and superhuman exploits of the Orlando of Pulci and Ariosto.  The whole assumption of the wickedness of the Saracens, particularly of the then Saracen king of Spain, whom Pulci’s authority, the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, strangely called Marsilius, was nothing but a pious fraud; the pretended Marsilius having been no less a person than the great and good Abdoulrahmaun the First, who wrested the dominion of that country out of the hands of the usurpers of his family-rights.  Yet so potent and long-lived are the most extravagant fictions, when genius has put its heart into them, that to this day we read of the devoted Orlando and his friends not only with gravity, but with the liveliest emotion.

THE

BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES

A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses.  Altogether impossible is it to save him.  I thought to make a pleasant ending of this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, than melancholy; but though Gan will die at last, Orlando must die before him, and that makes a tragedy of all.  I had a doubt whether, consistently with the truth, I could give the reader even that sorry satisfaction; for at the beginning of the dreadful battle, Orlando’s cousin, Rinaldo, who is said to have joined it before it was over, and there, as well as afterwards, to have avenged his death, was far away from the seat of slaughter, in Egypt; and how was I to suppose that he could arrive soon enough in the valleys of the Pyrenees?  But an angel upon earth shewed me the secret, even Angelo Poliziano, the glory of his age and country.  He informed me how Arnauld, the Provencal poet, had written of this very matter, and brought the Paladin from Egypt to France by means of the wonderful skill in occult science possessed by his cousin Malagigi—­a wonder to the ignorant, but not so marvellous to those who know that all the creation is full of wonders, and who have different modes of relating the same events.  By and by, a great many things will be done in the world, of which we have no conception now, and people will be inclined to believe them works of the devil, when, in fact, they will be very good works, and contribute to angelical effects, whether the devil be forced to have a hand in them or not; for evil itself can work only in subordination to good.  So listen when the astonishment comes, and reflect and think the best.  Meantime, we must speak of another and more truly devilish astonishment, and of the pangs of mortal flesh and blood.