and the fact is, that, partly from disease, and partly from a want of courage to look his defects in the face, he beheld the same things in so many different lights, and according as it suited him at the moment, that, without intending falsehood, his statements are really not to be relied on.  He degraded even his verses, sometimes with panegyrics for interest’s sake, sometimes out of weak wishes to oblige, of which he was afterwards ashamed; and, with the exception of Constantini, we cannot be sure that any one person praised in them retained his regard in his last days.  His suspicion made him a kind of Rousseau; but he was more amiable than the Genevese, and far from being in the habit of talking against old acquaintances, whatever he might have thought of them.  It is observable, not only that he never married, but he told Manso he had led a life of entire continence ever since he entered the walls of his prison, being then in his thirty-fifth year.[36] Was this out of fidelity to some mistress? or the consequence of a previous life the reverse of continent? or was it from some principle of superstition?  He had become a devotee, apparently out of a dread of disbelief; and he remained extremely religious for the rest of his days.  The two unhappiest of Italian poets, Tasso and Dante, were the two most superstitious.

As for the once formidable question concerning the comparative merits of this poet and Ariosto, which anticipated the modern quarrels of the classical and romantic schools, some idea of the treatment which Tasso experienced may be conceived by supposing all that used to be sarcastic and bitter in the periodical party-criticism among ourselves some thirty years back, collected into one huge vial of wrath, and poured upon the new poet’s head.  Even the great Galileo, who was a man of wit, bred up in the pure Tuscan school of Berni and Casa, and who was an idolator of Ariosto, wrote, when he was young, a “review” of the Jerusalem Delivered, which it is painful to read, it is so unjust and contemptuous.[37] But now that the only final arbiter, posterity, has accepted both the poets, the dispute is surely the easiest thing in the world to settle; not, indeed, with prejudices of creeds or temperaments, but before any judges thoroughly sympathising with the two claimants.  Its solution is the principle of the greater including the less.  For Ariosto errs only by having an unbounded circle to move in.  His sympathies are unlimited; and those who think him inferior to Tasso, only do so in consequence of their own want of sympathy with the vivacities that degrade him in their eyes.  Ariosto can be as grave and exalted as Tasso when he pleases, and he could do a hundred things which Tasso never attempted.  He is as different in this respect as Shakspeare from Milton.  He had far more knowledge of mankind than Tasso, and he was superior in point of taste.  But it is painful to make disadvantageous comparisons of one great poet with another.  Let us be thankful for Tasso’s enchanted gardens, without being forced to vindicate the universal world of his predecessor.  Suffice it to bear in mind, that the grave poet himself agreed with the rest of the Italians in calling the Ferrarese the “divine Ariosto;” a title which has never been popularly given to his rival.