of the sword, and politico-religious harangues from the clergy and leaders of the armies, were of daily occurrence. Then were the times when

"The pulpit, drum-ecclesiastic,

Was beat by fist instead of a stick."

Perhaps the earliest regular newspaper in Britain was Butler's News of the present week, printed in 1622. During the Rebellion numerous pamphlets and gazettes appeared, and after the restoration the Intelligencer, by Roger L'Estrange, was published by authority. From the period of the Revolution (1688), down to the present time, the press of Great Britain has been free and untrammelled, and newspapers of all shades and party hues have gradually multiplied, till the daily print of some kind or another has become almost an indispensable necessary of life. They are served up on the breakfast-table with the toast, or rolls, or muffins; and as the taste leads some to prefer brown bread to white, so the conservative, whig, or radical newspaper, is made choice of from the dictates of a similar mental appetite.

The history of some one of our daily newspapers, the Times for instance, would fill a large volume, or what would be equivalent, the whole columns of a double number of the Times itself. The reporting the penny-a-lining-the home and foreign contributing—the editing and sub-editing— advertising department-printing-financial, and distributing each of them would form long and curious chapters, and last of all the revenue, which would be found to exceed that of the greatest dukes and princes of former times, and even of many of the present,-all this we must postpone for the present.

The influence of such mighty and complicated enginery, as we have just alluded to, must be great on the public mind. It is so, but the influence of he public on the press is reciprocal. The power of the press is great, but it cannot be wielded without the concurrence of the minds it addresses. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the press abstractedly moulds and directs public opinion-it is only one of the organs of the huge giant, or monster, or call it what we may. The press is the great organ for collecting and disclosing, and it may be for disguising and mystifying, and sometimes poisoning, facts. It brings these scattered facts to the mind of the public; but then the public in the main exercises its own judgment, and whether this same public be actuated by reason, or passion, or folly, the press is the index, conductor, or expositor of all this. The press is a sort of usher to the public-a teacher, it may be, to the lower forms, but liable to be taught by the upper, and liable to the surveillance and rebuke of headmaster Reason, or Unreason, just as the said master may have chanced in a morning to waken on the wrong side or the right. In a former article, we endeavoured to arrange political parties

* Torch, No. 3

under certain orders,-now each of these orders have their newspapers, magazines, reviews, and pamphlets, prepared, and sugared, and spiced exactly to the palates of the readers. There is a certain circle within which each of these periodicals must of necessity move, and if they deviate but the smallest point from the prescribed lines, they will be infallibly repudiated. Were the Standard or Quarterly to measure out the smallest modicum of praise to Lord John Russell, or Grey, or Palmerston, they would be instantly burnt on the hearth of the aristocratic subscriber, and the same result would follow a similar breach of tactics on the part of an opposition journal. The planets may be permitted some little eccentricity of their orbits, but none is allowed to the party print. Wandering comets sometimes appear in the heavens, crossing the well-defined circles of all the planets, and coinciding with none-so we sometimes see a neutral periodical, but like its brother comet, it soon disappears, and is disregarded by all. Interregnums of party sometimes occur, too, when portions of the public press waver in opinion, and assume whirling motions, but old system is soon again restored, and they lapse into their places as before.

Such is the tact of editorship, that very rarely indeed does it appear otherwise than as if the press ruled and guided the multitude. On certain occasions, however, great questions arise, on which the public voice makes itself to be heard. This has happened in former times on some great questions of war or peace—to a certain extent it occurred in the slave abolition agitation, where the voice of justice and humanity silenced a venal press, and a band of hired orators, who were got up to support the iniquitous system. To a certain extent it occurred in the treatment of Ireland, and in a late disruption of a part of the Scottish Church, nearly a million of people (as is computed) had not a single newspaper or periodical of any kind but what was bitterly opposed to them, until they raised up periodicals for their own special advocacy. In this latter instance, the editorial tact was at fault-a new party arose,—a new planet, as it were, assumed a definite and distinct orbit, and the party prints were obliged to mould themselves the best way they could to accommodate the views of their former supporters.

Sometimes, on the other hand, the press makes an inroad on the opinions of the multitude. The voice of the few reiterated, and "fresh and fresh applied," at last prevails. When the Edinburgh Review first began its so-called democracy, it was hooted as a pestilence. It had barely arrived at its second or third number, when one of its chief supporters tells us that a certain noble earl then resident in Edinburgh, and more famous for his party prejudices than for his high intellectual powers, opened his hall door, and kicked the unfortunate blue and yellow into the street, as if it had been some basilisk that had intruded itself into his

dwelling. Yet the then cause of offence was probably some moderate scheme of parliamentary reform-or of slave emancipation-or of some small relief from the excessive restrictions of trade, all which would in the present time, to even the same lord's party, be looked upon as measures not going far enough.

