Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/263

Rh tragedy, Torrismondo, at Mantua in 1586; at Naples the exhortations of Manso's mother led him to compose his blank-verse poem on the Week of Creation (Il Mondo Creato), chiefly remarkable for its evident influence on the style and versification of Milton. The latter books, written in sickness, evince some languor, but no symptoms of disordered faculties appear, although the servility of the pseudo-religious sentiment painfully evinces how much ecclesiastical influences had enslaved him, and how he had fallen away from the free spirit of the Renaissance.

Another work of Tasso's decline, the reconstruction of the Jerusalem Delivered under the title of the Conquest of Jerusalem, although an error of judgment, yet rather indicates undue sensitiveness to criticism than insanity. Imperfect as the first editions had been, the Jerusalem had been received with enthusiasm, but had also excited much pedantic and some bigoted censure. The general result had been to convince Tasso that his poem was too romantic and not sufficiently epical; which, abstractedly considered, was true, but simply arose from the fact that his genius was rather romantic than epic. In endeavouring to bring his poem nearer Homer he led it away from Nature, and the beauties which he introduced bore no proportion to those which he retrenched. The new recension fell entirely flat, and is now almost unknown; although had the Jerusalem Delivered never been published, the Conquest would undoubtedly have gained Tasso a considerable name. It was dedicated to a new patron. Cardinal Cinthio Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII., and all allusions to the house of Este, for whose heritage the Pope, "hushed in grim repose," was patiently waiting, were