]

[Footnote 73: Canto vii. 3-11.]

That lyrical outcry, finding rhythmic utterance for tender sentiment,
which may be recognized as Tasso's chief addition to romantic poetry,
pierces like a song through many passages of mere narration. Rinaldo,
while carrying Clarice away upon Baiardo, with no chaste intention in
his heart, bids her thus dry her tears:[74]

Egli dice: Signora, onde vi viene
Si spietato martir, si grave affanno?
Perche le luci angeliche e serene
Ricopre della doglia oscuro panno?
Forse fia l'util vostro e 'l vostro bene
Quel ch'or vi sembra insupportabil danno,
Deh! per Dio, rasciugate il caldo pianto.
E l'atroce dolor temprate alquanto.

It is not that we do not find similar lyrical interbreathings in the
narrative of Ariosto. But Tasso developed the lyrism of the octave
stanza into something special, lulling the soul upon gentle waves of
rising and falling rhythm, foreshadowing the coming age of music in
cadences that are untranslateable except by vocal melody. In like
manner, the idyl, which had played a prominent part in Boiardo's and in
Ariosto's romance, detaches itself with a peculiar sweetness from the
course of Tasso's narrative. This appears in the story of Florindo,
which contains within itself the germ of the _Aminta_, the _Pastor Fido_
and the _Adone_.[75] Together with the bad taste of the artificial
pastoral, its preposterous costume (stanza 13), its luxury of tears
(stanza 23), we find the tyranny of kisses (stanzas 28, 52), the
yearning after the Golden Age (stanza 29), and all the other apparatus
of that operatic species. Tasso was the first poet to bathe Arcady in a
golden afternoon light of sensuously sentimental pathos. In his idyllic
as in his lyrical interbreathings, melody seems absolutely demanded to
interpret and complete the plangent rhythm of his dulcet numbers.
Emotion so far predominates over intelligence, so yearns to exhale
itself in sound and shun the laws of language, that we find already in
_Rinaldo_ Tasso's familiar _Non so che_ continually used to adumbrate
sentiments for which plain words are not indefinite enough.

[Footnote 74: Canto iv. 47.]

[Footnote 75: Canto v. 12-57.]

The _Rinaldo_ was a very remarkable production for a young man of
eighteen. It showed the poet in possession of his style and displayed
the specific faculties of his imagination. Nothing remained for Tasso
now but to perfect and develop