But whatever changes may have taken place in the human habitation, the scenes of Nature around, from which he drew the inspirations of his youthful genius, remain unchanged.  Every feature of landscape loveliness is focussed in that matchless panorama.  Behind is a range of wild mountains, whose many-shaped peaks and crags, clad with pine and olive, assume, as the day wears on, the golden and purple hues of the sky—­sloping down into the midst of vineyards and groves of orange, myrtle, and all the luxuriant verdure which the warm sun of the South calls forth, out of which gleam at frequent intervals picturesque villages and farms, which seem more the creation of Nature than of Art.  In front is a glorious view of the Bay of Naples, with the enchanted isles of Capri and Ischia sleeping on its bosom, and the reflected images of domes and palaces all along its curving shores “charming its blue waters;” while dominating the whole horizon are the snowy mountains of Campania, broken by the dark purple mass of Vesuvius, rising up with gradual slope to its rounded cone, over which rests continually a column of flame or smoke, “stimulating the imagination by its mystery and terror.”  Apart from its associations, that landscape would have been one to gaze on entranced, and to dream of for years afterwards.  But with its countless memories of all that is greatest and saddest in human history clinging to almost every object, it is indeed one of the most impressive in the world.  The land is the land of Magna Graecia.  The sea is the sea of Homer and Pindar.  Near at hand are the Isles of the Sirens, who allured Ulysses with their magic song; away in the dim distance are the wonderful Doric temples of Paestum, which go back to the mythical times of Jason and the Argonauts.  On the opposite shore is the tomb of Virgil, on the threshold of the scenes which he loved to describe,—­the Holy Land of Paganism, the Phlegraean Fields, with the terrible Avernus and the Cave of the Sibyl, and all the spots associated with the Pagan heaven and hell; and in the near neighbourhood Baiae, with its awful memories of Roman luxury and cruelty, and Puteoli, with its inspiring associations of the Apostle Paul’s visit, and the introduction of Christianity into Italy.  Meet nurse for any poetic child, the place of his birth was peculiarly so for such a child as Tasso; and we can detect in the subjects of his Muse in after years, the very themes which such a region would naturally have suggested and inspired.

The age in which he was born was also eminently favourable for the development of the poetic faculty.  By the wonderful discoveries of the starry Galileo, man’s intellectual vision was infinitely extended, and the great fundamental idea of modern astronomy—­infinite space peopled with worlds like our own—­was for the first time realised.  It was an era of maritime enterprise; the world was circumnavigated, and new ideas streamed in from each newly-visited region.  It was pre-eminently the period of art.