hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But
nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us
as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts
on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to
the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.

[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the _Furioso_, but
in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name
of the _Five Cantos_. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of
correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious
one, especially as it seems to have been written after the _Furioso_;
for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and
politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,--a
whale _inhabited_ by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that
his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in
his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on
the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.

Did Ariosto, by the way, omit Macchiavelli in his list of the friends who
hailed the close of his great poem, from not knowing what to make of his
book entitled the _Prince?_ It has perplexed all the world to this day,
and is not unlikely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on
a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's.]

[Footnote 2: A tremendous fancy this last!

"Sta for la pena, de la qual dicea
Che nacque quando la brutt'Ira nacque,
La Crudeltade, e la Rapina rea;
E quantunque in un ventre con for giacque,
Di tormentarle mai non rimanea."]

ISABELLA.[1]

Rodomont, King of Algiers, was the fiercest of all the enemies of
Christendom, not out of love for his own faith (for he had no piety), but
out of hatred to those that opposed him. He had now quarrelled, however,
with his friends too. He had been rejected by a lady, in favour of the
Tartar king, Mandricardo, and mortified by the publicity of the rejection
before his own lord paramount, Agramante, the leader of the infidel
armies. He could not bear the rejection; he could not bear the sanction
of it by his liege lord; he resolved to quit the scene of warfare and
return to Africa; and, in the course of his journey thither, he had come
into the south of France, where, observing a sequestered spot that suited
hi