146 ON THE STUDY OF ITALIAN. 



insults the understanding of his pupil. But enough has been said : 

 good night to Metastasio, and sound sleep (no harm if they sleep 

 over his works) to his readers. 



Hard and harsh and strange is it thus to write of a gentle bard, 

 beloved by gentle nyrnphs. The next work perused by Italian 

 students is in general Tasso's Jerusalem ; and we must alter our 

 speech and change our style, to discourse of one who was proverbially 

 Called "He of the pen and sword." Romance, chivalry, and poetry 

 all cast their beams on the person, the character, and the writings of 

 Tasso. Born with that deep and exquisite sensibility of feeling 

 which generally attends true poetical powers, and which, if it doubles 

 every joy, too truly doubles every woe, he became in early life 

 the victim of an unfortunate attachment. Every one knows the 

 story of the Princess Leonora; every one knows too how her en- 

 raged brother caused the young poetial aspirer to be immured in an 

 asylum for the insane. The touching lines which he there wrote 

 short, sweet, and melancholy, still sound in our ears, and vibrate on 

 our innermost feelings, 



" Tu che ne vai in Pindo 

 Dove pende la mia cetra ad un capresso, 

 Salutala in mio nome, e dille poi, 

 Ch'io son dagli anni e dalla fortuna oppresso." 



And when the cruel falsehood of his enemies produced the alien- 

 ation of mind which they had previously fabled, when his high- 

 strung feelings sunk beneath irritation and disappointment, who has 

 read without sympathy, and compassion, and regret, the history of 

 Jerusalem's minstrel's holding high converse with the phantoms of 

 his own creation, and forgetting the cruelty of his prince and the 

 neglect of his lady love, in the lofty excursions of his disordered but 

 still fine imagination ? 



I cannot write as I would of Tasso. " Thoughts that breathe and 

 words that burn" should be summoned up to express the feelings which 

 his poem awakens, but I cannot leave the subject without noticing a 

 slander affixed to his name by one who probably never read his 

 work. I allude to Boileau Boileau, whose taste is so just as to 

 have won for him the title of the prince of taste, whose strictures on 

 the ancients mark both reading and good sense, contrasts in his 

 " Art of Poetry," " le clinquant du Tasse" and " 1'or de Virgile." 

 From him it has been the fashion to talk of the tinsel of Tasso, and 

 to rank one of the most exquisite poets of modern times as a mere 

 superficial rhymester. The Italian language is now more generally 

 read, and studied ; and those who judge of Tasso in his own native 

 majesty (for, like Virgil, many of his beauties, as they depend on 

 harmony and phraseology, cannot be translated), will indignantly 

 repel all lowering insinuations, and warmly concur in this feeble but 

 sincere tribute to Jerusalem's bard. 



I am transgressing the limits to which I had meant originally to 

 confine myself. I cannot, however, pass by one, who 



" Sovra gli altri, come aquila, vola." 



