BERNARDO AND TORQUATO TASSO.
It is but seldom that poets are as romantic as their poems, or as interesting as the offspring of their imagination. When, therefore, a poet arises gifted with an interesting personality, the attention he excites becomes universal. Such was the fate of Torquato Tasso. It would not be altogether unjust to say that had he not suffered so many misfortunes, his name would not be a household word, for the merit of his poems hardly sustains the dignity of his renown.
His father, Bernardo, a native of Bergamo, was born in 1493, and died in 1569. He was a writer in prose and verse, his chief work being the Amadigi, an epic of immense length, well and carefully written, but without any spark of genius. He was attached to the Court of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, and when his master was driven out of his dominions by the Emperor Charles V, he followed his fortunes, leaving his wife, Properzia de' Rossi, and three children, the youngest of whom was Torquato, born in 1544, to the care of her relatives. His devotion to the fallen fortunes of the Prince of Salerno was the cause of many of the sorrows of his illustrious son. His patrimony was sequestrated, and when he died, he had nothing to leave to his children. Nor was this the greatest of his trials. He never saw his wife again, and when he wished to have her with him in Rome, she was in a dying condition. All she could do, was to send him the little Torquato, whose training was henceforth confided to the father's care.
The youth displayed as much love and more aptitude for poetical composition. When he was eighteen, he published his epic, Rinaldo, a wonderfully mature work for so young a writer. Torquato Tasso was one of those poets who produce their finest works in the earlier portion of their career. The works by which alone he is remembered, were all produced before his thirty-second year. His mind attained full mastery over its powers at a very early period, and when, like the voice of a singer, it lost its freshness, it also lost its charm. Corneille and Tennyson resemble him in this peculiarity of producing their masterpieces in comparative youth, but in their case, the division between the two periods is not quite so marked as in his. Corneille produced no really great drama after La Mort de Pompée, but some of his later tragedies have occasional flashes of his early fire. Tennyson gave no memorable creation to the world after Maud, but his Idylls of the King offer some poetical details, and a few lyrics are not devoid of that perfection which characterised his previous poems. But Tasso produced absolutely nothing that could, by any stretch of indulgence, be said to add to his renown after the publication of the Gerusalemme Liberata. On the contrary, he rather injured his reputation by yielding to the cavils of his detractors, and re-writing his great work under the title of Gerusalemme Conquistata, and producing an epic so feeble and lifeless that it immediately sank into utter neglect.
Precocious as he was in the manifestation of brilliant genius, his father was anxious that such powers should be cultivated to the utmost, and Torquato was sent to study law at Padua. But the law was little to his taste. His Rinaldo procured him immense renown, and he found it more agreeable to bask in the sunshine of the brilliant society that courted him in the dawn of his celebrity, than to spend laborious hours in the pursuit of a dry and distasteful science. No poet at so early an age ever had so brilliant a prospect of renown and fortune before him. But the very extent of the admiration he excited laid the foundations of the terrible disasters that were to overtake him ere many years had elapsed.
Cardinal Luigi of Este, attracted by his brilliant reputation, offered him a post in his household and an introduction to the Court of Ferrara. The dazzling offer was accepted by the poet; but the kindness of the Cardinal had results more fatal than could have attended the machinations of his bitterest enemies.
At first all went well. Tasso produced a favourable impression upon the Duke Alfonso and upon his two sisters, Lucrezia and Eleonora. He accompanied the Cardinal on a mission to the Court of Charles IX of France, and after a year's sojourn in Paris, where he was fêted by the leading authors, including Ronsard, then at the height of his fame, he returned to Ferrara to receive new proofs of the favour of the Duke. But the more he rose in the estimation of his master, the more he excited the jealousy of those who were equally ambitious but less successful. There is, indeed, no truth in the popular legend of his love for the Princess Eleanora. The object of his affections appears to have been a lady of the Court, Leonora Scandiano. The poet Guarini was also in love with this lady, and bitter hostility resulted from the rivalry of the two poets. The malignant envy of his opponents was excited by the brilliant success of his pastoral play, Aminta, produced in 1573. So much was that poem talked of, that the Princess Lucrezia, who had meanwhile married the Duke of Urbino, sent for Tasso to read it to her at Pesaro. So pleased was she both with the work and the writer, that she invited him to pass the summer at her palace of Castel Durante. The exquisite beauty of the gardens and the grounds is said to have been in his mind when he described the gardens of Armida in the Gerusalemme.
This was the happiest time of Tasso's life. He was honoured with the favour of the highest in the land, and with the admiration of the whole of Italy. He was congenially employed on the completion of the great epic which was to make his name immortal. Never was a poet placed in a more brilliant position, nor more apparently certain of a splendid and triumphant career.
