In the same year that he was thus mortally stricken, he had put his last hand to the "Orlando Furioso," and left the poem in that form in which it appears, in forty-six cantos; the five additional ones, which have always been deemed unworthy of such a connection, having been published for the first time in 1545, twelve years afterwards. Among what may be deemed the apocryphal traditions concerning Ariosto, it has been affirmed and contradicted, with very questionable evidence on either side, that he received the laurel from the hands of the emperor Charles V., in the city of Mantua, twelve months before his death. The very circumstance of a reasonable doubt being raised respecting a fact, which, if it had occurred, must have been known throughout all Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, seems almost sufficient to invalidate the story. One of his biographers (Minchino) says, that when Ariosto felt the crown upon his brows, placed there by so august a personage, he went beside himself for joy; and ran about the streets as much out of his wits, for the time, as his own hero. It may be remarked, that nothing could have been more out of character than such extravagance in a person of Ariosto's temperament, who (whatever licence he granted to his Muse in his writings, or to his passions in secret), in public, always maintained a dignity and manliness of demeanour, which commanded respect, and showed that he never forgot his honourable birth, or waved the consciousness of intellectual superiority; though he was careful that neither of these advantages should encroach upon the jealous or vindictive sensibility of others. Ariosto in person was tall and strong-boned, but stooping a little, and slow in his gait as well as in all his motions. His countenance, judging from Titian's portrait,--the lofty forehead a little bald, the black curled locks behind, and corresponding beard upon a jutting chin, the elevated brows above the dark bright eyes, the Roman nose, lips eloquently moulded, teeth "passing even and white," thin cheeks, complexion slightly olive, long visage, well-proportioned neck, and shoulders square,--his countenance, with features such as these, might altogether have been deemed the _beau idéal_ which the first painter had conceived of the first poet of the age, had not contemporary testimonies assured us that the whole was not more happily than correctly copied from the living model.