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Man, Thou hast no cause-he shall not harm thee Which made thee wretched!

-but

His sight may shock thine old limbs into palsy.
I say to thee--retire!

Abbot.

And I reply

Never-till I have battled with this fiend:-
What doth he here?

Man,

Man.
Thou false fiend, thou liest!
My life is in its last hour,-that I know,
Nor would redeem a moment of that hour;
I do not combat against death, but thee
And thy surrounding angels; my past power
Was purchased by no compact with thy crew,

Why-ay-what doth he here- But by superior science-penance-daring

I did not send for him, he is unbidden.

And length of watching-strength of mind—and skill

Abbot. Alas! lost mortal! what with guests like In knowledge of our fathers--when the earth

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Abbot. What art thou, unknown being? answer!—
speak!

Sp. The genius of this mortal.-Come! 'tis time.
Man. I am prepared for all things, but deny
The power which summons me. Who sent thee here?
Spirit. Thou 'lt know anon-Come! come!
Man.
I have commanded
Things of an essence greater far than thine,
And striven with thy masters. Get thee hence!

Spirit. Mortal! thine hour is come-Away! I say.
Man. I knew, and know my hour is come, but not
To render up my soul to such as thee:
Away! I'll die as I have lived-alone.

Spirit. Then I must summon up my brethren.-
Rise!
[Other Spirits rise up.
Abbot. Avaunt! ye evil ones!-Avaunt! I say,-
Ye have no power where piety hath power,
And I do charge ye in the name――

Old man!

Spirit.
We know ourselves, our mission, and thine order;
Waste not thy holy words on idle uses,

It were in vain: this man is forfeited.
Once more I summon him-Away! away!

Man. I do defy ye,-though I feel my soul
Is ebbing from me, yet I do defy ye;
Nor will I hence, while I have earthly breath
To breathe my scorn upon ye-earthly strength
To wrestle, though with spirits; what ye take
Shall be ta'en limb by limb.

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Saw men and spirits walking side by side,
And gave ye no supremacy: I stand
Upon my strength-I do defy-deny-
Spurn back, and scorn ye!—
Spirit.

Have made thee--
Man.

But thy many crimes

What are they to such as thee?
Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes,
And greater criminals?-Back to thy hell!
Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
The mind, which is immortal, makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts-
Is its own origin of ill and end—

And its own place and time-its innate sense,
When stripp'd of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without;
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt

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Cold-cold-even to the heart-
But yet one prayer-Alas! how fares it with thee?
Man. Old man! 'tis not so diflicult to die. (1)
[MANFRED expires.
Abbot. He's gone-his soul hath ta'en its earthless

flight

Whither? I dread to think-but he is gone. (2)

struck with it: but it was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however, and that of Faustus are very similar."

The following is the extract from Goethe's Kunst und Altherthum (i. e. Art and Antiquity) which the above letter

enclosed:

(2) in June, 1820, Lord Byron thus writes to his publisher:-" Enclosed is something which will interest you; to wit, the opinion of the greatest man in Germany - perhaps in Europe-upon one of the great men of your advertisements (all famous hands,' as Jacob Tonson used to say of bis raggamuffins)-in short, a critique of Goethe's upon Manfred. There is the original, an English translation, aud an Italian one: keep them all in your archives; for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, whether favourable or not, are always interesting--and this is more so, as favourable. His Faust I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much, only the alterations he has made, but their degree of re

"Byron's tragedy, Manfred, was to me a wonderful phenomenon, and one that closely touched me. This singularly intellectual poet has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them remains the same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot enough admire his genius. The whole is in this way so completely formed anew, that it would be an interesting task for the critic to point out, not

semblance with, or dissimilarity to, the original: in the course of which, I cannot deny, that the gloomy heat of an unbounded and exuberant despair becomes at last oppres sive to us. Yet is the dissatisfaction we feel always connected with esteem and admiration.

