532 



I \SSO- 



l>ri<ea, and said to him, "I i;ive to \<>u tin- laurel, 

 that it may receive as much honour Iroin you as it 

 has conferred upon those who have had it before 

 you." The solemnity was, however, delayed till 

 the spring, in order to give it the greater splendour. 

 During the winter, THSSO'S health tailed more and 

 more ; he felt his end approaching, and ordered him- 

 self to be carried into the monastery of St Onofrio, 

 where he died, April 25, 1595, the very day which 

 TII appointed for his coronation. A raging 

 fever terminated his life, at the commencement of 

 his lift y -second year. The cardinal Cintio caused 

 him to be buried honourably in the little church of 

 the monastery ; and eight years after, the cardinal 

 Bevilacqua ordered the monument to be erected 

 which is still to be seen there. The Italians, 

 Mano, Serassi and Zuccala (1819) have written 

 his life. Serassi has also published a collection of 

 more than 250 letters by Tasso. The physician 

 (liacomazzi, in his Diahflhi supra gli Amort, la 

 Priijionia ed il Genio di Torquato Tanso, etc. (Bres- 

 cia, 18*27), has expressed the opinion that not Leo- 

 nora, but Lucretia, afterwards the wife of the duke 

 of Urbino, was the object of the Platonic love of the 

 unfortunate poet. Frederic Schlegel, in his Ge- 

 schichte der alien und neuen Literatur (History of 

 Ancient and Modern Literature), comparing Ari- 

 osto, Camoens, and Tasso, says of the latter, " Not 

 only a poetical, but also a patriotic, inspiration for 

 the cause of Christendom animated this poet, in 

 whom love of glory and pious feeling were equally 

 predominant. Yet he has by no means reached the 

 grandeur of his subject ; and so little has he ex- 

 hausted its treasures, that he may be said only to 

 have skimmed over its surface. He was in some 

 degree confined by the Virgilian form, from which 

 he has borrowed with no great success, a few pieces 

 of what is commonly called the epic machinery. 

 Tasso belongs, upon the whole, rather to the class 

 of poets who represent themselves and their own 

 exquisite feelings, than of those who reflect a world 

 in their own minds, and are able to lose and forget 

 themselves in it. The finest passages of his poem 

 are such as would be beautiful either by themselves 

 or as episodes in any other epic, but have no neces- 

 sary connexion with the subject. The charms of 

 Armida, the beauty of Clorinda, and the love of 

 Erminia these, and similar passages, are the ones 

 which delight in Tasso. In his lyrical poems 

 (Rime), there is a glow of passion, and an inspira- 

 tion of unfortunate love, compared with which the 

 coldness of the artificial Petrarch appears repulsive. 

 Tasso is altogether a poet of feeling ; and as Ari- 

 osto is, throughout, a painter, so over the language 

 and versification of Tasso, there is poured forth the 

 whole charm of music a circumstance which has, 

 without doubt, greatly contributed to render him 

 the favourite poet of the Italians. His popularity 

 exceeds even that of Ariosto. Individual parts and 

 episodes of his poems are frequently sung : and the 

 Italians having no romantic ballads, like those of 

 the Spaniards, have split their epic poem, in order 

 to adapt it to song, into what may be called ballads, 

 the most melodious, graceful, noble, and poetical 

 ever possessed by any people. Perhaps this mode 

 of treating their great poem was the best for the 

 enjoyment of it ; for, by giving up the connexion, 

 little seems to be lost. How far Tasso's notions 

 on epic art were from being satisfactory to him- 

 self, is evident from his many alterations and 

 unsuccessful attempts. His first attempt was a 

 romance of chivalry. Afterwards, in the decline of 



his powt rs. lie entii.lv i HMM I he \\liole of his Je- 

 rusalem Delivered, to wliieh he owes his greatest 

 fame, sacrificing to the moral severity or anxiety 

 which he hud adopted, the mo>t delightful and glow- 

 ing passages in the poem, and introducing, through- 

 out, a cold allegory, little calculated to compensate 

 for what he had taken away. He also attempted 

 a Christian epic on the subject of the creation. Hut 

 even to the most gifted poet, how difficult must it 

 be to unfold a few mysterious sentences of Moe- 

 into as many cantos ! In this poem, Tasso laid 

 aside the use of rhyme, although his poems derive 

 a great part of their charms from it, and although 

 no poet ever possessed so entire a command of 

 rhyme. He has often been censured for his plays of 

 thought, or concetti, as they called it. Many of the- e, 

 however, are not only full of meaning, but beautiful 

 as images. A poet of feeling and of love may espe- 

 cially be pardoned such trifling errors. If we regard 

 Ta-so merely as a musical poet of feeling, it forms, 

 ! in truth, no proper subject of reproach, that he is, 

 in a certain sense, uniform, and, throughout, senti- 

 mental. Uniformity of this sort seems to be inse- 

 parable from that poetry which is in its nature ly- 

 rical ; and it seems to me a beauty in Tasso, that 

 he has spread this soft breath of elegy even over the 

 representation of the charms of sense. But an epic 

 poet must be richer in every thing : he must be 

 multiform ; be must embrace a whole world of ob- 

 jects, the spirit of the present time and of past ages 

 of his nation and of nature ; he must have command 

 not only over one chord, but over the whole compli- 

 cated instrument of feeling." An account of the 

 different original editions of Tasso's works is to be 

 found in Tassos Leben und Characteristik nach 

 Guinguene, dargestellt von P. A. Ebert Tasso's Life 

 and Poetical Character, by Ebert (Leipsic, 1819). 

 The English language possessess three translations 

 of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, by Fairfax, Hoole, 

 and Wiffen. 



TASSONI, ALEXANDLR, one of the celebrated 

 Italian poets, was born at Modena, in 1565. His 

 childhood was rendered unhappy by the early loss 

 of his parents, by sickness, enemies, and various 

 misfortunes. All this, however, did not interrupt 

 him in his studies at Bologna and Ferrara. In 1597, 

 he went to Rome, and became secretary to cardinal 

 Ascanio Colonna, who took him to Spain in 1600, 

 and twice despatched him upon business into Italy 

 (1602 and 1603). Upon one of these journeys he 

 wrote his celebrated Considerazioni sopra il Pe- 

 trarca. At Rome, he was admitted into the aca- 

 demy of the Umoristi. One fruit of his intercourse 

 with the societies of Rome was the ten books of 

 his Pensieri diversi, a specimen of which, under the 

 title Quesiti, he published in 1608, enlarged in 1612. 

 This work, full of ingenious paradoxes (in which the 

 author was not probably always serious), directed 

 against the sciences, was also seasoned with much 

 wit and elegance, and made a powerful impression. 

 Still more was this the case with the above-mentioned 

 Considerazioni, which first appeared in 1609. Con- 

 sidering the veneration in which Petrarch was held 

 by some to be extravagant, he endeavoured, in an 

 unreasonable manner, to diminish the fame of this 

 great poet, and hence became involved in a series of 

 controversies. Tassoni had been without office 

 since the death of cardinal Colonna. Being desti- 

 tute of the means of an independent livelihood, he 

 entered, in 1613, the service of the duke of Savoy, 

 Charles Emmanuel, and of the cardinal, his son. 

 Here he was alternately in favour and disgrace. This 



