Even extravagance thus ceases to be a blemish, whilst facility and freshness are ever multiplying new beauties. Episodes and incidents, serious or grotesque, capriciously introduced into the poem, give it a motley and heterogeneous aspect; variety of matter and diversity of style are its familiar characteristics; and its unequal execution is, perhaps, less pardonable than the desultory character of its plan. Nor is it only by its novelty that this freedom of action sustains the interest of the work. The introduction of real personages and recent events relieves the tedium of long continued allegory, and stamps nature and individuality on adventures in themselves extravagant and apocryphal. [Footnote 162: Bernardo Tasso, Lettere, II., No. 165. In a privilege of copyright granted in very complimentary terms by Leo X., the _Orlando_ is pedantically described by Bembo as "a work in vernacular verse regarding the feats of those called knights-errant, composed in a ludicrous style, but with long study, and the laborious application of many years."--Bembo, _Epistolæ nomine Leonis X._, Lib. X., No. 40.] In estimating the rank of this poet, critical judgment has too often been diverted from the quality of his verses to the fittingness of his style; and in comparing him with Tasso, the argument resolves itself into a contrast between romantic and classic poetry. Upon such a discussion we purpose not to enter. Ariosto found his countrymen under the charm of old legendary histories, perpetuated by tradition from the days of Charlemagne and his paladins, and more recently popularised in Pulci's burlesque epic of the _Morgante Maggiore_, and by Boiardo's unfettered fancy in the _Orlando Innamorato_. He was content to sail with the stream, spreading his canvas to the prevailing breeze, rather than to strike out another course, and steer in search of newer attractions. This decision necessarily limited the scope of a highly original genius to varying the details and episodes of inventions already familiarised to his readers by other less inspired pens; and it were difficult to account for his thus contentedly following their track, except from the conviction that none else was so certain a guide to success. Domenichi and Berni, aware that Boiardo had unworthily handled his theme, were content to employ themselves in recasting it into more attractive shape, and Le Sage's French translation is a mere paraphrase. But Ariosto chose the higher aim of taking up the story where Boiardo had left it incomplete, and working it out in forms less exaggerated and fanciful, but far more nobly conceived, and executed with infinitely greater polish and poetic beauty. * * * * *