His death partook of the melancholy shade that had overhung his career. Declining a new invitation from Duke Francesco Maria, in 1594, he brought to Rome all that mental and bodily sufferings had left him of broken health and blighted genius, to receive the honours of a laurel crown; and, in the monastery of S. Onofrio, he awaited the issue of arrangements which the warning voice of exhausted nature told him were made in vain. From thence he addressed to his friend Constantini[*196] the following touching farewell:—"What shall my Antonio say, when he hears the death of his Tasso? Nor, in my opinion, will the news be long delayed; for I feel my end to be at hand, having found no remedy for this troublesome malady, which, added to my many habitual ailments, is evidently sweeping me away like an impetuous and irresistible torrent. To say nothing of the world's ingratitude, which would prove its triumph by consigning me in penury to the tomb, the time is now past for speaking of my inveterate fortune; yet, when I think of the glory which this age will derive from my writings, in despite of all opposition, I cannot be left entirely unrequited. I have had myself brought to this convent of S. Onofrio, not only because the air is commended by the faculty more than that of any other part of Rome, but also, to begin as it were from this elevated spot, and in the conversation of these holy fathers, my celestial intercourse. Pray to God in my behalf, and rest assured that, as I have ever loved and respected you in this life, I shall do the like towards you in a better, as is the part of true and unfeigned affection; and to the Divine grace I commend you and myself. From Rome, at S. Onofrio."
Tasso's mind was habitually under devotional influences, which grew upon him as he experienced the delusive results of his early ambition, the emptiness of success, and the bitterness of failure. Religion was in him a deeply rooted sentiment; it soothed long hours of suffering, cheered the decline of life, and brightened those hopes for which the laurel crown had lost its charm. Gazing from the convent garden over a scene of all others the most inspiring to the poet, the most solemn to the moralist, he caught the seeds of malaria fever. His springs of life were already dried up by twenty long years of suffering, and, after a few days of peaceful and resigned preparation for a change that to him had no terrors, his spirit was released from its shattered tenement. He died on the 25th April, 1595, wept by many warmly attached and pitying friends, and lamented by the citizens, who lost in his death the spectacle of his coronation, to which they had long looked forward with an anxiety unusual even among the fête-loving populace of Rome.
Tasso's was a life of painful contrasts and of blighted hopes. The prospects of his childhood, bright as the sky which witnessed his birth, were quickly shadowed by a storm of tropical violence. The courtly favour that met his manhood proved baneful as a siren's smiles. The greenest garland that Italy could offer to her favourite minstrel was reserved until his brow was clammy with the dews of death. The honours lavished on his funeral have been grudged to his tomb. His resplendent genius was linked to the saddest and most humbling of human afflictions. The fame for which he felt more than a poet's thirst, and which he challenged as his due, was withheld by envy until no trumpet-note could reach his dull cold ear. But time, the avenger, has rendered him tardy justice, and Torquato is the popular bard of Italy, whilst the cumbrous pedantry of his della Crusca impugners is consigned to contemptuous oblivion.
