Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/269

Rh Thus (who could have believed it?) smouldering fires Of hidden orbs dissolved the frosty whereby That adamantine heart its core did cover, And the harsh foe becomes the tender lover.

Pale privet, roses red, and lilies white, Perennial blooming on that lovely shore, Blent with strange art, she wove in fetters light Yet close of clasp, and flung them softly o'er His neck and arms and feet; thus helpless quite She bound and held him fast, and sleeping bore Unto the prison of her car aerial, And carried in swift flight through realms ethereal."

Few of the great artificial epics of the world, those which have not been moulded out of songs and legends welling up spontaneously fronx the heart of the people, can sustain very strict criticism of their poetical economy, and the Jerusalem Delivered perhaps less than any other. The subject of the Crusades, indeed, is a very great one, too vast even to be embraced in a single poem; and the capture of Jerusalem, though of all its incidents incomparably the most fit for poetical treatment, is not of itself sufficiently extensive for an epic poem. It must consequently be enriched by episodes, which in Tasso's hands have the double fault of jarring with the spirit of the main action, and of obscuring its due predominance by their superior attractiveness. It might perhaps have been otherwise if Tasso had been cast in the mould of Milton or had lived in an austerer age. Italian poetry, however, was so saturated by the influence of Petrarch and Ariosto that any embellishments of the chief action must of necessity partake of the character of love and romance. The former class, however charming in themselves, inevitably depressed the character of an epic so largely depending upon them as the