"We find thus, in this tragedy, the quintessence of the most astonishing talent, born to be its own tormentor. The character of Lord Byron's life and poetry hardly permits a just and equitable appreciation. He has often enough confessed what it is that torments him. He has repeatedly portrayed it; and scarcely any one feels compassion for this intolerable suffering, over which he is ever laboriously ruminating. There are, properly speaking, two females whose phantoms for ever haunt him, and which, in this piece also, perform principal parts-one under the name of Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and merely a voice. Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the former, the following is related:-When a bold and enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one on whom any suspicion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, and these spirits haunted him all his life after.

"This romantic incident is rendered highly probable by innumerable allusions to it in his poems. As, for instance, when, turning his sad contemplations inwards, he applies to himself the fatal history of the king of Sparta. It is as follows:-Pausanias, a Lacedæmonian general, acquires glory by the important victory at Platæa, but afterwards forfeits the confidence of his countrymen through his ar rogance, obstinacy, and secret intrigues with the enemies of his country. This man draws upon himself the heavy guilt of innocent blood, which attends him to his end; for, while commanding the fleet of the allied Greeks, in the Black Sea, he is inflamed with a violent passion for a Byzantine maiden. After long resistance, he at length obtains her from her parents, and she is to be delivered up to him at night. She modestly desires the servant to put out the lamp, and, while groping her way in the dark, she overturns it. Pausanias is awakened from his sleep-apprehensive of an attack from murderers, he seizes his sword, and destroys his mistress. The horrid sight never leaves him. Her shade pursues him unceasingly, and he implores for aid in vain from the gods and the exorcising priests.

"That poet must have a lacerated heart who selects such a scene from antiquity, appropriates it to himself, and burdens his tragic image with it. The following soliloquy, which is overladen with gloom and a weariness of life, is, by this remark, rendered intelligible. We recommend it as an exercise to all friends of declamation. Hamlet's soliloquy appears improved upon here."-Goethe here subjoins Manfred's soliloquy, beginuing "We are the fools of time and terror," in which the allusion to Pausanias occurs.

The reader will not be sorry to pass from this German criticism to that of the Edinburgh Review on Manfred:"This is, undoubtedly, a work of great genius and origi nality. Its worst fault, perhaps, is that it fatigues and overawes us by the uniformity of its terror and solemnity. Another is the painful and offensive nature of the circumstance on which its distress is ultimately founded. The lyrical songs of the Spirits are too long, and not all excellent. There is something of pedantry in them now and then; and even Manfred deals in classical allusions a little too much. If we were to consider it as a proper drama, or even as a finished poem, we should be obliged to add, that it is far too indistinct and unsatisfactory. But this we take to be according to the design and conception of the author. He contemplated but a dim and magnificent

"The grave confidence with which the venerable critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real persons and events, making no dif ficulty even of a double murder at Florence to furnish grounds for his theory, affords an amusing instance of the disposition so prevalent throughout Europe, to picture Byron as a man of marvels and mysteries, as well in his life as his poetry. To these exaggerated or wholly false notions of him, the numerous fictions palmed upon the world of his romantic tours and wonderful adventures, in places he never saw, and with persons that never existed, have, no doubt, considerably contributed; and the consequence is, so utterly out of truth and nature are the representations of his life and character long current upon the Continent, that it may be questioned whether the real flesh and blood hero of these pages,-the social, practicalminded, and, with all his faults and eccentricities, English Lord Byron, may not, to the over-exalted imaginations of most of his foreign admirers, appear but an ordinary, unromantic, and prosaic personage." "-Moore.-L. E,

