what is artificial and
conceited. Hence came involved octaves like the following (vi. 109):

Siccome cerva, ch'assetata il passo
Mova a cercar d'acque lucenti e vive,
Ove un bel fonte distillar da un sasso
O vide un fiume tra frondose rive,
Se incontra i cani allor che il corpo lasso
Ristorar crede all'onde, all'ombre estive,
Volge indietro fuggendo, e la paura
La stanchezza obbliar face e l'arsura.

The image is beautiful; but the diction is elaborately intricate,
rhetorically indistinct. We find the same stylistic involution in these
lines (xii. 6):

Ma s'egli avverra pur che mia ventura
Nel mio ritorno mi rinchiuda il passo,
D'uom che in amor m'e padre a te la cura
E delle fide mie donzelle io lasso.

The limpid well of native utterance is troubled at its source by
scholastic artifices in these as in so many other passages of Tasso's
masterpiece. Nor was he yet emancipated from the weakness of _Rinaldo_.
Trying to soar upon the borrowed plumes of pseudo-classical sublimity,
he often fell back wearied by this uncongenial effort into prose. Lame
endings to stanzas, sudden descents from highly-wrought to pedestrian
diction, are not uncommon in the _Gerusalemme_. The poet, diffident of
his own inspiration, sought inspiration from books. In the magnificence
of single lines again, the _Gerusalemme_ reminds us of _Rinaldo_. Tasso
gained dignity of rhythm by choosing Latin adjectives and adverbs with
pompous cadences. No versifier before his date had consciously employed
the sonorous music of such lines as the following:--

Foro, tentando inaccessibil via (ii. 29).

Ond' Amor l'arco inevitabil tende (iii. 24).

Questa muraglia impenetrabil fosse (iii. 51).

Furon vedute fiammeggiare insieme (v. 28).

Qual capitan ch'inespugnabil terra (v. 64).

Sotto l'inevitabile tua spada (xvi. 33).

Immense solitudini d'arena (xvii. I).

The last of these lines presents an impressive landscape in three
melodious words.

These verbal and stylistic criticisms are not meant to cast reproach on
Tasso as a poet. If they have any value, it is the light they throw upon
conditions under which the poet was constrained to work. Humanism and
the Catholic Revival reduced this greatest genius of his age to the
necessity of clothing religious sentiments in scholastic phraseology,
with the view of attaining to epic grandeur. But the Catholic Revival
was no