When she continues to urge Tasso to make the friendship of Antonio, and assures him that the return of the minister has only procured him a friend the more, he answers:—
"Tasso.—I hoped it once, I doubt it now.
Instructive were to me his intercourse,
Useful his counsel in a thousand ways:
This man possesses all in which I fail.
And yet—though at his birth flock'd every god,
To hang his cradle with some special gift—
The graces came not there, they stood aloof:
And he whom these sweet sisters visit not,
May possess much, may in bestowing be
Most bountiful, but never will a friend,
Or loved disciple, on his bosom rest."
The tendency of this scene is to lull Tasso into the belief that he is beloved of the princess. Of course he is ardent to obey the latest injunctions he has received from her, and when Antonio next makes his appearance, he offers him immediately "his hand and heart." The secretary of state receives such a sudden offer (as it might be expected a secretary of state would do) with great coolness; he will wait till he knows whether he can return the like offer of friendship. He discourses on the excellence of moderation, and in a somewhat magisterial tone, little justified by the relative intellectual position of the speakers. Here, again, we have a true insight into the character of the man of genius. He is modest—very—till you become too overbearing; he exaggerates the superiority in practical wisdom of men who have mingled extensively with the world, and so invites a tone of dictation; and yet withal he has a sly consciousness, that this same superiority of the man of the world consists much more in a certain fortunate limitation of thought than in any peculiar extension. The wisdom of such a man has passed through the mind of the poet, with this difference, that in his mind there is much beside this wisdom, much that is higher than this wisdom; and so it does not maintain a very prominent position, but gets obscured and neglected.
"Tasso.—Thou hast good title to advise, to warn,
For sage experience, like a long-tried friend,
Stands at thy side. Yet be assured of this,
The solitary heart hears every day,
Hears every hour, a warning; cons and proves,
And puts in practice secretly that lore
Which in harsh lessons you would teach as new,
As something widely out of reach."
Yet, spurred on by the injunction of the princess, he still makes an attempt to grasp at the friendship of Antonio.
"Tasso.—Once more! here is my hand! clasp it in thine!
Nay, step not back, nor, noble sir, deny me
The happiness, the greatest of good men,
To yield me, trustful, to superior worth,
Without reserve, without a pause or halt.