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sketch of a subject which did not admit of more accurate drawing or more brilliant colouring. Its obscurity is a part of its grandeur; and the darkness that rests upon it, and the smoky distance in which it is lost, are all devices to increase its majesty, to stimulate our curiosity, and to impress us with deeper awe.-It is suggested, in an ingenious paper in a late number of the Edinburgh Magazine, that the general conception of this piece, and much of what is excellent in the manner of its execution, have been borrowed from The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, of Marlow; and a variety of passages are quoted, which the author con. siders as similar, and, in many respects, superior to others in the poem before us. We cannot agree in the general terms of the conclusion; but there is no doubt a certain resemblance, both in some of the topies that are suggested, and in the cast of the diction in which they are expressed. Thus, to induce Faustus to persist in his unlawful studies, he is told that the Spirits of the Elements will serve him,— Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, Shadowing more beauty in their ayrie browes,

Than have the white breasts of the Queene of Love.'

And again, when the amorous sorcerer commands Helen of
Troy to revive again to be his paramour, he addresses her,
on her first appearance, in these rapturous lines-
Was this the face that launcht a thousand ships,
And burn'd the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen! make me immortal with a kiss,
Her lips suck forth my soule-see where it flies.
Come, Helen, come give me my soule againe,
Here will I dwell, for heaven is on that lip,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

O! thou art fairer than the evening ayre,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand starres;
More lovely than the monarch of the skyes,
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms!'

The catastrophe, too, is bewailed in verses of great elegance and classical beauty

'Cut is the branch that might have growne full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone!-regard his hellish fall,
Whose findful torture may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things!"

But these and many other smooth and fanciful verses in this curious old drama prove nothing, we think, against the originality of Manfred; for there is nothing to be found there of the pride, the abstraction, and the heart-rooted misery in which that originality consists. Faustus is a vulgar sorcerer, tempted to sell his soul to the devil for the ordinary price of sensual pleasure, and earthly power and glory; and who shrinks and shudders in agony when the forfeit comes to be exacted. The style, too, of Marlow, though elegant and scholar-like, is weak and childish, compared with the depth and force of much of Lord Byron; and the disgusting buffoonery and low farce of which his piece is principally made up place it more in contrast, than in any terms of comparison, with that of his noble successor. In the tone and pitch of the composition, as well as in the character of the diction in the more solemn parts, Manfred reminds us much more of the Prometheus of Aschylus, than of any more modern performance. The tremendous solitude of the principal person-the supernatural beings with whom alone he holds communion-the guilt the firmness-the misery-are all points of 'resemblance, to which the grandeur of the poetic imagery only gives a more striking effect. The chief differences are, that the subject of the Greek poet was sanctified and exalted by the established belief of his country, and that his terrors are nowhere tempered with the sweetness which breathes from so many passages of his English rival." Jeffrey.-L. E.

On reading this, Lord Byron wrote from Venice." Jeffrey is very kind about Manfred, and defends its originality, which I did not know that any body had attacked. As to the gerias of it, they may be found in the Journal which I sent to Mrs. Leigh, shortly before I left Switzerland. I have the whole scene of Manfred before me, as if it was but yesterday, and could point it out, spot by spot, torrent and all."-L. E.

§ "Of the Prometheus of Eschylus I was passionately fond as a boy (it was one of the Greek plays we read thrice a-year at Harrow); indeed, that and the Medea were the only ones, except the Seven he fore Thebes, which ever much pleased me. The Prometheus, if not exactly in my plan, has always been so much in my head, that I can easily conceive its influence over all or any thing that I have written; but I deny Marlow and his progeny, and beg that you will do the same."-B. Letters, 1817.-L. E.

The Lament of Tasso.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Ar Ferrara, in the Library, are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gerusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from. Titian to Ariosto, and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the latter. But, as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the cotemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anna attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto -at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the cell itself, inviting, unnecessarily, the wonder and

(1) The original MS. of this poem is dated, "The Apennines, April 20, 1817." It was written in consequence of Lord Byron having visited Ferrara, for a single day, on his way to Florence. In a letter from Rome, he says, "The Lament of Tasso, which I sent from Florence, has, I trust, arrived. I look upon it as a These be good rhymes as Pope's papa said to him when he was a boy."

