I have seen a sketch in the poet’s own handwriting of the first three cantos.  This sketch he now modified and enlarged, and in the space of a few months completed five entire cantos.  He read the poem as it proceeded to the fair sisters of his patron, and received the benefit of their criticisms.  This work, which is “the great epic poem in the strict sense of modern times,” occupied altogether eighteen years of the author’s life.  It was begun in extreme youth, and finished in middle age, and is a most remarkable example of a young man’s devotion to one absorbing object.  The opening chapters were written amid the bright dreams of youth, and in the happiest circumstances; the closing ones were composed amid the dark clouds of a morbid melancholy, and during an imprisonment tyrannical in all its features.  Placed side by side with Homer and Virgil, it may be said with Voltaire that Tasso was more fortunate than either of these immortals in the choice of his subject.  It was based, not upon tradition, but upon true history.  It appealed not merely to the passions of love and ambition, but to the deepest feelings of the soul, to faith in the unseen and eternal.  To humanity at large the wars of the Cross must be more interesting than the wrath of Achilles, and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre than the siege of Troy.  No theme could be more susceptible of poetic treatment than the Crusades.  They were full of stirring incident, of continually changing objects and images.  The strife took place amid scenes from which the most familiar stories of our childhood have come, and around which have gathered the most sacred associations of the heart.  And Tasso’s mind was one that was peculiarly adapted to reflect all the special characteristics of the theme.  It was deeply religious in its tone, and therefore could enter into the struggle with all the sympathy of real conviction.  His luxuriant imagination was chastened by his classical culture; while the pervading melancholy of his temperament gave to the scenes which he described an effect such as a thin veil of mist that comes and goes gives to a mountain landscape.  The gorgeous Oriental world of the palm tree and the camel, seen through this sad poetic haze, has all the shadows of the deep northern forests and the tender gloom of the western hills.  The rigid outlines of history fade in it to the indefiniteness of fable, and fact becomes as flexible as fancy.

The circumstances of the times were also peculiarly favourable for the composition of such a poem.  He was at the proper focal distance to appreciate the full interest of the Crusades, not too near to be absorbed in observation and engrossed in the immediate results; not too far off to lose the sympathy for the religious chivalry which inspired the Holy War.  Earlier, in the intensely prosaic period that immediately succeeded, the romance of the Crusades was gone; later, Europe was girding itself for the sterner task of reformation.