THE LYRIC POETRY OF TASSO. lr frequently happens among the different works of a man of genius all equally excellent, that some descend to posterity amid the applauses of mankind, while others from their births remain in obscurity. This phenomenon in literature, seldom noticed and never satisfactorily explained, seems in the case of Tasso to be almost unaccountable; his lyrics being undeservedly neglected even in Italy, while his epic poetry has been uniformly the admiration of Europe. The Jerusalem Delivered ever was, and will be, the mark at which critics, ambitious of displaying their skill, level their shafts,-those shafts which without endangering the glory of the poet wounded even to death the heart of the man "But he is blessed, and for them recks not; Rolls on his sphere and in his bliss exults." Should the vicissitudes of ages change the languages of the earth, and Italian no more be spoken, there will still be found those who will dwell with admiration on the pages of the Jerusalem Delivered. The lyrics of Tasso, springing from the same noble source, though they betray more of the imperfection inseparable from humanity, exhibit beauties of a cast not less extraordinary than the genius of the poet. They were the momentary outpourings of his soul; yet he devoted to them all the care of a great artist, who, in whatever he undertakes always has perfection in view. Thus, His wild song speaks the sorrows of his heart, His lyre still breathes with all the rules of art: and in several letters to intimate friends, he anticipates for his short pieces almost as great an immortality as for his mightier epic. But they are nevertheless seldom mentioned, and scarcely ever read. They have indeed met with several editors, but we cannot say that we possess any correct edition of them, as they were collected during the long years of his imprisonment, and published, if not against his will, at least without his superintendence. The volume containing them was also wilfully swelled out with spurious pieces; much was omitted through haste or ignorance, and his poetry disgraced by inaccuracies of such a nature as to make it scarcely cognizable even by the author himself. He, therefore, thought it necessary to revise it; and in many instances his alterations seem to have been so material, that, in a collection published some time after his death, we meet with less of the language and verses than the number and titles of the pieces formerly printed. Interpolations, omissions, and errors of every sort were also scattered throughout this new edition, professed to be the only genuine one; and as none possessed the means, if they had the intention, of collating the original manuscript, there is in consequence no text of the Lyric Poetry of Tasso that can be depended upon. To this cause, which contributed to make his pieces less popular, may be added others peculiar to Italy. When Despotism kept genius in chains, and hired literature to render it subservient to its own purposes, great authors disappeared, and their places were filled by an innumerable crowd of others below mediocrity. These latter undertook the office of writing their literary history, and founded codes of criticism. It was naturally their interest to establish the national glory upon the number rather than the merit of authors. Having acknowledged Tasso to be a great epic poet, they could not acknowledge him a lyric writer of the first class without diminishing the reputation of other makers of sonnets and odes. Lyric poetry was then divided into species, and these species into classes; and at the head of each division and subdivision a poet was placed, with the right of being considered perpetual dictator in his species and class, and to remain so without competitor in future ages. The Italians were not in these times a nation of readers, and they professed, respecting literary matters, the same implicit faith that they were accustomed to yield in matters of religion. As they had a saint for agues or intermittents, another for bilious fevers, a third for the toothache, and another for a pain in the head, so they had a patron poet for madrigals, epigrams, the sonnetto eroico, and the anacreontic, and even one for the sonnetessa, an old-maidish species of sonnet. These laws were the more respected, inasmuch as within the last thirty years the monks were at the head of literature, and the oracles of rhetoric issued from the mouths of the masters of colleges. Thus, criticism, as well as doctrines in theology, were established by constitutional and invariable tradition, to which nothing could be added or taken away; and because, at the end of the sixteenth century, the monks, who were masters of colleges, did not recommend the lyric poetry of Tasso as a model for study, it was never adopted as such in any of those seminaries of learning. To these and similar regulations no man of letters dared to oppose himself without