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No Italian poet previous to Tasso had written an epic; and Tasso himself distinctly avowed that he had chosen that form of poetry deliberately; not only as being more congenial to his own mind, but also that he might avoid following in the steps of Ariosto, whose work he regarded as, in its own department, incapable of being excelled, or even equalled.
Dante, Jacopo, son of the poet, was visited in a dream by his father, who conversed with him and told him where to find the missing thirteen cantos of the Commedia. Tasso saw and conversed with beings invisible to those about him. Goethe saw his own double riding by his side under conditions which really occurred years later. His father, mother, and grandmother were all ghost-seers.
Modern Italian poets may seek by contact with Shakspere and Milton to gain a freedom from the trammels imposed upon them by the slavish followers of Petrarch; while the attentive perusal of Tasso should be recommended to all English people who have no ready access to the masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature.
Whether they came of an excess of the sprinkling, could not well be guessed. The drenching at least was righteously intended. Beneath their shut eyelids, they felt more and more the oppression of a darkness not laden with slumber. They saw it insolidity; themselves as restless billows, driven dashing to the despondent sigh. Sleep was denied them. Tasso slept.
Tenderest of brothers! bravest and best and most unfortunate of men! What, in the name of heaven! so bewilders you? Tasso. Sister! sister! sister! I could not save her. Cornelia. Certainly it was a sad event; and they who are out of spirits may be ready to take it for an evil omen. At this season of the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent. Tasso. How! what is this? Cornelia.
He meditated three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas. One was the story of Tasso; of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The third was the "Prometheus Unbound". The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Aeschylus filled him with wonder and delight.
The general rule undoubtedly is that, when a successful work of imagination had been produced, it should not be recast. We cannot at this moment, call to mind a single instance in which this rule has been transgressed with happy effect, except the instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast his Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination, and his Epistle to Curio.
On a dark and starless night, long after Tasso Simone and most of his family were wrapped in slumber, the door of his dwelling was softly opened, whereupon a slight, girlish figure stole forth and sped noiselessly across the vineyard of olive trees, toward the highway which skirted the gulf.
Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that woman who has loved you: she sins against her sex. Leonora was unblameable. Never think ill of her for what you have suffered. Tasso. Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we love for every thing; even for the pain they have given us. But she gave me none: it was where she was not, that pain was. Cornelia.
Torquato Tasso was now in the full bloom of opening manhood. He was distinguished, like his father, for his personal beauty and grace, with a high, noble forehead, deep gray melancholy eyes, regular well-cut features, and hair of a light brown. He had the advantage of all the culture of his time.
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