interrupted by the unprincipled descent of the French on Italy under Charles the Eighth; and in the December following he died. The Orlando Innamorato was thus left unfinished. Eight years before his decease the author published what he had written of it up to that time, but the first complete edition was posthumous. The poet was writing when the French came: he breaks off with an anxious and bitter notice of the interruption, though still unable to deny himself a last word on the episode which he was relating, and a hope that he should conclude it another time.

  "Mentre che io canto, o Dio redentore,
    Vedo l'Italia tutta a fiamma e foco,
  Per questi Galli, che con gran valore
    Vengon, per disertar non so che loco:
  Però vi lascio in questo vano amore
    Di Fiordespina ardente poco a poco
  Un' altra volta, se mi fia concesso,
  Racconterovvi il tutto per espresso."

  But while I sing, mine eyes, great God! behold
    A flaming fire light all the Italian sky,
  Brought by these French, who, with their myriads bold,
    Come to lay waste, I know not where or why.
  Therefore, at present, I must leave untold
    How love misled poor Fiordespina's eye.[2]
  Another time, Fate willing, I shall tell,
  From first to last, how every thing befell.

Besides the Orlando Innamorato, Boiardo wrote a variety of prose works, a comedy in verse on the subject of Timon, lyrics of great elegance, with a vein of natural feeling running through them, and Latin poetry of a like sort, not, indeed, as classical in its style as that of Politian and the other subsequent revivers of the ancient manner, but perhaps not the less interesting on that account; for it is difficult to conceive a thorough copyist in style expressing his own thorough feelings. Mr. Panizzi, if I am not mistaken, promised the world a collection of the miscellaneous poems of Boiardo; but we have not yet had the pleasure of seeing them. In his life of the poet, however, he has given several specimens, both Latin and Italian, which are extremely agreeable. The Latin poems consist of ten eclogues and a few epigrams; but the epigrams, this critic tells us, are neither good nor on a fitting subject, being satirical sallies against Nicolò of Este, who had attempted to seize on Ferrara, and been beheaded. Boiardo was not of a nature qualified to indulge in bitterness. A man of his chivalrous disposition probably misgave himself while he was writing these epigrams. Perhaps he suffered them to escape his pen out of friendship for the reigning branch of the family. But it must be confessed, that some of the best-natured men have too often lost sight of their higher feelings during the pleasure and pride of composition.

With respect to the comedy of Timon, if the whole of it is written as well as the concluding address of the misanthrope (which Mr. Panizzi has extracted into his pages), it must be very pleasant. Timon conceals a treasure in a tomb, and thinks he has baffled some knaves who had a design upon it. He therefore takes leave of his audience with the following benedictions

          "Pur ho scacciate queste due formiche,
  Che raspavano l' oro alla mia buca,
  Or vadan pur, che Dio le malediche.

     Cotal fortuna a casa li conduca,
  Che lor fiacchi le gambe al primo passo,
  E nel secondo l'osso della nuca.

    Voi altri, che ascoltate giuso al basso,
  Chiedete, se volete alcuna cosa,
  Prima ch' io parta, perchè mo vi lasso.

    Benchè abbia l'alma irata e disdegnosa,
  Da ingiusti oltraggi combattuta e vinta,
  A voi già non l'avrò tanto ritrosa.

    In me non è pietade al tutto estinta
  Faccia di voi la prova chi gli pare,
  Sino alla corda, the mi trovo cinta;

Gli presterò, volendosi impiccare."

     So! I've got rid of these two creeping things,
  That fain would have scratched up my buried gold.
  They're gone; and may the curse of God go with them!
  May they reach home dust in good time enough
  To break their legs at the first step in doors,
  And necks i' the second!—And now then, as to you,
  Good audience,—groundlings,—folks who love low places,
  You too perhaps would fain get something of me,
  Ere I take leave.—Well;—angered though I be,
  Scornful and torn with rage at being ground
  Into the dust with wrong, I'm not so lost
  To all concern and charity for others
  As not to be still kind enough to part
  With something near to me-something that's wound
  About my very self. Here, sirs; mark this;—
                                 [Untying the cord round his waist.
  Let any that would put me to the test,
  Take it with all my heart, and hang themselves.

The comedy of Timon, which was chiefly taken from Lucian, and one, if not more, of Boiardo's prose translations from other ancients, were written at the request of Duke Ercole, who was a great lover of dramatic versions of this kind, and built a theatre for their exhibition at an enormous expense. These prose translations consist of Apuleius's Golden Ass, Herodotus (the Duke's order), the Golden Ass of Lucian, Xenophon's Cyropædia (not printed), Emilius Probus (also not printed, and supposed to be Cornelius Nepos), and Riccobaldo's credulous Historia Universalis, with additions. It seems not improbable, that he also translated Homer and Diodorus; and Doni the bookmaker asserts, that he wrote a work called the Testamento dell' Anima (the Soul's Testament) but Mr. Panizzi calls Doni "a barefaced impostor;" and says, that as the work is mentioned by nobody else, we may be "certain that it never existed," and that the title was "a forgery of the impudent priest."

Nothing else of Boiardo's writing is known to exist, but a collection of official letters in the archives of Modena, which, according to Tiraboschi, are of no great importance. It is difficult to suppose, however, that they would not be worth looking at. The author of the Orlando Innamorato could hardly write, even upon the driest matters of government, with the aridity of a common clerk. Some little lurking well-head of character or circumstance, interesting to readers of a later age, would probably break through the barren ground. Perhaps the letters went counter to some of the good Jesuit's theology.

Boiardo's prose translations from the authors of antiquity are so scarce, that Mr. Panizzi himself, a learned and miscellaneous reader, says he never saw them. I am willing to get the only advantage in my power over an Italian critic, by saying that I have had some of them in my hands,—brought there by the pleasant chances of the bookstalls; but I can give no account of them. A modern critic, quoted by this gentleman (Gamba, Testi di Lingua), calls the version of Apuleius "rude and curious;"[3] but adds, that it contains "expressions full of liveliness and propriety." By "rude" is probably meant obsolete, and comparatively unlearned. Correctness of interpretation and classical nicety of style (as Mr. Panizzi observes) were the growths of a later age.

Nothing is told us by his biographers of the person of Boiardo: and it is not safe to determine a man's physique from his writings, unless perhaps with respect to the greater or less amount of his animal spirits; for the able-bodied may write effeminately, and the feeblest supply the defect of corporal stamina with spiritual. Portraits,