Produced by Kathleen Ethington
HENRY RICHARD, LORD HOLLAND,&c. &c. &c.
Who, at a late period of my labours upon the "Furioso", suggestedthe present work as its necessary prologue.
Kind peer, who, mid the tempest of debate,
Hast gladly wooed and won the Southern muse.
Where, crowned with fruit and flower of mingling hues,
She in a grove of myrtle keeps her state.
This I had entered by a postern gate,
Like stranger, who no certain path pursues.
Or garden's lord, that hath his own to choose,
Hadst thou not shewn a better entrance late:
That portal led me to Morgana's* towers,
Where fierce Orlando found the dame at play;
And though, too fast for me, from fields of flowers,
She flies to savage waste, and will not stay.
It will content me but to paint her bowers,
If this be granted by the scornful fay.
William Stewart Rose.
* See the adventure of Morgana, the type of Fortune, who, flyingfrom her garden into a wilderness, is taken by Orlando, Book II.
It is many years since I first entertained a vague idea oftranslating the Orlando Furioso, and circumstances of littleimportance to the reader, led me more recently to undertake it inearnest. This work was again laid down; and afterwards resumed atthe instance of a distinguished friend; and by an odd coincidence,I am indebted also to the suggestion of another eminent person forthe idea of the present translation of the Orlando Innamorato,which, I should observe, is intended to be auxiliary to that, myfirst and greater undertaking, though I need scarcely say, thatthe story of Boiardo is a necessary prologue to the poem ofAriosto.
It was my intention to have translated the first mentioned work,exactly upon the model adopted by Tressan in his version of theFrench romances, a scheme afterwards executed with so much bettersuccess, by my late excellent friend, Mr. George Ellis, in hisEnglish work of the same description. A further consideration ofthe subject, however, induced me to imitate them only in theirgeneral plan of illustrating a compendious prose translation byextracts, without seeking to add poignancy to this, by what mightgive a false idea of the tone of my original. I recollected that Istood in a very different predicament from that of either of theseauthors; that, to compare my work with the one, which is mostlikely to be familiar to my readers, the 'Specimens of earlyEnglish Romances,' the originals are composed in a spirit ofgravity which can hardly be confused with the gay style of thetranslator, and therefore nobody can be misled by the vein ofpleasantry which runs through Mr. Ellis's work, and which is sureto be exclusively ascribed to the author of the Rifacimento.This, however, would possibly not be the case with me, as theInnamorato is in a great measure a humourous work, of which Imight give a false impression, by infusing into it a differentspecies of wit, from that which distinguishes it;—aconsideration which induced me to adopt the scheme I have pursuedin the following sheets.
This project is to give a mere ground-plan of the Gothic edificeof Boiardo, upon a small scale, accompanie