not be denied that we have still much to learn-that the extent of our speculation is comparatively circumscribed, and that there remains even as yet a film on the mental eye, which it would require the elixir of the Archangel to remove.

As far as regards the mere pleasure derivable from works of the imagination, as well as from the other branches of literature, it will be found, we think for the most part, to consist in the feeling of abstraction. We are in general strongly disposed to raise ourselves above the flat realities of this life-to forget its cares and its ennui, and to create in an ideal world of our own, something superior to the monotonous enjoyments we have here below. This disposition we look upon as the fountain of enthusiasm, and it will be found to pervade the literary sçavans of every class, from the conchologist to the metaphysician-from the learned philologist who hunts a monosyllable through the entire circle of the dead and living languages-from the political economist who legislates for a reckless and ungrateful world-from the Botanist who marks with patient accuracy, the calyptra of a moss, to the astronomer who reads "the poetry of Heaven."

Whatever may be the opinions of our readers on the above speculative points, we think they will agree with us, that there are no names of more frequent association in the literary parlance of the day, than the two we have prefixed to this article, although the fact is, that it would be difficult to find in the entire range of literature, two characters which correspond so perfectly in the outlines, and which differ so much in detail. In the prolific powers of the inventive faculty-in vivid description, and in the adoption of supernatural machinery, the parallel holds good. But in analysing these traits, we shall discover other properties and qualities, which mark the two characters as perfectly distinct.

There is a preliminary consideration however, which suggests itself as necessary to the formation of an impartial opinion on their respective merits. We allude to the state of national literature in both countries, and their resources at the periods they commenced writing, and we deem it the more expedient to be explicit on this head, as we have reason to know that the grounds on which they stand are more unequal than is generally supposed. Voltaire, the gross inacuracy of whose statements on Italian literature, forms a humiliating contrast with the dogmatism and the flippancy of his criticisms, has been instrumental to the propagation of a most erroneous opinion respecting the progress of the Italian language. He states that from the era of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, until the period Ariosto wrote, the succession of native writers had been regular and unbroken. He is correct in classing Pulci before Ariosto, but he appears either not to have known or to have overlooked the mighty chasm which intervened between these authors, and the retrogade that took place in the public mind in the interim.

Almost immediately on the demise of Dante and his cotemporaries, the moral horizon of Italy was clouded, and a long and dreary night succeeded to the brief but glorious day of its intellectual illumination. That classic learning was not neglected in the interim, we are ready to allow, but it is undeniable that after their death, the Italian tongue was consigned to such neglect and disuse, as to be deemed utterly beneath the purposes of learned communication, that Latin was substituted in its place by the literati of the day, and that the sweet language of the Floren

tine bards being debased by ignorance and barbarism, not only lost its former harmony in the course of a short time, but also acquired the boorish and discordant tones of the most vulgar patois. The first writer who accomplished any thing towards the redemption of the national tongue, was Burchiello, who flourished about the middle of the 15th century; to him succeeded the three brothers of the Pulci, Count Bogardo and Lorenzo de Medici. Among the productions of those writers, the Morgante Maggiore of Luigi Pulci, the youngest of the three brothers, and the Orlando Inamorato of Count Boyardo, are the most remarkable; the first furnished Milton with the model for his devils; the other formed the prototype of the Furioso. However without depreciating the merits of these writers, it must be acknowledged, that the Italian language was far from having regained the elasticity of its youth when Ariosto commenced writing. Here we are induced to remark the curious coincidence which the literary history of both countries furnishes. The reader is aware that after the demise of Dante and his cotemporaries, (who may be considered the creators of the Italian tongue) darkness and the shadow of death rested upon the land.

If Chaucer did not perform the miracles of the Italian bards, he certainly conferred the improvement of a century on the national tongue, and brought it by the extraordinary efforts of his genius to a state of almost premature cultivation. His death, however, was followed by a long and dreary eclipse, and for more than a century the country laboured under that midnight of the mind, which is only prolific of gloom and horrors. It is to the author of the Fairy Queen that we stand indebted for the resuscitation of English literature, for his predecessors, Surrey and Wyatt, although not without some marks of inspiration, were unable to break the spell of our intellectual debasement. Spencer was a fervent worshipper of Ariosto, and his fine ear had been long attuned to the delicate graces of Italian harmony. He purified the language from the alloys with which it had been previously debased, removed the corruptions with which it had been encrusted, and if it was reserved for another to bestow on it the highest polish, he gave it a tone of silvery sweetness. We thing it superfluous to remark on the treasure which the three master minds that followed,-Shakspeare; Milton and Dryden-poured into the national coffers. But we are compelled to advert to a strange opinion concerning the merits of Dryden, which has been countenanced by some of our critical brethren of deservedly high repute. It has been said that he impaired the genius of our language, by sacrificing to the refinements of the French school (as it has been term-. ed.) Against the injustice of such a statement, we appeal to the reading world in general, and as it is a matter of fact, not of taste or speculation, we defy the abettors of this strange heresy, to produce in the whole range of our Poetry, an author, whose pages present such an abundance and variety of sterling English expression. If the sharpness of the Saxon character was in any degree impaired by the high polish of Pope, and any contraction in the currency of the old phraseology took place under his cotemporaries and imitators, the evil has been remedied and the deficiency abundantly supplied in our own days, by the splendid contributions of Cowper, which are all marked with the rough outlines of the ancient character.