Then we have another instance of the perseverance, and, we may almost add, the triumph of the public press, in the matter of the corn laws. Until a few years ago, the subject of the duties on corn, though frequently agitated, was to a considerable extent held in abeyance. The mass of the people, as to the abstract question, knew and cared little about the matter, yet a free trade in corn, as far as is practicable, is one of those truths founded in justice, and by dint of corn-law leagues, newspaper paragraphs, and pamphlets most assiduously circulated, the monster mind became full of the evil, and fumed and groaned over every hot roll and piece of buttered toast which its huge maw swallowed, till at last digestion is completely spoiled, and nothing will restore it but a repeal pill. Here, it is true, as in many other cases, the press is not so much the originator as the instrument, and, indeed, in all cases, unless a predisposition on the part of the public exists for any particular measure, all the powers of the press would be vain. But seeing that the press and party opinion are so varied, and often contradictory, how is the public mind to arrive at truth? Indeed, not very easily. Truth has always lain deep, and surrounded with obstructions. Were a perfectly disinterested person, on the occurrence of some great public event, to go into a news-room, and read the various papers on the subject, he could not fail to be greatly puzzled. In one he would find the event a measure extolled to the skies, in the other deprecated in the strongest terms, in a third cut up into shreds and patches, in a fourth volleys of execration, not so much at the measure in question, as at the parties supporting, and the parties opposing it. Did this stranger, in his perplexity, turn from the crowded columns of the newspapers, to the living groups around him, and enter with them into a discussion of the subject, his ideas on the matter would be still more clouded and perplexed. On the one hand, he would find a group of eager declaimers on the inexpediency and unlawful nature of the affair; on the other, a chuckling coterie, exulting in the fulfilment of their dearest hopes, while some long-visaged, pale-faced, slouch-hatted, restless-looking beings, perambulate the hall before him, muttering dissatisfaction at every view of the political horizon which can be presented to them. In walking out he may perhaps meet with a single round-faced, ruddy and cheerful old gentleman, who has been amusing himself with Punch, or the Illuminated Times, instead of the more truculent political prints, and who, on the question being put to him, gravely shakes his head with the well

weighed answer of Sir Roger de Coverley, "Indeed, indeed, sir, much may be said on both sides."

Yet, with all its faults and contradictions, the press, as expressive of the aggregate-mind of a thinking people, comes on the whole pretty near the truth. It may often declaim from feeling or passion, without pausing to consult the judgment. It too often writes through party prejudice, and the more debasing principle of self-interest and gain. Yet as in an intellectual community reason, and sound sense, and justice, and good feeling, will predominate and bear sway, these are so many salutary checks on the errors and weaknesses of political writers. Would that all theso would look upon their vocation as a sacred, as it is an important and influential one!

Newspapers are very meagre affairs in most of the kingdoms of continental Europe; indeed, a free press can only exist in a free and representative country. It is the voice of the people, and where restraint and curtailment of civil rights exist, this voice will of course be restrained, and the expression of political feeling repressed. Thus we shall find that with the improved government of France, the condition of their periodical literature has also been raised somewhat.

The press has its various gradations. The daily paper collects the raw materials, hastily digests them, and throws out bold and general hints, the spur or suggestion of the moment. The rumour of to-day is launched along as a sort of certainty,-the report of yesterday is expunged or neutralize l by something else. The weekly paper, again, has ruminated on all these daily morsels, and brings out its somewhat more matured thoughts. Still, much is vague and uncertain, and rumours are cautiously announced, because they have to lie. eight days uncontradicted. The monthly magazine still more considerately takes up the raw material, handles it with what skill it may, and then the whole is transferred to the bulky and longwinded quarterly, whose dicta have the stability of a whole quarter, if no untoward event happen while the sheets are yet in the throes of the press. The annual registers store up the best parts of the whole year's transactions, and pickle them up for future historians.

