The inscription on the door of Tasso's cell, lies, I believe, like many other inscriptions. Tasso was not confined in this cell for seven years; but here it was that he addressed that affecting Canzone to Leonora and her sister Lucrezia, which begins "Figlie di Renata,"—"daughters of Renée!" Thus in the very commencement, by this delicate and tender apostrophe, bespeaking their compassion, by awakening the remembrance of their mother, like him so long a wretched prisoner. He reminds them of the years he spent at their side-" their noble servant and their dear companion," Gli anni miei tra voi spese,— Qual son,-qual fui,-che chiedo -ove mi trovo !* He was, after the first year, removed to a larger cell, with better accommodations. Here he made a collection of his smaller poems lately written, and dedicated them to the two Princesses. But Leonora was no longer in a state to be charmed by the verses, or flattered or touched by the ad * Part of this Canzone has been elegantly translated by Mr. Wiffen in his Life of Tasso, p. 83. miring devotion of her lover,-her poet,- her faithful servant she was dying. A slow and cureless disease preyed on her delicate frame, and she expired in the second year of Tasso's imprisonment. When the news of her danger was brought to him, he requested his friend Pignarola to kiss her hand in his name, and ask her whether there was any thing which, in his sad state, he could do for her ease or pleasure? We do not know how this tender message was received or answered; but it was too late. Leonora died in February 1581, after lingering from the November previous. Thus perished, of a premature decay, the woman who had been for seventeen years the idol of a poet's imagination—the worship of a poet's heart; she who was not unworthy of being enshrined in the rich tracery-work of sweet thoughts and bright fancies she had herself suggested. The love of Tasso for the Princess Leonora might have appeared, in his own time, something like the "desire of the night-moth for the star ;" but what is it now? what was it then in the eyes of her whom he adored? How far was it permitted, encouraged, repaid in secret? This we cannot know; and perhaps had we lived at the time,-in the very Court, and looked daily into her own soft eyes, practised to conceal,-we had been no wiser. Yet one more observation. When Leonora died, all the poets of Ferrara pressed forward with the usual tribute of elegy and eulogium; but the voice of Tasso was not heard among the rest. He alone flung no garland on the bier of her, whose living brow he had wreathed with the brightest flowers of song. This is adduced by Serassi as a proof that he had never loved her. Ginguiné himself can only account for it, by the presumption that he was piqued by that coldness and neglect, which I have shown was merely supposititious. Strange reasoning as if Tasso, while his heart bled over his loss, in his solitary cell, could have deigned to join this crowd of courtly mourners! as if, under such circumstances, in such a moment, the greatness of his grief could have burst forth in any terms that must not have exposed himself to fresh rigours, and the fame, at least the discretion, of her he had loved, to suspicion! No! nothing remained to him but silence;-and he was silent. CHAPER XIX. MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI. THE Marquis Manso of Naples, who in his early youth had entertained Tasso in his palace, had cherished and honoured him when that great but unhappy man was wandering, brain-struck with misery, from one court to another,—was, in his old age, the host and admirer of Milton; thus, by a singular good fortune, allying his name to two of the most illustrious of earth's diviner sons while theirs, linked together by the recollection of this common friend, follow each other in our memory by a natural transition. We can think of them as pressing, though at an interval of many years, the same friendly hand, and gracing the same hospitable board with "colloquy sublime." Tasso, from the romance of his story, and his personal character, is the most interesting of the two; yet Milton, besides standing highest in the scale of moral dignity, sits nearest to our hearts as an Englishman, whose genius, speaking through our native accents, strikes upon our sense, Like the large utterance of the early gods. * or We rise from reading Johnson's Biography of Milton, either with the most painful and indignant feeling of the malignity of the critic,* with an impression of Milton's character, as false as it is odious. Of moral inconsistency and weakness, blended with splendid genius, we have proofs lamentable and numerous enough: to be obliged to regard the mighty father of English verse, him "who rode sublime upon the seraph wings of ecstasy,"-him, whose harmonious soul *What Dr. Johnson wrote is known; he was accustomed to say that the admiration expressed for Milton was all cant. |