Chapter 14

The lines were not so bold in the first edition. They stood thus

"Ad un monte di rose e gigli passa, Ch'ebbe già buon odore, or putia forte, Ch'era corrotto; e da Giovanni intese, Che fu un gran don ch'un gran signor mal spese."

"He came to a mount of lilies and roses, that once had a sweet smell, but now stank with corruption; and be understood from John that it was a great gift which a great lord ill expended."

The change of these lines to the stronger ones in the third edition, as they now stand, served to occasion a charge against Ariosto of having got his privilege of publication from the court of Rome for passages which never existed, and which he afterwards basely introduced; but, as Panizzi observes, the third edition had a privilege also; so that the papacy put its hand, as it were, to these very lines. This is remarkable; and doubtless it would not have occurred in some other ages. The Spanish Inquisition, for instance, erased it, though the holy brotherhood found no fault with the story of Giocondo.]

[Footnote 12: "Sol la pazzia non v'è, poca nè assai; Che sta quà giù, nè se ne parte mai" St. 78.]

[Footnote 13: Part of this very striking passage is well translated by Harrington

"He saw some of his own lost time and deeds, And yet he knew them not to be his own."

I have heard these lines more than once repeated with touching earnestness by Charles Lamb.]

[Footnote 14: Readers need not have the points of this exquisite satire pointed out to them. In noticing it, I only mean to enjoy it in their company--particularly the passage about the men accounted wisest, and the emphatic "I mean, sense" (Io dico, il senno).]

[Footnote 15: Admirable lesson to frailty!]

[Footnote 16: I do not feel warranted in injuring the strength of the term here made use of by the indignant apostle, and yet am withheld from giving it in all its force by the delicacy, real or false, of the times. I must therefore leave it to be supplied by the reader according to the requirements of his own feelings.]

ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.

Argument.

The Duke of Albany, pretending to be in love with a damsel in the service of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night, and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived, disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, who, according to the laws of Scotland, is sentenced to death for her supposed lawless passion. Lurcanio then challenges the unknown paramour (for the duke's face had not been discerned in the balcony); and Ariodante, who is not dead, is fighting him in disguise, when the Paladin Rinaldo comes up, discloses the whole affair, and slays the deceiver.

ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.[1]

Charlemagne had suffered a great defeat at Paris, and the Paladin Rinaldo was sent across the Channel to ask succours of the King of England; but a tempest arose ere he could reach the coast, and drove him northwards upon that of Scotland, where he found himself in the Caledonian Forest, a place famous of old for knightly adventure. Many a clash of arms had been heard in its shady recesses--many great things had been done there by knights from all quarters, particularly the Tristans and the Launcelots, and the Gawains, and others of the Round Table of King Arthur.

Rinaldo, bidding the ship await him at the town of Berwick, plunged into the forest with no other companion than his horse Bayardo, seeking the wildest paths he could find, in the hope of some strange adventure.[2] He put up, for the first day, at an abbey which was accustomed to entertain the knights and ladies that journeyed that way; and after availing himself of its hospitality, he inquired of the abbot and his monks if they could direct him where to find what he looked for. They said that plenty of adventures were to be met with in the forest; but that, for the most part, they remained in as much obscurity as the spots in which they occurred. It would be more becoming his valour, they thought, to exert itself where it would not be hidden; and they concluded with telling him of one of the noblest chances for renown that ever awaited a sword. The daughter of their king was in need of a defender against a certain baron of the name of Lurcanio, who sought to deprive her both of life and reputation. He accused her of having been found in the arms of a lover without the license of the priest; which, by the laws of Scotland, was a crime only to be expiated at the stake, unless a champion could be found to disprove the charge before the end of a month. Unfortunately the month had nearly expired, and no champion yet made his appearance, though the king had promised his daughter's hand to anybody of noble blood who should establish her innocence; and the saddest part of the thing was, that she was accounted innocent by all the world, and a very pattern of modesty.

While this horrible story was being told him, the Paladin fell into a profound state of thought. After remaining silent for a little while, at the close of it he looked up, and said, "A lady then, it seems, is condemned to death for having been too kind to one lover, while thousands of our sex are playing the gallant with whomsoever they please, and not only go unpunished for it, but are admired! Perish such infamous injustice! The man was a madman who made such a law, and they are little better who maintain it. I hope in God to be able to shew them their error."

The good monks agreed, that their ancestors were very unwise to make such a law, and kings very wrong who could, but would not, put an end to it. So, when the morning came, they speeded their guest on his noble purpose of fighting in the lady's behalf. A guide from the abbey took him a short cut through the forest towards the place where the matter was to be decided; but, before they arrived, they heard cries of distress in a dark quarter of the forest, and, turning their horses thither to see what it was, they observed a damsel between two vagabonds, who were standing over her with drawn swords. The moment the wretches saw the new comer, they fled; and Rinaldo, after re-assuring the damsel, and requesting to know what had brought her to a pass so dreadful, made his guide take her up on his horse behind him, in order that they might lose no more time. The damsel, who was very beautiful, could not speak at first, for the horror of what she had expected to undergo; but, on Rinaldo's repeating his request, she at length found words, and, in a voice of great humility, began to relate her story.

But before she begins, the poet interferes with an impatient remark.--"Of all the creatures in existence," cries he, "whether they be tame or wild, whether they are in a state of peace or of war, man is the only one that lays violent hands on the female of his species. The bear offers no injury to his; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion; the heifer has no fear of the horns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind? Husband and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some times with bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow himself to give a blow to a woman, or to hurt even a hair of her head, is a violater of nature, and a rebel against God; but to poison her, to strangle her, to take the soul out of her body with a knife,--he that can do that, never will I believe him to be a man at all, but a fiend out of hell with a man's face."[3]

Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo, and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony for ever.

But to return to what she was going to say.--

"You are to know, sir," she began, "that I have been from my childhood in the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with her; I was held in bonour, and I led a happy life, till it pleased the cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that there was no being on earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the princess regarded as most exclusively her own; for there she kept her jewels, and there she was accustomed to sleep during inclement states of the weather. It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which looked out to some lonely ruins; and nobody ever passed that way, day or night.

"Our intercourse continued for several months; and, finding that I placed all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day a design he had upon the princess's hand; nay, did not blush to ask my assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own, when I confess that I undertook to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer to the princess's than to mine; and he pretended that he sought the alliance merely on that account; protesting that he should love me more than ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name. But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please him.

"Day and night I exerted all my endeavours to recommend him to the princess. Heaven is my witness that I did it in real earnest, however wrong it was. But my labour was to no purpose, for she was in love herself. She returned in all its warmth the passion of a most accomplished and valiant gentleman, who had come into Scotland with a younger brother from Italy, and who had made himself such a favourite with every body, my lover included, that the king himself had bestowed on him titles and estates, and put him on a footing with the greatest lords of the land.

"Unfortunately, the princess not only turned a deaf ear to all I said in the duke's favour, but grew to dislike him in proportion to my recommendation; so that, finding there was no likelihood of his success, his own love was secretly turned into hate and rage. He studied, little as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient, which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in reality; and, in order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress myself in the identical clothes which the princess put off when she went to bed that night, and then to appear in them at my usual post in the balcony, and so let down the ladder as though I were her very self, and receive him into my arms.

"I did all that he desired, mad fool that I was; and out of the part which I played has come all this mischief. I have intimated to you that the duke and Ariodante (for such was the other's name) had been good friends before Ginevra preferred hint to my false lover. Pretending therefore to be still his friend, and entering on the subject of a passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if he pleased, might have ocular testimony. "Greatly astonished at this news was Ariodante. He had received all the proofs of his mistress's affection which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest scorn refused to believe it; but as the duke, with the air of a man who could not help the melancholy communication, quietly persisted in his story, the unhappy lover found himself compelled, at any rate, to let him afford those proofs of her infidelity which he asserted to be in his power. The consequence was, that Ariodante came with his brother to the ruins I spoke of; and there the two were posted on the night when I played my unhappy part in the balcony. He brought Lurcanio with him (that was the brother's name), because he suspected that the duke had a design on his life, not conceiving what he alleged against Ginevra to be possible. Lurcanio, however, was not in the secret of his brother's engagement with the princess. It had been disclosed hitherto neither to him nor to any one, the lady not yet having chosen to divulge it to the king himself. Ariodante, therefore, requested his brother to take his station at a little distance, out of sight of the palace, and not to come to him unless he should call: 'otherwise, my dear brother,' concluded he, 'stir not a step, if you love me.' "'Doubt me not,' said Lurcanio; and, with these words, the latter entrenched himself in his post.

"Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony,--the only person visible at that moment in all the place. In a few minutes the Duke of Albany appeared below it, making the signal to which I had been accustomed; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes of both, and let down the ladder.

"Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mysterious situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little distance; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely houses, perceived all that was going on.

"I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which the princess had put off that night; and as I was not unlike her in air and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her very self. The duke impatiently mounted the ladder; I received him as impatiently in my arms; and circumstances, though from very different feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour.

"You may imagine the grief of Ariodante. It rose at once to despair. He did not call out; so that, had not his brother followed him, still worse would have ensued than did; for he drew his sword, and was proceeding in distraction to fall upon it, when Lurcanio rushed in and stopped him. 'Miserable brother!' exclaimed he, 'are you mad? Would you die for a woman like this? You see what a wretch she is. I discern all your case at once, and, thank God, have preserved you to turn your sword where it ought to be turned, against the defender of such a pattern of infamy.'

"Ariodante put up his sword, and suffered himself to be led away by his brother. He even pretended, in a little while, to be able to review his condition calmly, but not the less had he secretly resolved to perish. Next day he disappeared, nobody knew whither; and about eight days afterwards, news was secretly brought to Ginevra, by a pilgrim, that he had thrown himself from a headland into the sea.

"'I met him by chance,' said the pilgrim, 'and we happened to be standing on the top of the headland, conversing, when he cried out to me, 'Relate to the princess what you beheld on parting from me; and add, that the cause of it was my having seen too much. Happy had it been for me had I been blind!' And with these words,' concluded the pilgrim, 'he leaped into the sea below, and was instantly buried beneath it.'

"The princess turned as pale as death at this story, and for a while remained stupefied. But, alas! what a scene was it my fate to witness, when she found herself in her chamber at night, able to give way to her misery. She tore her clothes, and her very flesh, and her beautiful hair, and kept repeating the last words of her lover with amazement and despair.

The disappearance of Ariodante, and a rumour which transpired of his having slain himself on account of some hidden anguish, surprised and afflicted the whole court. But his brother Lurcanio evinced more and more his impatience at it, and let fall the most terrible words. At length he entered the court when the king was holding one of his fullest assemblies, and laid open, as he thought, the whole matter; setting forth how his unhappy brother had secretly, but honourably, loved the princess; how she had professed to love him in return; and how she had grossly deceived him, and played him impudently false before his own eyes. He concluded with calling upon her unknown paramour to come forth, and shew reasons against him with his sword why she ought not to die.

"I need not tell you what the king suffered at hearing this strange and terrible recital. He lost no time in sharply investigating the truth of the allegation; and for this purpose, among other proceedings, he sent for the ladies of his daughter's chamber. You may judge, sir,--especially as, I blush to say it, I still loved the Duke of Albany,--that I could not await an examination like that. I hastened to meet the duke, who was as anxious to get me out of the way as I was to go; and to this end, professing the greatest zeal for my security, he commissioned two men to convey me secretly to a fortress he possessed in this forest. 'Tis at no great distance from the place where Heaven sent you to my deliverance. You saw, sir, how little those wretches intended to take me anywhere except to my grave; and by this you may judge of the agonies and shame I have endured in knowing what a dupe I have been to one of the cruelest of men. But thus it is that Love treats his most faithful servants."

The damsel here concluded her story; and the Paladin, rejoicing at having become possessed of all that was required to establish the falsehood of the duke, proceeded with her on his road to St. Andrews, where the lists had been set up for the determination of the question. The king and his court were anxiously praying at that instant for the arrival of some champion to fight with the dreaded Lurcanio; for the month, as I have stated, was nearly expired, and this terrible brother appeared to have the business all his own way; so that the stake was soon to be looked for at which the hapless Ginevra was to die.

Fast and eagerly the Paladin rode for St. Andrews, with his squire and the trembling damsel, who was now agitated for new reasons, though the knight gave her assurances of his protection. They were not far from the city when they found people talking of a champion who had certainly arrived, but whose name was unknown, and his face constantly concealed by his visor. Even his own squire, it seems, did not know him; for the man had but lately been taken into his service. Rinaldo, as soon as he entered the city, left the damsel in a place of security, and then spurred his horse to the scene of action, when he found the accuser and the champion in the very midst of the fight. The Paladin, whose horse, notwithstanding the noise of the combat, had been heard coming like a tempest, and whose sudden and heroical appearance turned all eyes towards him, rode straight to the royal canopy, and, begging the king to stop the combat, disclosed the whole state of the matter, to the enchantment of all present, except the Duke of Albany; for the villain himself was on horseback there in state as grand constable, and had been feasting his miserable soul with the hope of seeing Ginevra condemned. The combatants were soon changed. Instead of Lurcanio and the unknown champion (whom the new comer had taken care to extol for his generosity), it was the Paladin and the Duke that were opposed; and horribly did the latter's heart fail him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when life forsook him. Rinaldo then took off his own helmet; and the king, who had seen the great Paladin before, and who felt more rejoiced at his daughter's deliverance than if he had lost and regained his crown, lifted up his hands to heaven, and thanked God for having honoured her innocence with so illustrious a defender.

The other champion, who, in the mean time, had been looking on through the eyelets of his visor, was now entreated to disclose his own face. He did so with peculiar emotion, and king and all recognised with transport the face of the loved and, as it was supposed, lost Ariodante. The pilgrim, however, had told no falsehood. The lover had indeed thrown himself into the sea, and disappeared from the man's eyes; but (as oftener happens than people suppose) the death which was desired when not present became hated when it was so; and Ariodante, lover as he was, rising at a little distance, struck out lustily for the shore, and reached it.[4] He felt even a secret contempt for his attempt to kill himself; yet putting up at an hermitage, became interested in the reports concerning the princess, whose sorrow flattered, and whose danger, though he could not cease to think her guilty, afflicted him. He grew exasperated with the very brother he loved, when he found that Lurcanio pursued her thus to the death; and on all these accounts he made his appearance at the place of combat to fight him, though not to slay. His purpose was to seek his own death. He concluded that Ginevra would then see who it was that had really loved her, while his brother would mourn the rashness which made him pursue the destruction of a woman. "Guilty she is," thought he, "but no such guilt can deserve so cruel a punishment. Besides, I could not bear that she should die before me. She is still the woman I love, still the idol of my thoughts. Right or wrong, I must die in her behalf."

With this intention he purchased a suit of black armour, and obtained a squire unknown in those parts, and so made his appearance in the lists. What ensued there I need not repeat; but the king was so charmed with the issue of the whole business, with the resuscitation of the favourite whom he thought dead, and the restoration of the more than life of his beloved daughter, that, to the joy of all Scotland, and at the special instance of the great Paladin, he made the two lovers happy without delay; and the bride brought her husband for dowry the title and estates of the man who had wronged him.

[Footnote 1: The main point of this story, the personation of Ginevra by one of her ladies, has been repeated by many writers--among others by Shakspeare, in _Much Ado about Nothing_. The circumstance is said to have actually occurred in Ferrara, and in Ariosto's own time. Was Ariosto himself a party? "Ariodante" almost includes his name; and it is certain that he was once in love with a lady of the name of Ginevra.]

[Footnote 2: Rinaldo is an ambassador, and one upon very urgent business; yet he halts by the way in search of adventures. This has been said to be in the true taste of knight-errantry; and in one respect it is so. We may imagine, however, that the ship is wind-bound, and that he meant to return to it on change of weather. The Caledonian Forest, it is to be observed, is close at hand.]

[Footnote 3: All honour and glory to the manly and loving poet!

"Lavezzuola," says Panizzi, "doubts the conjugal concord of beasts, more particularly of bears. 'Ho letto presso degno autore un orso aver cavato un occhio ad un orsa con la zampa.' (I have read in an author worthy of credit, that a bear once deprived a she-bear of an eye with a blow of his paw.) The reader may choose between Ariosto and this nameless author, which of them is to be believed. I, of course, am for my poet."--Vol. i. p. 84. I am afraid, however, that Lavezzuola is right. Even turtle-doves are said not to be always the models of tenderness they are supposed to be. Brutes have even devoured their offspring. The violence is most probably owing (at least in excessive cases) to some unnatural condition of circumstances.]

[Footnote 4: This is quite in Ariosto's high and bold taste for truth under all circumstances. A less great and unmisgiving poet would have had the lover picked up by a fisherman.]

SUSPICION [1]

It is impossible to conceive a nobler thing in the world than a just prince--a thoroughly good man, who shuns no part of the burden of his duty, though it bend him double; who loves and cares for his people as a father does for his children, and who is almost incessantly occupied in their welfare, very seldom for his own.

Such a man puts himself in front of dangers and difficulties in order that he may be a shield to others; for he is not a mercenary, taking care of none but himself when he sees the wolf coming; he is the right good shepherd, staking his own life in that of his flock, and knowing the faces of every one of them, just as they do his own.

Such princes, in times of old, were Saturn, Hercules, Jupiter, and others--men who reigned gently, yet firmly, equal to all chances that came, and worthy of the divine honours that awaited them. For mankind could not believe that they quitted the world in the same way as other men. They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of demigods.

When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and, at all events, public decency is observed. Oh, blessed kingdoms that are governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the mercy of a man without justice--a fellow-creature without feelings!

Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of posterity. Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might. I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.

But they are not without torments of their own. At the core of their own hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies. There he stands every day and every moment--one who was born of the same mother with Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his infant brethren before they saw the light. His name is Suspicion.[2]

Yes, Suspicion;--the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being. This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and lowly. He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures. Well may the man hug himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants are in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret. The fear which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch afraid of every soul among them.

Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon the hearts of his race. He was one of the first who took to the custom of wearing beards, for, great as he was, he had a fear of the race of barbers! He built a tower in his palace, guarded by deep ditches and thick walls. It had but one drawbridge and one bay-window. There was no other opening; so that the very light of day had scarcely admittance, or the inmates a place to breathe at. In this tower he slept; and it was his wife's business to put a ladder down for him when he came in. A dog kept watch at the drawbridge; and except the dog and the wife, not a soul was to be discerned about the place. Yet he had such little trust in her, that he always sent spies to look about the room before he withdrew for the night.

Of what use was it all? The woman herself killed him with his own sword, and his soul went straight to hell.

Rhadamanthus, the judge there, thrust him under the boiling lake, but was astonished to find that he betrayed no symptoms of anguish. He did not weep and howl as the rest did, or cry out, "I burn, I burn!" He evinced so little suffering, that Rhadamanthus said, "I must put this fellow into other quarters." Accordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the torments are beyond all others.

Nevertheless, even here he seemed to be under no distress. At length they asked him the reason. The wretch then candidly acknowledged, that hell itself had no torments for him, compared with those which suspicion had given him on earth.

The sages of hell laid their heads together at this news. Amelioration of his lot on the part of a sinner was not to be thought of in a place of eternal punishment; so they called a parliament together, the result of which was an unanimous conclusion, that the man should be sent back to earth, and consigned to the torments of suspicion for ever.

He went; and the earthly fiend re-entered his being anew with a subtlety so incorporate, that their two natures were identified, and he became SUSPICION ITSELF. Fruits are thus engrafted on wild stocks. One colour thus becomes the parent of many, when the painter takes a portion of this and of that from his palette in order to imitate flesh.

