The duke no less with hope of conquest glows
Than if the palm he has already won;
As he that hopes with small expense of blows
To pluck the hair, the wizard-wight undone.
Stanza lxxx. lines 1, 2, 3, 4.
Here Ariosto was evidently indebted to the classical fable of King Nisus, whose life depended on a purple hair.
When to the castellan was certified
In Damietta, that the thief was dead,
He loosed a carrier-pigeon, having tied
Beneath her wing a letter by a thread.
She went to Cairo; and, to scatter wide
The news, another from that town was sped;
(Such is the usage there) so Egypt through,
In a few hours the joyful tidings flew.
Stanza xc.
It is curious to observe how confined customs often are, though perhaps easy in practice, and of general utility. Ariosto speaks of the use of pigeons in carrying dispatches, as if it was in his time peculiar to Egypt. Tasso also speaks of it as of a custom exclusively oriental, in the same manner, observing, upon Godfrey’s intercepting a letter which a pigeon was carrying to the enemy, that it was
Data in custodia al portator volante:
Chè tai messi in quel tempo usò il Levante.
La Gerusalemme liberata, canto xviii. lines 7 and 8.
Confided to the flying courier’s care,
Then wont dispatches in the East to bear.
And an Italian gentleman of my acquaintance, of no common information, once asked me if it was true that pigeons were applied to this purpose in England.