But the seeds of evil were already sown, and the mischief soon became apparent. He completed the Gerusalemme in 1575, and from that moment his peace of mind was gone. Whether he overworked himself in that great task, or whether he had secret causes of annoyance and humiliation, of which his biographers know nothing, it is difficult to conjecture, but from that period his temper seems to have become morbidly suspicious and irritable. He was painfully sensitive to criticism, and he harassed himself and others by perpetually altering and correcting passages to which objection had been taken. When at last the poem was published, which was not until some time after its completion, it was attacked by the Accademia della Crusca with considerable harshness and unfairness. The great fault found by the Academy was that the idiom was not always purely Tuscan. The very first line of the first Canto was singled out for censure:
"Canto l'arme pietose e il Capitano."
The poet uses the word "pietose" in the sense of 'pious," whereas the Academy contended that it could never mean anything but "compassionate."
Tasso was not only worried by these minute quibbles, but he was also haunted by the dreadful apprehension that his religious orthodoxy might be impugned, and he himself applied to the Fathers of the Holy Inquisition for an examination and a vindication. In vain the Fathers assured him with unanimous cordiality that such a process was utterly superfluous, and that the purity of his faith had never for a moment been held in doubt; he still professed himself dissatisfied, and he long continued to torment himself with religious scruples.
The Duke of Ferrara, doubtless highly gratified at the success of the masterpiece of his Court Poet, appointed Tasso his private secretary when that post became vacant through the death of Giambattista Pigna in 1577. Probably the arduous duties and the heavy responsibilities of this appointment weighed him down with a fresh load of anxiety, and he may have felt that he had become more than ever the object of malice and envy; whatever the cause, excitability verging on frenzy, and suspicion verging on madness betrayed themselves more and more in his speech and actions. He fancied, perhaps not without reason, that some of his letters had been intercepted; he firmly believed, though with less foundation, that there was a plot to poison him. He had also the annoyance, peculiarly galling to an author, of knowing that spurious copies of his great epic were being circulated throughout Italy, full of mistakes and interpolated passages.
All these causes of uneasiness culminated in frightful violence in the month of June of that fatal year. One evening in the apartments of the Princess Lucrezia, and even in her presence, he drew a dagger and stabbed a manservant whom he suspected of being concerned in the robbery of some missing documents. He was arrested, and the Duke ordered him to be kept a close prisoner. When released from captivity, he was so excited with grief and indignation, that all observers pronounced him mad. He took refuge in a Franciscan Monastery; but when the Duke refused to receive his letters, he dreaded the effects of his master's anger, and fled from Ferrara in a pitiable condition, without his manuscripts, without sufficient clothes, and without a particle of money. He seems actually to have begged his way from Ferrara to Sorrento, near Naples, where his sister was married to Marzio Sersale. It would be difficult to find a more picturesque episode in the life of any poet than that of Tasso presenting himself to his sister in the garb of a mendicant. She received the unhappy wanderer with hospitality and affection, welcomed him in her house, and when he was sufficiently recovered from the fatigues of mind and body to discuss his affairs, gave him the sensible advice never to return to the Court of Ferrara.
Unhappily, this advice was rejected; but to be perfectly just in our estimate of Tasso's conduct, we must bear in mind the position of men of letters of the Sixteenth Century in Italy. The complete absence of copyright law made it impossible for even the most popular writer to derive emolument from his books, for as soon as they acquired any popularity, they were shamelessly pirated all over the Peninsula. Enormously popular as they were, even during their lifetime, it does not appear that either Ariosto or Tasso ever profited to the extent of even one scudo by the sale of their poems. Thus a writer, unless he possessed ample means, or held some lucrative office, was entirely dependent for his bread on the fickle favour of the great. Tasso, in consequence of the reverses experienced by his father and the sequestration of his property, was absolutely devoid of anything he could call his own, and owed even the barest necessaries of life to the bounty of the Prince whom his violent conduct had, it must be admitted, justly offended. Great as his reputation was, he might well doubt whether any other sovereign in Italy would extend to him even a quarter of similar favour after the reckless and violent conduct of which he had been guilty.
Whatever may have been his motives, he wrote again and again to Alfonso and the Princesses for pardon for his errors and for permission to return. Eleonora alone answered him, and her reply was not encouraging. The mortification of being repulsed was doubtless intolerable to his proud spirit. He deserted Sorrento and the sister whose affection he should have valued above all the favours of princes. He went straight to Ferrara, but the doors of the Palace were barred against him, and to add to his afflictions, the Duke refused to allow his manuscripts to be given up to him. He was lonely and destitute, and the bitterness of his fall was intensified by the jeers of those who, on the very spot of his disgrace, had envied him the brilliancy of his triumph. Without a morsel of bread to eat, or a roof under which to take shelter, he sold some valuable trinkets which had been given to him in happier days by the Princess Lucrezia, and with the proceeds he made his way through Mantua and Padua to Venice.
