Or ti sovvegna
Saggio signor, chi sia Rinaldo, e quale;
... non dee chi regna
Nel castigo con tutti esser uguale.
Vario è l’ istesso error ne’ gradi vari;
E sol l’ egualità giusta è co’ pari[963].
It was acting on an opinion of this kind, in the case of the Master of Stair after the Massacre of Glencoe, that left uneffaced a deep stain on the memory of William III. and of Scotland. Doubtless there have been periods when, even in Christian countries, such sentiments have been professed as well as practised; but can there have been any period when the utterance of them from the mouth of a knight, who is exhibited to us as a pattern, would not have caused a revulsion in the minds of ordinary hearers or readers?
The Woman-characters of Tasso.
The Jerusalem is greatly overstocked with interesting couples; so much so, that at times we almost seem to be reading a Pastoral poem. Taken singly, the details of these love-stories are worked up with infinite art and beauty, and are the most effective and successful portions of the whole Epic; but the aggregate is so much too large, that it chills the general tone, as well as weakens the broader effects. The excess of quantity is, indeed, gross and glaring. Tasso has followed the Christian Romancers in employing largely the idea of the woman-warrior, practically unknown to Homer, introduced with great spirit but no very elevated moral effect in Virgil, carried by Bojardo and Ariosto to its perfection; and, without doubt, a conception far more suitable to the standard of those great poets of fancy, than to the lofty level of the Epic or the higher drama, which deal with the greatest powers and the deepest problems of our nature. Still, as to the manner of employing it, we need not deny that high praise must be accorded to the Clorinda of Tasso. It is indeed easy to criticize the religious incidents of her death, and not easy to understand what business she has after death in a tree of the enchanted wood; or why, when that wood becomes the prey of the carpenters, she is so unceremoniously overlooked in her uncomfortable abode. But as to the main exhibition of the character, she follows Bradamante without degeneracy: pure, upright, chivalrous, thoroughly martial, and yet not grossly masculine. She falls to the lot of Tancred. But besides the Sofronia, the Erminia, and the Gildippe, in the second degree of prominence, there is projected on the picture another person yet more conspicuous than even Clorinda, namely, Armida; so different that they can hardly be compared, and yet inconveniently jarring from the similarity of their relations to the great heroes of the poem. Both, too, are lovely; both figure in the camp. Notwithstanding, however, the profusion of charms, which Tasso has called into existence to set off the person and the powers of Armida, nothing can be more unsatisfactory than her character itself, except its place in the poem, and her particular relation to Rinaldo. When every one else is ravished by her overpowering attractions, he remains insensible: and yet afterwards, with no poetical justification for the change, he becomes desperately enamoured of her. Here we see that feebleness in the conception and exhibition of character, which depresses the flight of Tasso, which excludes him from a place in the class, quite as open to poets as to philosophers, the class of the greatest masters of thought and of human nature.
The Armida of Tasso.