perhaps during my life, I so much doubt of its success.”  Such was the painful state of fear and doubt experienced by the author of the “Jerusalem Delivered,” when he gave it to the world; a state of suspense, among the children of imagination, in which none are more liable to participate than the true sensitive artist.  We may now inspect the severe correction of Tasso’s muse, in the fac-simile of a page of his manuscripts in Mr. Dibdin’s late “Tour.”  She seems to have inflicted tortures on his pen, surpassing even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page which, thirty years ago, I gave of Pope’s Homer.[A] At Florence may still be viewed the many works begun and abandoned by the genius of MICHAEL ANGELO; they are preserved inviolate—­“so sacred is the terror of Michael Angelo’s genius!” exclaims Forsyth.  These works are not always to be considered as failures of the chisel; they appear rather to have been rejected for coming short of the artist’s first conceptions:  yet, in a strain of sublime poetry, he has preserved his sentiments on the force of intellectual labour; he thought that there was nothing which the imagination conceived, that could not be made visible in marble, if the hand were made to obey the mind:—­

  Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto,
    Ch’ un marmo solo in se non circoseriva
    Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
  La man che obbedisce all’ intelletto.

IMITATED.

  The sculptor never yet conceived a thought
    That yielding marble has refused to aid;
  But never with a mastery he wrought—­
    Save when the hand the intellect obeyed.

[Footnote A:  It now forms the frontispiece to vol. ii. of the last edition of the “Curiosities of Literature.”—­ED.]

An interesting domestic story has been preserved of GESNER, who so zealously devoted his graver and his pencil to the arts.  His sensibility was ever struggling after that ideal excellence which he could not attain.  Often he sunk into fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he was, the tenderness of his wife and friends could not soothe his distempered feelings; it was necessary to abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after a long abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, some accident occasioned him to return to them.  In one of these hypochondria of genius, after a long interval of despair, one morning at breakfast with his wife, his eye fixed on one of his pictures:  it was a group of fauns with young shepherds dancing at the entrance of a cavern shaded with vines; his eye appeared at length to glisten; and a sudden return to good humour broke out in this lively apostrophe—­“Ah! see those playful children, they always dance!” This was the moment of gaiety and inspiration, and he flew to his forsaken easel.