We subjoin the following historical notice of the origin of newspapers: The first modern paper, bearing any resemblance to a newspaper, was circulated in MS. at Venice in 1563, and called Gazetta. The English Mercurie is the first printed sheet, said to have been circulated while the Spanish Armada was in the English Channel in 1588. This and the Packet of News, were only issued occasionally. Butler's News of the present Week appeared in 1622, about which time similar sheets began to be circulated on the Continent. From this period till the restoration, sheets of news and gazettes were frequently published. In 1633, Roger L'Estrange brought out, with privilege, his Intelligencer, and two years afterwards, the Government Gazette was issued. In Scotland the first newspaper published was A Diurnal

of some passages and affairs, originally printed in London, and reprinted at Leith in 1652. The first actually produced in Edinburgh was the Mercurius Caledonius, 31st December 1660. The Edinburgh Courant was established some short time before the year 1710, for in that year liberty is granted by the town-council to the celebrated Daniel Defoe to publish it in room of the deceased Adam Bog. The Mercury, its contemporary, was conducted by the celebrated grammarian, Thomas Ruddiman. In Dublin the first paper was published about 1700, called Pue's Occurrence. The first provincial paper was the Norwich Postman, in 1706, price one "but a halfpenny not refused." All these papers penny, were of small size, and frequently from a dearth of news left half blank, or filled up with portions of Scripture, or printed on one leaf of letter paper, as Dawkins' News Letter. The Daily Courant, 1790, was the first daily

London paper. The Tatlers of Steel, Spectator of Steel and Addison, the Englishman, Rambler, Mirror, &c., were the archetypes of the modern race of literary periodicals. The Spectator was looked upon as having a prodigious circulation when it reached 10,000 copies per week; and such in reality it was, considering the population then and the illiterate condition of the mass of society. In 1782 the number of newspapers in England was 50, in Scotland 8, and in Ireland 3. In 1790 the total number in Britain was 114, in 1821 216, in 1832 369, in 1840 554, in 1813 570. Newspapers are printed in all the British colonies. Several are established and conducted in the West Indies by the coloured population; in India by Hindoos. In the United States of America nearly 100,000,000 copies of papers are annually circulated. They pay no tax, and are conveyed 100 miles by post for one half-penny.

DANTE was succeeded by two poets of a very different cast, Pulci and Boiardo, whose works are of a gay, chivalrous character, and which gave rise to the style which Ariosto afterwards perfected. Luigi Pulci was of a noble family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence in 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of a genius for poetry. Little is known of his life farther than that he married a noble lady, travelled in Lombardy and elsewhere, was one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary circle, and apparently led a life the most congenial to a poet, always meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and garden. Pulci, who was the first genuine romantic poet after Dante, at first sight seems, in the juxtaposition, like farce after tragedy, and indeed in many parts of his poem he is not only what he seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterer. He was a true poet of the mixed order, grave as well as gay, had a reflecting mind, a susceptible and most affectionate heart, and perhaps was never more in earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most laughable sallies.

While Pulci was in Florence, elevating romance out of the street-ballads, and laying the foundation of the chivalrous epic, Boiardo, a congenial spirit, arose in Lombardy. He was born of an ancient family, in the castle of Scandiano, at the foot of the Appenines, in 1434. He received a superior education, and rose to rank and command in the service of the Dukes of Modena. Little is known of his life, but that little is very pleasant. It exhibits him in the rare light of a poet who was at once rich, romantic, an Arcadian and a man of the world, a feudal lord and an indulgent philosopher, a husband and father, a courtier equally beloved by prince and people. His great poem is the Orlando Innamorato, besides which he wrote a comedy, and nu

merous prose works. As a poet, he in some respects excelled Ariosto; in all, with the exception of style, showed himself a genuine, though immature, master.

The congenial spirits of Pulci and Boiardo may be said to have attained to their height in the person of Ariosto. Lodovico Giovanni Ariosto was born in 1474, in the fortress at Reggio, in Lombardy, and was the son of the captain of that citadel, who was also master of the household to two successive dukes, his patrons. Lodovico was the eldest of ten children, and at a very early age began to manifest precocious talents.

At fifteen the young poet, like so many others of his class, was consigned to the study of the law, and took a great dislike to it. The extreme mobility of his nature, and the wish to please his father, appear to have made him enter on it willingly enough in the first instance; but as soon as he betrayed symptoms of disgust, Niccolo, whose affairs were in a bad way, drove him back to it with a vehemence which must have made bad worse. At the expiration of five years he was allowed to give it

up.

There is reason to believe that Ariosto was "theatricalising" during no little portion of this time; for, in his nineteenth year, he is understood to have been taken by Duke Ercole to Pavia and to Milan, either as a writer or performer of comedies, probably both, since the courtiers and ducal family themselves occasionally appeared on the stage; and one of the poet's brothers mentions his having frequently seen him dressed in charac

ter.