In these towns he seems to have been received with the consideration due to his poetical renown; but still the painful question as to where he should find a permanent home occurred to him in moments of anxiety and gloom. Strange to say, help came to him from an unexpected quarter. The Duke of Urbino's marriage with the Princess Lucrezia had turned out most unhappily, and the couple were now separated. It probably occurred to the Duke that the best way of annoying the House of Este would be to show favour to the poet who had been expelled from Ferrara in such deep disgrace, and Tasso owed to rancour and resentment that temporary respite from misfortune which he might have implored in vain from esteem and humanity.
The Duke in time wearied of the capricious and irritable poet, and Tasso found it expedient to remove to Turin. He received no countenance from the House of Savoy, and again his evil star led him to the Court of Ferrara.
In the month of February, 1579, he returned to Ferrara when it was at its gayest, on the occasion of the Duke's marriage to Margherita Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua. But Tasso was looked upon with aversion as an intruder. He wearied those who did not want to see him with long stories of his grievances, and with bitter invectives at princely ingratitude. These invectives waxed fiercer, until, after a culmination of insane violence, the Duke's patience was exhausted, and he had the unhappy poet arrested and thrown into a cell in the madhouse of Ferrara.
Here Tasso languished for more than seven years, until July, 1586. The most zealous admirers of the poet cannot deny that he brought this terrible catastrophe upon himself. The Duke cannot be blamed for having ordered his incarceration; indeed, in the frenzied condition of his mind at the time of arrest, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. If not placed under restraint, he might have done himself an injury, or he might even have attacked others. If he had been held in captivity for some weeks, or even months, until the paroxysm of his frenzy had spent itself, the Duke would not have incurred the odium which subsequently blackened his memory. But the peculiar hardship of Tasso's imprisonment was its long duration. A short period of restraint might actually have been beneficial, but seven years of gloomy captivity aggravated the malady which they were intended to cure, and it is no wonder that the patient subsided from wild excitability into sullen despair.
It is due to his gaolers to say that he was not treated with the inhumanity popularly supposed. Visitors were admitted into his presence, he was allowed occasionally to take walks in the town of Ferrara and the neighbourhood; his manuscripts were restored to him; he was at liberty to receive the letters of his friends, and to beguile with composition the weary hours of captivity. But still the galling fact remained that he was a prisoner, and a mind naturally prone to melancholy was still more darkened by contrasting the stern reality with the brilliant hopes fostered by the triumphs of his youth. He wrote to many of the nobles and princes of Italy, imploring them to use their influence to obtain his release. These letters do not seem to have been either intercepted or delayed. Strong representations were undoubtedly made to the Court of Ferrara to obtain the liberation of one so gifted and so unfortunate. Unhappily for his credit and honour, Alfonso proved inflexible, and what was originally salutary discipline became at last detestable tyranny.
Many different opinions were expressed as to whether Tasso was really insane. Montaigne, who was travelling in Italy at the time of his incarceration, visited him in his cell and left a pitiable description of the apathetic misery in which he found him, as if his powers of endurance were exhausted by suffering, and nothing but the stupor of despair remained. Others pointed to the poems, the essays, the letters he wrote in captivity, and asked in indignant tones whether the author of compositions so pregnant with thought and so perfect in diction could possibly be insane? Peculiar, he undoubtedly was; but he had expiated his errors by severe suffering, and was it not reasonable to suppose that he had learnt a salutary lesson, and would not, if restored to freedom, repeat the regrettable follies of the past?
This consideration, doubtless, after the lapse of so many years, inclined Alfonso to clemency, and when his brother-in-law, Vincenzo Gonzaga, interceded for the luckless poet, he did not meet with the harsh refusal given to others, but was able to boast that he alone of so many petitioners had obtained Tasso's release.
The door of the cell where the author of the Gerusalemme had languished for so many years was opened, and he was free to go wherever he liked. As may be imagined, he was cured of his wish to figure at the Court of Ferrara, and he left the inhospitable dominions, never to return.
Vincenzo Gonzaga took him to Mantua, where he passed the time immediately following his release. But the re-action, after so long a period of wretchedness, was too trying for his enfeebled frame. He forsook the brilliant circles of Mantua for a quieter retreat at Bergamo with some of his relatives. Here he finished his tragedy of Torrismondo, begun many years previously, but thrown aside, at first because he was engaged on the arduous task of his great epic, and then because his own life drifted into a tragedy far transcending the mimic sorrows of the stage.