"In a moment of dissatisfaction with himself, or during some melancholy mood, when his soul felt the worthlessness of fame and glory, Lord Byron told the world that his Muse should, for a long season, shroud herself in solitude; and every true lover of genius lamented that her lofty music was to cease. But there was a tide in his spirit obeying the laws of its nature, and not to be controlled by any human will. When he said that he was to be silent, he looked, perhaps, into the inner regions of his soul, and saw there a dim, hard, and cheerless waste, like the sand of the sea-shore; but the ebbed waves of passion in due course returned, and the scene was restored to its former beauty and magnificence,-its foam, its splendours, and its thunder. The mind of a mighty poet cannot submit even to chains of its own imposing: when it feels most enslaved, even then, perhaps, is it about to become most free; and one sudden flash may raise it from the darkness of its despondency up to the pure air of untroubled confidence. It required, therefore, but small knowledge of human nature, to assure ourselves that the obligation under which Lord Byron had laid himself could not bind, and that the potent spirit within him would laugh to scorn whatever dared to curb the frenzy of its own inspirations.

"It was not long, therefore, till he again came forth in his perfect strength, and exercised that dominion over our spirits which is truly a power too noble to be possessed without being wielded. Though all his heroes are of one family, yet are they a noble band of brothers, whose countenances and whose souls are strongly distinguished by peculiar characteristics. Each personage, as he advances before us, reminds us of some other being, whose looks, thoughts, words, and deeds had troubled us by their wild and perturbed grandeur. But though all the same, yet are they all strangely different. We hail each successive existence with a profounder sympathy; and we are lost in wonder, in fear, and in sorrow, at the infinitely-varied struggles, the endless and agonising modifications of the human passions, as they drive along through every gate and avenue of the soul, darkening or brightening, elevating or laying prostrate.

"From such agitating and terrific pictures, it is delightful to turn to those compositions in which Lord Byron has allowed his soul to sink down into gentler and more ordinary feelings. Many beautiful and pathetic strains have flowed from his heart, of which the tenderness is as touching as the grandeur of his nobler works is agitating and sublime. To those, indeed, who looked deeply into his poetry, there never was at any time a want of pathos; but it was a pathos o subduing and so profound, that even the poet himself seemed afraid of being delivered up unto it; nay, he seemed ashamed of being overcome by emotions, which the gloomy

the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed, and depopulated: the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon. (1)

THE LAMENT OF TASSO.

I.

LONG years!-It tries the thrilling frame to bear,
And eagle-spirit of a Child of Song-
Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
Imputed madness, prison'd solitude, (2)

pride of his intellect often vainly strove to scorn; and he dashed the weakness from his heart, and the tear from his eyes, like a man suddenly assailed by feelings which he wished to hide, and which, though true to his natúre, were inconsistent with the character which that mysterious nature had been forced, as in self-defence, to assume.

"But there is one poem in which he has almost wholly laid aside all remembrance of the darker and stormier passions; in which the tone of his spirit and his voice at once is changed, and where he who seemed to care only for agonies, and remorse, and despair, and death, and insanity, in all their most appalling forms, shows that he has a heart that can feed on the purest sympathies of our nature, and deliver itself up to the sorrows, the sadness, and the melancholy of humbler souls. The Prisoner of Chillon is a poem over which Infancy has shed its first mysterious tears for sorrows so alien to its own happy innocence,-over which the gentle, pure, and pious soul of Woman has brooded with ineffable, and yearning, and bursting tenderness of affection, and over which old Age, almost loosened from this world, has bowed his hoary head in delighted approbation of that fraternal love, whose beauty and simplicity fling a radiance over the earth he is about to leave, and exhibit our fallen nature in near approximation to the glories of its ultimate destiny. The Lament possesses much of the tenderness and pathos of the Prisoner of Chillon. Lord Byron has not delivered himself unto any one wild and fearful vision of the imprisoned Tasso, he has not dared to allow himself to rush forward with headlong passion into the horrors of his dungeon, and to describe, as he could fearfully have done, the conflict and agony of his uttermost despair, but he shows us the poet sitting in his cell, and singing there-a low, melancholy, wailing lament, sometimes, indeed, bordering on utter wretchedness, but oftener partaking of a settled grief, occasionally subdued into mournful resignation, cheered by delightful remembrances, and elevated by the confident hope of an immortal fame. His is the gathered grief of many years, over which his soul has brooded, till she has in some measure lost the power of misery; and this soliloquy is one which we can believe le might have uttered to himself any morning, or noon, or night of his solitude, as he seemed to be half communing with own heart, and half addressing the ear of that human nature from which he was shut out, but of which he felt the continual and abiding presence within his imagination. ”— Wilson.-L. E.

