Chapter 24

Great Carthage is laid low. Scarcely can eye Trace where she stood with all her mighty crowd For cities die; kingdoms and nations die; A little sand and grass is all their shroud; Yet mortal man disdains mortality! O mind of ours, inordinate and proud!

Very fine is this stanza of Tasso; and yet, like some of the finest writing of Gray, it is scarcely more than a cento. The commentators call it a "beautiful imitation" of a passage in Sannazzaro; and it is; but the passage in Sannazzaro is also beautiful. It contains not only the "Giace Cartago," and the "appena i segni," &c., but the contrast of the pride with the mortality of man, and, above all, the "dying" of the cities, which is the finest thing in the stanza of its imitator.

"Qua devictae Carthaginis arces Procubuere, jacentque infausto in littore turres Eversae; quantum ille metus, quantum illa laborum Urbs dedit insultans Latio et Laurentibus arvis! Nunc passim vix reliquias, vix nomina servans, Obruitur propriis non agnoscenda ruinis. Et querimur genus infelix, humana labare Membra aevo, cum regna palam moriantur et urbes."

_De Partu Virginis_, lib. ii.

The commentators trace the conclusion of this passage to Dante, where he says that it is no wonder families perish, when cities themselves "have their terminations" (termin hanuo): but though there is a like germ of thought in Dante, the mournful flower of it, the word "death," is not there. It was evidently suggested by a passage (also pointed out by the commentators) in the consolatory letter of Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter Tullia;--"Heu nos homunculi indignamur, si quis nostrum interiit, aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant." (Alas! we poor human creatures are indignant if any one of us dies or is slain, frail as are the materials of which we are constituted; and yet we can see, lying together in one place, the dead bodies of I know not how many cities!) The music of Tasso's line was indebted to one in Petrarch's _Trionfo del Tempo, v. 112

_" Passan le signorie, passano i regni;"

and the fine concluding verse, "Oh nostra mente," to another perhaps in his _Trionfo della Divinità, v. 61_, not without a recollection of Lucretius, lib. ii. v. 14:

"O miseras hominum menteis! o pectora caeca!"]

[Footnote 7: A fountain which caused laughter that killed people is in Pomponius Mela's account of the Fortunate Islands; and was the origin of that of Boiardo; as I ought to have noticed in the place.]

[Footnote 8: All this description of the females bathing is in the highest taste of the voluptuous; particularly the latter part:

"Qual mattutina stella esce de l'onde Rugiadosa e stillante: o come fuore Spuntò nascendo già da le feconde Spume de l'ocean la Dea d'Amore: Tale apparve costei: tal le sue bionde Chiome stillavan cristallino umore. Poi girò gli occhi, e pur allor s'infinse Que' duo vedere, e in se tutta si strinse:

E 'l crin the 'n cima al capo avea raccolto In un sol nodo, immantinente sciolse; Che lunghissimo in giù cadendo, e folto, D'un aureo manto i molli avori involse. Oh che vago spettacolo è lor tolto! Ma mon men vago fu chi loro il tolse. Così da l'acque e da capelli ascosa, A lor si volse, lieta e vergognosa.

Rideva insieme, e insieme ella arrossia; Ed era nel rossor più bello il riso, E nel riso il rossor, the le copria Insino al mento il delicato viso."