Then, while the strong current eddies to and fro within him, and while his fingers, playing instinctively on the handle of his sword, cause its blade to be seen, comes the warning vision of Pallas to him, and to him alone. This admonition restores the disturbed balance of his mind; and, his inward wound assuaged with the promise of a future revenge, to be wrought out for him by the self-condemning hands of the inflicters and abettors of the wrong, he moodily foregoes the reckoning of blood.
Such is the solid, the Cyclopian structure of the fabric, into which Homer has built his characters. Had the hero of Tasso indeed been endowed with a sublimity of passion beyond or like that of Achilles, we might not have been entitled to call him strictly to account for the slaughter of Gernando. But the truth is, that he is a somewhat jejune and feeble character; and his offence in this instance is not from the excess of the impelling, but from the defect, or rather the utter absence, of the restraining power.
Gioberti, in a posthumous work[972], remarks that the heroes of Paganism are more effective than those of Christianity, because the standard by which they are measured is lower, the idea imperfect instead of perfect. There is, I believe, much both of truth and of depth in this observation. It is no more than justice that Tasso should have the benefit of it, which is not inconsiderable.
Differing modes of describing personages.
Such, however, as his heroes are, he takes the precaution to describe them in outline at a very early stage indeed of his proceedings, namely, in the stanzas 8-10 of the First Canto. He here places before us Godfrey, Baldwin, Tancred, Boemondo, and Rinaldo; and he resumes from time to time the business of describing them. Bojardo and Ariosto avoid this; but it is probably because they were dealing with characters of well-known type, already familiar to their audience. Homer, who drew so much more powerfully, had more to describe than any of them. And yet it may be said he never describes characters at all, with the very slight exceptions of Nestor, in a few words, and Thersites with somewhat more detail: the latter, it is evident, because he wanted to concentrate contempt and disgust upon his qualities, for exhibiting which in action he could not afford to such a wretch any extended space: the former, perhaps because he has thought it better for effect to abstain from marking him through the poem by distinctive epithets, and could produce a certain roundness of figure, highly suitable to the personage, in this way with more convenience. But, in general, Homer’s characters are described by their actions only, with the aid of choice and characteristic epithets, and here and there of some small but pointed allusion, not from themselves nor from the Poet, but in the speeches of others. Thus he grapples with the full scale of the demands of the dramatic art. Others could not follow him. We must not blame Tasso for a proceeding quite necessary by way of clue to his poem; rather, indeed, we should praise the ingenious manner in which he has effected his purpose, by a survey which the Almighty takes of the Christian camp; a proceeding alike conducive to the religious character of his poem, not always so well cared for, and to the supply of the first necessities of his readers.
In the details of his battles, Tasso is a great and skilful describer. Perhaps in this point alone, out of so many, he may be termed superior to Homer. At least we may be disposed to think he has nothing so unsatisfactory under this head as the death of Patroclus. It may be another question how far he is indebted for instruction in this department to his great countrymen, especially Ariosto, and also whether he has anywhere equalled the magnificent account of that terrible contest with Rodomonte, which, in the Furioso, sums up Ruggiero’s triumphs.
As nearly all the greater situations and combinations of the Gerusalemme, and its general framework, have been suggested by the ancients, so the minor imitations are too numerous for notice. Many of Tasso’s similes are extremely beautiful and finished; and he has followed Homer in employing them to relieve the narrative of battle; but he has not observed the same judicious parsimony in other parts of his poem; he has apparently not perceived, certainly not followed, the general rules of Homer in the distribution of this ornament, and the result has been that they produce a somewhat cloying effect.
Like Virgil, he has been betrayed into imitating Homer in certain cases, where the whole reason of the case was changed: as, for instance, in the Invocation before the Catalogue, and in the wish expressed for multiplied organs of speech. To Homer, a reciting poet, the Catalogue was a great effort of memory, and it therefore justified the special application to the Muse: to Tasso it must have been one of the easier parts of his performance. As respects the second point, what can be more reasonable in the case of an unwritten composition? what less so, when the poet works with pen and ink? Nor is the case much mended by supposing that Tasso had in mind his recitations, unless the recitation had been, not the accident, but the rule, so that the poem would itself, in the ordinary course of thought, be conceived of as associated with the act of reciting.
Tasso seems, however, to have fallen into a more serious error in introducing a Second Catalogue into his poem. The first may be defended by the same reasoning, which so amply warrants that of Homer. But what interest could Christendom or Italy feel in the detailed muster-roll of the Egyptian army?
The Return of Rinaldo.