Tasso's translator, Fairfax, worthy both of his original and of Spenser, has had the latter before him in his version of the passage, not without a charming addition of his own at the close of the first stanza:
"And her fair locks, that in a knot were tied
High on her crown, she 'gan at large unfold;
Which falling long and thick, and spreading wide,
The ivory soft and white mantled in gold:
Thus her fair skin the dame would clothe and hide;
And that which hid it, no less fair was hold.
Thus clad in waves and locks, her eyes divine
From them ashamed would she turn and twine.
Withal she smilèd, and she blush'd withal;
Her blush her smiling, smiles her blushing graced.">[
[Footnote 9:
"E quel che 'l bello e 'l caro accresce a l'opre,
L'arte, the tutto fa, nulla si scopre.
Stimi (si misto il culto è col negletto)
Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti.
Di natura arte par, the per diletto
L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti."
The idea of Nature imitating Art, and playfully imitating her, is in Ovid; but that of a mixture of cultivation and wildness is, as far as I am aware, Tasso's own. It gives him the honour of having been the first to suggest the picturesque principle of modern gardening; as I ought to have remembered, when assigning it to Spenser in a late publication (Imagination and Fancy, p. 109). I should have noticed also, in the same work, the obligations of Spenser to the Italian poet for the passage before quoted about the nymph in the water.]
[Footnote 10:
"Par che la dura quercia e 'l casto alloro,
E tutta la frondosa ampia famiglia,
Par the la terra e l'acqua e formi e spiri
Dolcissimi d'amor sensi e sospiri."
St. 16.
Fairfax in this passage is very graceful and happy (in the first part of his stanza he is speaking of a bird that sings with a human voice—which I have omitted):