From this hasty summary it will be seen, that as far as the state of the literature, and consequently the language of his country was concerned, the advantages preponderated in favour of Scott. With respect to the immediate department of Poetry in which he commenced, although he was the

founder, not the disciple of a school like Ariosto, he had such an abundance of materials at his command, that we consider him, to say the least, perfectly equal in this point.

The Poems of Chaucer, who was first a worshipper of the allegorical Romance that arose in France in the 13th century under William de Lorris, but who afterwards became a follower of Boccaccio,the plays of Shakspeare, who furnished such a model for dramatic composition-the novels of Richardson, Fielding and Smollett-the pastoral drama of Ramsay, which presents such a faithful picture of the manners of his own country-the lyrical productions of Burns, who gave a degree of Doric sweetness to the patois of his native land, and the treasures of legendary lore which both countries supplied, presented an accumulation of materials, which, to an original genius. was much more desirable than any direct prototype. But there was another and more important point than either of them in which he had the advantage. Ariosto towered above his generation, like Saul the son of Benjamin," he was taller than all the people from his shoulders upwards." Scott, on the contrary, is only one of a gigantic brotherhood. The Italian Bard therefore could not have participated in that kindling influence which is communicated from one master-mind to another, until the moral atmosphere became electrical with the fires of genius. Having thus briefly adjusted the preliminaries, we may enter on the details of the comparison

The extraordinary powers of Invention which both have displayed form the grand link by which the two names have been associated in the present times. With the sole exception of Shakspeare and Lope de Vega, it would be difficult to name any writer capable of competing with either in creative genius. But they differ as widely from each other in the exercise of this faculty as it is possibly for two persons similarly gifted. Ariosto calls his spirits from the" vasty deep" of imagination, and they come in thousands and tens of thousands ready to abide his bidding, and to execute his behests. They perform the most extraordinary feats, and undergo the most perilous adventures before us, but their sorrows and distresses excite no correspondent emotions of pity in our breasts; they stimulate our curiosity very highly, but we feel that we have no sympathy-no kindred with them. Scott's empire, on the contrary, extends over the dead of past ages, and they arise at his mandate, not shrouded in the habiliments of the grave, but each arrayed in the costume of his own country-not with the pale expression and fixed and glassy stare of mortality, but with the kinding smiles, and glances of health and animation, and they perform once more before us the eventful drama of their lives, whilst our hearts throb, and our eyes are dimned at the moving spectacle. We mark with distinctness the individual lineaments of Ariosto's personages, but we are conscious that it is through the mist of illusion we behold them. Scott's figures on the contrary, stand forward in the bold relief, not of painting, but of sculpture. It is as it were through a remote and distant vista, that we behold the busy groups of the one, but we ourselves form a portion of the breathing crowds which the other has conjured around him. In variety, both of incident and of character, Ariosto appears to us to have the advantage, and this we consider the more remarkable, as nature invariably furnishes a greater variety than imagination. Orlando, Sacripant, Rinaldo, Astolphus, Rodomont, Mandricordo, &c. &c. though all knights and warriors, are all perfectly original and distinct from each other, and the daring but faithful Bradamant differs

as much from the warlike Marphissa, as the coquetish Angelica from the corrupt Onigilla, and the fond Lucina from the devoted Isabel. We are never introduced to the same character with a mere change of country and costume as frequently occurs amongst Scott's personages, nor do we detect the same train of incidents working towards a similar catastrophe. If the successive exposure of Geneura, Olympia and Angelica to the sea monster be referred to as an objection to the imputed diversity of Ariosto's occurrences, even in each of these cases, we will find a marked dissimilarity in the preceeding train of circumstances.

Amongst all his characters there are no borrowed features, no family likenesses. His supernatural personages exhibit the same individuality and distinctness, his fays and faeries, his grants and giantesses differ as much from each other as his heroes and heroines; and even when he has occasion to introduce a second time that favourite sea-monster, the Orc, he continues. to vary the description.

Although Scott may be abrupt and deficient in the intermediate parts, he seldom errs widely from the general proportions in the plan and design of his stories, but it has been judiciously observed of Ariosto, that instead of a regular series of classical reliefs he exhibits the fantastic design of an arabesque, where the sublime is mingled with the ludicrous, the beautiful withi the grotesque. The connection and gradation of events in Scott's stories is for the most part carefully marked, and uniformly preserved, but the Furioso is a grand poeticai kaleidescope, where the eye is continually dazzled by the never ending variety of events.