(2) Tasso's biographer, the Abate Serassi, has left it without doubt, that the first cause of the poet's punishment was his desire to be occasionally, or altogether, free from his servitude at the court of Alfonso. In 1575, Tasso resolved to visit Rome, and enjoy the indulgence of the jubilee; and this error," says the Abate, "increasing the suspicion already entertained, that he was in search of another service, was the origin of his misfortunes. On his return to Ferrara, the Duke refused to admit him to an audience, and he was repulsed from the houses of all the dependants of the court; and not one of the promises which the Cardinal Albano had obtained for him were carried into

And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;
And bare, at once, Captivity display'd
Stands scoffing through the never-open'd gate,
Which nothing through its bars admits, save day,
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone
Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave

Which is my lair, and it may be-my grave. (1)
All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon wall,
And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall;
And revell'd among men and things divine,
And pour'd my spirit over Palestine,
In honour of the sacred war for Him,
The God who was on earth and is in heaven,
For he hath strengthen'd me in heart and limb.
That through this sufferance I might be forgiven,
I have employ'd my penance to record

How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored.

II.

But this is o'er-my pleasant task is done;—(2)
My long-sustaining friend of many years!
If I do blot thy final page with tears,
Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me none.
But thou, my young creation! my soul's child!
Which ever playing round me came and smiled,
And woo'd me from myself with thy sweet sight,
Thou too art gone-and so is my delight:
And therefore do I weep and inly bleed

effect. Then it was that Tasso-after having suffered these hardships for some time, seeing himself constantly discountenanced by the Duke and the Princesses, abandoned by his friends, and derided by his enemies-could no longer contain himself within the bounds of moderation, but, giving vent to his choler, publicly broke forth into the most injurious expressions imaginable, both against the Duke and all the house of Este, cursing his past service, and retracting all the praises he had ever given in his verses to those princes, or to any individual connected with them, declaring that they were all a gang of poltroons, ingrates, and scoundrels (poltroni, ingrati, e ribaldi). For this of fence he was arrested, conducted to the hospital of St. Anna, and confined in a solitary cell as a madman." Serassi, Vita del Tasso.-L. E.

(1) "In the hospital of St. Anna, at Ferrara, they show a cell, over the door of which is the following inscription: - Rispettate, O posteri, la celebrità di questa stanza, dove Torquato Tasso, infermo più di tristezza che delirio, ditenuto dimorò anni vii. mesi ii., scrisse verse e prose, e fù rimesso in libertà ad instanza della città di Bergamo, nel giorno vi. Luglio, 1588.'--The dungeon is below the grounddoor of the hospital, and the light penetrates through its grated window from a small yard, which seems to have been common to other cells. It is nine paces long, between five and six wide, and about seven feet high. The bedstead, so they tell, has been carried off piecemeal, and the door half cut away by the devotion of those whom the verse and prose' of the prisoner have brought to Ferrara, was confined in this room from the middle of March 1579 to December 1580, when he was removed to a contiguous apartment much larger, in which, to use his own expressions, he could philosophise and walk about.' The inscription is incorrect as to the immediate cause of his enlargement, which was promised to the city of Bergamo, but

