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Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the Aeneid, still less can it be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen.
"The misfortune is," he observed, "that I am garbed like a philosopher. How show myself in such a costume among elegant females? 'Tis a sad pity! for it would be an easy matter for me to pay my respects to an actress at an important theatre. I have translated the Gerusalemme Liberata, that masterpiece of Torquato Tasso's.
It is contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing him in the Gerusalemme, and was the first to apply the ominous word 'madman' to the unfortunate poet.
Its association with Milton's far grander work, as literary twins laid for a while in the same cradle, will always invest it with deep interest to the student. Tasso occupied himself at the same time with an altered version of his great poem, which he called the Gerusalemme Conquistata.
But as well might the Æneid of Virgil be compared with the Metamorphoses of Ovid. The Orlando Furioso is a romantic poem in the manner of Ovid, whereas the Gerusalemme Liberata is an epic poem in the manner of Homer and Virgil.
He called his poem Rinaldo, after the name of the knight whose romantic adventures it celebrates not the Rinaldo of the Gerusalemme Liberata, but the Paladin of whom so much is said in the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto, and dedicated it to Cardinal Lewis of Este, then one of the most distinguished patrons of literature in Italy.
There is no date to this MS. The first printed edition of the Gerusalemme is dated 1580. There are other rare and valuable MSS. in this Museum, the most remarkable of which are a Commentary in Latin on the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, by Cardinal Grimani. It is adorned with exquisite miniature illustrations, painted by Don Giulio Clovio, called the Michael Angelo of miniature painters.
Alfonso and Ferrara faded away upon the horizon of eternity; even the fame of his Gerusalemme, the great object for which he had lived, had become utterly indifferent to him. In the monastery of St.
John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, within the city, and St. The Colosseum is the elephant among the ruins of the old city. This stupendous structure is eliptical in form, measuring 615 feet through the longer diameter and 510 feet through the shorter, covering more than 5-1/2 acres of ground.
But how many of the churches were empty, among them some of the most ancient and venerable, San Clemente, Sant' Agnese, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, where during the offices one saw but a few believers of the neighbourhood.
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