The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 17, No. 481, March 19, 1831

Excerpt

RELICS OF ARIOSTO.

We need not bespeak the reader's interest in these "trivial fond" relics—these consecrated memorials—of one of the most celebrated poets of Italy. They are preserved with reverential care at Ferrara, the poet's favourite residence, though not his birthplace. The Ferrarese, however, claim him "exclusively as their own" Lord Byron, in the Notes to Childe Harold, canto 4, says, "the author of the Orlando is jealously claimed as the Homer, not of Italy, but Ferrara. The mother of Ariosto was of Reggio, and the house in which he was born is carefully distinguished by a tablet with these words:—'Qui nacque Ludovico Ariosto il giorno 8 di Settembre dell' anno 1474.' But the Ferrarese make light of the accident by which their poet was born abroad, and claim him exclusively for their own. They possess his bones, they show his ARM-CHAIR, and his INKSTAND, and his autographs. The house where he lived, the room where he died, are designated by his own replaced memorial, and by a recent inscription."

Ferrara, we should here mention, is a fortified town, and a day's journey, en voiturier, from Florence to Vienna. The Tomb, as well as the above relics, a bronze Medallion of the great Poet, and an account of his last illness and death—the two latter found in his tomb—are in the public library at Ferrara. This library also contains the original MSS. of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Guarini's Pastor Fido; and in the Hospital of St. Anne, at Ferrara, travellers are shown the cell where Tasso was confined.

The INKSTAND is of bronze, and its singular device is said to refer to the Poet's amorous caution. In his Life, we are told that "The amours of Ariosto are a difficult theme for both his eulogists and his biographers. He has alluded in his Poems to several ladies with whose charms he was captivated, but, with the exception of Alessandra and Genevra, the names under which they are mentioned are fictitious. His caution in this respect is thought to have been hinted at in the device placed on his favourite inkstand, and which consisted of a little Cupid having his forefinger on his lip in token of secresy." The evidence in proof of Alessandra's being his wife is little short of unanswerable.

Reverting to the early life of the Poet—he studied at Ferrara, but losing his tutor, who was called from thence, and appointed preceptor to the son of Isabella of Naples, Ariosto was left without the present means of gaining instruction in Greek. To this period Mr. Stebbing thus alludes:—

"To the regret he experienced at losing his master, was added that of hearing soon after of his decease; but scarcely had he recovered from the distress he felt at this circumstance, when the death of his father put an end for some time to all his literary thoughts and pursuits. He has pathetically described his situation at this period in his sixth Satire, which contains several allusions both to the present and previous circumstances of his life.

"'My father dies; thenceforth with care oppressed

New thoughts and feelings fill my harass'd breast;

Homer gives way to lawyers and their deeds,

And all a brother's love within me pleads;

Fit suitors found, two sisters soon are wed,

And to the altar without portions led....