On being delivered from the study of the law, the young poet appears to have led a cheerful and unrestrained life for the next four or five years. He wrote, or began to write, the comedy of the Cessaria; probably meditated some poem in the style of Boiardo, then in the height of his fame; and he cultivated the Latin language, and intended to learn Greek, but delayed, and unfortunately missed it in consequence of losing his tu

tor.

Some of his happiest days were passed at a villa, still possessed by the Maleguzzi family, called La Mauriziana, two miles from Reggio. Twenty-five years afterwards he called to mind, with sighs, the pleasant spots there which used to invite him to write verses; the garden, the little river, the mill, the trees by the water-side, and all the other shady places in which he enjoyed himself during that sweet season of his life "betwixt April and May. To complete his happiness, he had a friend

and cousin, Pandolfo Ariosto, who loved every thing that he loved, and for whom he augured a brilliant reputation.

But a dismal cloud was approaching. In his twentyfirst year he lost his father, and found a large family left on his hands in narrow circumstances. The charge was at first so heavy, especially when aggravated by the death of Pandolfo, that he tells us he wished to die. He took to it manfully, however, in spite of these fits of gloom; and he lived to see his admirable efforts rewarded; his brothers enabled to seek their fortunes, and his sisters properly taken care of. Two of them, it seems, had become nuns. A third married; and a fourth remained long in his house. It is not known what became of the fifth.

In these family-matters the anxious son and brother was occupied for three or four years, not, however, without recreating himself with his verses, Latin and Italian, and recording his admiration of a number of goddesses of his youth. He mentions, in particular, one of the name of Lydia, who kept him often from "his dear mother and household," and who is probably represented by the princess of the same name in the Orlando, punished in the smoke of Tartarus, for being a jilt and coquette. His friend Bembo, afterwards the celebrated cardinal, recommended him to be blind to such little immaterial points as ladies' infidelities. But he is shocked at the advice. He was far more of Othello's opinion than Congreve's in such matters; and declared, that he would not have shared his mistress's good-will with Jupiter himself.

Towards the year 1504, the poet entered the service of the unworthy prince, Cardinal Ippolito of Este, brother of the new Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the First.

The admirers of our author may wonder how he could become the servant of such a man, much more how he could praise him as he did in the great work which he was soon to begin writing. But Ariosto was the son of a man who had passed his life in the service of the family; he had probably been taught a loyal blindness to its defects; gratuitous panegyrics of princes had been the fashion of men of letters since the time of Augustus; and the poet wanted help for his relatives, and was of a nature to take the least show of favour for a virtue, till he had learnt, as he unfortunately did, to be disappointed in the substance. It is not known what his appointment was under the Cardinal. Probably he was a kind of gentleman of all work; an officer in his guards, a companion to amuse, and a confidential agent for the transaction of business. The employment in which he is chiefly seen is that of an envoy, but he is said also to have been in the field of battle; and he intimates in his Satires, that household attentions were expected of him, which he was not quick to offer, such as pulling off his eminence's boots, and putting on his spurs. It is certain that he was employed in very delicate negotiations, sometimes to the risk of his life from the perils of roads and torrents. Ippolito, who was a man of no delicacy, probably made use of him on every occasion that requir ed address, the smallest as well as greatest,—an interview with a pope one day, and a despatch to a dog-fancier the next.

His great poem, however, proceeded. It was probably begun before he entered the cardinal's service; certainly was in progress during the early part of his engagement. This appears from a letter written to Ippolito by his sister the Marchioness of Mantua, to whom he had sent Ariosto at the beginning of the year 1509 to congratulate her on the birth of a child. She gives her brother special thanks for sending his message to her by 66 Messer Ludovico Ariosto," who had made her, she says, pass two delightful days, with giving her an account of the poem he was writing. Isabella was the name of this princess; and the grateful poet did not forget to embalm it in his verse.

Ariosto's latest biographer, Panizzi, thinks he never served under any other leader than the cardinal; but I

cannot help being of opinion with a former one, whom he quotes, that he once took arms under a captain of the name of Pio, probably a kinsman of his friend Albert Pio, to whom he addresses a Latin poem. It was probably on occasion of some early disgust with the cardinal; but I am at a loss to discover at what period of time. Perhaps, indeed, he had the cardinal's permission, both to quit his service, and return to it. Possibly he was not to quit it at all, except according to events; but merely had leave given him to join a party in arms, who were furthering Ippolito's own objects. Italy was full of captains in arms, and conflicting interests. The poet might even, at some period of his life, have headed a troop under another cardinal, his friend Giovanni de' Medici, afterwards Leo the Tenth. He had certainly been with him in various parts of Italy; and might have taken part in some of his bloodless, if not his most military, equitations.