At Bergamo, he learned that his liberator, Vincenzo Gonzaga, had succeeded to the Duchy of Mantua. Something of his old hope of courtly success revived in the wounded heart of Torquato. He left his provincial abode and hurried to the palace of his benefactor to lay the dedication of Torrismondo at his feet. He doubtless indulged in dreams of rich appointments and gratifying distinctions. But, alas! Vincenzo, kind and humane to the captive, seems to have turned a deaf ear to the courtier. Tasso had an unfortunate knack of making his presence irksome to his patrons. His ever keen sense of injury was stung to the quick by the Duke's neglect, and he lost no time in leaving Mantua to repair to Rome. But here new mortifications awaited him. Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga lodged him in his Palace, but was neither cordial nor gracious. Probably the dread that his insanity might burst out again, made people desirous of keeping him at a distance. Sixtus the Fifth, who then occupied the Papal Chair, took no interest in literature, and did not show him any attention, and the example of the Pope was followed by the Society of the capital.
He left Rome with even greater disappointment than he had felt in leaving Mantua. He hurried to Naples, where he had no cause to complain of the reception that awaited him, for he was overwhelmed with demonstrations of admiration and affection. But sorrow, captivity, and anguish of mind had done their evil work; he was but the wreck of himself, and he could no more endure the sweetness of praise than the bitterness of neglect. He fled from the kindness of the Neapolitans and flitted from place to place in a weary pilgrimage, without happiness and without repose. The wonder is, in his destitute condition, where the money came from to enable him to travel. His mind and his health were in a wretched condition. Distrustful and melancholy, he repelled even those who most admired his genius and pitied his misfortunes, and his ever-ready sense of injury magnified the slightest offence into bitter unkindness. But in spite of agonising thoughts and disturbing peregrinations, his pen never rested. He completed the Gerusalemme Conquistata, that unfortunate "improvement" on his masterpiece, which is never mentioned but to be regretted; he wrote a long poem in blank verse on the Creation, and dialogues and essays in abundance and letters innumerable. Indeed, he was throughout his life an indefatigable correspondent, and he seemed never to doubt that the outpourings of his mind about his wrongs and grievances would be as interesting to the recipients as to himself. Some of these letters are noble and affecting, but too many betray a mind sore and festering from constant brooding over his calamities. But in the presence of such misfortune, we can only pity, we cannot condemn.
Great though his errors were, and wayward as was his temper, he was a man of whom his country had reason to be proud, and it is pleasing to be able to narrate that he was destined to receive a tardy recognition for all the works with which he had enriched the literature of Italy. Cardinal Aldobrandini had been raised to the Papal Chair and had assumed the name of Clement VIII, and he and his nephews were anxious to signalise his Pontificate by reviving the Coronation of Petrarch in the Capitol in favour of a poet not less illustrious and more unfortunate. Accordingly, Tasso was summoned to Rome, and he was met outside the gates by an immense concourse of people and a brilliant galaxy of Cardinals, Prelates, and Nobles. But his frame was worn out, and the excitement of this great reception hardly infused sufficient animation to conceal from the bystanders the rapid approach of death. He was lodged in a noble suite of apartments in the Vatican; the poet who for so many years had been doomed to a madman's cell, found himself an honoured guest in the Palace of the Popes.
But the state and ceremony with which he was surrounded were more than his ebbing strength could bear. Religious feelings had always held powerful sway over his sensitive mind, and now, when he felt his end drawing near, he retired to the Monastery of Sant' Onofrio, situated on an eminence outside the town. Here, in prayer and meditation, he devoutly awaited release from all his sorrows. The monks tended him with care and assiduity; but it is recorded of him that his old suspicions revived by fits and starts, and on one occasion he made his attendant swallow the medicine he was directed to take in order to have ocular proof that it was not poisoned.
Worn out by his many sufferings, he passed away peacefully on the twenty-fifth of April, 1595, the day before he was to receive the laurel in the Capitol. But he probably did not regret that death prevented him from enjoying this symbol of greatness. As Leopardi, himself no less familiar with sorrow, beautifully says:
"Morte domanda
Chi nostro mal conobbe, e non ghirlanda."
There is a peculiar fitness in the circumstance that a poet, so singled out for misfortune, was not destined to wear the wreath of a conqueror. Peaceful after so much agitation, calm after such bitter resentment, he sank to rest in that secluded monastery, and for thirteen years he lay in the Church adjoining the quiet cloisters without a stone to mark his resting-place, until Cardinal Bonifazio Bevilacqua raised a noble monument to his memory, which may still be seen by the visitor who wends his way to Sant' Onofrio to pay the tribute of a sigh to so much glory linked to so much misfortune.
Tasso was tall and active; his countenance was handsome, though in later years much clouded by melancholy. In his younger days he was an expert swordsman, and skilled in all bodily exercises.
