[Footnote 54: To gratify the childish vanity of the house of
Este. Tasso has inserted in his poem, and in the first
crusade, a fabulous hero, the brave and amorous Rinaldo, (x.
75, xvii. 66 - 94.) He might borrow his name from a Rinaldo,
with the Aquila bianca Estense, who vanquished, as the
standard-bearer of the Roman church, the emperor Frederic
I., (Storia Imperiale di Ricobaldo, in Muratori Script.
Ital. tom. ix. p. 360. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iii. 30.)
But, 1. The distance of sixty years between the youth of the
two Rinaldos destroys their identity. 2. The Storia
Imperiale is a forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the end of
the xvth century, (Muratori, p. 281 - 289.) 3. This Rinaldo,
and his exploits, are not less chimerical than the hero of
Tasso, (Muratori, Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 350.)]