"These are not the octaves of Ariosto ": we have said as much. Certainly they are not, just as the octaves of Ariosto are not those of Pulci, and Ariosto, whatever trouble he might have taken, could never have attained to the inventions, the emotions, the clevernesses and the accents of the _Morgante,_ which are just as inimitable in their way as are the graces of the _Furioso._ And it is really unjust and almost odious that the reader, face to face with the treasures of fresh and original poetry, which Pulci throws without counting into his lap, should pull a wry face and ungratefully remark that Pulci's poetry is not that other poetry which he is now thinking about, and that it should be abolished, or made perfect by the other poetry! Almost the same thing is to be repeated about the author of the _Innamorato,_ who has also been tormented, condemned and executed by means of a comparison with the author of the _Furioso,_ sometimes conducted with such a refinement of cruelty that the strophes of the one are printed facing the strophes of the other, and selected as bearing upon similar situations, so that every word and syllable may be weighed; as though the strophes of a poet are not to be considered solely in themselves and in the poem of which they form part, and to be condemned, if occasion arise for condemnation, within that circle to which are confined the real conditions of judgment. Boiardo, to one who reads him without any sort of preconception and abandons himself to the simple impressions of reading, immediately shows himself to be altogether different from what some critics maintain, the pedantic singer of chivalry taken seriously, who gives way now and then to involuntary laughter and to a harsh intonation which should be toned down and softened by the skill of an Ariosto. He is quite other also than the epic bard, which some people have imagined him to be; he could not be epic, because he had no national sentiment, no feeling for class or religion, and the marvellous in him is all fancy, a marvel of the fairies; nor was he a pedant, for he obviously follows his own spontaneous inclinations, without any secondary purpose. No, Boiardo was on the contrary a soul passionately devoted to the primitive and the energetic, his was the energy of the lance-thrust, of the brand wielded, but also the energy of a proud will, of ferocious courage, of intransigent honour, of marvellous devices. And it is owing just to this energy, which has a value of its own, that he lives to unite poetically the cycles of Charlemagne and of Arthur, the Carlovingian and the Breton traditions, arms and adventures and love, both of them primitive cycles, the second being remarkable for the extraordinary nature of its adventures and the violence of its loves; whereas, if that heroism had continued to be full and substantial, it would have been difficult to make it a theme for erotic treatment, representing a different and opposed sentiment.