The new being took up his abode on a rock by the sea-shore, a thousand feet high, girt all about with mouldering crags, which threatened every instant to fall. It had a fortress on the top, the approach to which was by seven drawbridges, and seven gates, each locked up more strongly than the other; and here, now this moment, constantly thinking Death is upon him, Suspicion lives in everlasting terror. He is alone. He is ever watching. He cries out from the battlements, to see that the guards are awake below, and never does he sleep day or night. He wears mail upon mail, and mail again, and feels the less safe the more he puts on; and is always altering and strengthening everything on gate, and on barricado, and on ditch, and on wall. And do whatever he will, he never seems to have done enough.

* * * * *

Great poet, and good man, Ariosto! your terrors are better than Dante's; for they warn, as far as warning can do good, and they neither afflict humanity nor degrade God.

Spenser has imitated this sublime piece of pleasantry; for, by a curious intermixture of all which the mind can experience from such a fiction, pleasant it is in the midst of its sublimity,--laughable with satirical archness, as well as grand and terrible in the climax. The transformation in Spenser is from a jealous man into Jealousy. His wife has gone to live with the Satyrs, and a villain has stolen his money. The husband, in order to persuade his wife to return, steals into the horde of the Satyrs, by mixing with their flock of goats,--as Norandino does in a passage imitated from Homer by Ariosto. The wife flatly refuses to do any such thing, and the poor wretch is obliged to steal out again.

"So soon as he the prison door did pass, He ran as fast as both his feet could bear, And never looked who behind him was, Nor scarcely who before. Like as a bear That creeping close among the hives, to rear An honeycomb, the wakeful dogs espy, And him assailing, sore his carcass tear, That hardly he away with life does fly, Nor stays till safe himself he see from jeopardy.

Nor stay'd he till be came unto the place Where late his treasure he entombèd had; Where, when he found it not (for Trompart base Had it purloined for his master bad), With extreme fury he became quite mad, And ran away--ran with himself away; That who so strangely had him seen bestad, With upstart hair and staring eyes' dismay, From Limbo-lake him late escapèd sure would say.

High over hills and over dales he fled, As if the wind him on his wings had borne; Nor bank nor bush could stay him, when he sped His nimble feet, as treading still on thorn; Grief, and Despite, and Jealousy, and Scorn, Did all the way him follow hard behind; And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn, So shamefully forlorn of womankind, That, as a snake, still lurkèd in his wounded mind.

Still fled he forward, looking backward still; Nor stay'd his flight nor fearful agony Till that he came unto a rocky hill Over the sea suspended dreadfully, That living creature it would terrify To look a-down, or upward to the height From thence he threw himself dispiteously, All desperate of his fore-damnèd spright, That seem'd no help for him was left in living sight.

But through long anguish and self-murd'ring thought, He was so wasted and forpinèd quite, That all his substance was consumed to nought, And nothing left but like an airy sprite; That on the rocks he fell so flit and light, That he thereby received no hurt at all; But chancèd on a craggy cliff to light; Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl, That at the last he found a cave with entrance small.

Into the same he creeps, and thenceforth there Resolved to build his baleful mansion, In dreary darkness, and continual fear Of that rock's fall, which ever and anon Threats with huge ruin him to fall upon, That he dare never sleep, but that one eye Still ope he keeps for that occasion; Nor ever rests he in tranquillity, The roaring billows beat his bower so boisterously.

Nor ever is he wont on aught to feed But toads and frogs, his pasture poisonous, Which in his cold complexion do breed A filthy blood, or humour rancorous, Matter of doubt and dread suspicious, That doth with cureless care consume the heart, Corrupts the stomach with gall vicious, Cross-cuts the liver with internal smart, And doth transfix the soul with death's eternal dart.

Yet can he never die, but dying lives, And doth himself with sorrow new sustain, That death and life at once unto him gives, And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain; There dwells he ever, miserable swain, Hateful both to himself and every wight; Where he, through privy grief and horror vain, Is waxen so deformed, that he has quite Forgot he was a man, and Jealousy is hight."

Spenser's picture is more subtly wrought and imaginative than Ariosto's; but it removes the man farther from ourselves, except under very special circumstances. Indeed, it might be taken rather for a picture of hypochondria than jealousy, and under that aspect is very appalling. But nothing, under more obvious circumstances, comes so dreadfully home to us as Ariosto's poor wretch feeling himself "the less safe the more he puts on," and calling out dismally from his tower, a thousand feet high, to the watchers and warders below to see that all is secure.

[Footnote 1: This daring and grand apologue is not in the _Furioso_, but in a poem which Ariosto left unfinished, and which goes under the name of the _Five Cantos_. The fragment, though bearing marks of want of correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious one, especially as it seems to have been written after the _Furioso_; for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci,--a whale _inhabited_ by knights! It was most likely for these reasons that his friend Bembo and others advised him to suppress it. Was it written in his youth? The apologue itself is not one of the least daring attacks on the Borgias and such scoundrels, who had just then afflicted Italy.

Did Ariosto, by the way, omit Macchiavelli in his list of the friends who hailed the close of his great poem, from not knowing what to make of his book entitled the _Prince?_ It has perplexed all the world to this day, and is not unlikely to have made a particularly unpleasant impression on a mind at once so candid and humane as Ariosto's.]

[Footnote 2: A tremendous fancy this last!

"Sta for la pena, de la qual dicea Che nacque quando la brutt'Ira nacque, La Crudeltade, e la Rapina rea; E quantunque in un ventre con for giacque, Di tormentarle mai non rimanea."]

ISABELLA.[1]

Rodomont, King of Algiers, was the fiercest of all the enemies of Christendom, not out of love for his own faith (for he had no piety), but out of hatred to those that opposed him. He had now quarrelled, however, with his friends too. He had been rejected by a lady, in favour of the Tartar king, Mandricardo, and mortified by the publicity of the rejection before his own lord paramount, Agramante, the leader of the infidel armies. He could not bear the rejection; he could not bear the sanction of it by his liege lord; he resolved to quit the scene of warfare and return to Africa; and, in the course of his journey thither, he had come into the south of France, where, observing a sequestered spot that suited his humour, be changed his mind as to going home, and persuaded himself he could live in it for the rest of his life. He accordingly took up his abode with his attendants in a chapel, which had been deserted by its clergy during the rage of war.

This vehement personage was standing one morning at the door of the chapel in a state of unusual thoughtfulness, when he beheld coming towards him, through a path in the green meadow before it, a lady of a lovely aspect, accompanied by a bearded monk. They were followed by something covered with black, which they were bringing along on a great horse.

Alas! the lady was the widow of Zerbino, the Scottish prince, who spared the life of Medoro, and who now himself lay dead under that pall. He had expired in her arms from wounds inflicted during a combat with Mandricardo; and she had been thrown by the loss into such anguish of mind that she would have died on his sword but for the intervention of the hermit now with her, who persuaded her to devote the rest of her days to God in a nunnery. She had now come into Provence with the good man for that purpose, and to bury the corpse of her husband in the chapel which they were approaching.

Though the lady seemed lost in grief, and was very pale, and had her hair all about the ears, and though she did nothing but weep and lament, and looked in all respects quite borne down with her misery, nevertheless she was still so beautiful that love and grace appeared to be indestructible in her aspect. The moment the Saracen beheld her, he dismissed from his mind all the determinations he had made to hate and detest

The gentle bevy, that adorns the world.

He was bent solely on obtaining the new angel before him. She seemed precisely the sort of person to make him forget the one that had rejected him. Advancing, therefore, to meet her without delay, he begged, in as gentle a manner as he could assume, to know the cause of her sorrow.

The lady, with all the candour of wretchedness, explained who she was, and how precious a burden she was conveying to its last home, and the resolution she had taken to withdraw from a vain world into the service of God. The proud pagan, who had no belief in a God, much less any respect for restraints or fidelities of what kind soever, forgot his assumed gravity when he heard this determination, and laughed outright at the simplicity of such a proceeding. He pronounced it, in his peremptory way, to be foolish and frivolous; compared it with the miser who, in burying a treasure, does good neither to himself nor any one else; and said, that lions and serpents might indeed be shut up in cages, but not things lovely and innocent.

The monk, overhearing these observations, thought it his duty to interfere. He calmly opposed all which the other asserted, and then proceeded to set forth a repast of spiritual consolation not at all to the Saracen's taste. The fierce warrior interrupted the preacher several times; told him that he had nothing to do with the lady, and that the sooner he returned to his cell the better; but the hermit, nothing daunted, went on with his advice till his antagonist lost all patience. He laid hands on his sacred person; seized him by the beard; tore away as much of it as he grasped; and at length worked himself up into such a pitch of fury, that he griped the good man's throat with all the force of a pair of pincers, and, swinging him twice or thrice round, as one might a dog, flung him off the headland into the sea.

What became of the poor creature I cannot say. Reports are various. Some tell us that he was found on the rocks, dashed all to pieces, so that you could not distinguish foot from head; others, that he fell into the sea at the distance of three miles, and perished in consequence of not knowing how to swim, in spite of the prayers and tears that he addressed to Heaven; others again affirm, that a saint came and assisted him, and drew him to shore before people's eyes. I must leave the reader to adopt which of these accounts he looks upon as the most probable.

The Pagan, as soon as he had thus disposed of the garrulous hermit, turned towards Isabella (for that was the lady's name), and with a face some what less disturbed, began to talk to her in the common language of gallantry, protesting that she was his life and soul, and that he should not know what to do without her; for the sweetness of her appearance mollified even him; and indeed, with all his violence, he would rather have possessed her by fair means than by foul. He therefore flattered himself that, by a little hypocritical attention, he should dispose her to return his inclinations.

On the other hand, the poor disconsolate creature, who, in a country unknown to her, and a place so remote from help, felt like a mouse in the cat's claws, began casting in her mind by what possible contrivance she could escape from such a wretch with honour. She had made up her mind to perish by her own hand, rather than be faithless, however unwillingly, to the dear husband that had died in her arms: but the question was, how she could protect herself from the pagan's violence, before she had secured the means of so doing; for his manner was becoming very impatient, and his speeches every moment less and less civil.

At length an expedient occurred to her. She told him, that if he would promise to respect her virtue, she would put him in possession of a secret that would redound far more to his honour and glory, than any wrong which he could inflict on the innocent. She conjured him not to throw away the satisfaction he would experience all the rest of his life from the consciousness of having done right, for the sake of injuring one unhappy creature. "There were thousands of her sex," she observed, "with cheerful as well as beautiful faces, who might rejoice in his affection; whereas the secret she spoke of was known to scarcely a soul on earth but herself."

She then told him the secret; which consisted in the preparation of a certain herb boiled with ivy and rue over a fire of cypress-wood, and squeezed into a cup by hands that had never done harm. The juice thus obtained, if applied fresh every month, had the virtue of rendering bodies invulnerable. Isabella said she had seen the herb in the neighbourhood, as she came along, and that she would not only make the preparation forth-with, but let its effects be proved on her own person. She only stipulated, that the receiver of the gift should swear not to offend her purity in deed or word.

The fierce infidel took the oath immediately. It delighted him to think that he should be enabled to have his fill of war and slaughter for nothing; and the oath was the more easy to him, inasmuch as he had no intention of keeping it.

The poor Isabella went into the fields to look for her miraculous herb, still, however, attended by the Saracen, who would not let her go out of his sight. She soon found it; and then going with him into his house, passed the rest of the day and the whole night in preparing the mixture with busy solemnity,--Rodomont always remaining with her.

The room became so hot and close with the fire of cypress-wood, that the Saracen, contrary to his law and indeed to his habits, indulged himself in drinking; and the consequence was, that, as soon as it was morning, Isabella lost no time in proving to him the success of her operations. "Now," she said, "you shall be convinced how much in earnest I have been. You shall see all the virtue of this blessed preparation. I have only to bathe myself thus, over the head and neck, and if you then strike me with all your force, as though you intended to cut off my head,--which you must do in good earnest,--you will see the wonderful result."

With a glad and rejoicing countenance the paragon of virtue held forth her neck to the sword; and the bestial pagan, giving way to his natural violence, and heated perhaps beyond all thought of a suspicion with his wine, dealt it so fierce a blow, that the head leaped from the shoulders.

Thrice it bounded on the ground where it fell, and a clear voice was heard to come out of it, calling the name of "Zerbino," doubtless in joy of the rare way which its owner had found of escaping from the Saracen.

O blessed soul, that heldest thy virtue and thy fidelity dearer to thee than life and youth! go in peace, then soul blessed and beautiful. If any words of mine could have force in them sufficient to endure so long, hard would I labour to give them all the worthiness that art can bestow, so that the world might rejoice in thy name for thousands and thousands of years. Go in peace, and take thy seat in the skies, and be an example to womankind of faith beyond all weakness.

[Footnote 1: The ingenious martyrdom in this story, which has been told by other writers of fiction, is taken from an alleged fact related in Barbaro's treatise _De Re Uxoria_.It is said, indeed, to have been actually resorted to more than once; and possibly may have been so, even from a knowledge of it; for what is more natural with heroical minds than that the like outrages should produce the like virtues? But the colouring of Ariosto's narration is peculiarly his own; and his apostrophe at the close beautiful.]

TASSO:

Critical Notice of his Life and Genius.

Critical Notice

OF

TASSO'S LIFE AND GENIUS. [1]

The romantic poetry of Italy having risen to its highest and apparently its most lawless pitch in the _Orlando Furioso_, a reaction took place in the next age in the _Jerusalem Delivered_.It did not hurt, however, the popularity of Ariosto. It only increased the number of poetic readers; and under the auspices, or rather the control, of a Luther-fearing Church, produced, if not as classical a work as it claimed to be, or one, in the true sense of the word, as catholic as its predecessor, yet certainly a far more Roman Catholic, and at the same time very delightful fiction. The circle of fabulous narrative was thus completed, and a link formed, though in a very gentle and qualified manner, both with Dante's theocracy and the obvious regularity of the _Aeneid_, the oldest romance of Italy.

The author of this epic of the Crusades was of a family so noble and so widely diffused, that, under the patronage of the emperors and the Italian princes, it flourished in a very remarkable manner, not only in its own country, but in Flanders, Germany, and Spain. There was a Tasso once in England, ambassador of Philip the Second; another, like Cervantes, distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto; and a third gave rise to the sovereign German house of Tour and Taxis. _Taxus_ is the Latin of Tasso. The Latin word, like the Italian, means both a badger and a yew-tree; and the family in general appear to have taken it in the former sense. The animal is in their coat of arms. But the poet, or his immediate relatives, preferred being more romantically shadowed forth by the yew-tree. The parent stock of the race was at Bergamo in Lombardy; and here was born the father of Tasso, himself a poet of celebrity, though his fame has been eclipsed by that of his son.

Bernardo Tasso, author of many elegant lyrics, of some volumes of letters, not uninteresting but too florid, and of the _Amadigi_, an epic romance now little read, was a man of small property, very honest and good-hearted, but restless, ambitious, and with a turn for expense beyond his means. He attached himself to various princes, with little ultimate advantage, particularly to the unfortunate Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, whom he faithfully served for many years. The prince had a high sense of his worth, and would probably have settled him in the wealth and honours he was qualified to adorn, but for those Spanish oppressions in the history of Naples which ended in the ruin of both master and servant. Bernardo, however, had one happy interval of prosperity; and during this, at the age of forty-six, he married Porzia di Rossi, a young lady of a rich and noble family, with a claim to a handsome dowry. He spent some delightful years with her at Sorrento, a spot so charming as to have been considered the habitation of the Sirens; and here, in the midst of his orange-trees, his verses, and the breezes of an aromatic coast, he had three children, the eldest of whom was a daughter named Cornelia, and the youngest the author of the _Jerusalem Delivered_. the other child died young. The house distinguished by the poet's birth was restored from a dilapidated condition by order of Joseph Bonaparte when King of Naples, and is now an hotel.

Torquato Tasso was born March the 11th, 1544, nine years after the death of Ariosto, who was intimate with his father. He was very devoutly brought up; and grew so tall, and became so premature a scholar, that at nine, he tells us, he might have been taken for a boy of twelve. At eleven, in consequence of the misfortunes of his father, who had been exiled with the Prince of Salerno, he was forced to part from his mother, who remained at home to look after a dowry which she never received. Her brothers deprived her of it; and in two years' time she died, Bernardo thought by poison. Twenty-four years afterwards her illustrious son, in the midst of his own misfortunes, remembered with sighs the tears with which the kisses of his poor mother were bathed when she was forced to let him go.[2]

The little Torquato following, as he says, like another Ascanius, the footsteps of his wandering father, joined Bernardo in Rome. After two years' study in that city, partly under an old priest who lived with them, the vicissitudes of the father's lot took away the son first to Bergamo, among his relations, and then to Pesaro, in the duchy of Urbino, where his education was associated for nearly two years with that of the young prince, afterwards Duke Francesco Maria the Second (della Rovere), who retained a regard for him through life. In 1559 the boy joined his father in Venice, where the latter had been appointed secretary to the Academy; but next year he was withdrawn from these pleasing varieties of scene by the parental delusion so common in the history of men of letters--the study of the law; which Bernardo intended him to pursue henceforth in the city of Padua. He accordingly arrived in Padua at the age of sixteen and a half, and fulfilled his legal destiny by writing the poem of _Rinaldo_, which was published in the course of less than two years at Venice. The goodnatured and poetic father, convinced by this specimen of jurisprudence how useless it was to thwart the hereditary passion, permitted him to devote himself wholly to literature, which he therefore went to study in the university of Bologna; and there, at the early age of nineteen, he began his _Jerusalem Delivered_; that is to say, he planned it, and wrote three cantos, several of the stanzas of which he retained when the poem was matured. He quitted Bologna, however, in a fit of indignation at being accused of the authorship of a satire; and after visiting some friends at Castelvetro and Correggio, returned to Padua on the invitation of his friend Scipio Gonzaga, afterwards cardinal, who wished him to become a member of an academy he had instituted, called the _Eterei_(Ethereals). Here he studied his favourite philosopher, Plato, and composed three Discourses on Heroic Poetry, dedicated to his friend. He now paid a visit to his father in Mantua, where the unsettled man had become secretary to the duke; and here, it is said, he fell in love with a young lady of a distinguished family, whose name was Laura Peperara; but this did not hinder him from returning to his Paduan studies, in which he spent nearly the whole of the following year. He was then informed that the Cardinal of Este, to whom he had dedicated his _Rinaldo_, and with whom interest had been made for the purpose, had appointed him one of his attendants, and that he was expected at Ferrara by the 1st of December. Returning to Mantua, in order to prepare for this appointment with his father, he was seized with a dangerous illness, which detained him there nearly a twelvemonth longer. On his recovery he hastened to Ferrara, and arrived in that city on the last day of October, 1565, the first of many years of glory and misery.

The cardinal of Este was the brother of the reigning Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the Second, grandson of the Alfonso of Ariosto. It is curious to see the two most celebrated romantic poets of Italy thrown into unfortunate connexion with two princes of the same house and the same respective ranks. Tasso's cardinal, however, though the poet lost his favour, and though very little is known about him, left no such bad reputation behind him as Ippolito. It was in the service of the duke that the poet experienced his sufferings.

