. Also, I
resent his admirable rhetorical flourishes about his patrons, his
Ercoles, Ippolitos, and Isabellas they ring false, dreadfully false and
studied; and Boiardo's quickly despatched friendly greeting of his
friends, his courteous knights and gentle ladies, pleases me much
better. Moreover, the all-pervading consciousness of the existence of
Homer, Virgil, nay, Statius and Lucan, every trumpery antique
epic-monger, annoys me, giving an uncomfortable doubt as to whether
Ariosto did not try to make all this nonsense serious, and this romance
into an epic; all this occasional Virgilian stateliness, alternated with
a kind of polished Decameronian gossipy cynicism, diverts my attention,
turns paladins and princesses too much into tutor-educated gentlemen,
into Bandello and Cinthio-reading ladies of the sixteenth century. The
picture painted by Ariosto is finer, but you see too much of the
painter; he and his patrons take up nearly the whole foreground, and
they have affected, idealized faces and would-be dignified and
senatorial poses. For these and many other reasons, I personally prefer
Boiardo; and perhaps the best reason for my preference is the
irrational one that he gives me more pleasure. My preferences, my
impressions, I have said, are in this matter, much less critical than
personal. Hence I can speak of Boiardo only as he affects me.

When first I read Boiardo, I was conscious of a curious phenomenon in
myself. I must confess to reading books usually in a very ardent or
rather weary manner, either way in a hurry to finish them. As it
happened, when I borrowed Boiardo, I had a great many other things on
hand which required my time and attention; yet I could not make up my
mind to return the book until I had finished it, though my intention had
been merely to satisfy my curiosity by a dip into it. I went on, without
that eager desire to know what follows which one has in a novel;
drowsily with absolute reluctance to leave off, like the reluctance to
rise from the grass beneath the trees with only butterflies and shadows
to watch, or the reluctance to put aside some fairy book of Walter
Crane's. It was like strolling in some quaint, ill-trimmed, old garden,
finding fresh flowers, fresh bits of lichened walls, fresh fragments of
broken earthenware ornaments; or, rather, more like a morning in the
Cathedral Library at Siena, the place where the gorgeous choir books are
kept, itself illuminated like missal pages b