While the Italian school of amatory verse was flourishing in France, Spain, and England, almost to the extinction of originality in this style, the brightest light of Italian poesy had arisen, and was shining with a troubled splendour over that land of song. How swiftly at the thought does imagination shoot, “like a glancing star," over the wide expanse of sea and land, and through a long interval of sad and varied years! I am again standing within the porch of the church of San Onofrio, looking down upon the little slab in its dark corner, which covers the bones of TASSo.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LEONORA D'ESTE.

LEONORA D'ESTE, a princess of the proudest house in Europe, might have wedded an emperor, and have been forgotten. The idea, true or false, that she it was who broke the heart and frenzied the brain of Tasso, has glorified her to future ages; has given her a fame, something like that of the Greek of old, who bequeathed his name to immortality, by firing the grandest temple of the universe.

The question of Tasso's attachment to the Princess Leonora, is, I believe, set at rest by the acute researches and judicious reasoning of M. Ginguené, and those who have followed in his

steps. A body of circumstantial evidence has been collected, which would not only satisfy a court of love-but a court of law, with a Lord Chancellor, to boot, "perpending" at the head of it. That which was once regarded as a romance, which we wished to believe, if we could, is now an established fact, which we cannot disbelieve if we would.

No poet perhaps ever owed so much to female influence as Tasso, or wrote so much under the intoxicating inspiration of love and beauty. He paid most dearly for such inspiration; and yet not too dearly. The high tone of sentiment, the tenderness, and the delicacy which pervade all his poems, which prevail even in his most voluptuous descriptions, and which give him such a decided superiority over Ariosto, cannot be owing to any change of manners or increase of refinement produced by the lapse of a few years. It may be traced to the tender influence of two elegant women. He for many years read the cantos of the Gerusalemme, as he composed them, to the Princesses Lucretia and Leonora, both of whom he admired,—one of whom he adored.

Au reste-the kiss, which he is said to have imprinted on the lips of Leonora in a transport

of frenzy, as well as the idea that she was the primary cause of his insanity, and of his seven years' imprisonment at St. Anne's, rest on no authority worthy of credit; yet it is not less certain that she was the object of his secret and fervent admiration, and that this hopeless passion conspired, with many other causes, to fever his irritable temperament and unsettle his imagination, beyond that "fine madness,” which we are told ought "to possess the poet's brain.”

When Tasso first visited Ferrara, in 1565, he was just one-and-twenty, with all the advantages which a fine countenance, a majestic figure, (for he was tall even among the tallest,) noble birth, and excelling talents could bestow : he was already distinguished as the author of the Rinaldo, his earliest poem, in which he had celebrated (as if prophetically,) the Princesses d'Este,—and chiefly Leonora.

Lucrezia Estense, e l' altra i cui crin d' oro,
Lacci e reti saran del casto amore. *

* See the Rinaldo, c. 8.

When Tasso was first introduced to her in her brother's court, Leonora was in her thirtieth year; a disparity of age which is certainly no argument against the passion she inspired. For a young man, at his first entrance into life, to fall in love ambitiously-with a woman, for instance, who is older than himself, or with one who is, or ought to be, unattainable,—is a common occurrence. Tasso, from his boyish years, had been the sworn servant of beauty. He tells us, in grave prose, "che la sua giovanezza fu tutta sotto-posta all' amorose leggi ;" "* but he was also refined, even to fastidiousness, in his intercourse with women. He had formed, in his own poetical mind, the I most exalted idea of what a female ought to be, and unfortunately, she who first realised all his dreams of perfection, was a Princess-" there seated where he durst not soar." Leonora was still eminently lovely, in that soft, artless, unobtrusive style of beauty, which is charming in From my very birth

My soul was drunk with love, &c.

LAMENT OF TASSO.