This prince, who was haughty, ostentatious, and quarrelsome, was, at the time of the stranger's arrival, rehearsing the shows and tournaments intended to welcome his bride, the sister of the Emperor Maximilian the Second. She was his second wife. The first was a daughter of the rival house of Tuscany, which he detested; and the marriage had not been happy. The new consort arrived in the course of a few weeks, entering the city in great pomp; and for a time all went happily with the young poet. He was in a state of ecstasy with the beauty and grandeur he beheld around him--obtained the favourable notice of the duke's two sisters and the duke himself--went on with his _Jerusalem Delivered_, which, in spite of the presence of Ariosto's memory, he was resolved to load with praises of the house of Este; and in this tumult of pride and expectation, he beheld the duke, like one of the heroes of his poem, set out to assist the emperor against the Turks at the head of three hundred gentlemen, armed at all points, and mantled in various-coloured velvets embroidered with gold.

To complete the young poet's happiness, or commence his disappointments, he fell in love, notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have loved in return; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli. Among his rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and who accused him on this occasion of courting two ladies at once.

Guarini's accusation has been supposed to refer to the duke's sister Leonora, whose name has become so romantically mixed up with the poet's biography; but the latest inquiries render it probable that the allusion was to Laura Peperara.[3] The young poet, however, who had not escaped the influence of the free manners of Italy, and whose senses and vanity may hitherto have been more interested than his heart, rhymed and flattered on all sides of him, not of course omitting the charms of princesses. In order to win the admiration of the ladies in a body, he sustained for three days, in public, after the fashion of the times, _Fifty Amorous Conclusions_; that is to say, affirmations on the subject of love; doubtless to the equal delight of his fair auditors and himself, and the creation of a good deal of jealousy and ill-will on the part of such persons of his own sex as had not wit or spirits enough for the display of so much logic and love-making.

In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness; but the continuation of his _Jerusalem_, an _Oration_ spoken at the opening of the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora's sister Lucrezia with the Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections; and a journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into scenes that were not only totally new, but otherwise highly interesting to the singer of Godfrey of Boulogne. The occasion of it was a visit of the cardinal, his master, to the court of his relative Charles the Ninth. It is supposed that his Eminence went to confer with the king on matters relative to the disputes which not long afterwards occasioned the detestable massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Before his departure, Tasso put into the hands of one of his friends a document, which, as it is very curious, and serves to illustrate perhaps more than one cause of his misfortunes, is here given entire.

_Memorial left by Tasso on his departure to France._

"Since life is frail, and it may please Almighty God to dispose of me otherwise in this my journey to France, it is requested of Signor Ercole Rondinelli that he will, in that case, undertake the management of the following concerns:

"In the first place, with regard to my compositions, it is my wish that all my love-sonnets and madrigals should be collected and published; but with regard to those, whether amatory or otherwise, _which I have written for any friend_, my request is, that _they should be buried with myself_, save only the one commencing "_Or che l'aura mia dolce altrove spira_." I wish the publication of the _Oration_ spoken in Ferrara at the opening of the academy, of the four books on _Heroic Poetry_, of the six last cantos of the _Godfrey_ (the _Jerusalem_), and of those stanzas of the two first which shall seem least imperfect. All these compositions, however, are to be submitted to the review and consideration of Signor Scipio Gonzaga, of Signor Domenico Veniero, and of Signor Battista Guarini, who, I persuade myself, will not refuse this trouble, when they consider the zealous friendship I have entertained for themselves.

"Let them be informed, too, that it was my intention that they should cut and hew without mercy whatever should appear to them defective or superfluous. With regard to additions or changes, I should wish them to proceed more cautiously, since, after all, the poem would remain imperfect. As to my other compositions, should there be any which, to the aforesaid Signor Rondinelli and the other gentlemen, might seem not unworthy of publication, let them be disposed of according to their pleasure.

"In respect to my property, I wish that such part of it as I have _pledged to Abram --_ for twenty-five lire, and seven pieces of arras, which are _likewise in pledge to Signor Ascanio for thirteen scudi_, together with whatever I have in this house, should be sold, and that the overplus of the proceeds should go to defray the expense of the following epitaph to be inscribed on a monument to my father, whose body is in St. Polo. And should any impediment take place in these matters, I entreat Signor Ercole _to have recourse to the favour of the most excellent Madame Leonora, whose liberality I confide in, for my sake._

"I, Torquato Tasso, have written this, Ferrara, 1570."

I shall have occasion to recur to this document by and by. I will merely observe, for the present, that the marks in it, both of imprudence in money-matters and confidence in the goodwill of a princess, are very striking. "Abram" and "Signor Ascanio" were both Jews. The pieces of arras belonged to his father; and probably this was an additional reason why the affectionate son wished the proceeds to defray the expense of the epitaph. The epitaph recorded his father's poetry, state-services, and vicissitudes of fortune.

Tasso was introduced to the French king as the poet of a French hero and of a Catholic victory; and his reception was so favourable (particularly as the wretched Charles, the victim of his mother's bigotry, had himself no mean poetic feeling), that, with a rash mixture of simplicity and self-reliance (respect makes me unwilling to call it self-importance), the poet expressed an impolitic amount of astonishment at the favour shewn at court to the Hugonots--little suspecting the horrible design it covered. He shortly afterwards broke with his master the cardinal; and it is supposed that this unseasonable escape of zeal was the cause. He himself appears to have thought so.[4] Perhaps the cardinal only wanted to get the imprudent poet back to Italy; for, on Tasso's return to Ferrara, he was not only received into the service of the duke with a salary of some fifteen golden scudi a-month, but told that he was exempted from any particular duty, and might attend in peace to his studies. Balzac affirms, that while Tasso was at the court of France, he was so poor as to beg a crown from a friend; and that, when he left it, he had the same coat on his back that he came in.[5] The assertions of a professed wit and hyperbolist are not to be taken for granted; yet it is difficult to say to what shifts improvidence may not be reduced.

The singer of the house of Este would now, it might have been supposed, be happy. He had leisure; he had money; he had the worldly honours that he was fond of; he occupied himself in perfecting the _Jerusalem_; and he wrote his beautiful pastoral, the _Aminta_, which was performed before the duke and his court to the delight of the brilliant assembly. The duke's sister Lucrezia, princess of Urbino, who was a special friend of the poet, sent for him to read it to her at Pesaro; and in the course of the ensuing carnival it was performed with similar applause at the court of her father-in-law. The poet had been as much enchanted by the spectacle which the audience at Ferrara presented to his eyes, as the audience with the loves and graces with which he enriched their stage. The shepherd Thyrsis; by whom he meant himself, reflected it back upon them in a passage of the performance. It is worth while dwelling on this passage a little, because it exhibits a brief interval of happiness in the author's life, and also chews us what he had already begun to think of courts at the moment he was praising them. But he ingeniously contrives to put the praise in his own mouth, and the blame in another's. The shepherd's friend, Mopsus (by whom Tasso is thought to have meant Speroni), had warned him against going to court

"Però, figlio, Va su l'avviso," &c.

"Therefore, my son, take my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all, Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." "What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;-- "Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver, Heavy with wealth, are baskets full of bladders.[6]

* * * * *

The very walls there are so strangely made, They answer those who talk; and not in syllables, Or bits of words, like echo in our woods, But go the whole talk over, word for word, With something else besides, that no one said[7]. The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers, Chairs, and whatever furniture there is In room or bedroom, all have tongues and speech, And are for ever tattling. Idle Babble Is always going about, playing the child; And should a dumb man enter in that place, The dumb would babble in his own despite. And yet this evil is the least of all That might assail thee. Thou might'st be arrested In fearful transformation to a willow, A beast, fire, water,--fire for ever sighing, Water for ever weeping."--Here he ceased: And I, with all this fine foreknowledge, went To the great city; and, by Heaven's kind will, Came where they live so happily. The first sound I heard was a delightful harmony, Which issued forth, of voices loud and sweet;--Sirens, and swans, and nymphs, a heavenly noise Of heavenly things;--which gave me such delight, That, all admiring, and amazed, and joyed, I stopped awhile quite motionless. There stood Within the entrance, as if keeping guard Of those fine things, one of a high-souled aspect, Stalwart withal, of whom I was in doubt

Whether to think him better knight or leader.[8] He, with a look at once benign and grave, In royal guise, invited me within; He, great and in esteem; me, lorn and lowly. Oh, the sensations and the sights which then Shower'd on me! Goddesses I saw, and nymphs Graceful and beautiful, and harpers fine As Linus or as Orpheus; and more deities, All without veil or cloud, bright as the virgin Aurora, when she glads immortal eyes, And sows her beams and dew-drops, silver and gold.

In the summer of 1574, the Duke of Ferrara went to Venice to pay his respects to the successor of Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, then on his way to France from his kingdom of Poland. Tasso went with the duke, and is understood to have taken the opportunity of looking for a printer of his _Jerusalem_, which was now almost finished. Writers were anxious to publish in that crafty city, because its government would give no security of profit to books printed elsewhere. Alfonso, who was in mourning for Henry's brother, and to whom mourning itself only suggested a new occasion of pomp and vanity, took with him to this interview five hundred Ferrarese gentlemen, all dressed in long black cloaks; who walking about Venice (says a reporter) "by twos and threes," wonderfully impressed the inhabitants with their "gravity and magnificence."[9] The mourners feasted, however; and Tasso had a quartan fever, which delayed the completion of the _Jerusalem_ till next year. This was at length effected; and now once more, it might have been thought, that the writer would have reposed on his laurels.

But Tasso had already begun to experience the uneasiness attending superiority; and, unfortunately, the strength of his mind was not equal to that of his genius. He was of an ultra-sensitive temperament, and subject to depressing fits of sickness. He could not calmly bear envy. Sarcasm exasperated, and hostile criticism afflicted him. The seeds of a suspicious temper were nourished by prosperity itself. The author of the _Armida_ and the _Jerusalem_ began to think the attentions he received unequal to his merits; while with a sort of hysterical mixture of demand for applause, and provocation of censure, he not only condescended to read his poems in manuscript wherever he went, but, in order to secure the goodwill of the papal licenser, he transmitted it for revisal to Rome, where it was mercilessly criticised for the space of two years by the bigots and hypocrites of a court, which Luther had rendered a very different one from that in the time of Ariosto.

This new source of chagrin exasperated the complexional restlessness, which now made our author think that he should be more easy any where than in Ferrara; perhaps more able to communicate with and convince his critics; and, unfortunately, he permitted himself to descend to a weakness the most fatal of all others to a mind naturally exalted and ingenuous. Perhaps it was one of the main causes of all which he suffered. Indeed, he himself attributed his misfortunes to irresolution. What I mean in the present instance was, that he did not disdain to adopt underhand measures. He skewed a face of satisfaction with Alfonso, at the moment that he was taking steps to exchange his court for another. He wrote for that purpose to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, now a prelate at the court of Rome, earnestly begging him, at the same time, not to commit him in their correspondence; and Scipio, who was one of his kindest and most indulgent friends, and who doubtless saw that the Duke of Ferrara and his poet were not of dispositions to accord, did all he could to procure him an appointment with one of the family of the Medici.

Most unhappily for this speculation (and perhaps even the good-natured Gonzaga took a little more pleasure in it on that account), Alfonso inherited all the detestation of his house for that lucky race; and it is remarkable, that the same jealousies which hindered Ariosto's advancement with the Medici were still more fatal to the hopes of Tasso; for they served to plunge him into the deepest adversity. In vain he had warnings given him, both friendly and hostile. The princess, now Duchess of Urbino, who was his particular friend, strongly cautioned him against the temptation of going away. She said he was watched. He himself thought his letters were opened; and probably they were. They certainly were at a subsequent period. Tasso, however, persisted, and went to Rome. Scipio Gonzaga introduced him to Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici, afterwards Grand Duke of Tuscany; and Ferdinand made him offers of protection so handsome, that they excited his suspicion. The self-tormenting poet thought they savoured more of hatred to the Este family, than honour to himself.[10] He did not accept them. He did nothing at Rome but make friends, in order to perplex them; listen to his critics, in order to worry himself; and perform acts of piety in the churches, by way of shewing that the love-scenes in the _Jerusalem_ were innocent. For the bigots had begun to find something very questionable in mixing up so much love with war. The bloodshed they had no objection to. The love bearded their prejudices, and excited their envy.

Tasso returned to Ferrara, and endeavoured to solace himself with eulogising two fair strangers who had arrived at Alfonso's court,--Eleonora Sanvitale, who had been newly married to the Count of Scandiano (a Tiene, not a Boiardo, whose line was extinct), and Barbara Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, who was a Juno-like beauty, wore her hair in the form of a crown. The still more beautiful daughter-in-law had an under lip such as Anacreon or Sir John Suckling would have admired,--pouting and provoking,--[prokaloymenon phileama]. Tasso wrote verses on them both, but particularly to the lip; and this Countess of Scandiano is the second, out of the three Leonoras, with whom Tasso was said by his friend Manso to have been in love. The third, it is now ascertained, never existed; and his love-making to the new, or second Leonora, goes to shew how little of real passion there was in the praises of the first (the Princess Leonora), or probably of any lady at court. He even professed love, as a forlorn hope, to the countess's waiting-maid. Yet these gallantries of sonnets are exalted into bewilderments of the heart.

His restlessness returning, the poet now condescended to craft a second time. Expecting to meet with a refusal, and so to be afforded a pretext for quitting Ferrara, he applied for the vacant office of historiographer. It was granted him; and he then disgusted the Medici by pleading an unlooked-for engagement, which he could only reconcile to his applications for their favour by renouncing his claim to be believed. If he could have deceived others, why might he not have deceived them?

All the lurking weakness of the poet's temperament began to display itself at this juncture. His perplexity excited him to a degree of irritability bordering on delirium; and circumstances conspired to increase it. He had lent an acquaintance the key of his rooms at court, for the purpose (he tells us) of accommodating some intrigue; and he suspected this person of opening cabinets containing his papers. Remonstrating with him one day in the court of the palace, either on that or some other account, the man gave him the lie. He received in return a blow on the face, and is said by Tasso to have brought a set of his kinsmen to assassinate him, all of whom the heroical poet immediately put to flight. At one time he suspected the duke of jealousy respecting the dedication of his poem, and at another, of a wish to burn it. He suspected his servants. He became suspicious of the truth of his friend Gonzaga. He doubted, even, whether some praises addressed to him by Orazio Ariosto, the nephew of the great poet, which, one would have thought, would have been to him a consummation of bliss, were not intended to mystify and hurt him. At length he fancied that his persecutors had accused him of heresy to the Inquisition; and, as he had gone through the metaphysical doubts, common with most men of reflection respecting points of faith and the mysteries of creation, he feared that some indiscreet words had escaped him, giving colour to the charge. He thus beheld enemies all around him. He dreaded stabbing and poison; and one day, in some paroxysm of rage or horror, how occasioned it is not known, ran with a knife or dagger at one of the servants of the Duchess of Urbino in her own chamber.

Alfonso, upon this, apparently in the mildest and most reasonable manner, directed that he should be confined to his apartments, and put into the hands of the physician. These unfortunate events took place in the summer of 1577, and in the poet's thirty-third year.

Tasso shewed so much affliction at this treatment, and, at the same time, bore it so patiently, that the duke took him to his beautiful country seat of Belriguardo; where, in one of his accounts of the matter, the poet says that he treated him as a brother; but in another, he accuses him of having taken pains to make him criminate himself, and confess certain matters, real or supposed, the nature of which is a puzzle with posterity. Some are of opinion (and this is the prevailing one), that he was found guilty of being in love with the Princess Leonora, perhaps of being loved by herself. Others think the love out of the question, and that the duke was concerned at nothing but his endeavouring to transfer his services and his poetic reputation into the hands of the Medici. Others see in the duke's conduct nothing but that of a good master interesting himself in the welfare of an afflicted servant.

It is certain that Alfonso did all he could to prevent the surreptitious printing of the _Jerusalem Delivered_ in various towns of Italy, the dread of which had much afflicted the poet; and he also endeavoured, though in vain, to ease his mind on the subject of the Inquisition; for these facts are attested by state-papers and other documents, not dependent either on the testimony of third persons or the partial representations of the sufferer. But Tasso felt so uneasy at Belriguardo, that he requested leave to retire a while into a convent. He remained there several days, apparently so much to his satisfaction, that he wrote to the duke to say that it was his intention to become a friar; and, yet he had no sooner got into the place, than he addressed a letter to the Inquisition at Rome, beseeching it to desire permission for him to come to that city, in order to clear himself from the charges of his enemies. He also wrote to two other friends, requesting them to further his petition; and adding that the duke was enraged with him in consequence of the anger of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, it is supposed, had accused Tasso of having revealed to Alfonso some indecent epithet which his highness had applied to him.[11] These letters were undoubtedly intercepted, for they were found among the secret archives of Modena, the only principality ultimately remaining in the Este family; so that, agreeably to the saying of listeners hearing no good of themselves, if Alfonso did not know the epithet before, he learnt it then. The reader may conceive his feelings. Tasso, too, at the same time, was plaguing him with letters to similar purpose; and it is observable, that while in those which he sent to Rome he speaks of Cosmo de' Medici as "Grand Duke," he takes care in the others to call him simply the "Duke of Florence." Alfonso had been exasperated to the last degree at Cosmo's having had the epithet "Grand" added by the Pope to his ducal title; and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred of bitter "physic," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age for giving it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in a manner which it is humiliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The duke at length forbade his writing to him any more; and Tasso, whose fears of every kind of ill usage had been wound up to a pitch unbearable, watched an opportunity when he was carelessly guarded, and fled at once from the convent and Ferrara.

The unhappy poet selected the loneliest ways he could find, and directed his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sister lived. He was afraid of pursuit; he probably had little money; and considering his ill health and his dread of the Inquisition, it is pitiable to think what he may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd; and as he feared even his sister at first, from doubting whether she still loved him, his interview with her was in all its circumstances painfully dramatic. Cornelia Tasso, now a widow, with two sons, was still residing at Sorrento, where the poet, casting his eyes around him as he proceeded towards the house, must have beheld with singular feelings of wretchedness the lovely spots in which he had been a happy little boy. He did not announce himself at once. He brought letters, he said, from the lady's brother; and it is affecting to think, that whether his sister might or might not have retained otherwise any personal recollection of him since that time (for he had not seen her in the interval), his disguise was completed by the alterations which sorrow had made in his appearance. For, at all events, she did not know him. She saw in him nothing but a haggard stranger who was acquainted with the writer of the letters, and to whom they referred for particulars of the risk which her brother ran, unless she could afford him her protection. These particulars were given by the stranger with all the pathos of the real man, and the loving sister fainted away. On her recovery, the visitor said what he could to reassure her, and then by degrees discovered himself. Cornelia welcomed him in the tenderest manner. She did all that he desired; and gave out to her friends that the gentleman was a cousin from Bergamo, who had come to Naples on family affairs.

For a little while, the affection of his sister, and the beauty and freshness of Sorrento, rendered the mind of Tasso more easy: but his restlessness returned. He feared he had mortally offended the Duke of Ferrara; and, with his wonted fluctuation of purpose, he now wished to be restored to his presence for the very reason he had run away from it. He did not know with what vengeance he might be pursued. He wrote to the duke; but received no answer. The Duchess of Urbino was equally silent. Leonora alone responded, but with no encouragement. These appearances only made him the more anxious to dare or to propitiate his doom; and he accordingly determined to put himself in the duke's hands. His sister entreated him in vain to alter his resolution. He quitted her before the autumn was over; and, proceeding to Rome, went directly to the house of the duke's agent there, who, in concert with the Ferrarese ambassador, gave his master advice of the circumstance. Gonzaga, however, and another good friend, Cardinal Albano, doubted whether it would be wise in the poet to return to Ferrara under any circumstances. They counselled him to be satisfied with being pardoned at a distance, and with having his papers and other things returned to him; and the two friends immediately wrote to the duke requesting as much. The duke apparently acquiesced in all that was desired; but he said that the illness of his sister, the Duchess of Urbino, delayed the procuration of the papers, which, it seems, were chiefly in her hands. The upshot was, that the papers did not come; and Tasso, with a mixture of rage and fear, and perhaps for more reasons than he has told, became uncontrollably desirous of retracing the rest of his steps to Ferrara.

