original as Boiardo wrote it was published from 1544 to 1830, when Antonio Panizzi, doubtless stimulated by the circumstance that he himself was born near Reggio,[1] redeemed it from oblivion, and restored it to the place it has ever since maintained as a star of at least the second magnitude in the constellation of Italian epic poetry.
The almost simultaneous appearance of two such poems as the Morgante and the Orlando by two writers of such social and intellectual distinction as Pulci and Boiardo, indicates that the love of chivalrous fiction must have been very rife in Italy. It is remarkable that the Italian writers should have so rarely essayed the easier path of prose-romance, but this they left to the Spaniards, who on their part, excepting in ballads, in that age rarely ventured upon poetical composition. One only of the Italian romantic epics between Boiardo and Ariosto deserves mention. It is the Mambriano of Francesco Bello, known as Il Cieco d'Adria. The blind bard amused the court of Mantua with recitations which he afterwards stitched together into a long poem devoid of all pretence to epic unity. But, as he himself observes, he thought he had done enough in bringing all the paladins back to Paris, and rendering all the Saracens tributary to the Emperor. His diction is often as unshapen as his story; nevertheless, he is a real poet, and his description of the Temple of Mars in particular will compare not unfavourably with those of Statius, Chaucer, and Boccaccio.
- ↑ It is curious to note in this connection that Rubiera, the original seat of Boiardo's family, having become a state prison under the modern Dukes of Modena, gave Panizzi the subject for his first publication, known under the abridged title of I Processi di Rubiera.