Be this as it may, it is understood that Ariosto was present at the repulse given to the Venetians by Ippolito, when they came up the river Po against Ferrara, towards the close of the year 1509; though he was away from the scene of action at his subsequent capture of their flotilla, the poet having been despatched between the two events to Pope Julius the Second, on the delicate business of at once appeasing his anger with the duke for resisting his allies, and requesting his help to a feudatory of the church. Julius was in one of his towering passions at first, but gave way before the address of the envoy, and did what he desired. But Ariosto's success in this mission was nearly being the death of him in another; for Alfonso having accompanied the French the year following in their attack on Vicenza, where they committed cruelties of the same horrible kind as have shocked Europe within a few months past, the poet's tongue, it was thought, might be equally efficacious a second time; but Julius, worn out of patience with his too independent vassal, who maintained an alliance with the French when the pope had ceased to desire it, was to be appeased no longer. He excommunicated Alfonso, and threatened to pitch his envoy into the Tiber; so that the poet was fain to run for it, as the duke himself was afterwards, when he visited Rome to be absolved. Would Julius have thus treated Ariosto could he have foreseen his renown? Probably he would. The greater the opposition to the will, the greater the will itself. To chuck an accomplished envoy into the river, would have been much; but to chuck the immortal poet there, laurels and all, in the teeth of the amazement of posterity, would have been a temptation irresistible.

It was on this occasion that Ariosto, probably from inability to choose his times or modes of returning home, contracted a cough, which is understood to have shortened his existence; so that Julius may have killed him after all. But the pope had a worse enemy in his own bosom-his violence-which killed himself in a much shorter period. He died in little more than two years afterwards; and the poet's prospects were all now of a very different sort—at least he thought so, for in March 1513, his friend Giovanni de' Medici succeeded to the papacy, under the title of Leo the Tenth.

Ariosto hastened to Rome, among a shoal of visitants, to congratulate the new pope, perhaps not without a commission from Alfonso to see what he could do for his native country, on which the rival Medici family never ceased to have designs. The poet was full of hope, for he had known Leo under various fortunes; had been styled by him not only a friend, but a brother; and promised all sorts of participations of his prosperity. Not one of them came. The visitor was cordially received. Leo stooped from his throne, squeezed his hand, and kissed him on both his cheeks: but " at night," says Ariosto, I went all the way to the Sheep to get my supper, wet through." All that Leo gave him was a "bull," probably the one securing to him the profits of his Orlando; and the poet's friend Bibbiena-wit, car

dinal, and kinsman of Berni-facilitated the bull, but the receiver discharged the fees. He did not get one penny by promise, pope, or friend. He complains a little, but all in good humour; and good-naturedly asks what he was to expect when so many hungry kinsmen and partisans were to be served first. Well and wisely asked too, and with a superiority to his fortunes, which Leo and Bibbiena might have envied.

Julius soon died, and was succeeded in the papal chair by the cheerful and indulgent son of Lorenzo de' Medici. Ariosto paid a visit to Florence on this occasion, to witness the spectacles or showy saint-days of the south. Here it was that he fell in love with his future wife. She was the widow of one of the Stroggi family, whom he had known in Ferrara. The poet, who, like Petrarch and Boccaccio, has recorded the day on which he fell in love, dwells with minute fondness on the particulars of the lady's appearance.

Her dress was black silk, embroidered with two grapebearing vines intertwisted; and "between her serene forehead and the path that went dividing in two her rich and golden tresses," was a sprig of laurel in bud. Her observer, probably her welcome if not yet accepted lover, beheld something very significant in this attire; and a mysterious poem, in which he records a device of a black pen feathered with gold, which he wore embroidered on a gown of his own, has been supposed to allude to it. As every body is tempted to make his guess on such occasions, I take the pen to have been the blackhaired poet himself, and the golden feather the tresses of the lady. Beautiful as he describes her, with a face full of sweetness, and manners noble and engaging, he speaks most of the charms of her golden locks. The black gown could hardly have implied her widowhood; the allusion would not have been delicate. The vine belongs to dramatic poets, among whom the lover was at that time to be classed, the Orlando not having appeared. Its duplification intimated another self; and the crowning laurel was the success that awaited the heroic poet and the conqueror of the lady's heart.

