“Io non mi posso dal cor dipartire
    La dolce vista del viso sereno,
  Perch’io mi sento senza lei morire,
    E ’l spirto a poco a poco venir meno. 
  Or non mi vale forza, ne l’ardire
    Contra d’ amor, the m’ ha gia posto il freno;
  Ne mi giova saper, ne altrui consiglio: 
  Il meglio veggio, ed al peggior m’appiglio.”

  Alas!  I cannot, though I shut mine eyes,
    Lose the sweet look of that delightful face;
  The very soul within me droops and dies,
    To think that I may fail to gain her grace. 
  No strong limbs now, no valour, will suffice
    To burst the spell that roots me to the place: 
  No, nor reflection, nor advice, nor force;
  I see the better part, and clasp the worse.]

[Footnote 3: 
  [Greek:  Argureais logchaisi machou, kai panta krataeseis.]

  “Make war with silver spears, and you’ll beat all.”

The reader will note the allegory or not, as he pleases.  It is a very good allegory; but allegory, by the due process of enchantment, becomes matter of fact; and it is pleasant to take it as such.]

[Footnote 4:  “Re Galagron, il maledetto cane”]

[Footnote 5:  The lions in the shield of England were leopards in the “olden time,” and it is understood, I believe, ought still to be so,—­as Napoleon, with an invidious pedantry, once permitted himself to be angry enough to inform us.]

[Footnote 6:  The character of Astolfo, the germ of which is in our own ancient British romances, appears to have been completed by the lively invention of Boiardo, and is a curious epitome of almost all which has been discerned in the travelled Englishmen by the envy of poorer and the wit of livelier foreigners.  He has the handsomeness and ostentation of a Buckingham, the wealth of a Beckford, the generosity of a Carlisle, the invincible pretensions of a Crichton, the self-commitals and bravery of a Digby, the lucklessness of a Stuart, and the nonchalance “under difficulties” of “Milord What-then” in Voltaire’s Princess of Babylon, where the noble traveller is discovered philosophically reading the news-paper in his carriage after it was overturned.  English beauty, ever since the days of Pope Gregory, with his pun about Angles and Angels, has been greatly admired in the south of Europe—­not a little, perhaps, on account of the general fairness of its complexion.  I once heard a fair-faced English gentleman, who would have been thought rather effeminate looking at home, called an “Angel” by a lady in Genoa.]

[Footnote 7: 

  “Stava disciolto, senza guardia alcuna,
  Ed intorno a la fonte sollazzava;
  Angelica nel lume de la luna,
  Quanto potea nascosa, lo mirava.”

There is something wonderfully soft and lunar in the liquid monotony of the third line.]

[Footnote 8: 

  “La qual dormiva in atto tanto adorno,
  Che pensar non si puo, non ch’io lo scriva
  Parea che l’erba a lei fiorisse intorno,
  E d’amor ragionasse quella riva.”