h abound in the old romances. In these,
under different allegorical names, every passion, every virtue and vice,
had its palace, its enchanted bower, or its dreary cave. Among the
Italians, on the revival of letters, Pulci, Boiardo, and others,
borrowed these fictions from the Gothic romancers; Ariosto borrowed from
them, and Spenser has copied Ariosto and Tasso. In the sixth and seventh
books of the Orlando Furioso, there is a fine description of the island
and palace of Alcina, or Vice; and in the tenth book (but inferior to
the other in poetical colouring), we have a view of the country of
Logistilla, or Virtue. The passage, of this kind, however, where Ariosto
has displayed the richest poetical painting, is in the xxxiv. book, in
the description of Paradise, whither he sends Astolpho, the English
duke, to ask the help of St. John to recover the wits of Orlando. The
whole is most admirably fanciful. Astolpho mounts the clouds on the
winged horse, sees Paradise, and, accompanied by the Evangelist, visits
the moon; the adventures in which orb are almost literally translated in
Milton's Limbo. But the passage which may be said to bear the nearest
resemblance to the descriptive part of the island of Venus, is the
landscape of Paradise, of which the ingenious Mr. Hoole, to whose many
acts of friendship I am proud to acknowledge myself indebted, has
obliged me with this translation, though only ten books of his Ariosto
are yet published.

"O'er the glad earth the blissful season pours
The vernal beauties of a thousand flowers
In varied tints: there show'd the ruby's hue,
The yellow topaz, and the sapphire blue.
The mead appears one intermingled blaze
Where pearls and diamonds dart their trembling rays.
Not emerald here so bright a verdure yields
As the fair turf of those celestial fields.
On ev'ry tree the leaves unfading grow,
The fruitage ripens and the flow'rets blow!
The frolic birds, gay-plum'd, of various wing
Amid the boughs their notes melodious sing:
Still lakes, and murm'ring streams, with waters clear,
Charm the fix'd eye, and lull the list'ning ear.
A soft'ning genial air, that ever seems
In even tenor, cools the solar beams
With fanning breeze; while from the enamell'd field,
Whate'er the fruits, the plants, the blossoms yield
Of grateful scent, the stealing gales dispense
The blended sweets to feed th' immortal sense.