Love may have been among these reasons--probably was; though it does not follow that the passion must have been for a princess. The poet now, therefore, petitioned to that effect; and Alfonso wrote again, and said he might come, but only on condition of his again undergoing the ducal course of medicine; adding, that if he did not, he was to be finally expelled his highness's territories.

He was graciously received--too graciously, it would seem, for his equanimity; for it gave him such a flow of spirits, that the duke appears to have thought it necessary to repress them. The unhappy poet, at this, began to have some of his old suspicions; and the unaccountable detention of his papers confirmed them. He made an effort to keep the suspicions down, but it was by means, unfortunately, of drowning them in wine and jollity; and this gave him such a fit of sickness as had nearly been his death. He recovered, only to make a fresh stir about his papers, and a still greater one about his poems in general, which, though his _Jerusalem_ was yet only known in manuscript, and not even his _Aminta_ published, he believed ought to occupy the attention of mankind. People at Ferrara, therefore, not foreseeing the respect that posterity would entertain for the poet, and having no great desire perhaps to encourage a man who claimed to be a rival of their countryman Ariosto, now began to consider their Neapolitan guest not merely an ingenious and pitiable, but an overweening and tiresome enthusiast. The court, however, still seemed to be interested in its panegyrist, though Tasso feared that Alfonso meant to burn his _Jerusalem_. Alfonso, on the other hand, is supposed to have feared that he would burn it himself, and the ducal praises with it. The papers, at all events, apparently including the only fair copy of the poem, were constantly withheld; and Tasso, in a new fit of despair, again quitted Ferrara. This mystery of the papers is certainly very extraordinary.

The poet's first steps were to Mantua, where he met with no such reception as encouraged him to stay. He then went to Urbino, but did not stop long. The prince, it is true, was very gracious; and bandages for a cautery were applied by the fair hands of his highness's sister; but, though the nurse enchanted, the surgery frightened him. The hapless poet found himself pursued wherever he went by the tormenting beneficence of medicine. He escaped, and went to Turin. He had no passport; and presented, besides, so miserable an appearance, that the people at the gates roughly refused him admittance. He was well received, however, at court; and as he had begun to acknowledge that he was subject to humours and delusions, and wrote to say as much to Cardinal Albano, who returned him a most excellent and affecting letter, full of the kindest regard and good counsel, his friends entertained a hope that he would become tranquil. But he disappointed them. He again applied to Alfonso for permission to return to Ferrara--again received it, though on worse than the old conditions--and again found himself in that city in the beginning of the year 1579, delighted at seeing a brilliant assemblage from all quarters of Italy on occasion of a new marriage of the duke's (with a princess of Mantua). He made up his mind to think that nothing could be denied him, at such a moment, by the bridegroom whom he meant to honour and glorify.

Alas! the very circumstance to which he looked for success, tended to throw him into the greatest of his calamities. Alfonso was to be married the day after the poet's arrival. He was therefore too busy to attend to him. The princesses did not attend to him. Nobody attended to him. He again applied in vain for his papers. He regretted his return; became anxious to be any where else; thought himself not only neglected but derided; and at length became excited to a pitch of frenzy. He broke forth into the most unmeasured invectives against the duke, even in public; invoked curses on his head and that of his whole race; retracted all he had ever said in the praise of any of them, prince or otherwise; and pronounced him and his whole court "a parcel of ingrates, rascals, and poltroons."[12] The outbreak was reported to the duke; and the consequence was, that the poet was sent to the hospital of St. Anne, an establishment for the reception of the poor and lunatic, where he remained (with the exception of a few unaccountable leave-days) upwards of seven years. This melancholy event happened in the March of the year 1579.

Tasso was stunned by this blow as much as if he had never done or suffered any thing to expect it. He could at first do nothing but wonder and bewail himself, and implore to be set free. The duke answered, that he must be cured first. Tasso replied by fresh entreaties; the duke returned the same answers. The unhappy poet had recourse to every friend, prince, and great man he could think of, to join his entreaties; he sought refuge in composition, but still entreated; he occasionally reproached and even bantered the duke in some of his letters to his friends, all of which, doubtless, were opened; but still he entreated, flattered, adored, all to no purpose, for seven long years and upwards. In time he became subject to maniacal illusions; so that if he was not actually mad before, he was now considered so. He was not only visited with sights and sounds, such as many people have experienced whose brains have been over-excited, but he fancied himself haunted by a sprite, and become the sport of "magicians." The sprite stole his things, and the magicians would not let him get well. He had a vision such as Benvenuto Cellini had, of the Virgin Mary in her glory; and his nights were so miserable, that he ate too much in order that he might sleep. When he was temperate, he lay awake. Sometimes he felt "as if a horse had thrown himself on him." "Have pity on me," he says to the friend to whom he gives these affecting accounts; "I am miserable, because the world is unjust."[13]

The physicians advised him to leave off wine; but he says he could not do that, though he was content to use it in moderation. In truth he required something to support him against the physicians themselves, for they continued to exhaust his strength by their medicines, and could not supply the want of it with air and freedom. He had ringings in the ears, vomits, and fluxes of blood. It would be ludicrous, if it were not deplorably pathetic, to hear so great a man, in the commonest medical terms, now protesting against the eternal drenches of these practitioners, now humbly submitting to them, and now entreating like a child, that they might at least not be "so bitter." The physicians, with the duke at their head, were as mad for their rhubarbs and lancets as the quacks in Molière; and nothing but the very imagination that had nearly sacrificed the poet's life to their ignorance could have hindered him from dashing his head against the wall, and leaving them to the execrations of posterity. It is the only occasion in which the noble profession of medicine has not appeared in wise and beneficent connexion with the sufferings of men of letters. Why did Ferrara possess no Brocklesby in those days? no Garth, Mead, Warren, or Southwood Smith?

Tasso enabled himself to endure his imprisonment with composition. He supported it with his poetry and his poem, and what, alas! he had been too proud of during his liberty, the praises of his admirers. His genius brought him gifts from princes, and some money from the booksellers: it supported him even against his critics. During his confinement the _Jerusalem Delivered_ was first published; though, to his grief, from a surreptitious and mutilated copy. But it was followed by a storm of applause; and if this was succeeded by as great a storm of objection and controversy, still the healthier part of his faculties were roused, and he exasperated his critics and astonished the world by shewing how coolly and learnedly the poor, wild, imprisoned genius could discuss the most intricate questions of poetry and philosophy. The disputes excited by his poem are generally supposed to have done him harm; but the conclusion appears to be ill founded. They diverted his thoughts, and made him conscious of his powers and his fame. I doubt whether he would have been better for entire approbation: it would have put him in a state of elevation, unfit for what he had to endure. He had found his pen his great solace, and he had never employed it so well. It would be incredible what a heap of things he wrote in this complicated torment of imprisonment, sickness, and "physic," if habit and mental activity had not been sufficient to account for much greater wonders. His letters to his friends and others would make a good-sized volume; those to his critics, another; sonnets and odes, a third; and his Dialogues after the manner of Plato, two more. Perhaps a good half of all he wrote was written in this hospital of St. Anne; and he studied as well as composed, and had to read all that was written at the time, _pro_ and _con_, in the discussions about his _Jerusalem_, which, in the latest edition of his works, amount to three out of six volumes octavo! Many of the occasions, however, of his poems, as well as letters, are most painful to think of, their object having been to exchange praise for money. And it is distressing, in the letters, to see his other little wants, and the fluctuations and moods of his mind. Now he is angry about some book not restored, or some gift promised and delayed. Now he is in want of some books to be lent him; now of some praise to comfort him; now of a little fresh linen. He is very thankful for visits, for respectful letters, for "sweetmeats;" and greatly puzzled to know what to do with the bad sonnets and panegyrics that are sent him. They were sometimes too much even for the allowed ultra courtesies of Italian acknowledgment. His compliments to most people are varied with astonishing grace and ingenuity; his accounts of his condition often sufficient to bring the tears into the manliest eyes; and his ceaseless and vain efforts to procure his liberation mortifying when we think of himself, and exasperating when we think of the petty despot who detained him in so long, so degrading, and so worse than useless a confinement.

Tasso could not always conceal his contempt of his imprisoner from the ducal servants. Alfonso excelled the grandiloquent poet himself in his love of pomp and worship; and as he had no particular merits to warrant it, his victim bantered his love of titles. He says, in a letter to the duke's steward, "If it is the pleasure of the Most Serene Signor Duke, Most Clement and Most Invincible, to keep me in prison, may I beg that he will have the goodness to return certain little things of mine, which his Most Invincible, Most Clement, and Most Serene Highness has so often promised me.[14]

But these were rare ebullitions of gaiety, perhaps rather of bitter despair. A playful address to a cat to lend him her eyes to write by, during some hour in which he happened to be without a light (for it does not appear to have been denied him), may be taken as more probable evidence of a mind relieved at the moment, though the necessity for the relief may have been very sad. But the style in which he generally alludes to his situation is far different. He continually begs his correspondents to pity him, to pray for him, to attribute his errors to infirmity. He complains of impaired memory, and acknowledges that he has become subject to the deliriums formerly attributed to him by the enemies that had helped to produce them. Petitioning the native city of his ancestors (Bergamo) to intercede for him with the duke, he speaks of the writer as "this unhappy person;" and subscribes himself,--

"Most illustrious Signors, your affectionate servant, Torquato Tasso, a prisoner, and infirm, in the hospital of St. Anne in Ferrara."

In one of his addresses to Alfonso, he says most affectingly:

"I have sometimes attributed much to myself, and considered myself as somebody. But now, seeing in how many ways imagination has imposed on me, I suspect that it has also deceived me in this opinion of my own consequence. Indeed, methinks the past has been a dream; and hence I am resolved to rely on my imagination no longer."

Alfonso made no answer.

The causes of Tasso's imprisonment, and its long duration, are among the puzzles of biography. The prevailing opinion, notwithstanding the opposition made to it by Serassi and Black, is, that the poet made love to the Princess Leonora--perhaps was beloved by her; and that her brother the duke punished him for his arrogance. This was the belief of his earliest biographer, Manso, who was intimately acquainted with the poet in his latter days; and from Manso (though he did not profess to receive the information from Tasso, but only to gather it from his poems) it spread over all Europe. Milton took it on trust from him;[15] and so have our English translators Hoole and Wiffen. The Abbé de Charnes, however, declined to do so;[16] and Montaigne, who saw the poet in St. Anne's hospital, says nothing of the love at all. He attributes his condition to poetical excitement, hard study, and the meeting of the extremes of wisdom and folly. The philosopher, however, speaks of the poet's having survived his reason, and become unconscious both of himself and his works, which the reader knows to be untrue. He does not appear to have conversed with Tasso. The poet was only shewn him; probably at a sick moment, or by a new and ignorant official.[17] Muratori, who was in the service of the Este family at Modena, tells us, on the authority of an old acquaintance who knew contemporaries of Tasso, that the "good Torquato" finding himself one day in company with the duke and his sister, and going close to the princess in order to answer some question which she had put to him, was so transported by an impulse "more than poetical," as to give her a kiss; upon which the duke, who had observed it, turned about to his gentlemen, and said, "What a pity to see so great a man distracted!" and so ordered him to be locked up.[18] But this writer adds, that he does not know what to think of the anecdote: he neither denies nor admits it. Tiraboschi, who was also in the service of the Este family, doubts the truth of the anecdote, and believes that the duke shut the poet up solely for fear lest his violence should do harm.[19] Serassi, the second biographer of Tasso, who dedicated his book to an Este princess inimical to the poet's memory, attributes the confinement, on his own shewing, to the violent words he had uttered against his master.[20] Walker, the author of the _Memoir on Italian Tragedy_, says, that the life by Serassi himself induced him to credit the love-story:[21] so does Ginguéné.[22] Black, forgetting the age and illnesses of hundreds of enamoured ladies, and the distraction of lovers at all times, derides the notion of passion on either side; because, he argues, Tasso was subject to frenzies, and Leonora forty-two years of age, and not in good health.[23] What would Madame d'Houdetot have said to him? or Mademoiselle L'Espinasse? or Mrs. Inchbald, who used to walk up and down Sackville Street in order that she might see Dr. Warren's light in his window? Foscolo was a believer in the love;[24] Sismondi admits it;[25] and Rosini, the editor of the latest edition of the poet's works, is passionate for it. He wonders how any body can fail to discern it in a number of passages, which, in truth, may mean a variety of other loves; and he insists much upon certain loose verses (_lascivi_) which the poet, among his various accounts of the origin of his imprisonment, assigns as the cause, or one of the causes, of it. [26]

I confess, after a reasonable amount of inquiry into this subject, that I can find no proofs whatsoever of Tasso's having made love to Leonora; though I think it highly probable. I believe the main cause of the duke's proceedings was the poet's own violence of behaviour and incontinence of speech. I think it very likely that, in the course of the poetical love-making to various ladies, which was almost identical in that age with addressing them in verse, Torquato, whether he was in love or not, took more liberties with the princesses than Alfonso approved; and it is equally probable, that one of those liberties consisted in his indulging his imagination too far. It is not even impossible, that more gallantry may have been going on at court than Alfonso could endure to see alluded to, especially by an ambitious pen. But there is no evidence that such was the case. Tasso, as a gentleman, could not have hinted at such a thing on the part of a princess of staid reputation; and, on the other hand, the "love" he speaks of as entertained by her for him, and warranting the application to her for money in case of his death, was too plainly worded to mean any thing but love in the sense of friendly regard. "Per amor mio" is an idiomatical expression, meaning "for my sake;" a strong one, no doubt, and such as a proud man like Alfonso might think a liberty, but not at all of necessity an amatory boast. If it was, its very effrontery and vanity were presumptions of its falsehood. The lady whom Tasso alludes to in the passage quoted on his first confinement is complained of for her coldness towards him; and, unless this was itself a gentlemanly blind, it might apply to fifty other ladies besides the princess. The man who assaulted him in the streets, and who is supposed to have been the violator of his papers, need not have found any secrets of love in them. The servant at whom he aimed the knife or the dagger might be as little connected with such matters; and the sonnets which the poet said he wrote for a friend, and which he desired to be buried with him, might be alike innocent of all reference to Leonora, whether he wrote them for a friend or not. Leonora's death took place during the poet's confinement; and, lamented as she was by the verse-writers according to custom, Tasso wrote nothing on the event. This silence has been attributed to the depth of his passion; but how is the fact proved? and why may it not have been occasioned by there having been no passion at all?

All that appears certain is, that Tasso spoke violent and contemptuous words against the duke; that he often spoke ill of him in his letters; that he endeavoured, not with perfect ingenuousness, to exchange his service for that of another prince; that he asserted his madness to have been pretended in the first instance purely to gratify the duke's whim for thinking it so (which was one of the reasons perhaps why Alfonso, as he complained, would not believe a word be said); and finally, that, whether the madness was or was not so pretended, it unfortunately became a confirmed though milder form of mania, during a long confinement. Alfonso, too proud to forgive the poet's contempt, continued thus to detain him, partly perhaps because he was not sorry to have a pretext for revenge, partly because he did not know what to do with him, consistently either with his own or the poet's safety. He had not been generous enough to put Tasso above his wants; he had not address enough to secure his respect; he had not merit enough to overlook his reproaches. If Tasso had been as great a man as he was a poet, Alfonso would not have been reduced to these perplexities. The poet would have known how to settle quietly down on his small court-income, and wait patiently in the midst of his beautiful visions for what fortune had or had not in store for him. But in truth, he, as well as the duke, was weak; they made a bad business of it between them; and Alfonso the Second closed the accounts of the Este family with the Muses, by keeping his panegyrist seven years in a mad-house, to the astonishment of posterity, and the destruction of his own claims to renown.

It does not appear that Tasso was confined in any such dungeon as they now exhibit in Ferrara. The conduct of the Prior of the Hospital is more doubtful. His name was Agostino Mosti; and, strangely enough, he was the person who had raised a monument to Ariosto, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. To this predilection has been attributed his alleged cruelty to the stranger from Sorrento, who dared to emulate the fame of his idol;--an extraordinary, though perhaps not incredible, mode of skewing a critic's regard for poetry. But Tasso, while he laments his severity, wonders at it in a man so well bred and so imbued with literature, and thinks it can only have originated in "orders."[27] Perhaps there were faults of temper on both sides; and Mosti, not liking his office, forgot the allowance to be made for that of a prisoner and sick man. His nephew, Giulio Mosti, became strongly attached to the poet, and was a great comfort to him.

At length the time for liberation arrived. In the summer of 1586, Don Vincenzo Gonzaga, Prince of Mantua, kinsman of the poet's friend Scipio, came to Ferrara for the purpose of complimenting Alfonso's heir on his nuptials. The whole court of Mantua, with hereditary regard for Tasso, whose father had been one of their ornaments, were desirous of having him among them; and the prince extorted Alfonso's permission to take him away, on condition (so hard did he find this late concession to humanity, and so fearful was he of losing the dignity of jailor) that his deliverer should not allow him to quit Mantua without obtaining leave. A young and dear friend, his most frequent visitor, Antonio Constantini, secretary to the Tuscan ambassador, went to St. Anne's to prepare the captive by degrees for the good news. He told him that he really might look for his release in the course of a few days. The sensitive poet, now a premature old man of forty-two, was thrown into a transport of mingled delight and anxiety. He had been disappointed so often that he could scarcely believe his good fortune. In a day or two he writes thus to his visitor

"Your kindness, my dear friend, has so accustomed me to your precious and frequent visits, that I have been all day long at the window expecting your coming to comfort me as you are wont. But since you have not yet arrived, and in order not to remain altogether without consolation, I visit you with this letter. It encloses a sonnet to the ambassador, written with a trembling hand, and in such a manner that he will not, perhaps, have less difficulty in reading it than I had in writing."

Two days afterwards, the prince himself came again, requested of the poet some verses on a given subject, expressed his esteem for his genius and virtues, and told him that, on his return to Mantua, he should have the pleasure of conducting him to that city. Tasso lay awake almost all night, composing the verses; and next day enclosed them, with a letter, in another to Constantini, ardently begging him to keep the prince in mind of his promise. The prince had not forgotten it; and two or three days afterwards, the order for the release arrived, and Tasso quitted his prison. He had been confined seven years, two months, and several days. He awaited the prince's departure for a week or two in his friend's abode, paying no visits, probably from inability to endure so much novelty. Neither was he inclined or sent for to pay his respects to the duke. Two such parties could hardly have been desirous to look on each other. The duke must especially have disliked the thought of it; though Tasso afterwards fancied otherwise, and that he was offended at his non-appearance. But his letters, unfortunately, differ with themselves on this point, as on most others. About the middle of July 1586, the poet quitted Ferrara for ever.

At Mantua Tasso was greeted with all the honours and attentions which his love of distinction could desire. The good old duke, the friend of his father, ordered handsome apartments to be provided for him in the palace; the prince made him presents of costly attire, including perfumed silken hose (kindred elegancies to the Italian gloves of Queen Elizabeth); the princess and her mother-in-law were declared admirers of his poetry; the courtiers caressed the favourite of their masters; Tasso found literary society; he pronounced the very bread and fruit, the fish and the flesh, excellent; the wines were sharp and brisk ("such as his father was fond of"); and even the physician was admirable, for he ordered confections. One might imagine, if circumstances had not proved the cordial nature of the Gonzaga family, and the real respect and admiration entertained for the poet's genius by the greatest men of the time, in spite of the rebuke it had received from Alfonso, that there had been a confederacy to mock and mystify him, after the fashion of the duke and duchess with Don Quixote (the only blot, by the way, in the book of Cervantes; if, indeed, he did not intend it as a satire on the mystifiers).

