OF LITERATURE. 



li 



his sake, we almost regret that preference for 

 poetry, which threw him upon the sullen patron- 

 age of the Cardinal d'Este, and the niggardly 

 favours of the duke of Ferrara. 



Ariosto, as we have said, has the spirit of 

 Homer's song without its form. In the dull 

 attempt of Trissino * to revive, in Italian blank 

 verse, the systematic epos of antiquity, we have 

 the form without the spirit. But forgiven be the 

 coldness, the heaviness, the stupid gravity of his 

 Italia Liberata, if either the theme, which Trissino 

 selected, or the earnest view he took of it, had 

 aught to do with kindling heroic fire in the breast 

 of TORQUATO TASSO !f Not the world of classic 

 images and recollections alone, but the whole 

 realms of poetry were engraven on the learned, 

 imaginative, sublime, pathetic, polished, feeling 

 mind of this wonderful man, this restorer and 

 adorner of epic song in its noblest shape and 

 nature. All critics seem to join in extolling his 

 choice of a subject, from the brilliant annals of 

 the first crusade ; as displaying a magnificent 

 platform for lofty scenes, and an unrivalled 

 combination of the marvellous with the true. 

 Nor can it be questioned that the Fall of Troy 

 itself scarcely rouses so many associations, or 

 commands such universal interest, as the De- 

 liverance of Jerusalem. This subject, under 

 Tasso's management, has all the unity of 

 the Iliad ; it has equal grandeur ; and now, 

 for the first time, there was diffused over epic 

 poetry a bright halo of love : not the physical 

 passion, which the ancients commonly depicted ; 

 not the domestic feeling of Andromache and 

 Hector ; but that devout, that enthusiastic senti- 

 ment, of which the expression was, perhaps, 

 exaggerated in the days of chivalry, but which 

 was essentially the highest evidence of those 

 pure ethics and liberal manners introduced 

 among men by Christianity. With regard to the 

 other merits of Tasso, it is amusing to contrast 

 the opinions of his judges ; the mockery of 

 Voltaire, or the qualified praise of Schlegel, 

 with the raptures of Sismondi. His machinery 

 is childish and contemptible, says one ; it is 

 necessary, natural, and majestic, another re- 

 plies : and assuredly, though Dante's grotesque- 

 ness is here and there not happily imitated by 

 Tasso, there is something truly elevated in those 

 conceptions of infernal power and eloquence, 

 from which Milton deigned to receive a lesson. 

 His episodes are beautiful, but they might have 

 been placed, with equal propriety, in any other 

 epic, says Schlegel. Schlegel might have said 

 more justly that they are not only of matchless 



beauty, but most skilfully interlaced with the 

 subject ; that the magic of Annida, the charms 

 of Clorinda, the love of Erminia (since these are 

 specified by the critic) even where they do not 

 conduce to the march of the plot, surround it 

 with a lustre that makes the progress of the 

 main action more conspicuous and impressive. 

 It is curious to compare these differences of 

 opinion with the controversy that raged, during 

 the life of Tasso, between his partisans and those 

 of Ariosto. Strange that one so proud and 

 confident as Tasso was ; so successful, too, in 

 answering his first/ assailants ; should have suc- 

 cumbed, at last, to the Delia Cruscan academy, 

 and actually recast his work, and corrected his 

 phraseology, in deference, as it would appear, 

 to their authority! But, persecuted by critics 

 and by princes, Tasso has had one glory, of 

 which they could not bereave him. He has been 

 the people's bard. His strains have hardly yet 

 ceased to swell the alternate songs of Italian 

 gondoliers. 



Both Ariosto and Tasso wrote many things 

 besides their great works. The dramatic pieces 

 of the former will be mentioned when in sketch- 

 ing the last period of modern literature we come 

 to speak of the Italian theatre. But, though in 

 that period alone the loftier kinds of the Italian 

 drama deserve notice, we may here allude to 

 the Aminta of Tasso, as belonging rather to 

 pastoral than dramatic song. Pastoral poetry 

 had received a new shape of mingled verse and 

 prose from Boccacio, in which he had tried to 

 mingle, likewise, the tone of the Virgilian eclogue 

 with that of the romantic muse. Composed on 

 the same plan, but with far superior elegance, 

 the Arcadia of Sannazaro $ enjoyed at one time 

 a degree of popularity, that carried it through 

 more than sixty editions. It was Beccari of 

 Ferrara, however, who, remembering perhaps the 

 latter form of the Greek satyric plays (for the 

 Orfeo of Politien is too tragical to have been his 

 model) brought out the first regular bucolic 

 drama at the court of Hercules II. His dreary 

 sentimentalism, made only worse by a seasoning 

 of coarse gayety, was soon forgotten in the graces 

 of Tasso's Aminta. Faults were entailed upon 

 this delicious poem by the system to which it 

 belongs ; but they are redeemed by infinite 

 beauties in the execution, and by the balmy 

 atmosphere of love that exhales from every line. 

 Not that quaint conceits, in the Petrarchan style, 

 are altogether banished from the Aminta, any 

 more than they are from the Jerusalem. By a 

 like incongruity a chill is too often thrown even 



A. D. 1478- 1550. 



t A. D. 15441595. 



A. D 1488-1530. 



A. D. 1510 15SO. 



