APPENDIX. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MATTEO MARIA BOJARDO, COUNT OF SCANDIANO, Selected from an historical and critical Essay on the Revival of the Drama in Italy, BY JOSEPH COOPER WALKER, M. R. I. A. Honorary Member of the Societies of Perth and Dublin, and of the Academies of Cortona, Rome, and Florence. MATTEO María Bojardo, Count of Scandiano, was born about the year 1434, in Fratta, according to Mazzachelli; but Barotti, and Tiraboschi, with more appearance of probability, suppose the event to have taken place in Scandiano, a fief of the house of Bojardo, whence Matteo Maria derived his title.He was the son of Giovanni Bojardo and of Lucia Strozzi, sister of the celebrated Tito Vespasiano. U Where he acquired the rudiments of his education does not appear; but we find that he was removed, at an early period of life, to the university of Ferrara, where he was placed under the immediate care of Socino Benzi. Here he enjoyed the instruction of Guarino Veronese in the Greek language, which he continued, during the remainder of his days, to cultivate with great ardour and success. Of his profound skill in that language, his translations from Lucian, Herodotus, and Xenophon, are existing monuments. In 1469, he was sent, with other nobility of the court of Borso, to meet the Emperor Frederick III., and conduct him to Ferrara, whither he was repairing to visit Borso, whom he had a few years before created Duke of Modena, out of gratitude for the hospitable and splendid reception he had experienced at his court. In 1471, he was again honorably distinguished by the amiable and munificent Borso. On receiving an invitation from Paul II. to repair to Rome, in order to receive, at the hands of his Holiness, the ducal crown of Ferrara, Borso added Bojardo to his train on this occasion. This train consisted of five hundred gentlemen, the chamberlains and pages of the court, one hundred menial servants, and one hundred and fifty mules. The train were clothed according to their degree, in brocade, velvet, or fine cloth. The bells of the mules were of silver, and the dresses, liveries, and trappings covered with gold and silver embroidery. Having assisted at the pompous investiture, he returned from Rome in 1472, and retired to Scandiano, where he married Taddea Gonzaga, of the family of the Counts of Novellara. Borso dying soon after his investiture, he was succeeded by his nephew Ercole I., who inheriting the passion for letters which had so long distinguished the family of Este, invited Bojardo to his court, and honored him with the most flattering reception." In the court of Duke Borso and his 66 successor," says Gibbon, "Bojardo, Count of "Scandiano, was respected as a noble, a soldier, "and a scholar." A treaty of marriage being set on foot between Ercole and Eleanora of Arragon, daughter of the King of Naples, Bojardo was nominated by the Duke to conduct his intended bride to Ferrara.—In the state paper which contains his appointment, he is called Clarissimum et insignem virum, by the Duke, who bestows on him, in the same paper, other epithets equally flattering. This gracious earnest of the Duke's favour was followed by an appointment to the government of Reggio, from which he was removed to the more honorable and lucrative office of capitano of Modena; but he did not long enjoy this exalted situation. Addicted to pleasure, and devoted to his muse, he neglected the duties of his office, and merited, if he did not suffer, the displeasure of his patron. In 1492 he retired to Reggio, where he died, on the night of the 21st of December, in the castle of that city, a venerable edifice, within whose walls, about twenty years before, Ariosto had been born ;- an event, which, by a secret and insensible operation on the mind of the Homer of Ferrara, might have irresistibly impelled him to the source whence the Orlando Furioso flowed. The "Fonte onde poi é uscito il Furioso" are the words of Gravini, speaking of the Orlando Innamorato. As the cause of Bojardo's death is not mentioned by any of his biographers, fancy may attribute it to the shock which his exquisite sensibility received, on hearing that the French armies had entered Italy, and were spreading death and devastation before them. The effect which this intelligence had on his feelings, appears from the abrupt manner in which he breaks off a very interesting narrative in Lib. III. Canto 9, of his Orlando Innamo rato: Mentre ch'io canto gli amorosi detti, Alte roine con rabbiosi effetti, Par che dimonstra il ciel col fiamme accese, Di quà, e di la, col ferro ne minaccia. Having thus given vent to his feelings, and painted the horrors of the coming storm, he expresses a doubt of his ever resuming the interrupted tale-the pen drops from his hand-and, with the prophetic sigh which he breathed on closing the poem, his soul seems to have fled. The remains of Bojardo were interred in Reggio; but not a stone tells where the original inventor of the Gothic epic lies: posterity, however, has been grateful to his memory, and he shares with his great continuator, Ariosto, the respect and admiration which the wonderful poem of that "heaven-born genius" imperiously demands. "The vigorous fancy of Bojardo," says Gibbon," first celebrated the loves and exploits of the Paladine Orlando; and his fame has at once been preserved and eclipsed by the brighter glories of the continuation of his work." Before Ariosto took up the subject, a feeble attempt to complete Bojardo's plan had been made by Niccolo degli Agostini.-It is hardly necessary to add, that the original work was newly versified, or rather travestied, by Francesco Berni. The period in which Bojardo began his epic |