because Spenser is not always a safe guide in the use of words, of which lie coined many and misapplied others, the exact meaning of which he did not understand.
Carte blanche they proffer.
Stanza lxxxii. line 5.
In the original ‘foglio bianco;’ for which I cannot find any English equivalent.
To hell, from which thou came, I render thee.
Stanza xci. line 5.
I have here, and sometimes elsewhere, in according the second person plural of a verb with the second person singular of the pronoun thou, also imitated our older poets, who (like the Italians) make little sacrifices of grammar for the sake of euphony. It is a strange truth that our language (though this is perhaps true of all languages) should have grown harsher and our verse less harmonious in proportion as both have been cultivated. As to the little licence often taken by these our earlier poets, in thus breaking that vile alliance of the st, the opprobrium of our language, there is yet one distinguished modern who seems to have a due horror of a sound which might hiss an Italian into madness, and who, I believe, always takes the sting out of the tail of such words as amongst and amidst.
For the passage in the original; I may observe, that if Milton, as Mr. Foscolo, in his lectures, ingeniously suggested, was indebted to Pulci for the dignified character which he, improving gloriously upon his model, has given the Devil, he certainly took the idea of ascribing to him the invention of artillery from this passage of Ariosto, whatever may be the worth of the thing borrowed. An Italian critic justly remarks how entirely the poet, in his simple but exact description of an arquebuss, has put himself in the place of one to whom fire-arms are new.