The vicissitudes of his life afford such picturesque material for narration and description that we cannot wonder that it became a favourite theme with poets and biographers. The noble play of Goethe is familiar to all lovers of poetry. Of his biographers the earliest was Manso, a Neapolitan nobleman, who had the singular fortune of being, in the course of his long life, the friend of three renowned epic poets, of Tasso himself, of Marino, and of the greatest of all, Milton, whose acquaintance he made during the travels of the English poet in Italy. Tasso mentions him in the Gerusalemme Conquistata:
"Fra cavalier magnanimi e cortesi
Risplende il Manso."
Marino did not leave his praises unsung, and Milton addressed him in one of his finest Latin poems. He must have had striking qualities to endear him to men so eminent and so different; but his biography, probably because it was the first, gave rise to many legends which have been repeated down to the present day. He seems to have been somewhat credulous, and to have relied too much on the statements made to him by Tasso himself, without distrusting his informant's wild and heated imagination.
The Abbé Serassi, in his biography published in 1785, did what Manso had neglected to do. He sifted the evidence and examined the documents; and gave to the world a picture much nearer the truth than had yet been presented; but it was reserved for the indefatigable labours of Angelo Solerti to produce a really exhaustive history of the poet.
It must be confessed that in turning from Tasso's life, so full of passion and romance, to his poetry, we experience a certain sense of disappointment. Had he not been so striking an object of sympathy and interest, it may be doubted whether his works would have arrested quite so much attention as they actually did. Considering the varied panorama of life that had been unfolded before him and the mental sufferings he underwent, he does not sound those depths of impassioned meditation that might be expected. What traces there are of them, will be found rather in his letters than in his poems. This fact is very strange and points to the limitations of his talent. He had materials in his life sufficient to inspire him with great lyric poems, and yet we find nothing in his odes, sonnets and madrigals to compare to the finest passages of Petrarch, or of Leopardi, or even of Filicaia. None of his shorter poems impress themselves indelibly on the reader: none glow with the intensity of lyric fire.
Not being able to give him the title of a great lyric poet, we proceed to enquire whether he was a great epic or a great dramatic poet.
His narrative poems are four in number; the Rinaldo, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Gerusalemme Conquistata, and the Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato, a long work in blank verse on the subject of the Creation. His Rinaldo is remarkable because it was written in such early youth; his Gerusalemme Conquistata was admitted even by his admirers to be an utter failure. It has only one striking passage, a prophecy of evil to the house of Bourbon, which seems clearly to foretell the crimes and horrors of the French Revolution, and which deserves to rank among poetical prophecies next to the celebrated prediction of the discovery of America in the tragedy of Medea attributed to Seneca. The Sette Giornate furnished some hints to Milton when he came to the description of the Creation of the World in Paradise Lost. It has, however, no intrinsic merit to recommend it, being heavy and uninteresting to the last degree. These three poems had hardly vitality enough to keep them alive until the close of the Century in which they were written, and to modern readers they are quite dead. And yet the subjects were of sufficient interest to afford brilliant opportunities of displaying the powers of a great writer. We cannot help asking the question, can he be a great poet who allowed such brilliant opportunities to escape?
His pastoral play, Aminta, has much sweetness and freshness of style; his tragedy, Torrismondo, has some touches that lead us to think that under happier circumstances and with a mind less pre-occupied with his own distresses, he might have become a fine dramatist; but the shepherds and nymphs of the Aminta seem vapid and mawkish to readers of the present day; and the Torrismondo has not that convincing power that a tragedy ought to possess.
In all these works, lyric, epic, and dramatic, Tasso's style, though sweet and flowing in the earlier productions, is strangely devoid of originality, and, therefore, of colour; and no writer was more deeply imbued with the conventional phraseology of the poetry of his age. Thought and style are alike devoid of those vivid touches that command admiration and ensure immortality. We are left under the impression that the poet is not fixing all his powers of mind on his verse, and that his attention is largely engaged elsewhere. This absence of full power is the only trace in his poems of the disordered state of his mind. Many poets, whose sanity has never been questioned, have passages far more morbid and eccentric than any that can be found in Tasso's pages. He never indulges in wild flights of fancy, the order of his thoughts is lucidity itself; and there are no incoherent and very few exaggerated metaphors. On the contrary, they would rather gain by a little more irregularity. They are so logically thought out as to become occasionally almost exasperating.
Thus it will be seen that his claims to rank as a great poet rest entirely on the Gerusalemme Liberata.
