schools. Ariosto, though a master of language, is less solicitous about the polish of the instrument, than the efficiency of its execution; Tasso, intent upon beauty of style, sometimes carries elegance of finish to excessive refinement. Ariosto, spontaneous, impulsive, impetuous, as if inspired with the reckless daring of his favourite heroes, gives loose rein to his fancy, that flashes over the earth like his superb Rabicano, or careers through the heavens on the hippogriff of his own adventurous Astolpho. Tasso, with a more timid muse and a less precipitous flight, rarely mounting so high or descending so low as his more daring rival, is throughout more uniform and well-sustained than Ariosto. With a seductive melancholy, and an almost morbid fancy, Tasso intoxicates the senses, whilst the reader, captivated and enthralled like Rinaldo in the enchanted gardens of the voluptuous Armida, abandons himself to the magical spell, and is proud of the flowery chain that proclaims him a prisoner. Ariosto, full of freshness and spirit, with a robust genius and a healthy imagination, transports us through the interminable mazes of his imaginary world, now penetrating hell's dark and murky profound, and now ascending upon a winged courser to the fabulous sphere of fire, at the same time inspiring us with so much of his own enthusiasm that, for the moment, we contemplate with wonder and delight, what we subsequently remember as the fantastic phantasmagoria of some wild and extravagant dream. In a word, we may say of Tasso that he was the finer poet; of Ariosto, that he was the greater genius. Few poets, of either ancient or modern times, have been so happy in the selection of their subject as Tasso in the Jerusalem Delivered. Affording greater variety than the Iliad, and greater unity than the Eneid, it combines in a remarkable degree the marvels of tradition with the sobriety of history, the romance of chivalry with the realities of Christianity; or, as the poet himself so well expresses it, "fictions light" with "truths divine." A poetic rehearsal of Christian knight-errantry, appealing to our sympathies more forcibly than the expedition of the Argonauts, the siege of Troy, or the wanderings of Ulysses, like Paradise Lost, it is founded upon a religious faith as enduring as the Bible, and as widespread as Christianity. Tasso, though pre-eminently a poet of romance and sentiment, is not simply a troubadour singing, beneath the balcony of his lady-love, of the brave Rinaldo recalled to duty and honour from amid the wanton delights of the enchanted gardens, nor yet of Paynim and Paladin engaged in deadly encounter with broadsword and battleaxe as the champions of the fair and false Armida, Who made each knight himself and God forget. He is rather the high-priest of the Muses chanting the Te Deum Laudamus in the ear of delighted Christendom, as the standard of the cross supplants the crescent upon the battlements of the Holy City, around whose sacred walls, crusader and infidel had fought long and well for the possession of the Holy Sepulchre. The appearance of the Jerusalem, which may be regarded as a lyrical paraphrase of the First Crusade, was the occasion of one of the bitterest controversies that has ever disfigured the annals of literature. It was at once compared to the Orlando, and Tasso, by not a few, was placed forthwith above Ariosto. Their respective partisans opened fire with every missile known to literary warfare, whilst the oligarchy of the Della Crusca fulminated its anathemas. As the battle raged around the walls of Tasso's prison house with ever increasing fury, the poet, already on the verge of distraction, defended himself with dignified calmness and manly vigour, until at length, exhausted by assaults so desperate and long continued, he was compelled to acknowledge the justice of adverse criticism by recasting his great epic under the title of the Jerusalem Conquered. The genius of Tasso is essentially lyrical. A poet of exquisite feeling, full of tenderness and passion, with a delicate taste, an ethereal fancy, and a masterly command of rhythm and rhyme, nature evidently intended him for a lyric poet. Even his great epic is characteristically lyric. Notwithstanding its general unity, the Jerusalem is fragmentary and episodical. In the absence of romantic ballads, its beautiful stanzas have furnished the Italians with a series of tender and graceful odes, glowing with genuine sentiment and passion, such as once were sung by the gondoliers of the Arno and the Po, or re-echoed with such magical effect over the moonlit waters of the Venetian lagoons. Tasso is eminently subjective. He has everywhere strongly impressed the peculiarities of his genius upon the productions of his muse. Serious by nature, religious by conviction, and inclined to melancholy from a sad and bitter experience, there is everywhere blended with the magical sweetness of his song a pathetic undertone of pensive sadness that breathes a spirit of the most refined elegy—a mournful refrain of unrequited love, or unmerited wrong, like the plaintive voice of Clorinda issuing from the living trunks of the enchanted forest. With the laurel of his poetic crown is intertwined the melancholy cypress, whilst the bright aureole of his genius is beclouded with the incense that rises from the censer of a broken heart. Tasso is the Correggio of poets. In both we note the same lightness of touch and elaborate finish, the same symmetry of outline and harmony of colouring, the same peculiar grace in the disposition and attitudes of their figures, which, though betraying, if examined critically, a certain tone of affectation and sentimentality, are invested with a magical charm which fascinates you, nevertheless. In both we find the purest types of ideal beauty, an ethereal, spiritual, almost effeminate beauty, together with the same marked prominence assigned to the principal character. Godfrey, the "Star of knighthood and flower of chivalry," In shape an angel, and a god in speech, appears scarcely less divine in the grand tableau of the Jerusalem Delivered, than the infant Christ in the La Notte of Correggio, who, as the central light of that immortal masterpiece, radiates the divinity of the God-man with an