becoming subject to satires, intrigues, and the imputation of heresy. This may seem to be an exaggerated statement; but it is strictly correct; and in the sequel we shall have occasion to give proofs of its being so, at once melancholy and ridiculous. In this way some booksellers speculated, with the quackery of the trade, on the national vanity, by professing to print by subscription the Italian Classics. To swell their edition they made them amount to half a thousand volumes; yet while they published the opera omnia of versifiers hardly worthy to be so called, such was the prejudice against Tasso's lyric poetry that they published nothing more of it than extracts, and even those ill chosen. It is not therefore astonishing that Mr. Mathias has given his countrymen the odes of Guidi and Filicaja as the most sublime models of poetry in the Italian language. It is said, too, that he has admirably imitated their Italian Pindaric Odes. We believe that Guidi and Filicaja, while they would exalt their strains to heaven, do not really mount so high; these aspiring gentlemen often find themselves enveloped among cold, dark, and humid clouds, where nevertheless they attract a blind admiration. It would be absurd to deny that Mr. Mathias has carried his imitation in this respect to the extreme of perfection-harmony rolls through his Italian verses and Guidian bombast like thunder among the clouds, while the few of his phrases which we are successful in comprehending may be compared to flashes of lightning that only serve to make the night thicker and more awful Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inaneis. a celebrity not to be scoffed at. The short pieces of Tasso are the more interesting, inasmuch as they are the sudden conceptions of a man formed by nature to think too deeply, and condemned by fortune for a long period to a solitude, where he could pour out his bursting feelings no other way but in writing. In spite of the disorder with which his pieces are printed, their different tones of character are so distinguishable, as to indicate, without the necessity of dates, the various epochs when they were penned. His lines describe the state of his mind in the different stages of his life. The poetry which he wrote in his youth is nearly all on the subject of love. His verses are addressed to many different ladies, and it appears from his gallantry with all, that he had not then felt a real passion for any. Tasso was one of those men, whose life was known even in the minutest details, partly from the frankness and imprudence of his character, and partly from the celebrity which on every account was attached to him. Friends and enemies were equally interested in observing and describing his movements. Thus two centuries after his death we have his biography written with such exactness that it appears a journal of his actions, opinions, and most secret thoughts. Nevertheless, we do not find there any notice of loose morals, nor of the multitude of cruel enemies, hypocrites, and calumniators, who attacked his reputation, both as an author and as a man, none of whom dared to cast on him the imputation of libertinism. His fugitive pieces however shew, that in professing to treat love in the manner of Petrarch he felt it like Ovid, and sometimes he expressed himself like Anacreon; but he is uniformly more delicate than either. The following short song will serve as an exquisite model of its kind. Non sono in queste rive Fiori così vermigli, Come le labbra della donna mia : Nè il suon dell' aure estive, Tra fonti e rose e gigli, Fan del suo canto più dolce armonia, Canto, che m'ardi e piaci, T'interrompano solo i nostri baci. "There is not to be found in the garden a flower as ruby-coloured as the lips of my love; nor do the mingled sounds of the wind rustling among the trees, the melody of the birds, or the murmurs of the fountain, come over my soul with such sweet harmony as the song of my love-O sweet song! may it never be interrupted except by our kisses!" Many pieces of this kind, although not absolutely copies, are imitations of the Greek and Latin writers. Tasso has sometimes made a too scrupulous acknowledgment of his study of their beauties to transplant them into his poems. But his language is always of his own creation, new and yet correct, full of sweetness and of majesty, of sublimity and of perspicuity. The following stanzas, the ideas of which may be found in every page of Horace, acquire from the style of Tasso new life and a fresh claim to originality— Odi, Filli, che tuona! odi, che in gelo Il vapor di là su converso piove! Ma che curar dobbiam, che faccia Giove? Godiamo amando, e un dolce ardente zelo Ben folle ed a se stesso empio è colui, Pera il mondo e rovini; a me non cale, Se non di quel, che più piace e diletta, "Hark, Phyllis, to the thunder in the skies mid the darkness of the night, and the clouds condensed in hail falling against