only mention, as instances, the story of Ginevra, that of Zerbino and Isabella, and the death of Brandimarte. His acquaintance with history, geography, and other sciences, was respectable, considering the time he lived in. His language is generally natural and flowing, and the justness and clearness of his expressions render the perusal of his poem of great use even to prose writers. Galileo used to say that he had formed his style chiefly by assiduous study of the Furioso. Ariosto has been accused of using trivial expressions, borrowed from popular use rather than from books. Many of these, however, have been since adopted by the best Italian writers. Several of his lines certainly are harsh and inharmonious, but it is not improbable that this was intentional, for the sake of expression, or to give variety to the sound of his verse, as it is well known that Ariosto was not a negligent writer; he corrected and recorrected his poem with the greatest care, and his apparent facility is the result of much study and labour. It is said that he altered not less than twenty times the 142d stanza of the eighteenth canto, in which he describes the beginning of a storm at sea, before he fixed on the text as it how stands.

After the three editions of the Furioso superintended by Ariosto himself, numerous editions appeared in various parts of Italy during the sixteenth century, all however more or less incorrect, and some of them—for instance, the one of 1556, by Ruscelli—deliberately mutilated or interpolated, either by editorial presumption, or through scruples of morality. The Aldine edition of 1545 is one of the best of that age; it is also the first that contains five additional cantos, which are the beginning of a new chivalric poem, left in MS. by the author, and given by his son Virginio to Antonio Manuzio. The edition of 1584, by Franceschi of Venice, is rich in comments and illustrations, but the text is often incorrect. The editions of the seventeenth century are all likewise imperfect. The edition of Orlandini, 2 vols. folio, Venice, 1731, contains all the works of Ariosto, with three biographies by Pigna, Fornari, and Garofalo, and several comments and illustrations. The learned Barotti of Ferrara brought out an edition of all Ariosto’s works, Venice, 6 vols. 12mo., 1766, in which he restored in many places the original reading, and added a life of Ariosto, which is still considered the best extant. The Birmingham edition of the Furioso, 4 vols. 4to., with plates, some of which are by Bartolozzi, is remarkably handsome, and one of the most correct. But the best text of the Furioso is that of the edition of Pirotta, Milan, 1818, in 4to., in which the editor, Morali, has succeeded in faithfully restoring the original text of Ariosto’s last edition of 1532, which has been since adopted by Molini in his edition, Florence, 2 vols. 12mo., 1823, by the Padua edition of 1827 in 4to., and by other later Italian editors. Ciardetti has published all the works of Ariosto, Florence, 8 vols. large 8vo., 1823–4.

The Orlando Furioso has been translated into most European languages. Of the English translations, Harrington’s is spirited, but far from faithful; it is in reality rather an imitation than a translation. That by T. H. Croker, 1755, has the merit of being faithful and literal, stanza for stanza. The recent translation by Mr. S. Rose is considered the best.

The Satires of Ariosto are seven in number; they are addressed to his brothers and other friends. As the author did not intend them for publication in his lifetime, he expressed himself freely in them, and related many curious particulars of his history. They were first published in 1534, and have been often reprinted, both separately and with the rest of his works. They have been twice translated into English, by Robert Toft in 1608, and by Croker in 1759. Ariosto is one of the best Italian satirists. He has followed the Horatian model; he corrects without too much bitterness or scurrility. He reprobates the vices of his age and country, and they were many and great. He speaks of popes, princes, and cardinals, of the learned and the unlearned, of clergymen and laymen, of nobles and plebeians, with great freedom, but without violence or exaggeration, and in language generally, though not always, decorous. Ariosto’s satires deserve to be more generally read than they are, both as a mirror of the times, and as a model of that species of composition which, from the pens of ill-tempered or vulgar men, has too often assumed a tone of malignancy and licentiousness equally remote from justice and truth.

Besides the Orlando Furioso, his comedies, and his satires, Ariosto left some minor works, in Italian and in Latin verse, such as epigrams, canzoni, sonnets, capitoli in terza rima, and other lyrics; and a curious Latin eclogue, which long remained inedited, composed in 1506, on the occasion of a conspiracy against the life of Duke Alfonso by his two brothers, Ferrante and Giulio. He also wrote a dialogue in Italian prose, called “l’Erboleto,” on medicine and philosophy. We have no other works of his in prose, except one or two letters; his correspondence, which probably was extensive, has never been collected.

The number of commentators, critics, and biographers of Ariosto is very great: a complete collection of them would form a considerable library. Some of the best have been mentioned in this sketch. We must add Baruffaldi, junior, who wrote a life of Ariosto, Ferrara, 1807, and Count Mazzuchelli, who has given a good biography of him in his “Scrittori d’Italia.”