Tasso says, when he thought himself happy in the love of Leonora d'Este—
"I have often dream'd of this great happiness—
'Tis here!—and oh, how far beyond the dream!
A blind man, let him reason upon light,
And on the charm of colour, how he will,
If once the new-born day reveal itself,
It is a new-born sense."
And again on this same felicity,
"Not on the wide sands of the rushing ocean,
'Tis in the quiet shell, shut up, conceal'd,
We find the pearl."
It is in another strain that the poet speaks when Leonora Sanvitale attempts to persuade him that Antonio entertains in reality no hostility towards him. In what follows, we see the anger and hatred of a meditative man. It is a hatred which supports and exhausts itself in reasoning; which we might predict would never go forth into any act of enmity. It is a mere sentiment, or rather the mere conception of a sentiment. For the poet rather thinks of hatred than positively hates.
"And if I err, I err resolvedly.
I think of him as of my bitter foe;
To think him less than this would now distract,
Discomfort me. It were a sort of folly
To be with all men reasonable; 'twere
The abandonment of all distinctive self.
Are all mankind to us so reasonable?
No, no! Man in his narrow being needs
Both feelings, love, and hate. Needs he not night
As well as day? and sleep as well as waking?
No! I will hold this man for evermore
As precious object of my deepest hate,
And nothing shall disturb the joy I have
In thinking of him daily worse and worse."
Act. 4, Scene 2.