Marsilius first, and after Agramant, &c.
Stanza xi. line 1.
Ariosto is not more successful than Homer in this catalogue, and the same observation may be made on the review of Tasso, which is only animated by his apostrophe to the Greeks. He has done much better, it is true, in his second catalogue, the production of his riper age (see canto xvi. of the Jerusalem Delivered); but a modern author has succeeded yet better, and the description of the Scottish troops in Marmion, in my opinion, ranks above every attempt of this description.
As a key to the present catalogue, I should observe that Ariosto uses ancient and modern names indiscriminately, as serves his purpose best. Such is, indeed, his usual practice, as may have been already observed, and an example of it occurs in the third stanza of this very canto.
Quando cedendo Morini e Piccardi
L’esercito Normanno e l’ Aquitano.
Whom when the cloudy sun his rays withdrew
Beneath the Centaur and the Goat, &c.
Stanza xxv. lines 5 and 6.
In the original,
Che mentre il sol fu nubiloso sotto
Il gran Centauro e i corui orridi e fieri.
It is hardly necessary to observe that Sagittarius is the sign into which Chiron is said to have been translated, and is, therefore, always represented by a Centaur. “I corni orridi e fieri,” Mr. Huggins, the most accurate of Ariosto’s translators, imagines to be those of the Bull, but he is certainly wrong. The poet, wishing to mark the stormy season of November, says that Rodomont went to Africa when the sun was under Sagittarius; and ‘the fierce and horrid horns,’ by which he evidently meant to indicate those of Capricorn or the Goat, the sign into which the sun passes on quitting Sagittarius, indicating thus a part of November, all December, and the greatest part of January.
