Goffredo intorno gli occhi gravi e tardi (vii. 58: Inf.. iv.).
a riveder le stelle (iv. 18: Inf. xxxiv.).
Ond' è ch'or tanto ardire in voi s'alletti? (ix. 76: Inf. ix.)
A guisa di leon quando si posa (x. 56: Purg. vi.)
e guardi e passi (xx. 43: Inf. in.)
As in the Rinaldo, so also in the Gerusalemme, Tasso's classical proclivities betrayed him into vio lation of the clear Italian language. Afraid of what is natural and common, he produced what is artificial and conceited. Hence came involved octaves like the following (vi. 109):
Siccome cerva, ch'assetata il passo
Mova a cercar d'acque lucenti e vive,
Ove un bel fonte distillar da un sasso
O vide un fiume tra frondose rive,
Se incontra i cani allor che il corpo lasso
Ristorar crede all'onde, all'ombre estive,
Volge indietro fuggendo, e la paura
La stanchezza obbliar face e l'arsura.
The image is beautiful; but the diction is elaborately intricate, rhetorically indistinct. We find the same stylistic involution in these lines (xii. 6):
Ma s'egli avverrà pur che mia ventura
Nel mio ritorno mi rinchiuda il passo,
D'uom che in amor m'è padre a te la cura
E delle fide mie donzelle io lasso.
The limpid well of native utterance is troubled at its source by scholastic artifices in these as in so many other passages of Tasso's masterpiece. Nor was he yet emancipated from the weakness of Rinaldo. Trying to soar upon the borrowed plumes of pseudo-classical sublimity, he often fell back wearied by this uncongenial effort into prose. Lame endings to stanzas, sudden descents from highly-wrought to pedestrian diction, are not uncommon in the Gerusalemme. The poet, diffident of his own inspiration, sought inspiration from books. In the magnificence of single lines again, the Gerusalemme reminds us of Rinaldo. Tasso gained dignity of rhythm by choos ing Latin adjectives and adverbs with pompous cadences. No versifier before his date had consciously employed the sonorous music of such lines as the following:—