are the Isles of the Sirens, who allured Ulysses with
their magic song; away in the dim distance are the wonderful Doric
temples of Paestum, which go back to the mythical times of Jason and
the Argonauts. On the opposite shore is the tomb of Virgil, on the
threshold of the scenes which he loved to describe,--the Holy Land of
Paganism, the Phlegraean Fields, with the terrible Avernus and the Cave
of the Sibyl, and all the spots associated with the Pagan heaven and
hell; and in the near neighbourhood Baiae, with its awful memories of
Roman luxury and cruelty, and Puteoli, with its inspiring associations
of the Apostle Paul's visit, and the introduction of Christianity into
Italy. Meet nurse for any poetic child, the place of his birth was
peculiarly so for such a child as Tasso; and we can detect in the
subjects of his Muse in after years, the very themes which such a
region would naturally have suggested and inspired.

The age in which he was born was also eminently favourable for the
development of the poetic faculty. By the wonderful discoveries of the
starry Galileo, man's intellectual vision was infinitely extended, and
the great fundamental idea of modern astronomy--infinite space peopled
with worlds like our own--was for the first time realised. It was an
era of maritime enterprise; the world was circumnavigated, and new
ideas streamed in from each newly-visited region. It was
pre-eminently the period of art. Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael had
just passed away, but Michael Angelo, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul
Veronese were still living, freeing men's spirits by the productions
of their pencil from formal fancies and conventional fetters, and
sending them back to the fresh teaching of Nature. The art of printing
was giving a new birth to letters, and the reformation of religion a
new growth to human thought. A new power had descended into the
stagnant waters of European life, and imparted to them a wonderful
energy. Along with the revival of classical learning and the general
quickening of men's minds, there was blended in the South of Europe a
lingering love of romance and chivalry, and a strong religious
feeling, which had arisen out of the vigorous reaction of Roman
Catholicism. Italy was at this time the acknowledged parent both of
the poetry and the general literature of Europe; and the immortal
works of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto had formed an almost perfect
vernacular language in which the creations of geni