At the same time, several eminent poets devoted their attention to that style of composition which was destined to form the glory of Ariosto. The trouvères chose Charlemagne and his paladins as the heroes of their poems and romances, and these, composed for the most part in French in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were early circulated in Italy. Their origin accorded with the vivacity of the prevailing religious sentiment, the violence of the passions and the taste for adventures which distinguished the first crusades; while from the general ignorance of the times, their supernatural agency was readily admitted. But at the close of the fifteenth century, when the poets possessed themselves of these old romances, in order to give a variety to the adventures of their heroes, the belief in the marvelous was much diminished, and they could not be recounted without a mixture of mockery. The spirit of the age did not admit in the Italian language a subject entirely serious. He who made pretensions to fame was compelled to write in Latin, and the choice of the vulgar tongue was the indication of a humorous subject. The language had developed since the time of Boccaccio a character of _naïveté_ mingled with satire, which still remains, and which is particularly remarkable in Ariosto.
The "Morgante Maggiore" of Pulci (1431-1470) is the first of these romantic poems. It is alternately burlesque and serious, and it abounds with passages of great pathos and beauty. The "Orlando Innamorato" of Boiardo (1430-1494) is a poem somewhat similar to that of Pulci. It was, however, remodeled by Berni, sixty years after the death of the author, and from the variety and novelty of the adventures, the richness of its descriptions, the interest excited by its hero, and the honor rendered to the female sex, it excels the Morgante.
3. ROMANTIC EPIC POETRY.--The romances of chivalry, which had been thus versified by Pulci and Boiardo, were elevated to the rank of epic poetry by the genius of Ariosto (1474-1533). He was born at Reggio, of which place his father was governor. As the means of improving his resources, he early attached himself to the service of Cardinal D'Este, and afterwards to that of the Duke of Ferrara. At the age of thirty years he commenced his "Orlando Furioso," and continued the composition for eleven years. While the work was in progress, he was in the habit of reading the cantos, as they were finished, at the courts of the cardinal and duke, which may account for the manner in which this hundred-fold tale is told, as if delivered spontaneously before scholars and princes, who assembled to listen to the marvelous adventures of knights and ladies, giants and magicians, from the lips of the story-teller. Ariosto excelled in the practice of reading aloud with distinct utterance and animated elocution, an accomplishment of peculiar value at a time when books were scarce, and the emoluments of authors depended more on the gratuities of their patrons than the sale of their works. In each of the four editions which he published, he improved, corrected, and enlarged the original. No poet, perhaps, ever evinced more fastidious taste in adjusting the nicer points that affected the harmony, dignity, and fluency of his composition, yet the whole seems as natural as if it had flowed extemporaneously from his pen. Throughout life it was the lot of Ariosto to struggle against the difficulties inseparable from narrow and precarious circumstances. His patrons, among them Leo X., were often culpable in exciting expectations, and afterwards disappointing them. The earliest and latest works of Ariosto, though not his best, were dramatic. He wrote also some satires in the form of epistles. He died in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and his ashes now rest under the magnificent monument in the new church of the Benedictines in Ferrara. The house in which the poet lived, the chair in which he was wont to study, and the inkstand whence he filled his pen, are still shown as interesting memorials of his life and labors.