for in this (the "Orlando Furioso"), the madness of his hero covered him with more glory than the restoring of the Paladin's lost wits did the rider of the hippogriff. Ariosto, indeed, was the very Astolpho of song, and both his Paladins and their countries must be sought in the moon, or nowhere. He was, during the greater portion of this eventful period of his life, in the service of cardinal Hippolito d'Este, who affected to be a Mæcenas, and who, at least as much from vanity and ostentation as from genuine taste or delight in their compositions, assembled round him the prime scholars and wits of the age. By some of his biographers, the poet is said to have received munificent proofs that the princely ecclesiastic knew how to value the endowments of the Muses more than personages of his rank are wont to do. But this seems very questionable, from the poet's own account of his patron's bounty in his second Satire, which may be noticed hereafter. Leisure and competence, however, he must have enjoyed during this irksome and almost menial servitude, under which, with all its debasements, he produced his "Orlando Furioso." Having commenced the poem, he communicated the specimen and plan to his friend cardinal Bembo, who, influenced by the pedantic prejudice formerly alluded to, seriously advised him to compose it in Latin; a language in which, with all the mastery that a modern could attain over it, the licentious fables of chivalry--licentious in every sense, in diction, sentiment, plot, narrative, and morals,--would have appeared as heterogeneous and outlandish as the wrath of Achilles in Chinese, or the piety of Æneas in Sanscrit. Mr. Roscoe says of Sanazzaro and Bembo, who were brother rivals for the honours of Parnassus, that while the former "turned all his talents for the improvement of Latin poesy, the latter persevered in cultivating his native tongue."[94] Most people can give better advice than they take: Bembo, it seems, took better than he gave; and Ariosto had sagacity enough to follow his counsellor's example rather than his precept, nobly answering, "I would rather stand among the first of writers in my own tongue, than below Ovid or Virgil himself in theirs."