nished the subjects of their respective works, and gave them propriety of truth. But it was the good fortune of Ariosto to have lived at a period, when they were as much objects of overweening partiality, as it was the fate of Spenser to have lived in an age when they were objects of unmerited reproach. Each found it his interest to pay a respect to the prejudices of his times and while Ariosto had but to accommodate himself to the existing state of opinion, Spenser had to struggle against it, in treating a subject of the same description and character. How his choice of the romance as an epical subject, was notwithstanding judicious, as conformable to the popular prejudices in the reign of Elizabeth, may be collected, without any labour of deduction, from those letters on chivalry and romance so often quoted.

Thus it happens, by assigning its proper place and level to what is real and what is allegorical in the epick romance, by considering neither part perfect in itself, but the latter merely auxiliary to the former, that the defence of the Italian poets is easily made out. And thus we find it explained, how this part of fanciful poetry, though it has

met with many strenuous opponents, has found no adequate defenders. Both parties, as well those who opposed as those who supported it, seem not to have taken in its plan at one comprehensive view, but to have regarded it with a divided consideration: they have been led to regard it not as a whole composed of one principal with a subordinate part, but as a whole in which the parts were equally prominent. Thus regarding it as a species of composition as much typical as literal, they have been led to expect, that, in both forms, it should be equally perfect: that its more obvious sense should possess continued verisimilitude, and its more latent meaning be continued allegory. It cannot then appear extraordinary that under such a consideration, in which the object of these compositions is so completely misconceived, they should have exhibited so much to justify the censure of their opponents: and that their apologists, taking the matter on the same grounds, should have laboured so ineffectually in their vindication.

But if there are any of Ariosto's fictions which appear defective in verisimilitude, and at the same time inobvious in allegorical signification, we must attribute the circumstance

not so much to the poet, as to the age in which he flourished. He was only required to impart that verisimilitude to his fictions which was suited to the existing state of popular opinion in his time. That censure which arraigns him for not having done more, might be equally employed to condemn Homer for not having devised a train of mythological imagery correspondent with our religious notions at the present day. We must in fact admit the poetical systems of both poets subject to the popular superstitions of the age in which they wrote: and the credulity of that in which Ariosto lived would have admitted certain fictions as possessing every necessary verisimilitude which we now reject as improbable and extravagant.

This reasoning appears perfectly borne out by observing the state of opinion, not only when the "Orlando Furioso" was composed, but that under which every poetical romance, which has risen into popular estimation, appears to have been produced. As proofs that the enchantments of Spenser and Shakespeare were received with some sincerity, and admitted to possess some credibility, many parallel examples might be

produced besides the trial and conviction of the witches of Warbois. The æra of Ariosto cannot be considered more enlightened than that in which Bacon lived and wrote: nor can we conceive what light could have arisen to dissipate the credulity of Ariosto's age, when but half a century before him Dante was believed to have descended to the infernal regions, and to have witnessed all those marvellous occurrences which he has detailed in his "Divina Comedia."

I cannot, however, bring myself to believe that the state of opinion at present, though less calculated to favour the effect of marvellous fictions than it has been at the time when this species of poetry was most successfully cultivated, has tended to weaken the verisimilitude of those fictions, to diminish their intrinsick beauty, or destroy the pleasure which the works even of Ariosto or Spenser were originally intended to afford. In our more collected moments, during the perusal of these marvellous inventions, when occupied rather in reasoning on their defects, than in feeling their beauties, we are so far disengaged from emotion as to consider their want of truth and probability, we are enabled to take into account the different

circumstances under which the poem is now read, and those under which it was originally written. And though the allowances which are thus made may not raise the pleasure which a modern reader takes in such fictions as those of Homer, to that degree which was experienced by the Grecian who professed Homer's religion, it does not follow that a similar disparity exists in the pleasure which any one now takes in the imagery of the "Orlando Furioso," and that experienced by the first readers of Ariosto. Setting aside the consideration that the cotemporaries of Ariosto could not have had that unreserved belief in the fictions of the "Orlando," which those of Homer had in the "Iliad," the mythological notions of the latter are wholly irreconcileable with the truth of our present religion, while the fictions of the former possess at least the verisimilitude of some superstitions not wholly exploded among us, which if we do not implicitly believe, we do not absolutely reject. From these circumstances it is very allowable to conclude that the pleasure, which Ariosto's work at first afforded, both has remained, and is likely to continue at nearly its original level.