Pulci approached the romance of Charlemagne from a _bourgeois_ point of view. He felt no sincere sympathy with the knightly or the religious sentiment of his originals. Boiardo treated similar material in a chivalrous spirit. The novelty of his poem consisted in the fusion of the Carolingian and Arthurian Cycles; for while he handled an episode of the former group, he felt sincere admiration for errant knighthood as figured in the tales of Lancelot and Tristram. Throughout the _Orlando Innamorato_ we trace the vivid influence of feudal ideals. Ariosto differed in his attitude from both of his predecessors. The irony that gives a special quality to his romance, is equally removed from the humor of Pulci and the frank enthusiasm of Boiardo. Ariosto was neither the citizen of a free burgh playing with the legends of a bygone age, nor yet the highborn noble in whose eyes the adventures of Orlando and his comrades formed a picture of existence as it ought to be. He was a courtier and a man of letters, and his poem is a masterpiece of courtly and literary art. Boiardo never flattered the princes of the House of Este. Ariosto took every occasion to interweave their panegyric with his verse. For Boiardo the days of chivalry were a glorious irrecoverable golden age. Ariosto contemplated this mythical past less with the regret of a man who had fallen upon worse days, than with the satisfaction of an artist who perceives the rare opportunities for poetic handling it afforded. He does not really believe in chivalry; where Boiardo is in earnest, Ariosto jests. It is not that, like Cervantes, he sought to satirize the absurdities of romance, or that he set himself, like Folengo, to burlesque the poems of his predecessors; but his philosophy inclined him to watch the doings of humanity with a genial half-smile, an all-pervasive irony that had no sting in it. A poet who stands thus aside and contemplates the comedy of the world with the dry light of a kindly and indulgent intellect, could not treat the tales of Paladins and giants seriously. He uses them as the machinery of a great work on human life, painting mankind, not as he thinks it ought to be, but as he finds it. This treatment of romance from the standpoint of good sense and quiet humor produces an apparent discrepancy between his practical knowledge of the world and his fanciful extravagance. In the artistic harmony effected by Ariosto between these opposite elements lies the secret of his irony. His worldly wisdom has the solidity of prose and embraces every circumstance of life. The creatures of his imagination belong to fairyland and exceed the wildest dreams in waywardness. He smiles to see them play their pranks; yet he never loses sight of reality, and moves his puppets by impulses and passions worthy of real men and women. Having granted the romantic elements of wonder and exaggeration for a basis, we find the superstructure to be natural.