For a while, in short, the liberated prisoner thought himself happy. He corrected his prose works, resumed and finished the tragedy of _Torrismond_, which he had begun some years before, corresponded with princes, and completed and published a narrative poem left unfinished by his father. Torquato was as loving a son as Mozart or Montaigne. Whenever he had a glimpse of felicity, he appears to have associated the idea of it with that of his father. In the conclusion of his fragment, "O del grand' Apennino," he affectingly begs pardon of his blessed spirit for troubling him with his earthly griefs.[28]

But, alas, what had been an indulgence of self-esteem had now become the habit of a disease; and in the course of a few months the restless poet began to make his old discovery, that he was not sufficiently cared for. The prince had no leisure to attend to him; the nobility did not "yield him the first place," or at least (he adds) they did not allow him to be treated "externally as their equal;" and he candidly confessed that he could not live in a place where such was the custom.[29] He felt also, naturally enough, however well it might have been intended, that it was not pleasant to be confined to the range of the city of Mantua, attended by a servant, even though he confessed that he was now subject to "frenzy." He contrived to stay another half-year by help of a brilliant carnival and of the select society of the prince's court, who were evidently most kind to him; but at the end of the twelvemonth he was in Bergamo among his relations. The prince gave him leave to go; and the Cavaliere Tasso, his kinsman, sent his chariot on purpose to fetch him.

Here again he found himself at a beautiful country-seat, which the family of Tasso still possesses near that city; and here again, in the house of his father, he proposed to be happy, "having never desired," he says, "any journey more earnestly than this." He left it in the course of a month, to return to Mantua.

And it was only to wander still. Mantua he quitted in less than two months to go to Rome, in spite of the advice of his best friends. He vindicated the proceeding by a hope of obtaining some permanent settlement from the Pope. He took Loretto by the way, to refresh himself with devotion; arrived in a transport at Rome; got nothing from the Pope (the hard-minded Sixtus the Fifth); and in the spring of the next year, in the triple hope of again embracing his sister, and recovering the dowry of his mother and the confiscated property of his father, he proceeded to Naples.

Naples was in its most beautiful vernal condition, and the Neapolitans welcomed the poet with all honour and glory; but his sister, alas, was dead; he got none of his father's property, nor (till too late) any of his mother's; and before the year was out, he was again in Rome. He acquired in Naples, however, another friend, as attached to him and as constant in his attentions as his beloved Constantini, to wit, Giambattista Manso, Marquis of Villa, who became his biographer, and who was visited and praised for his good offices by Milton. In the society of this gentleman he seemed for a short while to have become a new man. He entered into field-sports, listened to songs and music, nay, danced, says Manso, with "the girls." (One fancies a poetical Dr. Johnson with the two country damsels on his knees.) In short, good air and freedom, and no medicine, had conspired with the lessons of disappointment to give him, before he died, a glimpse of the power to be pleased. He had not got rid of all his spiritual illusions, even those of a melancholy nature; but he took the latter more quietly, and had grown so comfortable with the race in general, that he encouraged them. He was so entirely freed from his fears of the Inquisition and of charges of magic, that whereas he had formerly been anxious to shew that he meant nothing but a poetical fancy by the spirit which he introduced as communing with him in his dialogue entitled the _Messenger_, he now maintained its reality against the arguments of his friend Manso; and these arguments gave rise to the most poetical scene in his history. He told Manso that he should have ocular testimony of the spirit's existence; and accordingly one day while they were sitting together at the marquis's fireside, "he turned his eyes," says Manso, "towards a window, and held them a long time so intensely on it, that, when I called him, he did not answer. At last, 'Behold,' said he, 'the friendly spirit which has courteously come to talk with me. Lift up your eyes, and see the truth.' I turned my eyes thither immediately (continues the marquis); but though I endeavoured to look as keenly as I could, I beheld nothing but the rays of the sun, which streamed through the panes of the window into the chamber. Whilst I still looked around, without beholding any object, Torquato began to hold, with this unknown something, a most lofty converse. I heard, indeed, and saw nothing but himself; nevertheless his words, at one time questioning, at another replying, were such as take place between those who reason strictly on some important subject. And from what was said by the one, the reply of the other might be easily comprehended by the intellect, although it was not heard by the ear. The discourses were so lofty and marvellous, both by the sublimity of their topics and a certain unwonted manner of talking, that, exalted above myself in a kind of ecstasy, I did not dare to interrupt them, nor ask Tasso about the spirit, which he had announced to me, but which I did not see. In this way, while I listened between stupefaction and rapture, a considerable time had elapsed; till at last the spirit departed, as I learned from the words of Torquato; who, turning to me, said, 'From this day forward all your doubts will have vanished from your mind.' 'Nay,' said I, 'they are rather increased; since, though I have heard many things worthy of marvel, I have seen nothing of what you promised to shew me to dispel them.' He smiled, and said, 'You have seen and heard more of him than perhaps --,' and here he paused. Fearful of importuning him with new questions, the discourse ended; and the only conclusion I can draw is, what I before said, that it is more likely his visions or frenzies will disorder my own mind than that I shall extirpate his true or imaginary opinion."[30]

Did the "smile" of Tasso at the close of this extraordinary scene, and the words which he omitted to add, signify that his friend had seen and heard more, perhaps, than the poet _would have liked_ to explain? Did he mean that he himself alone had been seen and heard, and was author of the whole dialogue? Perhaps he did; for credulity itself can impose;--can take pleasure in seeing others as credulous as itself. On the other hand, enough has become known in our days of the phenomena of morbid perception, to render Tasso's actual belief in such visions not at all surprising. It is not uncommon for the sanest people of delicate organisation to see faces before them while going to sleep, sometimes in fantastical succession. A stronger exercise of this disposition in temperaments more delicate will enlarge the face to figure; and there can be no question that an imagination so heated as Tasso's, so full of the speculations of the later Platonists, and accompanied by a state of body so "nervous," and a will so bent on its fancies, might embody whatever he chose to behold. The dialogue he could as easily read in the vision's looks, whether he heard it or not with ears. If Nicholay, the Prussian bookseller, who saw crowds of spiritual people go through his rooms, had been a poet, and possessed of as wilful an imagination as Tasso, he might have gifted them all with _speaking countenances_ as easily as with coats and waistcoats. Swedenborg founded a religion on this morbid faculty; and the Catholics worship a hundred stories of the like sort in the Lives of the Saints, many of which are equally true and false; false in reality, though true in supposition. Luther himself wrote and studied till he saw the Devil; only the great reformer retained enough of his naturally sturdy health and judgment to throw an inkstand at Satan's head,--a thing that philosophy has been doing ever since.

Tasso's principal residence while at Naples had been in the beautiful monastery of Mount Olivet, on which the good monks begged he would write them a poem; which he did. A cold reception at Rome, and perhaps the difference of the air, brought back his old lamentations; but here again a monastery gave him refuge, and he set himself down to correct his former works and compose new ones. He missed, however, the comforts of society and amusement which he had experienced at Naples. Nevertheless, he did not return thither. He persuaded himself that it was necessary to be in Rome in order to expedite the receipt of some books and manuscripts from Bergamo and other places; but his restlessness desired novelty. He thus slipped back from the neighbourhood of Rome to the city itself, and from the city back to the monastery, his friends in both places being probably tired of his instability. He thought of returning to Mantua; but a present from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, accompanied by an invitation to his court, drew him, in one of his short-lived transports, to Florence. He returned, in spite of the best and most generous reception, to Rome; then left Rome for Mantua, on invitation from his ever-kind deliverer from prison, now the reigning duke; tired again, even of him; returned to Rome; then once more to Naples, where the Prince of Conca, Grand Admiral of the kingdom, lodged and treated him like an equal; but he grew suspicious of the admiral, and went to live with his friend Manso; quitted Manso for Rome again; was treated with reverence on the way, like Ariosto, by a famous leader of banditti; was received at Rome into the Vatican itself, in the apartments of his friend Cintio Aldobrandino, nephew of the new pope Clement the Eighth, where his hopes now seemed to be raised at once to their highest and most reasonable pitch; but fell ill, and was obliged to go back to Naples for the benefit of the air. A life so strangely erratic to the last (for mortal illness was approaching) is perhaps unique in the history of men of letters, and might be therefore worth recording even in that of a less man than Tasso; but when we recollect that this poet, in spite of all his weaknesses, and notwithstanding the enemies they provoked and the friends they cooled, was really almost adored for his genius in his own time, and instead of refusing jewels one day and soliciting a ducat the next, might have settled down almost any where in quiet and glory, if he had but possessed the patience to do so, it becomes an association of weakness with power, and of adversity with the means of prosperity, the absurdity of which admiration itself can only drown in pity.

He now took up his abode in another monastery, that of San Severino, where he was comforted by the visits of his friend Manso, to whom he had lately inscribed a dialogue on _Friendship_; for he continued writing to the last. He had also the consolation, such as it was, of having the law-suit for his mother's dowry settled in his favour, though under circumstances that rendered it of little importance, and only three months before his death. So strangely did Fortune seem to take delight in sporting with a man of genius, who had thought both too much of her and too little; too much for pomp's sake, and too little in prudence. Among his new acquaintances were the young Marino, afterwards the corrupter of Italian poetry, and the Prince of Venosa, an amateur composer of music. The dying poet wrote madrigals for him so much to his satisfaction, that, being about to marry into the house of Este, he wished to reconcile him with the Duke of Ferrara; and Tasso, who to the last moment of his life seems never to have been able to resist the chance of resuming old quarters, apparently from the double temptation of renouncing them, wrote his old master a letter full of respects and regrets. But the duke, who himself died in the course of the year, was not to be moved from his silence. The poet had given him the last possible offence by recasting his _Jerusalem_, omitting the glories of the house of Este, and dedicating it to another patron. Alfonso, who had been extravagantly magnificent, though not to poets, had so weakened his government, that the Pope wrested Ferrara from the hands of his successor, and reduced the Este family to the possession of Modena, which it still holds and dishonours. The duke and the poet were thus fading away at the same time; they never met again in this world; and a new Dante would have divided them far enough in the next.[31]

The last glimpse of honour and glory was now opening in a very grand manner on the poet--the last and the greatest, as if on purpose to give the climax to his disappointments. Cardinal Cintio requested the Pope to give him the honour of a coronation. It had been desired by the poet, it seems, three years before. He was disappointed of it at that time; and now that it was granted, he was disappointed of the ceremony. Manso says he no longer cared for it; and, as he felt himself dying, this is not improbable. Nevertheless he went to Rome for the purpose; and though the severity of the winter there delayed the intention till spring, wealth and honours seemed determined to come in floods upon the poor expiring great man, in order to take away the breath which they had refused to support. The Pope assigned him a yearly pension of a hundred scudi; and the withholders of his mother's dowry came to an accommodation by which he was to have an annuity of a hundred ducats, and a considerable sum in hand. His hand was losing strength enough to close upon the money. Scarcely was the day for the coronation about to dawn, when the poet felt his dissolution approaching. Alfonso's doctors had killed him at last by superinducing a habit of medicine-taking, which defeated its purpose. He requested leave to return to the monastery of St. Onofrio--wrote a farewell letter to Constantini--received the distinguished honour of a plenary indulgence from the Pope--said (in terms very like what Milton might have used, had he died a Catholic), that "this was the chariot upon which he hoped to go crowned, not with laurel as a poet into the capitol, but with glory as a saint to heaven"--and expired on the 25th of April, 1575, and the fifty-first year of his age, closely embracing the crucifix, and imperfectly uttering the sentence beginning, "Into thy hands, O Lord!"[32]

Even after death, success mocked him; for the coronation took place on the senseless dead body. The head was wreathed with laurel; a magnificent toga delayed for a while the shroud; and a procession took place through the city by torchlight, all the inhabitants pouring forth to behold it, and painters crowding over the bier to gaze on the poet's lineaments, from which they produced a multitude of portraits. The corpse was then buried in the church of St. Onofrio; and magnificent monuments talked of, which never appeared. Manso, however, obtained leave to set up a modest tablet; and eight years afterwards a Ferrarese cardinal (Bevilacqua) made what amends he could for his countrymen, by erecting the stately memorial which is still to be seen.

Poor, illustrious Tasso! weak enough to warrant pity from his inferiors--great enough to overshadow in death his once-fancied superiors. He has been a by-word for the misfortunes of genius: but genius was not his misfortune; it was his only good, and might have brought him all happiness. It is the want of genius, as far as it goes, and apart from martyrdoms for conscience' sake, which produces misfortunes even to genius itself--the want of as much wit and balance on the common side of things, as genius is supposed to confine to the uncommon.

Manso has left a minute account of his friend's person and manners. He was tall even among the tall; had a pale complexion, sunken cheeks, lightish brown hair, head bald at the top, large blue eyes, square forehead, big nose inclining towards the mouth, lips pale and thin, white teeth, delicate white hands, long arms, broad chest and shoulders, legs rather strong than fleshy, and the body altogether better proportioned than in good condition; the result, nevertheless, being an aspect of manly beauty and expression, particularly in the countenance, the dignity of which marked him for an extraordinary person even to those who did not know him. His demeanour was grave and deliberate; he laughed seldom; and though his tongue was prompt, his delivery was slow; and he was accustomed to repeat his last words. He was expert in all manly exercises, but not equally graceful; and the same defect attended his otherwise striking eloquence in public assemblies. His putting to flight the assassins in Ferrara gave him such a reputation for courage, that there went about in his honour a popular couplet

"Colla penna e colla spada Nessun val quanto Torquato."

For the sword as well as pen Tasso is the man of men.

He was a little eater, but not averse to wine, particularly such as combined piquancy with sweetness; and he always dressed in black. Manso's account is still more particular, and yet it does not tell all; for Tasso himself informs us that he stammered, and was near-sighted;[33] and a Neapolitan writer who knew him adds to the near-sightedness some visible defect in the eyes.[34] I should doubt, from what Tasso says in his letters, whether he was fond of speaking in public, notwithstanding his _début_ in that line with the _Fifty Amorous Conclusions_.Nor does he appear to have been remarkable for his conversation. Manso has left a collection of one hundred of his pithy sayings--a suspicious amount, and unfortunately more than warranting the suspicion; for almost every one of them is traceable to some other man. They come from the Greek and Latin philosophers, and the apothegms of Erasmus. The two following have the greatest appearance of being genuine:

A Greek, complaining that he had spoken ill of his country, and maintaining that all the virtues in the world had issued out of it, the poet assented; with the addition, that they had not left one behind them.

A foolish young fellow, garnished with a number of golden chains, coming into a room where he was, and being overheard by him exclaiming, "Is this the great man that was mad?" Tasso said, "Yes; but that people had never put on him more than one chain at a time."

His character may be gathered, but not perhaps entirely, from what has been written of his life; for some of his earlier letters shew him to have been not quite so grave and refined in his way of talking as readers of the _Jerusalem_ might suppose. He was probably at that time of life not so scrupulous in his morals as he professed to be during the greater part of it. His mother is thought to have died of chagrin and impatience at being separated so long from her husband, and not knowing what to do to save her dowry from her brothers; and I take her son to have combined his mother's ultra-sensitive organisation with his father's worldly imprudence and unequal spirits. The addition of the nervous temperament of one parent to the aspiring nature of the other gave rise to the poet's trembling eagerness for distinction; and Torquato's very love for them both hindered him from seeing what should have been corrected in the infirmities which he inherited. Falling from the highest hopes of prosperity into the most painful afflictions, he thus wanted solid principles of action to support him, and was forced to retreat upon an excess of self-esteem, which allowed his pride to become a beggar, and his naturally kind, loving, just, and heroical disposition to condescend to almost every species of inconsistency. The Duke of Ferrara, he complains, did not believe a word he said;[35] and the fact is, that, partly from disease, and partly from a want of courage to look his defects in the face, he beheld the same things in so many different lights, and according as it suited him at the moment, that, without intending falsehood, his statements are really not to be relied on. He degraded even his verses, sometimes with panegyrics for interest's sake, sometimes out of weak wishes to oblige, of which he was afterwards ashamed; and, with the exception of Constantini, we cannot be sure that any one person praised in them retained his regard in his last days. His suspicion made him a kind of Rousseau; but he was more amiable than the Genevese, and far from being in the habit of talking against old acquaintances, whatever he might have thought of them. It is observable, not only that he never married, but he told Manso he had led a life of entire continence ever since he entered the walls of his prison, being then in his thirty-fifth year.[36] Was this out of fidelity to some mistress? or the consequence of a previous life the reverse of continent? or was it from some principle of superstition? He had become a devotee, apparently out of a dread of disbelief; and he remained extremely religious for the rest of his days. The two unhappiest of Italian poets, Tasso and Dante, were the two most superstitious.

As for the once formidable question concerning the comparative merits of this poet and Ariosto, which anticipated the modern quarrels of the classical and romantic schools, some idea of the treatment which Tasso experienced may be conceived by supposing all that used to be sarcastic and bitter in the periodical party-criticism among ourselves some thirty years back, collected into one huge vial of wrath, and poured upon the new poet's head. Even the great Galileo, who was a man of wit, bred up in the pure Tuscan school of Berni and Casa, and who was an idolator of Ariosto, wrote, when he was young, a "review" of the _Jerusalem Delivered_, which it is painful to read, it is so unjust and contemptuous.[37] But now that the only final arbiter, posterity, has accepted both the poets, the dispute is surely the easiest thing in the world to settle; not, indeed, with prejudices of creeds or temperaments, but before any judges thoroughly sympathising with the two claimants. Its solution is the principle of the greater including the less. For Ariosto errs only by having an unbounded circle to move in. His sympathies are unlimited; and those who think him inferior to Tasso, only do so in consequence of their own want of sympathy with the vivacities that degrade him in their eyes. Ariosto can be as grave and exalted as Tasso when he pleases, and he could do a hundred things which Tasso never attempted. He is as different in this respect as Shakspeare from Milton. He had far more knowledge of mankind than Tasso, and he was superior in point of taste. But it is painful to make disadvantageous comparisons of one great poet with another. Let us be thankful for Tasso's enchanted gardens, without being forced to vindicate the universal world of his predecessor. Suffice it to bear in mind, that the grave poet himself agreed with the rest of the Italians in calling the Ferrarese the "divine Ariosto;" a title which has never been popularly given to his rival.

The _Jerusalem Delivered_ is the history of a Crusade, related with poetic license. The Infidels are assisted by unlawful arts; and the libertinism that brought scandal on the Christians, is converted into youthful susceptibility, led away by enchantment. The author proposed to combine the ancient epic poets with Ariosto, or a simple plot, and uniformly dignified style, with romantic varieties of adventure, and the luxuriance of fairy-land. He did what he proposed to do, but with a judgment inferior to Virgil's; nay, in point of the interdependence of the adventures, to Ariosto, and with far less general vigour. The mixture of affectation with his dignity is so frequent, that, whether Boileau's famous line about Tasso's tinsel and Virgil's gold did or did not mean to imply that the _Jerusalem_ was nothing but tinsel, and the _Æneid_ all gold, it is certain that the tinsel is so interwoven with the gold, as to render it more of a rule than an exception, and put a provoking distance between Tasso's epic pretensions and those of the greatest masters of the art. People who take for granted the conceits because of the "wildness" of Ariosto, and the good taste because of the "regularity" of Tasso, just assume the reverse of the fact. It is a rare thing to find a conceit in Ariosto; and, where it does exist, it is most likely defensible on some Shakspearian ground of subtle propriety. Open Tasso in almost any part, particularly the love-scenes, and it is marvellous if, before long, you do not see the conceits vexatiously interfering with the beauties.

