To ask of him delicacy of treatment in the representation of his knights, or delicacy of thoughts and words in his treatment of women and love, and in general, beauty of sentiment, is to ask of him what is external to his fundamental motive. To be astonished that he sometimes laughs or smiles, is to be astonished at what happens every day among the people (and there are traces of it in the ingenuous epic) when they are listening to the recital of great deeds, which do not forbid an occasional comic remark. To lament his supposed neglect of art, his lack of polish of language and versification, is to censure him as a grammarian who employs pre-established models or dwells upon minute details to which he attributes sovereign importance. How on the other hand can it be forgotten, when praise of his rich fancy and robust frankness of style and composition is opposed to censures or interlarded among them, that we must explain whence came to him these merits, for they are not to be snatched, but are born only of the soul. Whence came they, if not from true poetical inspiration and from his already mentioned passion for the energetic and the primitive? Hence the admiration aroused by his vast canvases, his vivid narratives:--Angelica, who by merely appearing at Carlo's banquet, makes everyone fall in love with her, and whom even the Emperor himself cannot refrain from admiring, though with discretion, lest he should compromise his gravity, Angelica, whom the greatest champions of Christianity and Paganism follow with admiration, refusing herself to all and loving only him who alone abhors her;--the solemn council of war, held by Agramante previous to entering France, with the speeches of the kings who surround him, courageous or prudent, the sudden appearance of the youthful Rodomonte, who dominates all with his tremendous energy;--the joyful courage of Astolfo, never disconcerted by headlong mishaps, whom fortune succours by furnishing him with a lance, by means of which, to the astonishment of all, he accomplishes prodigies, while he himself remains unastonished;--Brunello, as to whose doings one would like to apply Vico's phrase about "heroic thieving," Brunello, who wanders about the earth, stealing the most carefully guarded objects, with an audacious dexterity and so comic an imagination, Brunello, revelling in his joyous virtuosity and vainly-pursued over the whole world by Marfisa of the viper's eye, which spirts venom, Marfisa who wishes to put him to death; but he flies from her, turning from time to time in his flight to laugh in her face and make gestures of mockery;--Then again there are the colloquies of Orlando and Agricane, during the pauses in their bitter duel, which must end in the death of one of them; Rinaldo's caustic reply to Orlando, who has reproved him for wishing to carry away the golden couch from the fairy's garden; and that other no less caustic repartee of the courageous highway robber to Brandimarte; and