.--ED.]

[Footnote B: See the article on "The Sensibility of Racine" in "Literary
Miscellanies," (in the present volume) and that on "Parody," in
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 459.--ED.]

[Footnote C: Voltaire quietly said he should not have troubled himself to
visit him if he had been merely a private gentleman.--ED.]

The life of TASSO abounds with pictures of a complete exhaustion of this
kind. His contradictory critics had perplexed him with the most intricate
literary discussions, and either occasioned or increased a mental
alienation. In one of his letters, we find that he repents the composition
of his great poem, for although his own taste approved of that marvellous,
which still forms a noble part of its creation, yet he confesses that his
cold reasoning critics have decided that the history of his hero, Godfrey,
required another species of conduct. "Hence," cries the unhappy bard,
"doubts torment me; but for the past, and what is done, I know of no
remedy;" and he longs to precipitate the publication, that "he may be
delivered from misery and agony." He solemnly swears--"Did not the
circumstances of my situation compel me, I would not print it, even
perhaps during my life, I so much doubt of its success." Such was the
painful state of fear and doubt experienced by the author of the
"Jerusalem Delivered," when he gave it to the world; a state of suspense,
among the children of imagination, in which none are more liable to
participate than the true sensitive artist. We may now inspect the severe
correction of Tasso's muse, in the fac-simile of a page of his manuscripts
in Mr. Dibdin's late "Tour." She seems to have inflicted tortures on his
pen, surpassing even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page which,
thirty years ago, I gave of Pope's Homer.[A] At Florence may still be
viewed the many works begun and abandoned by the genius of MICHAEL ANGELO;
they are preserved inviolate--"so sacred is the terror of Michael Angelo's
genius!" exclaims Forsyth. These works are not always to be considered as
failures of the chisel; they appear rather to have been rejected for
coming short of the artist's first conceptions: yet, in a strain
of sublime poetry, he has preserved his sentiments on the force of
intellectual labour; he thought that there was nothing which the
imagination conceived, that could not be made visible in marble, if the
hand were made to obey the mind:--

Non ha l'ottimo artista alc