"Oh maraviglia! Amor, the appena è nato, Già grande vola, e già trionfa armato." Canto i. St. 47.

Oh, miracle! Love is scarce born, when, lo, He flies full wing'd, and lords it with his bow!

"Se 'l miri fulminar ne l'arme avvolto, Marte lo stimi; Amor, se scopre il volto." St. 58.

Mars you would think him, when his thund'ring race In arms he ran; Love, when he shew'd his face.

Which is as little true to reason as to taste; for no god of war could look like a god of love. The habit of mind would render it impossible. But the poet found the prettiness of the Greek Anthology irresistible.

Olindo, tied to the stake amidst the flames of martyrdom, can say to his mistress

"Altre fiamme, altri nodi amor promise." Canto ii. st. 34.

Other flames, other bonds than these, love promised.

The sentiment is natural, but the double use of the "flames" on such an occasion, miserable.

In the third canto the fair Amazon Clorinda challenges her love to single combat.

"E di due morti in un punto lo sfida." St. 23.

"And so at once she threats to kill him twice." _Fairfax_.

That is to say, with her valour and beauty.

Another twofold employment of flame, with an exclamation to secure our astonishment, makes its appearance in the fourth canto

"Oh miracol d'amor! che le faville Tragge del pianto, e'i cor' ne l'acqua accende." St. 76.

Oh, miracle of love! that draweth sparks Of fire from tears, and kindlest hearts in water!

This puerile antithesis of _fire_ and _water, fire_ and _ice, light_ in _darkness, silence_ in _speech_, together with such pretty turns as _wounding one's-self in wounding others_, and the worse sacrifice of consistency and truth of feeling,--lovers making long speeches on the least fitting occasions, and ladies retaining their rosy cheeks in the midst of fears of death,--is to be met with, more or less, throughout the poem. I have no doubt they were the proximate cause of that general corruption of taste which was afterwards completed by Marino, the acquaintance and ardent admirer of Tasso when a boy. They have been laid to the charge of Petrarch; but, without entering into the question, how far and in what instances conceits may not be natural to lovers haunted, as Petrarch was, with one idea, and seeing it in every thing they behold, what had the great epic poet to do with the faults of the lyrical? And what is to be said for his standing in need of the excuse of bad example? Homer and Milton were in no such want. Virgil would not have copied the tricks of Ovid. There is an effeminacy and self-reflection in Tasso, analogous to his Rinaldo, in the enchanted garden; where the hero wore a looking-glass by his side, in which he contemplated his sophisticated self, and the meretricious beauty of his enchantress.[38] Agreeably to this tendency to weakness, the style of Tasso, when not supported by great occasions (and even the occasion itself sometimes fails him), is too apt to fall into tameness and common-place,--to want movement and picture; while, at the same time, with singular defect of enjoyment, it does not possess the music which might be expected from a lyrical and voluptuous poet. Bernardo prophesied of his son, that, however he might surpass him in other respects, he would never equal him in sweetness; and he seems to have judged him rightly. I have met with a passage in Torquato's prose writings (but I cannot lay my hands on it), in which he expresses a singular predilection for verses full of the same vowel. He seems, if I remember rightly, to have regarded it, not merely as a pleasing variety, which it is on occasion, but as a reigning principle. Voltaire (I think, in his treatise on _Epic Poetry_) has noticed the multitude of _o_'s in the exordium of the _Jerusalem_.This apparent negligence seems to have been intentional.

"Cantò l'armi pietòse e 'l capitanò Che 'l gran Sepòlerò liberò di Cristò; Mòltò egli òprò còl sennò e còn la manò, Mòltò sòffri nel glòriòsò acquistò; E invan l'infernò a lui s'òppòse; e invanò S'armò d'Asia e di Libia il pòpòl mistò; Che il ciel gli diè favòre, e sòttò ai santi Segni ridusse i suòi còmpagni erranti."

The reader will not be surprised to find, that he who could thus confound monotony with music, and commence his greatest poem with it, is too often discordant in the rest of his versification. It has been thought, that Milton might have taken from the Italians the grand musical account to which he turns a list of proper names, as in his enumerations of realms and deities; but I have been surprised to find how little the most musical of languages appears to have suggested to its poets anything of the sort. I am not aware of it, indeed, in any poets but our own. All others, from Homer, with his catalogue of leaders and ships, down to Metastasio himself, though he wrote for music, appear to have overlooked this opportunity of playing a voluntary of fine sounds, where they had no other theme on which to modulate. Its inventor, as far as I am aware, is that great poet, Marlowe.[39]

There are faults of invention as well as style in the _Jerusalem_. The Talking Bird, or bird that sings with a human voice (canto iv. 13), is a piece of inverisimilitude, which the author, perhaps, thought justifiable by the speaking horses of the ancients. But the latter were moved supernaturally for the occasion, and for a very fine occasion. Tasso's bird is a mere born contradiction to nature and for no necessity. The vulgar idea of the devil with horns and a tail (though the retention of it argued a genius in Tasso very inferior to that of Milton) is defensible, I think, on the plea of the German critics, that malignity should be made a thing low and deformed; but as much cannot be said for the storehouse in heaven, where St. Michael's spear is kept with which he slew the dragon, and the trident which is used for making earthquakes (canto vii. st. 81). The tomb which supernaturally comes out of the ground, inscribed with the name and virtues of Sueno (canto viii. st. 39), is worthy only of a pantomime; and the wizard in robes, with beech-leaves on his head, who walks dry-shod on water, and superfluously helps the knights on their way to Armida's retirement (xiv. 33), is almost as ludicrous as the burlesque of the river-god in the _Voyage_ of Bachaumont and Chapelle.

But let us not wonder, nevertheless, at the effect which the _Jerusalem_ has had upon the world. It could not have had it without great nature and power. Rinaldo, in spite of his aberrations with Armida, knew the path to renown, and so did his poet. Tasso's epic, with all its faults, is a noble production, and justly considered one of the poems of the world. Each of those poems hit some one great point of universal attraction, at least in their respective countries, and among the givers of fame in others. Homer's poem is that of action; Dante's, of passion; Virgil's, of judgment; Milton's, of religion; Spenser's, of poetry itself; Ariosto's, of animal spirits (I do not mean as respects gaiety only, but in strength and readiness of accord with the whole play of nature); Tasso looked round with an ultra-sensitive temperament, and an ambition which required encouragement, and his poem is that of tenderness. Every thing inclines to this point in his circle, with the tremulousness of the needle. Love is its all in all, even to the design of the religious war which is to rescue the sepulchre of the God of Charity from the hands of the unloving. His heroes are all in love, at least those on the right side; his leader, Godfrey, notwithstanding his prudence, narrowly escapes the passion, and is full of a loving consideration; his amazon, Clorinda, inspires the truest passion, and dies taking her lover's hand; his Erminia is all love for an enemy; his enchantress Armida falls from pretended love into real, and forsakes her religion for its sake. An old father (canto ix.) loses his five sons in battle, and dies on their dead bodies of a wound which he has provoked on purpose. Tancred cannot achieve the enterprise of the Enchanted Forest, because his dead mistress seems to come out of one of the trees. Olindo thinks it happiness to be martyred at the same stake with Sophronia. The reconciliation of Rinaldo with his enchantress takes place within a few stanzas of the close of the poem, as if contesting its interest with religion. The _Jerusalem Delivered_, in short, is the favourite epic of the young: all the lovers in Europe have loved it. The French have forgiven the author his conceits for the sake of his gallantry: he is the poet of the gondoliers; and Spenser, the most luxurious of his brethren, plundered his bowers of bliss. Read Tasso's poem by this gentle light of his genius, and you pity him twentyfold, and know not what excuse to find for his jailer.

The stories translated in the present volume, though including war and magic, are all love-stories. They were not selected on that account. They suggested themselves for selection, as containing most of the finest things in the poem. They are conducted with great art, and the characters and affections happily varied. The first (_Olindo and Sophronia_) is perhaps unique for the hopelessness of its commencement (I mean with regard to the lovers), and the perfect, and at the same time quite probable, felicity of the conclusion. There is no reason to believe that the staid and devout Sophronia would have loved her adorer at all, but for the circumstance that first dooms them both to a shocking death, and then sends them, with perfect warrant, from the stake to the altar. Clorinda is an Amazon, the idea of whom, as such, it is impossible for us to separate from very repulsive and unfeminine images; yet, under the circumstances of the story, we call to mind in her behalf the possibility of a Joan of Arc's having loved and been beloved; and her death is a surprising and most affecting variation upon that of Agrican in Boiardo. Tasso's enchantress Armida is a variation of the Angelica of the same poet, combined with Ariosto's Alcina; but her passionate voluptuousness makes her quite a new character in regard to the one; and she is as different from the painted hag of the _Orlando_ as youth, beauty, and patriotic intention can make her. She is not very sentimental; but all the passion in the world has sympathised with her; and it was manly and honest in the poet not to let her Paganism and vehemence hinder him from doing justice to her claims as a human being and a deserted woman. Her fate is left in so pleasing a state of doubt, that we gladly avail ourselves of it to suppose her married to Rinaldo, and becoming the mother of a line of Christian princes. I wish they had treated her poet half so well as she would infallibly have treated him herself.

But the singer of the Crusades can be strong as well as gentle. You discern in his battles and single combats the poet ambitious of renown, and the accomplished swordsman. The duel of Tancred and Argantes, in which the latter is slain, is as earnest and fiery writing throughout as truth and passion could desire; that of Tancred and Clorinda is also very powerful as well as affecting; and the whole siege of Jerusalem is admirable for the strength of its interest. Every body knows the grand verse (not, however, quite original) that summons the devils to council, "Chiama gli abitator," &c.; and the still grander, though less original one, describing the desolations of time, "Giace l'alta Cartago."[40] The forest filled with supernatural terrors by a magician, in order that the Christians may not cut wood from it to make their engines of war, is one of the happiest pieces of invention in romance. It is founded in as true human feeling as those of Ariosto, and is made an admirable instrument for the aggrandizement of the character of Rinaldo. Godfrey's attestation of all time, and of the host of heaven, when he addresses his army in the first canto, is in the highest spirit of epic magnificence. So is the appearance of the celestial armies, together with that of the souls of the slain Christian warriors, in the last canto, where they issue forth in the air to assist the entrance into the conquered city. The classical poets are turned to great and frequent account throughout the poem; and yet the work has a strong air of originality, partly owing to the subject, partly to the abundance of love-scenes, and to a certain compactness in the treatment of the main story, notwithstanding the luxuriance of the episodes. The _Jerusalem Delivered_ is stately, well-ordered, full of action and character, sometimes sublime, always elegant, and very interesting-more so, I think, as a whole, and in a popular sense, than any other story in verse, not excepting the _Odyssey_. For the exquisite domestic attractiveness of the second Homeric poem is injured, like the hero himself, by too many diversions from the main point. There is an interest, it is true, in that very delay; but we become too much used to the disappointment. In the epic of Tasso the reader constantly desires to learn how the success of the enterprise is to be brought about; and he scarcely loses sight of any of the persons but he wishes to see them again. Even in the love-scenes, tender and absorbed as they are, we feel that the heroes are fighters, or going to fight. When you are introduced to Armida in the Bower of Bliss, it is by warriors who come to take her lover away to battle.

One of the reasons why Tasso hurt the style of his poem by a manner too lyrical was, that notwithstanding its deficiency in sweetness, he was one of the profusest lyrical writers of his nation, and always having his feelings turned in upon himself. I am not sufficiently acquainted with his odes and sonnets to speak of them in the gross; but I may be allowed to express my belief that they possess a great deal of fancy and feeling. It has been wondered how he could write so many, considering the troubles he went through; but the experience was the reason. The constant succession of hopes, fears, wants, gratitudes, loves, and the necessity of employing his imagination, accounts for all. Some of his sonnets, such as those on the Countess of Scandiano's lip ("Quel labbro," &c.); the one to Stigliano, concluding with the affecting mention of himself and his lost harp; that beginning

"Io veggio in cielo scintillar le stelle,"

recur to my mind oftener than any others except Dante's "Tanto gentile" and Filicaia's _Lament on Italy_; and, with the exception of a few of the more famous odes of Petrarch, and one or two of Filicaia's and Guidi's, I know of none in Italian like several of Tasso's, including his fragment "O del grand' Apennino," and the exquisite chorus on the _Golden Age_, which struck a note in the hearts of the world.

His _Aminta_, the chief pastoral poem of Italy, though, with the exception of that ode, not equal in passages to the _Faithful Shepherdess_ (which is a Pan to it compared with a beardless shepherd), is elegant, interesting, and as superior to Guarini's more sophisticate yet still beautiful _Pastor Fido_ as a first thought may be supposed to be to its emulator. The objection of its being too elegant for shepherds he anticipated and nullified by making Love himself account for it in a charming prologue, of which the god is the speaker:

"Queste selve oggi ragionar d'Amore S'udranno in nuova guisa; e ben parassi, Che la mia Deità sia quì presente In se medesma, e non ne' suoi ministri. Spirerò nobil sensi à rozzi petti; Raddolcirò nelle lor lingue il suono: Perchè, ovunque i' mi sia, io sono Amore Ne' pastori non men che negli eroi; E la disagguaglianza de' soggetti, Come a me piace, agguaglio: e questa è pure Suprema gloria, e gran miracol mio, Render simili alle più dotte cetre Le rustiche sampogne."

After new fashion shall these woods to-day Hear love discoursed; and it shall well be seen That my divinity is present here In its own person, not its ministers. I will inbreathe high fancies in rude hearts; I will refine and render dulcet sweet Their tongues; because, wherever I may be, Whether with rustic or heroic men, There am I Love; and inequality, As it may please me, do I equalise; And 'tis my crowning glory and great miracle To make the rural pipe as eloquent Even as the subtlest harp.

I ought not to speak of Tasso's other poetry, or of his prose, for I have read little of either; though, as they are not popular with his countrymen, a foreigner may be pardoned for thinking his classical tragedy, _Torrismondo_, not attractive--his _Sette Giornate_ (Seven Days of the Creation) still less so--and his platonical and critical discourses better filled with authorities than reasons. Tasso was a lesser kind of Milton, enchanted by the Sirens. We discern the weak parts of his character, more or less, in all his writings; but we see also the irrepressible elegance and superiority of the mind, which, in spite of all weakness, was felt to tower above its age, and to draw to it the homage as well as the resentment of princes.

[Footnote 1: My authorities for this notice are, Black's _Life of Tasso_ (2 vols. 4to, 1810), his original, Serassi, _Vita di Torquato Tasso_ (do. 1790), and the works of the poet in the Pisan edition of Professor Rosini (33 vols. 8vo, 1332). I have been indebted to nothing in Black which I have not ascertained by reference to the Italian biographer, and quoted nothing stated by Tasso himself but from the works. Black's Life, which is a free version of Serassi's, modified by the translator's own opinions and criticism, is elegant, industrious, and interesting. Serassi's was the first copious biography of the poet founded on original documents; and it deserved to be translated by Mr. Black, though servile to the house of Este, and, as might be expected, far from being always ingenuous. Among other instances of this writer's want of candour is the fact of his having been the discoverer and suppresser of the manuscript review of Tasso by Galileo. The best summary account of the poet's life and writings which I have met with is Ginguéné's, in the fifth volume of his _Histoire Littéraire_, &c. It is written with his usual grace, vivacity, and acuteness, and contains a good notice of the Tasso controversy. As to the Pisan edition of the works, it is the completest, I believe, in point of contents ever published, comprises all the controversial criticism, and is, of course, very useful; but it contains no life except Manso's (now known to be very inconclusive), has got a heap of feeble variorum comments on the _Jerusalem_, no notes worth speaking of to the rest of the works, and, notwithstanding the claim in the title-page to the merit of a "better order," has left the correspondence in a deplorable state of irregularity, as well as totally without elucidation. The learned Professor is an agreeable writer, and, I believe, a very pleasant man, but he certainly is a provoking editor.]

[Footnote 2: In the beautiful fragment beginning, _O del grand'Apennino:_

"Me dal sen della madre empia fortuna Pargoletto divelse. Ah! di que' baci, Ch'ella bagnò di lagrime dolenti, Con sospir mi rimembra, e degli ardenti Preghi, che sen portár l'aure fugaci, Ch'io giunger non dovea più volto a volto Fra quelle braccia accolto Con nodi così stretti e sì tenaci. Lasso! e seguii con mal sicure piante, Qual Ascanio, o Camilla, il padre errante."

Me from my mother's bosom my hard lot Took when a child. Alas! though all these years I have been used to sorrow, I sigh to think upon the floods of tears which bathed her kisses on that doleful morrow:

I sigh to think of all the prayers and cries She wasted, straining me with lifted eyes: For never more on one another's face was it our lot to gaze and to embrace! Her little stumbling boy, Like to the child of Troy, Or like to one doomed to no haven rather, Followed the footsteps of his wandering father.]

[Footnote 3: Rosini, _Saggio sugli Amori di Torquato Tasso_, &c., in the Professor's edition of his works, vol. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 4: _Lettere Inedite_, p. 33, in the _Opere_, vol. xvii.]

[Footnote 5: _Entretiens_, 1663, p.169 quoted by Scrassi, pp. 175, 182.]

[Footnote 6: Suggested by Ariosto's furniture in the Moon.]

[Footnote 7: This was a trick which he afterwards thought he had reason to complain of in a style very different from pleasantry.]

[Footnote 8: Alfonso. The word for "leader" in the original, _duce_, made the allusion more obvious. The epithet "royal," in the next sentence, conveyed a welcome intimation to the ducal car, the house of Este being very proud of its connexion with the sovereigns of Europe, and very desirous of becoming royal itself.]

[Footnote 9: Serassi, vol i. p. 210.]

(Footnote 10: "Alla lor magnanimità è convenevole il mostrar, ch'amor delle virtù, non odio verso altri, gli abbia già mossi ad invitarmi con invito così largo." _Opere_, vol. xv. p. 94.]

[Footnote 11: The application is the conjecture of Black, vol. i. p. 317. Serassi suppressed the whole passage. The indecent word would have been known but for the delicacy or courtliness of Muratori, who substituted an _et-cetera_ in its place, observing, that he had "covered" with it "an indecent word not fit to be printed" ("sotto quell'_et-cetera_ ho io coperta un'indecente parola, che non era lecito di lasciar correre alle stampe." _Opere del Tasso,_ vol. xvi. p. 114). By "covered" he seems to have meant blotted out; for in the latest edition of Tasso the _et-cetera is_ retained.]

[Footnote 12: Black's version (vol. ii. p. 58) is not strong enough. The words in Serassi are "una ciurma di poltroni, ingrati, e ribaldi." ii. p. 33.]

[Footnote 13: _Opere_, vol xiv. pp. 158, 174, &c.]

[Footnote 14: "Prego V. Signoria the si contenti, se piace al Serenissimo Signor Duca, Clementissimo ed Invitissimo, the io stia in prigione, di farmi dar le poche robicciole mie, the S.A. Invitissima, Clementissima, Serenissima m' ha promesse tante volte," &c. _Opere_, vol. xiv. p. 6.]

[Footnote 15: "Altera Torquatum cepit Leonora poetam," &c.]

[Footnote 16: _Vie du Tasse,_ 1695, p. 51.]

[Footnote 17: In the Apology _for Raimond de Sebonde_; Essays, vol. ii. ch. 12.]

