'"Tasso," says Rousseau, "has predicted my misfortunes. Have you remarked that Tasso has this peculiarity, that you cannot take from his work a single strophe, nor from any strophe a single line, nor from any line a single word, without disarranging the whole poem? Very well! take away the strophe I speak of, the stanza has no connection with those that precede or follow it; it is absolutely useless. Tasso probably wrote it involuntarily, and without comprehending it himself."
'As to the impossibility of taking from Tasso without disarranging the poem, &c., I dare say 'tis not one whit more justly said of his, than, of any other narrative poem. Mais, n'importe, 'tis sufficient if Rousseau believed this. I found the stanza in question; admire its meaning beauty.
'I hope you have Italian enough to appreciate the singular perfection in expression. If not, look to Fairfax's Jerusalem Delivered, Canto 12, Stanza 77; but Rousseau says these lines have no connection with what goes before, or after; they are preceded, stanza 76, by these three lines, which he does not think fit to mention.'
* * * * *
"Misero mostro d'infelice amore;
Misero mostro a cui sol pena è degna
Dell' immensa impietà, la vita indegna."
"Vivrò fra i miei tormenti e fra le cure,
Mie giuste furie, forsennato errante.
Paventerò l'ombre solinghe e scure,
Che l'primo error mi recheranno avante
E del sol che scoprì le mie sventure,
A schivo ed in orrore avrò il sembiante.
Temerò me medesmo; e da me stesso
Sempre fuggendo, avrò me sempre appresso."
LA GERUSALEMME: LIBERATA, C. XII. 76, 77.
TO R.W.E.
'_Dec._12, 1843.—When Goethe received a letter from Zelter, with a handsome superscription, he said. "Lay that aside; it is Zelter's true hand-writing. Every man has a dæmon, who is busy to confuse and limit his life. No way is the action of this power more clearly shown, than in the hand-writing. On this occasion, the evil influences have been evaded; the mood, the hand, the pen and paper have conspired to let our friend write truly himself."
'You may perceive, I quote from memory, as the sentences are anything but Goethean; but I think often of this little passage. With me, for weeks and months, the dæmon works his will. Nothing succeeds with me. I fall ill, or am otherwise interrupted. At these times, whether of frost, or sultry weather, I would gladly neither plant nor reap,—wait for the better times, which sometimes come, when I forget that sickness is ever possible; when all interruptions are upborne like straws on the full stream of my life, and the words that accompany it are as much in harmony as sedges murmuring near the bank. Not all, yet not unlike. But it often happens, that something presents itself, and must be done, in the bad time; nothing presents itself in the good: so I, like the others, seem worse and poorer than I am.'