“Mentre che io canto, o Dio redentore,
    Vedo l’Italia tutta a fiamma e foco,
  Per questi Galli, che con gran valore
    Vengon, per disertar non so che loco: 
  Pero vi lascio in questo vano amore
    Di Fiordespina ardente poco a poco
  Un’ altra volta, se mi fia concesso,
  Racconterovvi il tutto per espresso.”

  But while I sing, mine eyes, great God! behold
    A flaming fire light all the Italian sky,
  Brought by these French, who, with their myriads bold,
    Come to lay waste, I know not where or why. 
  Therefore, at present, I must leave untold
    How love misled poor Fiordespina’s eye.[2]
  Another time, Fate willing, I shall tell,
  From first to last, how every thing befell.

Besides the Orlando Innamorato, Boiardo wrote a variety of prose works, a comedy in verse on the subject of Timon, lyrics of great elegance, with a vein of natural feeling running through them, and Latin poetry of a like sort, not, indeed, as classical in its style as that of Politian and the other subsequent revivers of the ancient manner, but perhaps not the less interesting on that account; for it is difficult to conceive a thorough copyist in style expressing his own thorough feelings.  Mr. Panizzi, if I am not mistaken, promised the world a collection of the miscellaneous poems of Boiardo; but we have not yet had the pleasure of seeing them.  In his life of the poet, however, he has given several specimens, both Latin and Italian, which are extremely agreeable.  The Latin poems consist of ten eclogues and a few epigrams; but the epigrams, this critic tells us, are neither good nor on a fitting subject, being satirical sallies against Nicolo of Este, who had attempted to seize on Ferrara, and been beheaded.  Boiardo was not of a nature qualified to indulge in bitterness.  A man of his chivalrous disposition probably misgave himself while he was writing these epigrams.  Perhaps he suffered them to escape his pen out of friendship for the reigning branch of the family.  But it must be confessed, that some of the best-natured men have too often lost sight of their higher feelings during the pleasure and pride of composition.

With respect to the comedy of Timon, if the whole of it is written as well as the concluding address of the misanthrope (which Mr. Panizzi has extracted into his pages), it must be very pleasant.  Timon conceals a treasure in a tomb, and thinks he has baffled some knaves who had a design upon it.  He therefore takes leave of his audience with the following benedictions

          “Pur ho scacciate queste due formiche,
  Che raspavano l’ oro alla mia buca,
  Or vadan pur, che Dio le malediche.

     Cotal fortuna a casa li conduca,
  Che lor fiacchi le gambe al primo passo,
  E nel secondo l’osso della nuca.

    Voi altri, che ascoltate giuso al basso,
  Chiedete, se volete alcuna cosa,
  Prima ch’ io parta, perche mo vi lasso.