SOURCE: Hazlitt, William. “Sismondi's ‘Literature of the South’.” Edinburgh Review 25, no 44 (June 1815): 31-63.

In the following excerpt, Hazlitt compares Orlando furioso with Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered.

[Ariosto's excellence is] infinite grace and gaiety. He has fine animal spirits, an heroic disposition, sensibility mixed with vivacity, an eye for nature, great rapidity of narration and facility of style, and, above all, a genius buoyant, and with wings like the Griffin-horse of Rogero, which he turns and winds at pleasure. He never labours under his subject; never pauses; but is always settting out on fresh exploits. Indeed, his excessive desire not to overdo any thing, has led him to resort to the unnecessary expedient of constantly breaking off in the middle of his story; and going on to something else. His work is in this respect worse than Tristram Shandy; for there the progress dramatic or humourous shape; but here...