The admiration and curiosity with which it was
received, and the like of which will perhaps never fall again to the
lot of epic poetry to the end of time, is a brilliant proof of how
great was the need of it. It is idle to ask whether that epic ideal
which our own day has formed from Homer and the 'Nibelungenlied' is or
is not realized in these works; an ideal of their own age certainly
was. By their endless descriptions of combats, which to us are the most
fatiguing part of these poems, they satisfied, as we have already said,
a practical interest of which it is hard for us to form a just
conception--as hard, indeed, as of the esteem in which a lively and
faithful reflection of the passing moment was then held.
Nor can a more inappropriate test be applied to Ariosto than the degree
in which his 'Orlando Furioso' serves for the representation of
character. Characters, indeed, there are, and drawn with an
affectionate care; but the poem does not depend on these for its
effect, and would lose, rather than gain, if more stress were laid upon
them. But the demand for them is part of a wider and more general
desire which Ariosto fails to satisfy as our day would wish it
satisfied. From a poet of such fame and such mighty gifts we would
gladly receive something better than the adventures of Orlando. From
him we might have hoped for a work expressing the deepest conflicts of
the human soul, the highest thoughts of his time on human and divine
things--in a word, one of those supreme syntheses like the 'Divine
Comedy' or 'Faust.
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