[Footnote 10:  Such, I suppose, as was given at convent-gates.]

[Footnote 11:  The pretended gift of the palace of St. John Lateran, the foundation of the pope’s temporal sovereignty.  This famous passage was quoted and translated by Milton.

“Di varii fiori ad on gran monte passa
Ch’ebbe gia buon odore, or putia forte. 
Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece)
Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece.”

Canto xxxiv. st. 80.

The lines were not so bold in the first edition.  They stood thus

“Ad un monte di rose e gigli passa,
Ch’ebbe gia buon odore, or putia forte,
Ch’era corrotto; e da Giovanni intese,
Che fu un gran don ch’un gran signor mal spese.”

“He came to a mount of lilies and roses, that once had a sweet smell, but now stank with corruption; and be understood from John that it was a great gift which a great lord ill expended.”

The change of these lines to the stronger ones in the third edition, as they now stand, served to occasion a charge against Ariosto of having got his privilege of publication from the court of Rome for passages which never existed, and which he afterwards basely introduced; but, as Panizzi observes, the third edition had a privilege also; so that the papacy put its hand, as it were, to these very lines.  This is remarkable; and doubtless it would not have occurred in some other ages.  The Spanish Inquisition, for instance, erased it, though the holy brotherhood found no fault with the story of Giocondo.]

[Footnote 12:  “Sol la pazzia non v’e, poca ne assai;
Che sta qua giu, ne se ne parte mai”
St. 78.]

[Footnote 13:  Part of this very striking passage is well translated by Harrington

“He saw some of his own lost time and deeds,
And yet he knew them not to be his own.”

I have heard these lines more than once repeated with touching earnestness by Charles Lamb.]

[Footnote 14:  Readers need not have the points of this exquisite satire pointed out to them.  In noticing it, I only mean to enjoy it in their company—­particularly the passage about the men accounted wisest, and the emphatic “I mean, sense” (Io dico, il senno).]

[Footnote 15:  Admirable lesson to frailty!]

[Footnote 16:  I do not feel warranted in injuring the strength of the term here made use of by the indignant apostle, and yet am withheld from giving it in all its force by the delicacy, real or false, of the times.  I must therefore leave it to be supplied by the reader according to the requirements of his own feelings.]

ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.

Argument.