ced man, whose speech
Gave faithful transcript of a real scene.
Alas! the more I listen'd, still the more
I sank within myself: it seem'd my being
Would vanish like an echo of the hills,
Resolved to a mere sound--a word--a nothing.

"_Princess._--Poets and heroes for each other live,
Poets and heroes seek each other out,
And envy not each other: this thyself,
Few minutes past, did vividly portray.
True, it is glorious to perform the deed
That merits noble song; yet glorious too
With noble song the once accomplish'd deed
Through all the after-world to memorize."

When she continues to urge Tasso to make the friendship of Antonio, and
assures him that the return of the minister has only procured him a
friend the more, he answers:--

"_Tasso._--I hoped it once, I doubt it now.
Instructive were to me his intercourse,
Useful his counsel in a thousand ways:
This man possesses all in which I fail.
And yet--though at his birth flock'd every god,
To hang his cradle with some special gift--
The graces came not there, they stood aloof:
And he whom these sweet sisters visit not,
May possess much, may in bestowing be
Most bountiful, but never will a friend,
Or loved disciple, on his bosom rest."

The tendency of this scene is to lull Tasso into the belief that he is
beloved of the princess. Of course he is ardent to obey the latest
injunctions he has received from her, and when Antonio next makes his
appearance, he offers him immediately "his hand and heart." The
secretary of state receives such a sudden offer (as it might be expected
a secretary of state would do) with great coolness; he will wait till he
knows whether he can return the like offer of friendship. He discourses
on the excellence of moderation, and in a somewhat magisterial tone,
little justified by the relative intellectual position of the speakers.
Here, again, we have a true insight into the character of the man of
genius. He is modest--very--till you become too overbearing; he
exaggerates the superiority in practical wisdom of men who have mingled
extensively with the world, and so invites a tone of dictation; and yet
withal he has a sly consciousness, that this same superiority of the man
of the world consists much more in a certain fortunate limitation of
thought than in any peculiar extension. The wisdom of such a man has
passed through the mind of the poet, with this difference, that in his
mind there