h Armida, knew the path
to renown, and so did his poet. Tasso's epic, with all its faults, is a
noble production, and justly considered one of the poems of the world.
Each of those poems hit some one great point of universal attraction,
at least in their respective countries, and among the givers of fame in
others. Homer's poem is that of action; Dante's, of passion; Virgil's, of
judgment; Milton's, of religion; Spenser's, of poetry itself; Ariosto's,
of animal spirits (I do not mean as respects gaiety only, but in strength
and readiness of accord with the whole play of nature); Tasso looked
round with an ultra-sensitive temperament, and an ambition which required
encouragement, and his poem is that of tenderness. Every thing inclines
to this point in his circle, with the tremulousness of the needle. Love
is its all in all, even to the design of the religious war which is
to rescue the sepulchre of the God of Charity from the hands of the
unloving. His heroes are all in love, at least those on the right side;
his leader, Godfrey, notwithstanding his prudence, narrowly escapes the
passion, and is full of a loving consideration; his amazon, Clorinda,
inspires the truest passion, and dies taking her lover's hand; his
Erminia is all love for an enemy; his enchantress Armida falls from
pretended love into real, and forsakes her religion for its sake. An old
father (canto ix.) loses his five sons in battle, and dies on their
dead bodies of a wound which he has provoked on purpose. Tancred cannot
achieve the enterprise of the Enchanted Forest, because his dead mistress
seems to come out of one of the trees. Olindo thinks it happiness to be
martyred at the same stake with Sophronia. The reconciliation of Rinaldo
with his enchantress takes place within a few stanzas of the close of
the poem, as if contesting its interest with religion. The _Jerusalem
Delivered_, in short, is the favourite epic of the young: all the lovers
in Europe have loved it. The French have forgiven the author his conceits
for the sake of his gallantry: he is the poet of the gondoliers; and
Spenser, the most luxurious of his brethren, plundered his bowers of
bliss. Read Tasso's poem by this gentle light of his genius, and you pity
him twentyfold, and know not what excuse to find for his jailer.

The stories translated in the present volume, though including war and
magic, are all love-stories. They were not selected on that account. They
suggested themselves