insufferable brightness, not only illuminating the darkness of the night, but dazzling the sight of the astonished spectators, whilst it transfigures and glorifies the homely scene of His humble birth. Tasso constantly reminds us of Milton, or, to speak more properly, Milton reminds us of Tasso. The description of Michael, the Archangel, as he appears in the east, more radiant than the noonday sun, is suggestive of Raphael in Paradise Lost, who Seems another morn Risen on mid noon, though Milton has doubtless improved upon the original of Tasso, Quando a paro col sol, ma più lucente L'angelo gli appari dall' oriente. Then, too, the glowing description of the enchanted garden of Armida, with its odorous breath, ambrosial fruits, and everlasting spring, is a most beautiful prototype of the Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost. Un' isoletta, la qual nome prende Con le vicine sue dalla Fortuna ; Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende Le spalle e i fianchi, e senza neve alcuna modern, have enjoyed a higher He is to Italy what Cervantes Sixty editions of the Few poets, either ancient or degree of popularity than Ariosto. is to Spain, or Shakespeare to England. Orlando were published during a single century. That its popularity is on the wane is doubtless true, though by no means surprising. The romantic epic, which in the Orlando reached its apogee, though admirably adapted to an age which still delighted in knightly combats, enchanted castles and forests, or the loves and adventures of noble ladies and gallant cavaliers, has lost a portion of its charm in this more practical, prosaic age, in which lovers represent pages rather than knights, and romance has lost the form as well as the spirit of poetry. And yet the errant, desultory, independent life of a cavalier, whose career was one continuous series of adventures and combats, though directly at variance with the modified conditions of modern society, is highly poetical, nevertheless. Furnishing, as it does, an inexhaustible fund of humour and ridicule, arising from the disparity between its promise and fulfilment, together with its brilliant examples of individual heroism, it excites our laughter at the same time that it challenges our admiration. Aside from the pomp and pageantry of knight-errantry, with its stirring adventures and romantic episodes, there is an imperishable instinct underlying the glittering exterior, which will continue, under a variety of forms, to reassert itself, until it finds its normal development. This irrepressible instinct, the inextinguishable love of personal liberty, found its fullest exercise in the life of a true cavalier, of which Marfisa and Mandricardo furnish us the highest poetical types. The knight-errant was a law unto himself. In truth, the code of knightly honour, modified only by the self-imposed restraints of a Christian faith, constituted at the time, whatever there was of either local or international law. The days of chivalry are gone, never again to return, but the great problem of human society, which it so signally failed to solve, still demands a solution. This problem may be stated thus: to establish a stable equilibrium between the social instinct and its counterpoise, the instinct of personal liberty, or, in other words, to ascertain the minimum of legal restraint, consistent with the maximum well-being of society. The scope of the Orlando is to celebrate the origin of the House of Este, which enjoyed the singular good fortune and unenviable notoriety of being immortalised, as Ginguené observes, by the two greatest of Italian epic poets, and then of having repaid them with neglect and ingratitude as the price of their immortality. In this interminable tissue of fact and fable, history and romance, myths and miracles, where knights and ladies, heroes and giants, monsters and fairies, angels and devils, roam through the world at pleasure, suspending the laws of nature, or superseding them with the marvels of magic, there is, there can be, no historic scope, no epical unity. Nor is this want of unity felt in the Orlando, from the very nature of the subject, which represents society, owing to the assertion of individual liberty in its highest possibilities, in a disorganised, if not almost chaotic, state. Then, too, this absence of a determinate scope is less obvious in view of the delicate vein of humour and satire running through the poem. "Ridicule," observes Gioberti, "is the negation of all teleology. Still, in satirical compositions, a certain indeterminate order is necessary, because chaos is not apprehensible, but this order should be only apparent and superficial, not organic and dynamic." Such is the unity of the Orlando. In this inimitable arabesque, there are three principal groups-the nuptials of Roger and Bradamant, the fabulous siege of Paris under Charlemagne, and the madness of Roland or Orlando. All this is diversified by innumerable episodes, recounting the adventures of beautiful ladies and bold cavaliers, throughout which are blended the fanciful and real, the beautiful and grotesque, in about equal proportions. Since the Orlando Furioso must be regarded as a continuation of the Orlando Innamorato, in which Ariosto, taking up the thread of the story where Boiardo leaves it, adopting not only his subject, but his characters and poetical formulæ, in what, it may be asked, consists the distinguishing merit of the great Italian poet. What Raphael did for art in the Transfiguration, Ariosto did for the romantic epic in the Orlando Furioso. Preserving certain essential characteristics of the epic romance, certain traditional types of character, which neither the poet nor the artist can safely ignore, he re-groups, re-colours, and re-animates the whole in such a masterly manner as to distance all his competitors; and, while playing the unpretending rôle of an imitator, has well nigh consigned his original to oblivion by immortalising his poem. He enters the world of romance and tradition, not as a royal preserve, but as a public domain where all have equal rights. Laying poetry and art, history and mythology, fable and legend, all under contribution, he selects his materials; and, in the transforming alembic of his won |