Of works so universally known as those of Tasso it would be presumptuous to offer new analyses, and superfluous to encumber our pages with trite criticism. The edition of them by Rosini extends to thirty quarto volumes, a startling testimony to the copiousness of his commentators, as well as to his own wonderful fertility. His pen ranged over a wide field both in prose and verse,—the former including essays—moral, literary, and political,—dialogues, and letters; the latter touching upon themes sacred, heroic, romantic, sylvan, pastoral, and lyric. It is, however, as an epic poet that he has gained a niche in Parnassus, and the admiration of posterity. No rivalry could arise with Dante, in whose Vision the things of time are strangely interwoven with revelations of eternity; and his muse is of a nobler caste, though less touching character, than that of the bard of Arqua. But it is otherwise with the fourth great name of Italian minstrelsy, and no one discusses the merits of Tasso without keeping those of Ariosto in view. This, however, arises from habit rather than necessity. The latter name was dragged forward by the della Crusca Academicians as a stalking-horse to mask the malice of their attacks upon the later of Ferrara's two laureates, whose successive appearance on that stage alone induced a contrast for which their respective works were by no means adapted. The comparison thus forced upon the world has been declined by Tiraboschi, who, in the exercise of a sounder criticism, has assigned to each his peculiar excellence. Bearing in mind that the Orlando is intrinsically a romantic poem, whilst the Jerusalem is composed upon the epic model, there can be but little technical analogy between them, and the beauties of the one would become blemishes in the other. The striking and unlooked-for episodes of the former, running ever into extravagance and burlesque, must have outraged the grave unities required in the latter, and have proved more serious faults than any which the jaundiced optics of the academicians were able to discover. But perhaps Tasso's greatest triumph over his jealous detractors has been the continued preference of his earlier and greater work to his continuation of the same theme, in which he studied to profit by their criticisms. Many Italians, among whom the romantic school took its origin and maintained its influence, have preferred Ariosto, whilst transalpine critics have more generally given their suffrages to the poem of Tasso, as more regular in its plan, and better preserving the elevation and the unities observed by the best classic models.
It has been the boast of some minstrels to mould the temper of the age to the tone of their poetry. Tasso chose a less hazardous aim, and, seizing in his great epic upon a theme at once the most fertile and the most popular, gained the sympathies of all. The Crescent, once more in the ascendant, had swept the Mediterranean, overrun Greece, and threatened Vienna. The spirit of the crusades revived. The often-mooted movement of all Christendom in the holy cause was at length carried into effect, and victory crowned the Cross at the great naval conflict of Lepanto. But alas! his was the last great name in Italian poetry;[*197] and thenceforward genius fled from the land of song, or bowed unresisting before an all-prevailing mediocrity. Morbid repetition, redundant verbiage, far-fetched figures,—all those faults for which its liquid language afforded such fatal facilities, sprang up in rank deformity, and smothered generous inspiration. The academies sent out their many songsters, who poured forth notes artfully sweet, but rarely thrilling; and already
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"Their once-loved minstrels scarce may claim The transient mention of a dubious name." |
Nor did they merit a better fate; for their conceptions were extravagant, their imagery redundant, their execution alternately glaring and languid. Unnatural contrasts, startling conceits, ill compensated in them for vigorous diction and the stamp of genius. Yet the lyric muse was not utterly extinct, and from time to time its warblings may yet be heard in the orange groves and laurel bosquets of that bright land.
Guarini's is another name shared between Ferrara and Urbino.[*198] He was born at the former city in 1537, of a family already possessing claims upon literary distinction during three generations, his great-grandfather having been Guarini of Verona. In conformity with the custom of employing men of learning upon diplomatic missions, he served Duke Alfonso II. at various courts, until, in 1575, he undeservedly lost his favour by the failure of a quixotic negotiation, having for its object to place the crown of Poland upon his brows. During the seclusion which followed, he wrote the Pastor Fido, a pastoral drama of more complex incident than had been hitherto produced, and whose refined polish and seductive strains, though misapplied upon a factitious style, long retained their popularity. It was composed in avowed emulation of Tasso's Aminta, and he carried the rivalry into ducal saloons, and even ladies' boudoirs, with the results naturally to be looked for among the peppery tribe of poets. But when Torquato's hour of darkness arrived, Guarini proved himself a generous opponent, and, in the edition of 1581, he did his utmost to rescue the cantos of Gerusalemme from the adulteration of unfriendly pens. When his country's subjugation had followed upon his patron's death, he was fain to seek other service with the Medici; and soon thereafter the Duke of Urbino wrote to Abbé Brunetti, his envoy at Venice, in the following terms: "We shall with much pleasure look over the pastoral which the Cavaliere Guarino has reprinted with notes and engravings, for we greatly esteem his meritorious works, and are aware how much we are indebted to his affection and courtesy. You will therefore thank him in our name for his remembrance of us."[199] This presentation copy procured the author a substantial reward in the following letter to Brunetti, dated some weeks later.
"Most magnificent and most reverend,