The poet

With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
Thou too art ended-what is left me now?
For I have anguish yet to bear-and how?
I know not that-but in the innate force
Of my own spirit shall be found resource.
I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,

Nor cause for such: they call'd me mad-and why?
O Leonora! wilt not thou reply? (3)

I was indeed delirious in my heart
To lift my love so lofty as thou art;
But still my frenzy was not of the mind;
I knew my fault, and feel my punishment
Not less because I suffer it unbent.
That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind,
Hath been the sin which shuts me from mankind:
But let them go, or torture as they will,
My heart can multiply thine image still;
Successful love may sate itself away,

The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate
To have all feeling save the one decay,
And every passion into one dilate,
As rapid rivers into ocean pour;

But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore.

III.

Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry
Of minds and bodies in captivity.
And hark! the lash and the increasing howl,
And the half-inarticulate blasphemy!
There be some here with worse than frenzy foul,
Some who do still goad on the o'er-labour'd mind,
And dim the little light that's left behind
With needless torture, as their tyrant will
Is wound up to the lust of doing ill: (4)
With these and with their victims am I class'd,
'Mid sounds and sights like these long years have

pass'd;

'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close: So let it be--for then I shall repose.

was carried into effect at the intercession of Don Vincenzo Gonzago, Prince of Mantua." Hobhouse.-L. E.

(2) The opening lines bring the poet before us at once, as if the door of the dungeon was thrown open. From this bitter complaint, how nobly the unconquered bard rises into calm, and serene, and dignified exultation over the beauty of 'that young creation, his soul's child,' the Gerusalemme Liberata. The exultation of conscious genius then dies away, and we behold him, 'bound between distraction and disease,' no longer in an inspired mood, but sunk into the lowest prostration of human misery. There is something terrible in this transition from divine rapture to degraded agony." Wilson.-L. E.

(3) In a letter to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, shortly after Lis confinement, Tasso exclaims,-"Ah, wretched me! I had designed to write, besides two epic poems of most noble argument, four tragedies, of which I had formed the plan. I had schemed, too, many works in prose, on subjects the most lofty, and most useful to human life; 1 had designed to write philosophy with eloquence, in such a manner that there might remain of me an eternal memory in the world. Alas! I had expected to close my life with glory and renown; but now, oppressed by the burden of so many calamities, I have lost every prospect of reputation and of honour, The fear of perpetual imprisonment increases my melancholy; the indignities which I suffer augment it; and the squalor of my heard, my hair, and habit, the sordidness and filth, exceedingly annoy me. Sure am I that, if sur, who so little has corresponded to my attachment-if she saw me in such a state, and in such affliction-she would have some compassion on me." Opere, t. x. p. 387.-L. E.

(4) For nearly the first year of his confinement Tasso endured all the horrors of a solitary cell, and was under the care of a gaoler whose chief virtue, although he was a peet and a man of letters, was a cruel obedience to the

IV.

I have been patient, let me be so yet,

I had forgotten half I would forget,

But it revives-Oh! would it were my lot
To be forgetful as I am forgot!—

Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell
In this vast lazar-house of many woes?
Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind;
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell-
For we are crowded in our solitudes-
Many, but each divided by the wal!,
Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;-
While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call-
None! save that one, the veriest wretch of all, (1)
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here?
Who have debased me in the minds of men,
Debarring me the usage of my own,
Blighting my life in best of its career,
Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear?
Would I not pay them back these pangs again,
And teach them inward Sorrow's stifled groan?
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our stoical success?
No!-still too proud to be vindictive-I
Have pardon'd princes' insults, and would die.
Yes, sister of my sovereign! for thy sake
I weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates-but I can not detest; (2)
Thou pitiest not-but I can not forsake.

