ncapable of baseness, fixed on fair and worthy objects of
contemplation. Yet the personal nobility which distinguished him as a
thinker and a man, was not of the heroic type. He had nothing Homeric
in his inspiration, nothing of the warrior or the patriot in his nature.
His genius, when it pursued its bias, found instinctive utterance in
elegy and idyl, in meditative rhetoric and pastoral melody. In order to
assume the heroic strain, Tasso had recourse to scholarship, and gave
himself up blindly to the guidance of Latin poets. This was consistent
with the tendency of the Classical Revival; but since the subject to be
dignified by epic style was Christian and mediaeval, a discord between
matter and manner amounting almost to insincerity resulted. Some
examples will make the meaning of this criticism more apparent. When
Goffredo rejects the embassy of Atlete and Argante, he declares his firm
intention of delivering Jerusalem in spite of overwhelming perils. The
crusaders can but perish:

Noi morirem, ma non morremo inulti. (i. 86.)

This of course is a reminiscence of Dido's last words, and the
difference between the two situations creates a disagreeable
incongruity. The nod of Jove upon Olympus is translated to express the
fiat of the Almighty (xiii. 74); Gabriel is tricked out in the plumes
and colors of Mercury (i. 13-15); the very angels sinning round the
throne become 'dive sirene' (xiv. 9); the armory of heaven is described
in terms which reduce Michael's spear and the arrows of pestilence to
ordinary weapons (vii. 81); Hell is filled with harpies, centaurs,
hydras, pythons, the common lumber of classical Tartarus (iv. 5); the
angel sent to cure Goffredo's wound culls dittany on Ida (xi. 72); the
heralds, interposing between Tancredi and Argante, hold pacific scepters
and have naught of chivalry (vi. 51). It may be said that both Dante
before Tasso, and Milton after him, employed similar classical language
in dealing with Christian and mediaeval motives. But this will hardly
serve as an excuse; for Dante and Milton communicate so intense a
conviction of religious earnestness that their Latinisms, even though
incongruous, are recognized as the mere clothing of profoundly felt
ideas. The sublimity, the seriousness, the spiritual dignity is in their
thought, not in its expression; whereas Tasso too frequently leaves us
with the certainty that he has sought by ceremonious language to realize
more than he could gras