[Footnote 18: In his _Letter to Zeno,--Opere del

Tasso_, xvi. p. 118.]

[Footnote 19: _Storia della Poesia Italiana_ (Mathias's edition), vol. iii. part i. p 236.]

[Footnote 20: Serassi is very peremptory, and even abusive. He charges every body who has said any thing to the contrary with imposture. "Egli non v' ha dubbio, che le troppe imprudenti e temerarie parole, che il Tasso si lasciò uscir di bocca in questo incontro, furone la sola cagione della sua prigionia, e ch' è mera favola ed _impostura_ tutto ciò, che diversamente è stato affermato e scritto da altri in tale proposito." Vol. ii. p. 33. But we have seen that the good Abbè could practise a little imposition himself.]

[Footnote 21: Black, ii. 88.]

[Footnote 22: _Hist. Litt. d'Italie_, v. 243, &c.]

[Footnote 23: Vol. ii. p. 89.]

[Footnote 24: Such at least is my impression; but I cannot call the evidence to mind.]

[Footnote 25: _Literature of the South of Europe_ (Roscoe's translation), vol. ii. p. 165. To shew the loose way in which the conclusions of a man's own mind are presented as facts admitted by others, Sismondi says, that Tasso's "passion" was the cause of his return to Ferrara. There is not a tittle of evidence to shew for it.]

[Footnote 26: _Saggio sugli Amori_, &c. ut sup p. 84, and passim. As specimens of the learned professor's reasoning, it may be observed that whenever the words _humble, daring, high, noble_, and _royal_, occur in the poet's love-verses, he thinks they _must_ allude to the Princess Leonora; and he argues, that Alfonso never could have been so angry with any "versi lascivi," if they had not had the same direction.]

[Footnote 27: _Opere_, vol. xvii. p.32.]

[Footnote 28:

"Padre, o buon padre, che dal ciel rimiri, Egro e morto ti piansi, e ben tu il sai; E gemendo scaldai La tomba e il letto. Or che negli altri giri Tu godi, a te si deve onor, non lutto: A me versato il mio dolor sia tutto."

O father, my good father, looking now On thy poor son from heaven, well knowest thou What scalding tears I shed Upon thy grave, upon thy dying bed; But since thou dwellest in the happy skies, 'Tis fit I raise to thee no sorrowing eyes Be all my grief on my own head.]

[Footnote 29:

" Non posso viver in città, ove tutti i nobili, o non mi concedano i primi luoghi, o almeno non si contentino the la cosa in quel the appartiene a queste esteriori dimostrazioni, vada del pari." _Opere,_, vol. xiii. p. 153.]

[Footnote 30: Black, vol. ii. p. 240.]

[Footnote 31: The world in general have taken no notice of Tasso's reconstruction of his _Jerusalem_, which he called the _Gerusalemme Conquistata_. It never "obtained," as the phrase is. It was the mere tribute of his declining years to bigotry and new acquaintances; and therefore I say no more of it.]

[Footnote 32: _In manus tuas, Domine_. One likes to know the actual words; at least so it appears to me.]

[Footnote 33: Serassi, ii. 276.]

[Footnote 34: "Quem _cernis_, quisquis es, procera statura virum, _luscis_ oculis, &c. hic Torquatus est."--Cappacio, _Illustrium Literis Virorum Elogia et Judici_, quoted by Serassi, ut sup. The Latin word _luscus_, as well as the Italian _losco_, means, I believe, near-sighted; but it certainly means also a great deal more; and unless the word _cernis_ (thou beholdest) is a mere form of speech implying a foregone conclusion, it shews that the defect was obvious to the spectator.]

[Footnote 35: "Il Signor Duca non crede ad alcuna mia parola." _Opere_, xiv. 161.]

[Footnote 36: "Fui da bocca di lui medesimo rassicurato, che dal tempo del suo ritegno in sant'Anna, ch'avenne negli anni trentacinque della sua vita e sedici avanti la morte, egli intieramente fu casto: degli anni primi non mi favellò mai di modo ch' io possa alcuna cosa di certo qui raccontare." _Opere_, xxxiii. 235.]

[Footnote 37: It is to be found in the collected works, _ut supra_; both of the philosopher and the poet.]

[Footnote 38: It is an extraordinary instance of a man's violating, in older life, the better critical principles of his youth,--that Tasso, in his _Discourses on Poetry_, should have objected to a passage in Ariosto about sighs and tears, as being a "conceit too lyrical," (though it was warranted by the subtleties of madness, see present volume, p. 219), and yet afterwards not in the same conceits when wholly without warrant.]

[Footnote 39: [Greek:

Dardanion aut aerchen, eus pais Agchisao, Aineias ton hup Agchisae teke di Aphroditae Idaes en knaemoisi, thea brotps eunaetheisa Ouk oios hama toge duo Antaenoros uie, Archilochos t, Akamas te machaes en eidute pasaes.

_Iliad_, ii. 819.]

It is curious that these five lines should abound as much in _a_'s Tasso's first stanza does in o's. Similar monotonies are strikingly observable in the nomenclatures of Virgil. See his most perfect poem, the _Georgics_:

"Omnià secum `Armentàrius `Afer àgit, tectumque, Làremque, `Armaque, `Amyclæumque cànem, Cressàmque pharetràm." Lib. iii. 343.

It is clear that Dante never thought of this point. See his Mangiadore, Sanvittore, Natan, Raban, &c. at the end of the twelfth canto of the _Paradiso_. Yet in his time poetry was _recitatived_ to music. So it was in Petrarch's, who was a lutenist, and who "tried" his verses, to see how they would go to the instrument. Yet Petrarch could allow himself to write such a quatrain as the following list of rivers

"Non Tesin, Pò, Varo, Arno, Adige e Tebro, Eufrate, Tigre, Nilo, Ermo, Indo c Gange, Tana, Istro, Alfeo, Garrona, è 'l mar the frange, Rodano, Ibero, Ren, Senna, _Albia, Era, Ebro!_"

In Tasso's _Sette Giornate_, to which Black thinks Milton indebted for his grand use of proper names, the following is the way in which the poet writes

"Di Silvàni Di Pàni, e d' Egipàni, e d' àltri errànti, Ch'empier lè solitariè incultè selvè D'antichè maravigliè; e quell'accòltò Esercitò di Baccò in òriente Ond'egli vinse, e trionfò degl'Indi, Tornandò glòriòsò ai Greci lidi, Siccòm'e favòlòsò anticò gridò."

The most diversified passage of this kind (as far as I an, aware) is Ariosto's list of his friends at the close of the _Orlando_; and yet such writing as follows would seem to shew that it was an accident:

"Iò veggiò il Fracastòrò, il Bevazzanò, Trifòn Gabriel, e il Tassò più lòntanò; Veggo Niccòlò Tiepoli, e con esso Niccòlò Amaniò in me affissar le ciglia; Autòn Fulgòsò, ch'a vedermi appressò Al litò, mòstra gaudiò e maraviglia. Il miò Valeriò e quel che là s'è messò Fuòr de le dònne," &c.

Even Metastasio, who wrote expressly for singers, and often with exquisite modulation, especially in his songs, forgets himself when he comes to the names of his dramatis persome,--"`Artaserse, `Artàbàno, `Arbàce, Màndàne, Semirà, Megàbise,"--all in one play.

"Gran cose io temo. Il mio germàno `Arbàce Pàrte prià de l'aurorà. Il pàdre armàto Incontro, e non mi pàrlà. `Accusà il cielo `Agitàto `Artàserse, e m'àbbàndonà."

Atto i. se. 6.

I am far from intending to say that these reiterations are not sometimes allowable, nay, often beautiful and desirable. Alliteration itself may be rendered an exquisite instrument of music. I am only speaking of monotony or discord in the enumeration of proper names.]

[Footnote 40: See them both in the present volume, pp. 420 and 445.]

OLINDO AND SOPHRONIA.

Argument.

The Mahomedan king of Jerusalem, at the instigation of Ismeno, a magician, deprives a Christian church of its image of the Virgin, and sets it up in a mosque, under a spell of enchantment, as a palladium against the Crusaders. The image is stolen in the night; and the king, unable to discover who has taken it, orders a massacre of the Christian portion of his subjects, which is prevented by Sophronia's accusing herself of the offence. Her lover, Olindo, finding her sentenced to the stake in consequence, disputes with her the right of martyrdom. He is condemned to suffer with her. The Amazon Clorinda, who has come to fight on the side of Aladin, obtains their pardon in acknowledgment of her services; and Sophronia, who had not loved Olindo before, now returns his passion, and goes with him from the stake to the marriage-altar.

OLINDO AND SOPHRONIA.

Godfrey of Boulogne, the leader of the Crusaders, was now in full march for Jerusalem with the Christian army; and Aladin, the old infidel king, became agitated with wrath and terror. He had heard nothing but accounts of the enemy's irresistible advance. There were many Christians within his walls whose insurrection he dreaded; and though he had appeared to grow milder with age, he now, in spite of the frost in his veins, felt as hot for cruelty, as the snake excited by the fire of summer. He longed to stifle his fears of insurrection by a massacre, but dreaded the consequence in the event of the city's being taken. He therefore contented himself, for the present, with laying waste the country round about it, destroying every possible receptacle of the invaders, poisoning the wells, and doubly fortifying the only weak point in his fortifications.

At this juncture the renegade Ismeno stood before him--a bad old man who had studied unlawful arts. He could bind and loose evil spirits, and draw the dead out of their tombs, restoring to them breath and perception. This man told the king, that in the church belonging to his Christian subjects there was an altar underground, on which stood a veiled image of the woman whom they worshipped--the mother, as they called her, of their dead and buried God. A dazzling light burnt for ever before it; and the walls were hung with the offerings of her credulous devotees. If this image, he said, were taken away by the king's own hand, and set up in a mosque, such a spell of enchantment could be thrown about it as should render the city impregnable so long as the idol was kept safe.

Aladin proceeded instantly to the Christian temple, and, treating the priests with violence, tore the image from its shrine and conveyed it to his own place of worship. The necromancer then muttered before it his blasphemous enchantment. But the light of morning no sooner appeared in the mosque, than the official to whose charge the palladium had been committed missed it from its place, and in vain searched every other to find it. In truth it never was found again; nor is it known to this day how it went. Some think the Christians took it; others that Heaven interfered in order to save it from profanation. And well (says the poet) does it become a pious humility so to think of a disappearance so wonderful.

The king, who fell into a paroxysm of rage, not doubting that some Christian was the offender, issued a proclamation setting a price on the head of any one who concealed it. But no discovery was made. The necromancer resorted to his art with as little effect. The king then ordered a general Christian massacre. His savage wrath hugged itself on the reflection, that the criminal would be sure to perish, perish else who might.

The Christians heard the order with an astonishment that took away all their powers of resistance. The suddenness of the presence of death stupified them. They did not resort even to an entreaty. They waited, like sheep, to be butchered. Little did they think what kind of saviour was at hand.

There was a maiden among them of ripe years, grave and beautiful; one who took no heed of her beauty, but was altogether absorbed in high and holy thoughts. If she thought of her beauty ever, it was only to subject it to the dignity of virtue. The greater her worth, the more she concealed it from the world, living a close life at home, and veiling herself from all eyes.

But the rays of such a jewel could not but break through their casket. Love would not consent to have it so locked up. Love turned her very retirement into attraction. There was a youth who had become enamoured of this hidden treasure. His name was Olindo; Sophronia was that of the maiden. Olindo, like herself, was a Christian; and the humbleness of his passion was equal to the worth of her that inspired it. He desired much, hoped little, asked nothing.[1] He either knew not how to disclose his love, or did not dare it. And she either despised it, or did not, or would not, see it. The poor youth, up to this day, had got nothing by his devotion, not even a look.

The maiden, who was nevertheless as generous as she was virtuous, fell into deep thought how she might save her Christian brethren. She soon came to her resolve. She delayed the execution of it a little, only out of a sense of virgin decorum, which, in its turn, made her still more resolute. She issued forth by herself, in the sight of all, not muffling up her beauty, nor yet exposing it. She withdrew her eyes beneath a veil, and, attired neither with ostentation nor carelessness, passed through the streets with unaffected simplicity, admired by all save herself. She went straight before the king. His angry aspect did not repel her. She drew aside the veil, and looked him steadily in the face.

"I am come," she said, "to beg that you will suspend your wrath, and withhold the orders given to your people. I know and will give up the author of the deed which has offended you, on that condition."

At the noble confidence thus displayed, at the sudden apparition of so much lofty and virtuous beauty, the king's countenance was confused, and its angry expression abated. Had his spirit been less stern, or the look she gave him less firm in its purpose, he would have loved her. But haughty beauty and haughty beholder are seldom drawn together. Glances of pleasure are the baits of love. And yet, if the ungentle king was not enamoured, he was impressed. He was bent on gazing at her; he felt an emotion of delight.

"Say on," he replied; "I accept the condition."

"Behold then," said she, "the offender. The deed was the work of this hand. It was I that conveyed away the image. I am she whom you look for. I am the criminal to be punished."

And as she spake, she bent her head before him, as already yielding it to the executioner.

Oh, noble falsehood! when was truth to be compared with thee?[2]

The king was struck dumb. He did not fall into his accustomed transports of rage. When he recovered from his astonishment, he said, "Who advised you to do this? Who was your accomplice?"

"Not a soul," replied the maiden. "I would not have allowed another person to share a particle of my glory. I alone knew of the deed; I alone counselled it; I alone did it."

"Then be the consequence," cried he, "on your own head!"

"'Tis but just," returned Sophronia. "Mine was the sole honour; mine, therefore, should be the only punishment."

The tyrant at this began to feel the accession of his old wrath. "Where," he said, "have You hidden the image?"

"I did not hide it," she replied, "I burnt it. I thought it fit and righteous to do so. I knew of no other way to save it from the hands of the unbelieving. Ask not for what will never again be found. Be content with the vengeance you have before you."

Oh, chaste heart! oh, exalted soul! oh, creature full of nobleness! think not to find a forgiving moment return. Beauty itself is thy shield no longer.

The glorious maiden is taken and bound. The cruel king has condemned her to the stake. Her veil, and the mantle that concealed her chaste bosom, are torn away, and her soft arms tied with a hard knot behind her. She said nothing; she was not terrified; but yet she was not unmoved. Her bosom heaved in spite of its courage. Her lovely colour was lost in a pure white.

The news spread in an instant, and the city crowded to the sight, Christians and all, Olindo among them. He had thought within himself, "What if it should be Sophronia!" But when he beheld that it was she indeed, and not only condemned, but already at the stake, he made way through the crowd with violence, crying out, "This is not the person,--this poor simpleton! She never thought of such a thing; she had not the courage to do it; she had not the strength. How was she to carry the sacred image away? Let her abide by her story if she dare. I did it."

Such was the love of the poor youth for her that loved him not.

When he came up to the stake, he gave a formal account of what he pretended to have done. "I climbed in," he said, "at the window of your mosque at night, and found a narrow passage round to the image, where nobody could expect to meet me. I shall not suffer the penalty to be usurped by another. I did the deed, and I will have the honour of doing it, now that it comes to this. Let our places be changed."

Sophronia had looked up when she heard the youth call out, and she gazed on him with eyes of pity. "What madness is this!" exclaimed she. "What can induce an innocent person to bring destruction on himself for nothing? Can I not bear the thing by myself? Is the anger of one man so tremendous, that one person cannot sustain it? Trust me, friend, you are mistaken. I stand in no need of your company."

Thus spoke Sophronia to her lover; but not a whit was he disposed to alter his mind. Oh, great and beautiful spectacle! Love and virtue at strife;--death the prize they contend for;--ruin itself the salvation of the conqueror! But the contest irritated the king. He felt himself set at nought; felt death itself despised, as if in despite of the inflictor. "Let them be taken at their words," cried be; "let both have the prize they long for."

The youth is seized on the instant, and bound like the maiden. Both are tied to the stake, and set back to back. They behold not the face of one another. The wood is heaped round about them; the fire is kindled.

The youth broke out into lamentations, but only loud enough to be heard by his fellow-sufferer. "Is this, then," said he, "the bond which I hoped might join us? Is this the fire which I thought might possibly warm two lovers' hearts?[3] Too long (is it not so?) have we been divided, and now too cruelly are we united: too cruelly, I say, but not as regards me; for since I am not to be partner of thy existence, gladly do I share thy death. It is thy fate, not mine, that afflicts me. Oh! too happy were it to me, too sweet and fortunate, if I could obtain grace enough to be set with thee heart to heart, and so breathe out my soul into thy lips! Perhaps thou wouldst do the like with mine, and so give me thy last sigh."

Thus spoke the youth in tears; but the maiden gently reproved him.

She said: "Other thoughts, my friend, and other lamentations befit a time like this. Why thinkest thou not of thy sins, and of the rewards which God has promised to the righteous? Meet thy sufferings in his name; so shall their bitterness be made sweet, and thy soul be carried into the realms above. Cast thine eyes upwards, and behold them. See how beautiful is the sky; how the sun seems to invite thee towards it with its splendour."

At words so noble and piteous as these, the Pagans themselves, who stood within hearing, began to weep. The Christians wept too, but in voices more lowly. Even the king felt an emotion of pity; but disdaining to give way to it, he turned aside and withdrew. The maiden alone partook not of the common grief. She for whom every body wept, wept not for herself.

The flames were now beginning to approach the stake, when there appeared, coming through the crowd, a warrior of noble mien, habited in the arms of another country. The tiger, which formed the crest of his helmet, drew all eyes to it, for it was a cognizance well known. The people began to think that it was a heroine instead of a hero which they saw, even the famous Clorinda. Nor did they err in the supposition.

A despiser of feminine habits had Clorinda been from her childhood. She disdained to put her hand to the needle and the distaff. She renounced every soft indulgence, every timid retirement, thinking that virtue could be safe wherever it went in its own courageous heart; and so she armed her countenance with pride, and pleased herself with making it stern, but not to the effect she looked for, for the sternness itself pleased. While yet a child her little right hand would control the bit of the charger, and she wielded the sword and spear, and hardened her limbs with wrestling, and made them supple for the race; and then as she grew up, she tracked the footsteps of the bear and lion, and followed the trumpet to the wars; and in those and in the depths of the forest she seemed a wild creature to mankind, and a man to the wildest creature. She had now come out of Persia to wreak her displeasure on the Christians, who had already felt the sharpness of her sword; and as she arrived near this assembled multitude, death was the first thing that met her eyes, but in a shape so perplexing, that she looked narrowly to discern what it was, and then spurred her horse towards the scene of action. The crowd gave way as she approached, and she halted as she entered the circle round the stake, and sat gazing on the youth and maiden. She wondered to see the male victim lamenting, while the female was mute. But indeed she saw that he was weeping not out of grief but pity; or at least, not out of grief for himself; and as to the maiden, she observed her to be so wrapt up in the contemplation of the heavens at which she was gazing, that she appeared to have already taken leave of earth.

Pity touched the heart of the Amazon, and the tears came into her eyes. She felt sorry for both the victims, but chiefly for the one that said nothing. She turned to a white-headed man beside her, and said, "What is this? Who are these two persons, whom crime, or their ill fortune, has brought hither?"

The man answered her briefly, but to the purpose; and she discerned at once that both must be innocent. She therefore determined to save them. She dismounted, and set the example of putting a stop to the flames, and then said to the officers, "Let nobody continue this work till I have spoken to the king. Rest assured he will hold you guiltless of the delay." The officers obeyed, being struck with her air of confidence and authority; and she went straight towards the king, who had heard of her arrival, and who was coming to bid her welcome.