the flowers! But what matters it to us what Jupiter does? Whilst we are joyful on earth, let him be angry in his heavens. "Let love be our happiness; let his smiles and his ardour enable us to rejoice even amid the darkness and the tempest of the night; let the vulgar be afraid of the thunder, which will fall wherever chance may carry it. "How mad, how cruel against himself is the man who never ceases from hopes and fears, and thus provokes them to make him an inconsolable wretch. "While I enjoy life, what need I care for the impending ruin and destruction of the world? Am I not born to be destroyed? I shall become dust-the very dust which I was before my birth." This piece is followed by a recantation, which also begins, Odi, Filli, che tuona! The sentiments in this are more religious, but the poetry is not equally attractive. His chef-d'œuvre among his amorous poetry is an ode, the length of which prevents our giving it here. It is addressed to a fille de chambre whom he flattered, and with whom he professed himself in love, that he might, by her intercession with her mistress, obtain his suit Io gli occhi a te rivolto, E nel tuo vezzosetto e lieto viso Dolcemente m' affiso; Bruna sei tu, ma bella, Qual vergine viola ; e del tuo vago Che non disdegno signoria d' ancella. "While the heavenly beauty of thy lady dazzles my sight, I turn myself to gaze on the smiles and graces of thy face; there my eyes and my heart find a sweet welcome. Thou art brown, but such is the hue and charms of a virgin violet, and such is my delight when wooing you, that I do not disdain to be under the command of a servant." Of the character and tendency of this ode, the reader can form an idea from the few lines composing the last stanza. Vanne occulta, canzone, Nata d'amore e di pietoso zelo, A quella bella man, che con tant' arte L' altrui chiome comparte. Di che l'asconda fra le mamme e il velo "Now, my song, go secretly to those hands, the skill of which adds beauty to the most beautiful tresses-tell her to place thee between her veil and her bosom; to secure thee from being seen by the severe eyes of men and gods." After these juvenile effusions we must class the pieces written under the influence of love. In these there is every where seen the extreme ardour of a hopeless passion, mingled with a species of awe towards the person of the object. There is not one expression to be met with in them that can raise a blush; at the same time his efforts to exalt and justify his love by Platonic opinions lead him into the double fault of appearing too refined as a lover and too servile an imitator of Petrarch. But there are passages dictated by that real passion which is always the most eloquent inspirer of genius; and in these Tasso is also a poet, and as original as Petrarch. Ben veggio avvinta al lido ornata nave, Eil nocchier, che m' alletta, e il mar, che giace Ma il vento e Amore e il mar fede non ave; Per notturno seren già sciolse audace, Veggio trofei del mar, rotte le vele, Tronche le sarte, e biancheggiar l' arene D'ossa insepolte, e intorno errar gli spiriti. "I see on the shore the ship pompously decorated-the pilot invites me; the ocean, in all its magnificent beauty, is unruffled by the storm, its surface only rippled by a gentle breeze. But there is no faith in the winds, in the waves, or in love. How many, allured by these promising appearances, sailed under the auspices of a serene night. Behold, the sails are rent, the rigging broken, and the wreck strewn on the waves, a trophy of the sea, whilst the shores are whitened by unburied bones, and I see their ghosts wander without rest." With the love pieces of Tasso are mingled those which he composed in his character of poet laureat to the different patrons who received him at their courts. There is not one of these panegyrics that does not contain lines and sometimes stanzas worthy of him; but, perhaps, there is not one that can be mentioned, as a whole, meriting preservation. His fortune gained by them as little as his poetical reputation. His patrons, judging these flatteries dictated by fear, perceived the feebleness of the man, and were the more bold in punishing his faults and imprudences as crimes. Historians will be ever embarrassed to explain the reasons of Tasso's imprisonment. It is involved in the same obscurity as the exile of Ovid. Both were among those thunderstrokes that Despotism suddenly darts forth. In crushing their victims, they terrified them, and reduced spectators to silence. There are incidents in courts that, although known to many persons, remain in eternal oblivion. Contemporaries dare not reveal, and posterity can only divine them. It was moreover the interest of the House of Este that the misfortunes of Tasso should be attributed to his bodily complaints and his tendency to insanity; and some writers exhort us gravely to thank the Duke Alphonso for placing Tasso in a place of security, and |