Boiardo’s prose translations from the authors of antiquity are so scarce, that Mr. Panizzi himself, a learned and miscellaneous reader, says he never saw them.  I am willing to get the only advantage in my power over an Italian critic, by saying that I have had some of them in my hands,—­brought there by the pleasant chances of the bookstalls; but I can give no account of them.  A modern critic, quoted by this gentleman (Gamba, Testi di Lingua), calls the version of Apuleius “rude and curious;"[3] but adds, that it contains “expressions full of liveliness and propriety.”  By “rude” is probably meant obsolete, and comparatively unlearned.  Correctness of interpretation and classical nicety of style (as Mr. Panizzi observes) were the growths of a later age.

Nothing is told us by his biographers of the person of Boiardo:  and it is not safe to determine a man’s physique from his writings, unless perhaps with respect to the greater or less amount of his animal spirits; for the able-bodied may write effeminately, and the feeblest supply the defect of corporal stamina with spiritual.  Portraits, however, seem to be extant.  Mazzuchelli discovered that a medal had been struck in the poet’s honour; and in the castle of Scandiano (though “the halls where knights and ladies listened to the adventures of the Paladin are now turned into granaries,” and Orlando himself has nearly disappeared from the outside, where he was painted in huge dimensions as if “entrusted with the wardenship”) there was a likeness of Boiardo executed by Niccolo dell’ Abate, together with the principal events of the Orlando Innamorato and the AEneid.But part of these paintings (Mr. Panizzi tells us) were destroyed, and part removed from the castle to Modena” to save them from certain loss;” and he does not add whether the portrait was among the latter.

From anecdotes, however, and from the poet’s writings, we gather the nature of the man; and this appears to have been very amiable.  There is an aristocratic tone in his poem, when speaking of the sort of people of whom the mass of soldiers is wont to consist; and Foscolo says, that the Count of Scandiano writes like a feudal lord.  But common soldiers are not apt to be the elite of mankind; neither do we know with how goodnatured a smile the mention of them may have been accompanied.  People often give a tone to what they read, more belonging to their own minds than the author’s.  All the accounts left us of Boiardo, hostile as well as friendly, prove him to have been an indulgent and popular man.  According to one, he was fond of making personal inquiries among its inhabitants into the history of his native place; and he requited them so generously for their information, that it was customary with them to say, when they wished good fortune to one another, “Heaven send Boiardo to your house!” There is said to have been a tradition at Scandiano, that having tried in vain one day, as he was riding out, to discover