[Footnote 2:  Rinaldo is an ambassador, and one upon very urgent business; yet he halts by the way in search of adventures.  This has been said to be in the true taste of knight-errantry; and in one respect it is so.  We may imagine, however, that the ship is wind-bound, and that he meant to return to it on change of weather.  The Caledonian Forest, it is to be observed, is close at hand.]

[Footnote 3:  All honour and glory to the manly and loving poet!

“Lavezzuola,” says Panizzi, “doubts the conjugal concord of beasts, more particularly of bears.  ’Ho letto presso degno autore un orso aver cavato un occhio ad un orsa con la zampa.’ (I have read in an author worthy of credit, that a bear once deprived a she-bear of an eye with a blow of his paw.) The reader may choose between Ariosto and this nameless author, which of them is to be believed.  I, of course, am for my poet.”—­Vol. i. p. 84.  I am afraid, however, that Lavezzuola is right.  Even turtle-doves are said not to be always the models of tenderness they are supposed to be.  Brutes have even devoured their offspring.  The violence is most probably owing (at least in excessive cases) to some unnatural condition of circumstances.]

[Footnote 4:  This is quite in Ariosto’s high and bold taste for truth under all circumstances.  A less great and unmisgiving poet would have had the lover picked up by a fisherman.]

SUSPICION [1]

It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the world than a just prince—­a thoroughly good man, who shuns no part of the burden of his duty, though it bend him double; who loves and cares for his people as a father does for his children, and who is almost incessantly occupied in their welfare, very seldom for his own.

Such a man puts himself in front of dangers and difficulties in order that he may be a shield to others; for he is not a mercenary, taking care of none but himself when he sees the wolf coming; he is the right good shepherd, staking his own life in that of his flock, and knowing the faces of every one of them, just as they do his own.

Such princes, in times of old, were Saturn, Hercules, Jupiter, and others—­men who reigned gently, yet firmly, equal to all chances that came, and worthy of the divine honours that awaited them.  For mankind could not believe that they quitted the world in the same way as other men.  They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of demigods.

When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and, at all events, public decency is observed.  Oh, blessed kingdoms that are governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the mercy of a man without justice—­a fellow-creature without feelings!