me Liberata," and said, smiling, "Art in its calm is here."

You remember that I was then at Sorrento by the order of my physician.
Never shall I forget the soft autumn day when I sat amongst the lonely
rocklets to the left of the town,--the sea before me, with scarce
a ripple; my very heart steeped in the melodies of that poem, so
marvellous for a strength disguised in sweetness, and for a symmetry in
which each proportion blends into the other with the perfectness of a
Grecian statue. The whole place seemed to me filled with the presence of
the poet to whom it had given birth. Certainly the reading of that poem
formed an era in my existence: to this day I cannot acknowledge the
faults or weaknesses which your criticisms pointed out; I believe
because they are in unison with my own nature, which yearns for harmony,
and, finding that, rests contented. I shrink from violent contrasts, and
can discover nothing tame and insipid in a continuance of sweetness and
serenity. But it was not till after I had read "La Gerusalemme" again
and again, and then sat and brooded over it, that I recognized the main
charm of the poem in the religion which clings to it as the perfume
clings to a flower,--a religion sometimes melancholy, but never to me
sad. Hope always pervades it. Surely if, as you said, "Hope is twin-born
with art," it is because art at its highest blends itself unconsciously
with religion, and proclaims its affinity with hope by its faith in some
future good more perfect than it has realized in the past.

Be this as it may, it was in this poem so pre-eminently Christian that
I found the something which I missed and craved for in modern French
masterpieces; even yours,--a something spiritual, speaking to my own
soul, calling it forth; distinguishing it as an essence apart from mere
human reason; soothing, even when it excited; making earth nearer
to heaven. And when I ran on in this strain to you after my own wild
fashion, you took my head between your hands and kissed me, and said,
"Happy are those who believe! long may that happiness be thine!" Why did
I not feel in Dante the Christian charm that I felt in Tasso? Dante in
your eyes, as in those of most judges, is infinitely the greater
genius; but reflected on the dark stream of that genius the stars are so
troubled, the heaven so threatening.

Just as my year of holiday was expiring, I turned to English literature;
and Shakspeare, of course, was the first English poe