In considering that celebrated poem, the first thought that must occur to the reader is the extremely happy choice of the subject. It was unhackneyed; it was picturesque; it was noble. We cannot help feeling that Ariosto is sometimes dragged down by the frivolous stories he tells; we cannot help feeling that Tasso is sustained and inspired by the magnificent episodes it is his duty to narrate. He is rather too fond of imitating passages from Homer and Virgil, but such imitation was universal in his day, and in his case it is skilfully executed. The Oriental colouring of the scenes laid in Palestine and Syria is, perhaps, not very vivid, but it is quite as vivid as his contemporaries expected. On the whole it would be harsh to deny that he has done justice to his subject, and in one respect he deserves the highest praise: he imparts a human interest and an air of reality to his characters that cannot be too highly extolled. Ariosto often treats his characters merely as puppets, and is himself the first to laugh at them. Very different is the attitude of Tasso towards his creations. He believes in them with unshaken sincerity, and he loves them because he believes in them. Erminia, Sophronia, Armida, Rinaldo, Goffredo, Tancredi, all stand before us in the life, moving and breathing. As Goethe says, in his play on the subject of Tasso:
"Es sind nicht Schatten die der Wahn erzeugte;
Ich weiss es, sie sind ewig, denn sie sind.
["They are not shadows by illusion made;
I know they live for ever, for they live.">[
This great quality undoubtedly explains the universal popularity of the Gerusalemme. That poem even penetrated to classes of the community to whom, as a rule, literary poets appeal in vain. Detached passages were set to music, and sung by the people like ballads. For two centuries the gondoliers beguiled their work with the musical stanzas of the unhappy poet. Who does not remember Byron's lines?—
"In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier."
When they first began to be neglected is not recorded. They seem only to have been handed down orally. Alterations would inevitably creep in, and losing their accuracy, they lost also their charm.
Writing in the same stanza as Ariosto, Tasso could not fail to resemble him in some respects. They are both clear, rapid, and musical. But the style of the earlier poet is richer, stronger, more original, and, I think, in spite of an occasional want of tenderness, more truly poetical. Tasso too often indulges in conventions and common-places, hence he becomes feeble and unimpressive. To give samples of the two poets, I will quote a passage from each.
Ariosto.
A ship of the enemy approaches incautiously the fleet of Charlemagne.
"Quivi il nocchier, eh' ancor non s'era accorto
Degl' inimici, entrò con la galea,
Lasciando molte miglia addietro il porto
D'Algieri, ove calar prima volea,
Per un vento gagliardo ch' era sorto,
E spinto oltre il dover la poppa avea.
Venir tra i suoi credette, e in loco fido,
Come vien Progne al suo loquace nido.
Ma come poi l'imperiale augello,
I gigli d'oro, e i pardi vide appresso,
Restò pallido in faccia, come quello
Che 'l piede incauto d'improvviso ha messo
Sopra 'l serpente venenoso e fello,
Dal pigro sonno in mezzo l'erbe oppresso;
Che spaventato e smorto si ritira,
Fuggendo quel ch'è pien di tosco e d'ira."
"Orlando Furioso," c. xxxìx, st. 31 ani 32.
Tasso.
The Saracens hearing from the walls of Jerusalem the chorus of the Crusaders in the distance.
"Colà s'invia l'esercito canoro,
E ne suonan le valli ime e profonde,
E gli alti colli e le spelonche loro;
E da ben mille parti Eco risponde;
E quasi par che boschereccio coro
Fra quegli antri si celi e quelle fronde,
Si chiaramente replicar s'udia
Or di Cristo il gran nome, or di Maria.
D'in sulle mura ad ammirar frattanto
Cheti si stanno e attoniti i Pagani
Que' tardi avvolgimenti, e l'umil canto,
E l'insolite pompe e i riti estrani.
Poi che cessò dello spettacol santo
La novitate, i miseri profani
Alzâr le strida; e di bestemmie e d'onte
Mugì il torrente e la gran valle e 'l monte."
"Gerusalemme Liberata," c. xv, st. 11 ani 12.
Tasso's style has a pathetic air which is very taking at first sight; but when we examine it minutely, we find certain weaknesses which cannot be detected in the style of Ariosto. The magnificent passage from the Orlando Furioso is without a flaw and could not be improved. The same cannot be said of the stanzas from the Gerusalemme, musical as they are. We may be sure that Ariosto would never have been guilty of the feeble repetition of the feeble epithet, "gran nome, gran valle."
It is owing to his pathos that Tasso loses so much less in translation than Ariosto. All the renderings of the Orlando Furioso that I have seen, are somewhat colourless, even the Elizabethan translation of Harrington, and even the careful and accurate translation of Rose. The German translations of Griess and Donner are as admirable as they can possibly be, considering the great difficulties of the task, but even they do not quite succeed in reproducing the exquisite flexibility of Ariosto's style. Tasso, in many respects the most unfortunate of poets, was singularly lucky in the translators who introduced him to foreign nations. He has been translated into many languages with signal success, and with remarkably little loss of spirit and beauty. The earliest English rendering, that of Fairfax, is the best. It is not always scrupulously accurate, but it is delightfully fresh, vigorous, and musical. I will subjoin one of the most successful passages which will give the reader a favourable idea of the skill of Fairfax, and of the thoughts and conceptions of the illustrious Italian poet, illustrious in spite of the shortcomings which occasionally detract from his qualities.
