In the court of Duke Borso and his successor, Boyardo Count Scandiano, was respected as a noble, a soldier, and a scholar: his vigorous fancy first celebrated the loves and exploits of the paladin Orlando; and his fame has been preserved and eclipsed by the brighter glories and continuation of his work.

Ferrara may boast that on classic ground Ariosto and Tasso lived and sung; that the lines of the _Orlando Furioso_, the _Gierusalemme Liberata_ were inscribed in everlasting characters under the eye of the First and Second Alphonso.

In a period of near three thousand years, five great epic poets have arisen in the world, and it is a singular prerogative that two of the five should be claimed as their own by a short age and a petty state." It perhaps will be admitted that if the style of these passages is less elaborate than that of the _Decline and Fall_, the deficiency, if it is one, is compensated by greater ease and lightness of touch.
It may be interesting to give a specimen of Gibbon's French style.

His command of that language was not inferior to his command of his native idiom.

One might even be inclined to say that his French prose is controlled by a purer taste than his English prose.