Ariosto appears as independant of criticism, and as disdainful of the ordinary forms of composition as his heroes are of the general ties of society and the peaceful tenor of existence. But what he is deficient in proportion, he attones for in fanciful tracing. He is the most volatile, capricious and fantastic of all poets living or dead. There is nothing cold, sombre, or phlegmatic in the constitution of his genius. Scott frequently taxes the patience of the most matter of fact reader by the drawling slowness of his movements, but Ariosto leaves the most mercurial panting and flagging behind him. From the moment he commences his incantations, his voice never falters, and his wand never wavers; new forms and figures are continually arising before us, which disappear as suddenly again among the inchanted mazes of his narrative. He is always sure to keep expectation on tiptoe, and when he has wrought our imagination to an extraordinary pitch of excitement, he all at once leaves his heroes and heroines entangled in difficulties, apparently the most insuperable, drops a new scene, crowds new characters and events upon the stage, and leaves us pefectly bewildered. Knights, hermits and magicians,-felons, outlaws and amazons, drive through his pages, in all the rapid metamorphoses of a Harlequinade. As if fays and fairies, giants and giantesses, dwarfs, goblins and ghosts, were insufficient for his purpose, he has also pressed into his service Proteus, Neptune and the Nereids-saints, angels and centaurs-a whole tribe of allegorical personifications, and a pair of Dante's devils.

Grouped with such a crowd of supernatural figures, it was to be expected, that the creatures of the animal world should be represented on a corresponding scale of magnitude, and we find orcs, unicorns and hippogriffs, eagles, starpies and ostrichs, whales, tunmies and sea-calfs, the commonplace creatures of the scene. Nor is the prowess of the combatants at all disproportionate to the marvellous circumstances with which they are in

vested. Rodomont singlehanded decapitates hundreds of the Parisians, and threatens the city of Paris with ruin. Orlando mows down whole squadrons with "his durindane." Astolphus desolates a country with a single blast of his horn, and the shield of Achilles compared to the buckler of Rogero, is but as a spider's web to the tower of David. The latter is rather an offensive than a defensive weapon-a single glance of it is sufficient to throw the fiercest assailants into a state of immoveable torpor. What an extraordinary effect it produces, on the hawk and dog and horse and person of the falconer in Rogers's escape from Alcina, whilst attacking him with the greatest fury, and by their superior swiftness entirely precluding the possibility of escape, he suddenly unveils his shield, and at the very first glance, the hawk remains with extended wing immoveably fixed in mid-air-the voice of the dog is hushed for ever-the horse is riveted to the ground, and the falconer himself becomes an unbreathing statue. When viewed merely in the abstract, there is something highly exciting in these heterogenous groups, but when mingled and confounded together with a degree of supernatural velocity, the effect is perfectly astounding. The rapidity of locomotion is commensurate with the other wonders of this work, we are borne on the pinions of the winds from Zealand to Paris, from Iceland to Ethiopia, from the land of potatoes to Araby the blest, from the coast of Cornwall to Cochin-China. A visit to the infernal regions is only a matter of curiosity, and the moon is not far off. But the violent transitions which are hourly taking place, give the most dazzling aspect to the entire spectacle. The versatility of the author can only be equalled by his lubricity: a combat between two fierce Paladins, suddenly gives place to the distresses of a bewildered damsel,-the crowds and bustle of a city, to the billows of the atlantic,—the storm, the tumult, and the turmoil of the battle, to the loneliness and seclusion of some flowery retreat, with its gushing fount, and pendent arbour-brave knights and fair damsels, are changed into myrtles, stones, and fountains, the wind is deposited in a bag, the leaves of a tree put on the "bravery and beauty" of armed frigates; but more wonderful than all these together, the same individuals without losing their personal identity, pass and repass before us with the borrowed features and physiognomy of their friends! Your Waverleys, and Quentin Durwards, and Flora Mac Ivors, are mere pigmies, compared with the characters of the Furioso. They are all heroes and heroines by profession, adventure is their element, they delight only in casualties, perplexities, and predicaments, and can scarcely be said to feel existence, unless amid perilous encounters, "hair breadth 'scapes, and moving accidents by fire and flood." They do not "outface the brow of bragging horror," but contemplate it with such complacency, as actually to become enamoured of it. As our friend, Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan has it, "it is all delightful confusion from begining to end."

In a work so highly imaginative, so thickly crowded with incidents and characters, so rapid in its progress, and diverging into such a multitude of episodical labyrinths, it is not to be wondered at, that the head of the most sober reader should become dizzy, and the fact is, that like the knights in Atlantes' castle who were doomed to run the enchanted round without intermission, we find ourselves in continual chase of the fugitive author through the magic circle of his poem. Indeed it cannot be denied that the versatility of his genius has been carried to excess, it has given an enigmatical cast to portions of his narrative and he appears to play at cross purposes with his readers.