The Christian Knights in search of Rinaldo, find him in the enchanted Palace of Armida.
(Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto XVI.)
I.
The palace great is builded rich and round,
And in the centre of the inmost hold
There lies a garden sweet on fertile ground,
Fairer than that where grew the trees of gold.
The cunning sprites had buildings reared around,
With doors and entries false a thousandfold.
A labyrinth they made that fortress brave,
Like Daedal's prison or Porsenna's grave.
II.
The Knights passed through the castle's largest gate.
(Though round about a hundred ports there shine),
The door leaves framed of carved silver plate
Upon their golden hinges turn and twine;
They stayed to view this work of wit and state,
The workmanship excelled the substance fine,
For all the shapes in that rich metal wrought,
Save speech, of living bodies wanted nought.
III.
Alcides there sat telling tales, and spun
Among the feeble troups of damsels mild;
(He that the fiery gates of Hell had won,
And Heaven upheld); false love stood by and smiled.
Armed with his club, fair Iole forth run,
His club with blood of monsters foul denied;
And on her back his lion's skin had she,
Too rough a bark for such a tender tree.
IV.
Beyond was made a sea, whose azure flood
The hoary froth crushed from the surges blue,
Wherein two navies great well-rangéd stood
Of warlike ships, fire from their arms out flew;
The waters burnt about their vessels good,
Such flames the gold therein enchased threw;
Cæsar his Romans hence, the Asian Kings
Thence Anthony and Indian Princes, brings;
V.
The Cyclads seemed to swim amid the main,
And hill 'gainst hill, and mount 'gainst mountain smote;
With such great fury met those armies twain,
Here burnt a ship, there sank a bark or boat;
Here darts and wildfire flew, there drowned or slain
Of Princes dead the bodies fleet and float;
Here Cæsar wins, and yonder conquered been
The eastern ships, there fled the Egyptian Queen.
VI.
Antonius eke himself to flight betook,
The Empire lost to which he would aspire;
Yet fled not he, nor flight for fear forsook,
But followed her, drawn on by fond desire.
Well might you see, within his troubled look,
Strive and contend love, courage, shame and ire;
Oft looked he back, oft gazed he on the fight,
But oftener on his mistress and her flight.
VII.
Then in the secret creeks of fruitful Nile,
Cast in her lap he would sad Death await.
And in the pleasure of her lovely smile
Sweeten the bitter stroke of cursed Fate.
All this did art with curious hand compile
In the rich metal of that princely gate.
The Knights these stories viewed, first and last;
Which seen, they forward pressed, and in they passed.
VIII.
As through his channel crook'd Meander glides
With turns and twines, and rolls now to and fro,
Whose streams run forth there to the salt sea-sides,
Here back return, and to their spring-ward go;
Such crooked paths, such ways this palace hides;
Yet all the maze their map described so
That through the labyrinth they go in fine
As Theseus did by Ariadne's line.
IX.
When they had passed all those troubled ways,
The garden sweet spread forth her green to shew;
The moving crystal from the fountains plays,
Fair trees, high plants, strange herbs, and flowers new,
Sun-shiny hills, dales hid from Phœbus' rays,
Groves, arbours, mossy caves at orice they view;
And that which beauty most, most wonder brought,
Nowhere appeared the art which all this wrought.
X.
So with the rude, the polished mingled was,
That natural seemed all, and every part.
Nature would craft in counterfeiting pass,
And imitate her imitator art.
Mild was the air, the clouds were clear as glass,
The trees no whirlwind felt nor tempest's smart,
But ere their fruit drop off, the blossom comes,
This springs, that falls, that ripeneth, and this blooms.
XI.
The leaves upon the self-same bough did hide,
Beside the young, the old and ripened fig.
Here fruit was green, there ripe with vermeil side,
The apples new and old grew on one twig.
The fruitful vine her arms spread high and wide,
That bended underneath their clusters big;
The grapes were tender here, hard, young and sour,
There, purple, ripe and nectar sweet forth pour.
XII.
The joyous birds, hid under greenwood shade,
Sung many notes on every branch and bough;
The wind that in the leaves and waters played,
With murmur sweet now sang, and whistled now;
Ceased the birds, the wind loud answer made,
And while they sang, it rumbled soft and low;
Thus, were it hap or cunning, chance or art,
The wind in this strange music bore his part.
XIII.