V.

Look on a love which knows not to despair, (3)
But all unquench'd is still my better part,
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart
As dwells the gather'd lightning in its cloud,
Encompass'd with its dark and rolling shroud,
Till struck,-forth flies the all-ethereal dart!
And thus, at the collision of thy name,
The vivid thought stiil flashes through my frame,
And for a moment all things as they were
Flit by me; they are gone-I am the same.

commands of his prince. His name was Agostino Mosti. Tasso says of him, in a letter to his sister, ed usa meco ogni sorte di rigore ed inumanità.' Hobhouse.-L. E.

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(1) This fearful picture is finely contrasted with that which Tasso draws of himself in youth, when nature and meditation were forming his wild, romantic, and impassioned genius. Indeed, the great excellence of the Lament consists in the ebbing and flowing of the noble prisoner's soul;-his feelings often come suddenly from afar off, --sometimes gentle airs are breathing, and then all at once arise the storins and tempest, -the gloom, though black as night while it endures, gives way to frequent bursts of radiance, and when the wild strain is closed, our pity and commiseration are blended with a sustaining and elevating sense of the grandeur and majesty of his character." Wilson.-L. E.

(2) Not long after his imprisonment, Tasso appealed to the mercy of Aifonso, in a canzone of great beauty, couched in terms so respectful and pathetic, as must have moved, it might be thought, the severest bosom to relent. The heart of Alfonso was, however, impregnable to the appea!; and Tasso, in another ode to the princesses, whose pity he invoked in the name of their own mother, who had herself known, if not the like horrors, the like solitude of imprisonment, and bitterness of soul. "Considered merely as

And yet my love without ambition grew;
I knew thy state, my station, and I knew
A princess was no love-mate for a bard;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it was
Sufficient to itself, its own reward;
And if my eyes reveal'd it, they, alas!
Were punish'd by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
Worshipp'd at holy distance, and around
Hallow'd and meekly kiss'd the saintly ground;
Not for thou wert a princess, but that Love
Had robed thee with a glory, and array'd
Thy lineaments in beauty that dismay'd-
Oh! not dismay'd-but awed, like one above;
And in that sweet severity there was

A something which all softness did surpass--
I know not how-thy genius master'd mine-
My star stood still before thee:-if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;

But thou art dearest still, and I should be
Fit for this cell, which wrongs me-but for thee.
The very love which lock'd me to my chain
Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain. (4)

VI.

It is no marvel-from my very birth

My soul was drunk with love,-which did pervade And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;

Of objects all inanimate I made

Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours, (5)
Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe,
And that the only lesson was a blow;-
And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again
The visions which arise without a sleep.

poems," says Black, "these canzoni are extremely beautiful; but, if we contemplate them as the productions of a mind diseased, they form important documents in the history of man." Life of Tasso, vol. ii. p. 408.-L. E.

(3) "As to the indifference which the Princess is said to have exhibited for the misfortunes of Tasso, and the little effort she made to obtain his liberty, this is one of the negative arguments founded on an hypothesis, that may be easily destroyed by a thousand others equally plausible. Was not

the Princess anxious to avoid her own ruin? In taking too warm an interest for the poet, did she not risk destroying herself, without saving him?" Foscolo.-I. E.

(4) "Tasso's profound and unconquerable love for Leonora, sustaining itself without hope throughout years of darkness and solitude, breathes a moral dignity over all his sentiments, and we feel the strength and power of his noble spirit in the un-upbraiding devotedness of his passion." Wilson.-L. E.

(5) It has been remarked by an anonymous author of Memoirs of Lord Byron, that "this is so far from being in character, that it is the very reverse; for, whether Tasso was in his senses or not, if his love was sincere he would have made the object of his affection the sole theme of his meditation, instead of generalizing his passion, and talking about the original sympathies of his nature.”—P. E.

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