“Fugge tra selve spaventose e scure,
Per lochi inabitati, ermi e selvaggi. 
Il mover de le frondi e di verzure
Che di cerri sentia, d’ olmi e di faggi,
Fatto le avea con subite paure
Trovar di qua e di la strani viaggi;
Ch’ ad ogni ombra veduta o in monte o in valle
Temea Rinaldo aver sempre alle spalle.”

Canto i. st. 33.]

[Footnote 3: 

“Ecco non lungi un bel cespuglio vede
Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rose,
Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede,
Chiuso dal Sol fra l’ alte quercie ombrose; ]

[Footnote 4:  And how lovely is this!

“E fuor di quel cespuglio oscuro e cieco
Fa di se bella et improvvisa mostra,
Come di selva o fuor d’ombroso speco
Diana in scena, o Citerea si mostra,” &c.

St. 52.]

[Footnote 5:  How admirable is the suddenness, brevity, and force of this scene!  And it is as artful and dramatic as off-hand; for this Amazon, Bradamante, is the future heroine of the warlike part of the poem, and the beauty from whose marriage with Ruggiero is to spring the house of Este.  Nor without her appearance at this moment, as Panizzi has shewn (vol. i. p. cvi.), could a variety of subsequent events have taken place necessary to the greatest interests of the story.  All the previous passages in romance about Amazons are nothing compared with this flash of a thunderbolt.]

[Footnote 6:  From bayard, old French; bay-colour.]

Footnote 7:  His famous sword, vide p. 48.]

[Footnote 8:  To richness and rarity, how much is added by remoteness!  It adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it.]

[Footnote 9: 

  “Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro
  Mezo ascoso ne l’onda, e mezo sorto. 
  Come sospinto suol da Borca o d’Ostro
  Venir lungo navilio a pigliar porto,”
                                        Canto x. st. 100.

Improved from Ovid, Metamorph. lib. iv. 706

  “Ecce velut navis praefixo concita rostro
  Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis;
  Sic fera,” &c.

  As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce,
  Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar.

Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster.  The comparison of the fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste.  The classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far as the combat is concerned, is imitated from Ovid’s story of Perseus and Andromeda.]

[Footnote 10: 

“Sul lito un bosco era di querce ombrose,
Dove ogn’ or par che Filomena piagna;
Ch’in mezo avea un pratel con una fonte,

  E quinci e quindi un solitario monte. 

Quivi il bramoso cavalier ritenne
L’audace corso, e nel pratel discese.” 

                                                                                                                  St. 113.