With party-coloured plumes and purple bill
A wondrous bird among the rest there flew,
That in plain speech sung lovelays loud and shrill,
Her leden[1] was like human language true;
So much she talked, and with such wit and skill
That strange it seemed how much good she knew;
Her feathered fellows all stood hushed to hear,
Dumb was the wind, the waters silent were.
XIV.
"The gently-budding rose (quoth she) behold,
The first scent peeping forth with virgin beams,
Half ope, half shut, her beauties doth upfold
In their dear leaves, and less seen fairer seems;
And after, spreads them forth more broad and bold,
Then languisheth and dies in last extremes;
Nor seems the same that decked bed and bower
Of many a lady late and paramour;
XV.
"So in the passing of a day doth pass
The bud and blossom of the life of man,
Nor e'er doth flourish more, but like the gratis
Cut down, becometh withered, pale and wan;
Oh, gather then the rose while time thou has:
Short is the day, done when it scant began;
Gather the rose of love which yet thou may'st;
Loving be loved; embracing, be embraced."
XVI.
She ceased; and as approving all she spoke,
The choir of birds their heavenly tune renew;
The turtles sighed, and sighs with kisses broke;
The fowls to shades unseen by pairs withdrew;
It seemed the laurel chaste and stubborn oak,
And all the gentle trees on earth that grew,
It seemed the land, the sea and heaven above
All breathed out fancy sweet and sighed out love.
XVII.
Through all this music rare and strong consent
Of strange allurements, sweet 'bove mean and measure,
Severe, firm, constant, still the Knights forth went,
Hardening their hearts 'gainst false, enticing pleasure;
'Twixt leaf and leaf their sight before they sent,
And after crept themselves at ease and leisure
Till they beheld the Queen sit with their knight
Beside the lake, shaded with boughs from sight.
* * * * * * *
XXVII.
The twain that hidden in the bushes, were,
Before the Prince in glittering arms appear.
XXVIII.
As the fierce steed for age withdrawn from war,
Wherein the glorious beast had always won,
That in vile rest, from fright sequestered far,
Feeds with the mares at large, his service done:
If arms he sees or hears the trumpet's jar,
He neigheth loud, and thither fast doth run,
And wisheth on his back the armed knight,
Longing for jousts, for tournaments and fight:
XXIX.
So fared Rinaldo when the glorious light
Of their bright harness glistered in his eyes;
His noble spirit awaked at that sight.
His blood began to warm, his heart to rise;
Though drunk with ease, devoid of wonted might,
On sleep till then his weakened virtue lies.
Ubaldo forward stepped and to him held
Of diamonds clear that pure and precious shield.
XXX.
Upon the targe his looks amazed he bent,
And therein all his wanton habit spied,
His civet, balm, and perfumes redolent,
How from his locks they smoked and mantle wide
His sword that many a Pagan stout had shent,[2]
Bewrapped with flowers, hung idly by his side,
So nicely decked that it seemed the knight
Wore it for fashion sake, but not for fight.
XXXI.
As when from sleep and idle dreams abrayed[3]
A man awaked calls home his wits again,
So in beholding his attire he played,
But yet to view himself could not sustain;
His looks he downward cast and nought he said,
Grieved, shamèd, sad, he would have diéd fain;
And oft he wished the earth or ocean wide
Would swallow him, and so his errors hide.
XXXII.
Ubaldo took the time, and thus began—
"All Europe now, and Asia be in war
And all that Christ adore and fame have won
In battaille strong, in Syria fighting are;
But thee alone, Bertoldo's noble son,
This little corner keeps, exiled far
From all the world, buried in sloth and shame,
A carpet champion for a wanton dame!
XXXIII.
"What letharge hath in drowsiness append[4]
Thy courage thus? What sloth doth thee infect?
Up! up! Our camp and Godfrey for thee send,
Thee fortune, praise and victory expect;
Come fatal champion; bring to happy end
This enterprise begun, and all that sect
(Which oft thou shaken hast) to earth full low
With thy sharp brand strike down, kill, overthrow."
XXXIV.
This said, the noble infant stood a space
Confused, speechless, senseless, ill, ashamed,
But when that shame to just disdain gave place,
To fierce disdain, from courage sprung untamed,
Another redness blushèd through his face,
Whence worthy anger shone, displeasure flamed;
His nice attire in scorn he rent and tore,
For of his bondage vile that witness bore;
XXXV.
That done he hastèd from the charmed fort,
And through the maze passed with his searchers twain.
Armida of her mount and chiefest port
Wondered to find the furious keeper slain;
Awhile she feared, but she knew in short
That her dear lord was fled; then saw she plain
(Ah! woeful sight!) how from her gates the man
In haste and fear, in wrath and anger ran.
[1] Leden—language.
[2] Shent—Iniured.
[3] Abrayed—Awaked.
[4] Append—Tied-up.