The marriage was never acknowledged. The husband was in the receipt of profits arising from church-offices, which put him into the condition of the fellow of a college with us, who cannot marry so long as he retains his fellowship; but it is proved to have taken place, though the date is uncertain. Ariosto, in a satire written three or four years after his falling in love, says he never intends either to marry or to take orders; because if he takes orders, he cannot marry; and if he marries, he cannot take orders-that is to say, must give up his semi-priestly emoluments.

The year after his marriage he published his great poem, Orlando Furioso, in forty cantos, and dedicated it to his patron, Cardinal Bibbiena. The coarse wit and unrefined taste of his patron, however, was not very congenial to the taste of the poet; he excused himself from attending him on his travels into Hungary, and preferred freedom and his books to the trammels of court attendance.

The only sinecure which the poet is now supposed to have retained, was a grant of twenty-five crowns every four months on the episcopal chancery of Milan: so, to help out his petty income, he proceeded to enter into the service of Alfonso, which shows that both the brothers were not angry with him. He tells us, that he would gladly have had no new master, could he have helped it; but that, if he must needs serve, he would rather serve the master of every body else than a subordinate

Ariosto); but a convent demanded it on the part of one of their brotherhood, who was a natural son of this gentleman; and a more formidable and ultimately successful claim was advanced in a court of law by the Chamber of the Duchy of Ferrara, the first judge in the cause being the duke's own steward, and a personal enemy of the poet's. Ariosto, therefore, while the suit was going on, was obliged to content himself with his fees from Milan and a monthly allowance which he received from the duke, of "about thirty-eight shillings," together with provisions for three servants and two horses. He entered the duke's service in the spring of 1518, and remained in it for the rest of his life. But it was not so burdensome as that of the cardinal; and the consequence of the poet's greater leisure was a second edition of the Furioso, in the year 1521, with additions and corrections; still, however, in forty cantos only. It appears, by a deed of agreement, that the work was printed at the author's expense; that he was to sell the bookseller one hundred copies for sixty livres (about L.5, 12s.) on condition of the book's not being sold at the rate of more than sixteen sous (1s. 8d.); that the author was not to give, sell, or allow to be sold, any copy of the book at Ferrara, except by the bookseller; that the bookseller, after disposing of the hundred copies, was to have so many more as he chose on the same terms; and that, on his failing to require a further supply, Ariosto was to be at liberty to sell his volumes to whom he pleased. “With such profits," observed Panizzi, "it was not likely that the poet would soon become independent;" and it may be added, that he certainly got nothing by the first edition, whatever he may have done by the second. Не expressly tells us, in the Satire which he wrote on declining to go abroad with Ippolito, that all his poetry had not procured him money enough to purchase a cloak. Twenty years afterwards, when he was dead, the poem was in such request, that, between 1542 and 1551, Panizzi calculates there must have been a sale of it in Europe to the amount of a hundred thousand copies.

Latterly, he suffered much from ill health, and died much attenuated, on 6th June 1533, aged 58. His body, according to his directions, was taken to the church of the Benedictines, during the night, by four men, and buried in the most private manner.

Ariosto was tall and stout, with a dark complexion; bright black eyes, black and curling hair, aquiline nose, and shoulders broad but a little stooping. His aspect was thoughtful, and his gestures deliberate. Titian, besides painting his portrait, designed that which appeared in the woodcut of the author's own third edition of his poem, which has been copied into Mr Panizzi's. It has all the look of truth of that great artist's vital hand; but, though there is an expression of the genial character of the mouth, notwithstanding the exuberance of beard, it does not suggest the sweetness observable in one of the medals of Ariosto.

The poet's temperament inclined him to melancholy, but his intercourse was always cheerful. One biographer says he was strong and healthy-another, that he was neither. In all probability he was naturally strong, but weakened by a life full of emotion. He talks of growing old at forty-four, and of having been bald for some time. He had a cough for many years before he died. His son says he cured it by drinking good old wine. Ariosto says that "vin fumoso" did not agree with him; but that might only mean wine of a heady sort. The chances, under such circumstances, were probably against wine of any kind; and Panizzi thinks the cough was never subdued. The physicians forbade him all sorts of stimulants with his food.

His temper and habits were those of a man of gaiety, In his youth he was volatile, and at no time unsusceptible of the tender affections. Every woman attracted