"I am Clorinda," she said. "Thou knowest me? Then thou knowest, sir, one who is desirous to defend the good faith and the king of Jerusalem. I am ready for any duty that may be assigned me. I fear not the greatest, nor do I disdain the least. Open field or walled city, no post will come amiss to the king's servant."

"Illustrious maiden," answered the king, "who knoweth not Clorinda? What region is there so distant from Asia, or so far away out of the paths of the sun, to which the sound of thy achievements has not arrived? Joined by thee and by thy sword I fear nothing. Godfrey, methinks, is too slow to attack me. Dost thou ask to which post thou shalt be appointed? To the greatest. None else becomes thee. Thou art lady and mistress of the war."

Clorinda gave the king thanks for his courtesy, and then resumed. "Strange is it, in truth," she said, "to ask my reward before I have earned it; but confidence like this reassures me. Grant me, for what I propose to do in the good cause, the lives of these two persons. I wave the uncertainty of their offence; I wave the presumption of innocence afforded by their own behaviour. I ask their liberation as a favour. And yet it becomes me, at the same time, to confess, that I do not believe the Christians to have taken the image out of the mosque. It was an impious thing of the magician to put it there. An idol has no business in a Mussulman temple, much less the idols of unbelievers; and my opinion is, that the miracle was the work of Mahomet himself, out of scorn and hatred of the contamination. Let Ismeno prefer his craft, if he will, to the weapons of a man; but let him not take upon himself the defence of a nation of warriors."

The warlike damsel was silent; and the king, though he could with difficulty conquer his anger, yet did so, to please his guest. "They are free," said he; "I can deny nothing to such a petitioner. Whether it be justice or not to absolve them, absolved they are. If they are innocent, I pronounce them so; if guilty, I concede their pardon."

At these words the youth and the maiden were set free. And blissful indeed was the fortune of Olindo; for love, so proved as his, awoke love in the noble bosom of Sophronia; and so he passed from the stake to the marriage-altar, a husband, instead of a wretch condemned--a lover beloved, instead of a hopeless adorer.

[Footnote 1: "Brama assai, poco spera, e nulla chiede." Canto ii. st. 16. A line justly famous.]

[Footnote 2:

"Magnanima menzogna! or quando è il vero Sì bello, che si possa a te preporre?"]

[Footnote 3: This conceit is more dwelt upon in the original, coupled with the one noticed at p. 362.]

TANCRED AND CLORINDA.

Argument.

The Mussulman Amazon Clorinda, who is beloved by the Christian chief Tancred, goes forth in disguise at night to burn the battering tower of the Christian army. She effects her purpose; but, in retreating from its discoverers, is accidentally shut out of the gate through which she had left the city. She makes her way into the open country, trusting to get in at one of the other gates; but, having been watched by Tancred, who does not know her in the armour in which she is disguised, a combat ensues between them, in which she is slain. She requests baptism in her last moments, and receives it from the hands of her despairing lover.

TANCRED AND CLORINDA

The Christians, in their siege of Jerusalem, had brought a huge rolling tower against the walls, from which they battered and commanded the city with such deadly effect, that the generous Amazon Clorinda resolved to go forth in disguise and burn it. She disclosed her design to the chieftain Argantes, for the purpose of recommending to him the care of her damsels, in case any misfortune should happen to her; but the warrior, jealous of the glory of such an enterprise, insisted on partaking it. The old king, weeping for gratitude, joyfully gave them leave; and the Soldan of Egypt, with a generous emulation, would fain have joined them. Argantes was about to give him a disdainful refusal, when the king interposed, and persuaded the Soldan to remain behind, lest the city should miss too many of its best defenders at one time; adding, that the risk of sallying forth should be his, in case the burners of the tower were pursued on their return. Argantes and the Amazon then retired to prepare for the exploit, and the magician Ismeno compounded two balls of sulphur for the work of destruction.

Clorinda took off her beautiful helmet, and her surcoat of cloth of silver, and laid aside all her haughty arms, and dressed herself (hapless omen!) in black armour without polish, the better to conceal herself from the enemy. Her faithful servant, the good old eunuch Arsetes, who had attended her from infancy, and was now following her about as well as he could with his accustomed zeal, anxiously noticed what she was doing, and guessing it was for some desperate enterprise, entreated her, by his white hairs and all the love he had shewn her, to give it up. Finding his prayers to no purpose, he requested with great emotion that she would give ear to certain matters in her family history, which he at length felt it his duty to disclose. "It would then," he said, "be for herself to judge, whether she would persist in the enterprise or renounce it." Clorinda, at this, looked at the good man, and listened with attention.

"Not long ago," said he, "there reigned in Ethiopia, and perhaps is still reigning, a king named Senapus, who in common with his people professed the Christian religion. They are a black though a handsome people, and the king and his queen were of the salve colour. The king loved her dearly, but was unfortunately so jealous, that he concealed her from the sight of mankind. Had it been in his power, I think he would have hindered the very eyes of heaven from beholding her. The sweet lady, however, was wise and humble, and did every thing she could to please him.

"I was not a Christian myself. I was a Pagan slave, employed among the women about the queen, and making one of her special attendants.

"It happened, that the royal bed-chamber was painted with the story of a holy knight saving a maiden from a dragon;[1] and the maiden had a face beautifully fair, with blooming cheeks. The queen often prayed and wept before this picture; and it made so great an impression on her, particularly the maiden's face, that when she bore a child, she saw with consternation that the infant's skin was of the same fair colour. This child was thyself. [2]

"Terrified with the thoughts of what her husband would feel at such a sight, what a convincing proof he would hold it of a faith on her part the reverse of spotless,[3] she procured a babe of her own colour by means of a confidant; and before thou wert baptised (which is a ceremony that takes place in Ethiopia later than elsewhere) committed thee to my care to be brought up at a distance. Who shall relate the tears which thy mother poured forth, and the sighs and sobs with which they were interrupted? How many times, when she thought she had given thee the last embrace, did she not gather thee to her bosom once more! At length, raising her eyes to heaven, she said, 'O Thou that seest into the hearts of mortals, and knowest in this matter the spotlessness of mine, dark though it be otherwise with frailty and with sin, save, I pray thee, this innocent creature who is denied the milk of its mother's breast. Vouchsafe that she resemble her hapless parent in nothing but a chaste life. And thou, celestial warrior, that didst deliver the maiden out of the serpent's mouth, if I have ever lit humble taper on thine altar, and set before thee offerings of gold and incense, be, I implore thee, her advocate. Be her advocate to such purpose, that in every turn of fortune she may be enabled to count on thy good help.' Here she ceased, torn to her very heart-strings, with a face painted of the colour of death; and I, weeping myself, received thee, and bore thee away, hidden in a sweet covering of flowers and leaves.

"I journeyed with thee along a forest, where a tiger came upon us with fury in its eyes. I betook me, alas, to a tree, and left thee lying on the ground, such terror was in me; and the horrible beast looked down upon thee. But it fell to licking thee with its dreadful tongue, and thou didst smile to it, and put thy little hand to its jaws; and, lo, it gave thee suck, being a mother itself; and then, wonderful to relate, it returned into the woods, leaving me to venture down from the tree, and bear thee onward to my place of refuge. There, in a little obscure cottage, I had thee nursed for more than a year; till, feeling that I grew old, I resolved to avail myself of the riches the queen had given me, and go into my own country, which was Egypt. I set out for it accordingly, and had to cross a torrent where thieves threatened me on one side, and the fierce water on the other. I plunged in, holding thee above the torrent with one hand, till I came to an eddy that tore thee from me. I thought thee lost. What was my delight and astonishment, on reaching the bank, to find that the water itself had tossed thee upon it in safety!

"But I had a dream at night, which seemed to shew me the cause of thy good fortune. A warrior appeared before me with a threatening countenance, holding a sword in my face, and saying in an imperious voice, 'Obey the commands of the child's mother and of me, and baptise it. She is favoured of Heaven, and her lot is in my keeping. It was I that put tenderness in the heart of the wild beast, and even a will to save her in the water. Woe to thee, if thou believest not this vision. It is a message from the skies.'

"The spirit vanished, and I awoke and pursued my journey; but thinking my own creed the true one, and therefore concluding the dream to be false, I baptised thee not; I bred thee what I was myself, a Pagan; and thou didst grow up, and become great and wonderful in arms, surpassing the deeds of men, and didst acquire riches and lands; and what thy life has been since, then knowest as well as I; ay, and thou knowest mine own ways too, how I have followed and cautiously waited on thee ever, being to thee both as a servant and father.

"Now yesterday morning, as I lay heavily asleep, in consequence of my troubled mind, the same figure of the warrior made its appearance, but with a countenance still more threatening, and speaking in a louder voice. 'Wretch,' it exclaimed, 'the hour is approaching when Clorinda shall end both her life and her belief. She is mine in despite of thee. Misery be thine.' With these words it darted away as though it flew.

"Consider then, delight of my soul, what these dreams may portend. They threaten thee terrible things; for what reason I know not. Can it be, that mine own faith is the wrong one, and that of thy parents the right? Ah! take thought at least, and repress this daring courage. Lay aside these arms that frighten me."

Tears hindered the old man from saying more. Clorinda grew thoughtful, and felt something of dread, for she had had a like kind of dream. At length, however, cheerfully looking up, she said, "I must follow the faith I was bred in; the faith which thou thyself bred'st me in, although thy words would now make me doubt it. Neither can I give up the enterprise that calls me forth. Such a withdrawal is not to be expected of an honourable soul. Death may put on the worst face it pleases. I shall not retreat."

The intrepid maiden, however, did her best to console her good friend; but the time having arrived for the adventure, she finally bade him be of good heart, and so left him.

Silently, and in the middle of the night, Argantes and Clorinda took their way down the hills of Jerusalem, and, quitting the gates, went stealthily towards the site of the tower. But its ever-watchful guards were alarmed. They demanded the watch-word; and, not receiving it, cried out, "To arms! to arms!" The dauntless adventurers plunged forwards with their swords; they dashed aside every assailant, pitched the balls of sulphur into the machine, and in a short time, in the midst of a daring conflict, had the pleasure of seeing the smoke and the flame arise, and the whole tower blazing to its destruction. A terrible sight it was to the Christians. Waked up, they came crowding to the place; and the two companions, notwithstanding their skill and audacity, were compelled to make a retreat. The besieged, with the king at their head, now arrived also, crowding on the walls; and the gate was opened to let the adventurers in. The Soldan issued forth at the same moment to cover the retreat. Argantes was forced through the gate by Clorinda in spite of himself; and she, but for a luckless antagonist, would have followed him; but a soldier aiming at her a last blow, she rushed back to give the man his death; and, in the confusion of the moment, the warders, believing her to have entered, shut up the gate, and the heroine was left without.

Behind Clorinda was the gate--before and round about her was a host of foes; and surely at that moment she thought that her life was drawing to its end. Finding, however, that her dark armour befriended her in the tumult, she mingled with the enemy as though she had been one of themselves, and so, by degrees, picked her way through the confusion caused by the fire. As the wolf, with its bloody mouth, seeks covert in the woods, even so Clorinda got clear out of the multitude into the darkness and the open country.

Not, however, so clear, alas, but that Tancred perceived her--Tancred, her foe in creed, but her adoring lover, whose heart she had conquered in the midst of strife, and whose passion for her she knew. But now she knew not that he had seen her; nor did he, poor valiant wretch, know that the knight in black armour whom he pursued, was a woman, and Clorinda. Tancred had seen the warrior strike down the assailant at the gate; he had watched him as he picked his way to escape; and Clorinda now heard the unknown Tancred coming swiftly on horseback behind her as she was speeding round towards another gate in hopes of being let in.

The heroine at length turned, and said, "How now, friend?--what is thy business?"

"Death!" answered the pursuer.

"Thou shalt have it," replied the maiden.

The knight, as his enemy was on foot, dismounted, in order to render the combat equal; and their swords are drawn in fury, and the fight begins.[4]

Worthy of the brightest day-time was that fight--worthy of a theatre full of valiant be-holders. Be not displeased, O. Night! that I draw it out of thy bosom, and set it in the serene light of renown: the splendour will but the more exhibit the great shade of thy darkness.

No trial was this of skill--no contest of warding and traversing and taking heed--no artful interchange of blows now pretended, now given in earnest, now glancing. Night-time and rage flung aside all consideration. The swords horribly clashed and hammered on one another. Not a cut descended in vain--not a thrust was without substance. Shame and fury aggravated one another. Every blow became fiercer than the last. They closed--they could use their blades no longer; they dashed the pummels of their swords at one another's faces; they butted and shouldered with helm and buckler. Three times the man threw his arms round the woman with other embraces than those of love--three times they returned to their swords, and cut and slashed one another's bleeding bodies; till at length they were obliged to hold back for the purpose of taking breath.

Tancred and Clorinda stood fronting one another in the darkness, leaning on their swords for want of strength. The last star in the heavens was fading in the tinge of dawn; and Tancred saw that his enemy had lost more blood than himself, and it made him proud and joyful. Oh, foolish mind of us humans, elated at every fancy of success! Poor wretch! for what dost thou rejoice? How sad will be thy victory! What a misery to look back upon, thy delight! Every drop of that blood will be paid for with worlds of tears!

Dimly thus looking at one another stood the combatants, bleeding a while in peace. At length Tancred, who wished to know his antagonist, said, "It hath been no good fortune of ours to be compelled thus to fight where nobody can behold us; but we have at least become acquainted with the good swords of one another. Let me request, therefore (if to request any thing at such a time be not unbecoming), that I may be no stranger to thy name. Permit me to learn, whatever be the result, who it is that shall honour my death or my victory."

"I am not accustomed," answered the fierce maiden, "to disclose who I am; nor shall I disclose it now. Suffice to hear, that thou seest before thee one of the burners of the tower."

Tancred was exasperated at this discovery. "In an evil moment," cried he, "hast thou said it. Thy silence and thy speech alike disgust me." Into the combat again they dash, feeble as they were. Ferocious indeed is the strife in which skill is not thought of, and strength itself is dead; in which valour rages instead of contends, and feebleness becomes hate and fury. Oh, the gates of blood that were set open in wounds upon wounds! If life itself did not come pouring forth, it was only because scorn withheld it.

As in the Ægean Sea, when the south and north winds have lost the violence of their strength, the billows do not subside nevertheless, but retain the noise and magnitude of their first motion; so the continued impulse of the combatants carried them still against one another, hurling them into mutual injury, though they had scarcely life in their bodies.[5]

And now the fatal hour has come when Clorinda must die. The sword of Tancred is in her bosom to the very hilt. The stomacher under the cuirass which enclosed it is filled with a hot flood.

Her legs give way beneath her. She falls--she feels that she is departing. The conqueror, with a still threatening countenance, prepares to follow up his victory, and treads on her as she lies.

But a new spirit had come upon her--the spirit which called the beloved of Heaven to itself; and, speaking in a sorrowing voice, she thus uttered her last words:

"My friend, thou hast conquered--I forgive thee. Forgive thou me, not for my body's sake, which fears nothing, but for the sake, alas, of my soul. Baptise me, I beseech thee."

There was something in the voice, as the dying person spake these words, that went, he knew not why, to the heart of Tancred. The tears forced themselves into his eyes. Not far off there was a little stream, and the conqueror went to it and filled his helmet; and returning, prepared for the pious office by unlacing his adversary's helmet. His hands trembled when he first beheld the forehead, though he did not yet know it; but when the vizor was all down, and the face disclosed, he remained without speech and motion.

Oh, the sight! oh, the recognition!

He did not die. He summoned up all the powers within him to support his heart for that moment. He resolved to hold up his duty above his misery, and give life with the sweet water to her whom he had slain with sword. He dipped his fingers in it, and marked her forehead with the cross, and repeated the words of the sacred office; and while he was repeating them, the sufferer changed countenance for joy, and smiled, and seemed to say, in the cheerfulness of her departure, "The heavens are opening--I go in peace." A paleness and a shade together then came over her countenance, as if lilies had been mixed with violets. She looked up at heaven, and heaven itself might be thought for very tenderness to be looking at her; and then she raised a little her hand towards that of the knight (for she could not speak), and so gave it him in sign of goodwill; and with his pressure of it her soul passed away, and she seemed asleep.

But Tancred no sooner beheld her dead, than all the strength of mind which he had summoned up to support him fell flat on the instant. He would have given way to the most frantic outcries; but life and speech seemed to be shut up in one point in his heart; despair seized him like death, and he fell senseless beside her. And surely he would have died indeed, had not a party of his countrymen happened to come up. They were looking for water, and had found it, and they discovered the bodies at the same time. The leader knew Tancred by his arms. The beautiful body of Clorinda, though he deemed her a Pagan, he would not leave exposed to the wolves; so he directed them both to be carried to the pavilion of Tancred, and there placed in separate chambers.

Dreadful was the waking of Tancred--not for the solemn whispering around him--not for his aching wounds, terrible as they were,--but for the agony of the recollection that rushed upon him. He would have gone staggering out of the pavilion to seek the remains of his Clorinda, and save them from the wolves; but his friends told him they were at hand, under the curtain of his own tent. A gleam of pleasure shot across his face, and be staggered into the chamber; but when he beheld the body gored with his own hand, and the face, calm indeed, but calm like a pale night without stars, he trembled so, that he would have sunk to the ground but for his supporters.

"O sweet face!" he exclaimed; "thou mayst be calm now; but what is to calm me? O hand that was held up to me in sign of peace and forgiveness! to what have I brought thee? Wretch that I am, I do not even weep. Mine eyes are as cruel as my hands. My blood shall be shed instead."

And with these words he began tearing off the bandages which the surgeons had put upon him; and he thrust his fingers into his wounds, and would have slain himself thus outright, had not the pain made him faint away.

He was then taken back to his own chamber. Godfrey came in the mean time with the venerable hermit Peter; and when the sufferer awoke, they addressed him in kind words, which even his impatience respected; but it was not to be calmed till the preacher put on the terrors of religion, remonstrating with him as an ingrate to God, and threatening him with the doom of a sinner. The tears then crept into his eyes, and he tried to be patient, and in some degree was so--only breaking out ever and anon, now into exclamations of horror, and now into fond lamentations, talking as if with the shade of his beloved.

Thus lay Tancred for days together, ever woful; till, falling asleep one night towards the dawn, the shade of Clorinda did indeed appear to him, more beautiful than ever, and clad in light and joy. She seemed to stoop and wipe the tears from his eyes; and then said, "Behold how happy I am. Behold me, O beloved friend, and see how happy, and bright, and beautiful I am; and consider that it is all owing to thyself. 'Twas thou that took'st me out of the false path, and made me worthy of admission among saints and angels. There, in heaven, I love and rejoice; and there I look to see thee in thine appointed time; after which we shall both love the great God and one another for ever and ever. Be faithful, and command thyself, and look to the end; for, lo, as far as it is permitted to a blessed spirit to love mortality, even now I love thee!"

With these words the eyes of the vision grew bright beyond mortal beauty; and then it turned and was hidden in the depth of its radiance, and disappeared.

Tancred slept a quiet sleep; and when he awoke, he gave himself patiently up to the will of the physician; and the remains of Clorinda were gathered into a noble tomb.[6]

[Footnote 1: St. George.]

[Footnote 2: This fiction of a white Ethiop child is taken from the Greek romance of Heliodorus, book the fourth. The imaginative principle on which it is founded is true to physiology, and Tasso had a right to use it; but the particular and excessive instance does not appear happy in the eyes of a modern reader acquainted with the history of _albinos._]

[Footnote 3: The conceit is more antithetically put in the original

"Ch'egli avria del candor che in te si vede Argomentato in lei non bianca fede."