only the loom is narrower, and the pattern of the web less intricate.  The air of artlessness which lent its charm to Romance in Italy has disappeared, yielding place to sustained elaboration of Latinizing style.  Otherwise the fabric remains substantially unaltered—­like a Gothic dwelling furnished with Palladian window-frames.  We move in the old familiar sphere of Paladins and Paynims, knights errant and Oriental damsels, magicians and distressed maidens.  The action is impelled by the same series of marvelous adventures and felicitous mishaps.  There are the same encounters in war and rivalries in love between Christian and Pagan champions; journeys through undiscovered lands and over untracked oceans; fantastic hyperboles of desire, ambition, jealousy, and rage, employed as motive passions.  Enchanted forests; fairy ships that skim the waves without helm or pilot; lances endowed with supernatural virtues; charmed gardens of perpetual spring; dismal dungeons and glittering palaces, supply the furniture of this romance no less than of its predecessors.  Rinaldo, like any other hero of the Renaissance, is agitated by burning thirst for fame and blind devotion to a woman’s beauty.  We first behold him pining in inglorious leisure[64]:—­

    Poi, ch’oprar non poss’io che di me s’oda
      Con mia gloria ed onor novella alcuna,
      O cosa, ond’ io pregio n’acquisti e loda,
      E mia fama rischiari oscura e bruna.

The vision of Clarice, appearing like Virgil’s Camilla, stirs him from this lethargy.  He falls in love at first sight, as Tasso’s heroes always do, and vows to prove himself her worthy knight by deeds of unexampled daring.  Thus the plot is put in motion; and we read in well-appointed order how the hero acquired his horse, Baiardo, Tristram’s magic lance, his sword Fusberta from Atlante, his armor from Orlando, the trappings of his charger from the House of Courtesy, the ensign of the lion rampant on his shield from Chiarello, and the hand of his lady after some delays from Malagigi.

[Footnote 64:  Canto i. 17.]

No new principle is introduced into the romance.  As in earlier poems of this species, the religious motive of Christendom at war with Islam becomes a mere machine; the chivalrous environment affords a vehicle for fanciful adventures.  Humor, indeed, is conspicuous by its absence.  Charles the Great assumes the sobriety of empire; and his camp, in its well-ordered gravity, prefigures that of Goffredo in the Gerusalemme.[65] Thus Tasso’s originality must not be sought in the material of his work, which is precisely that of the Italian romantic school in general, nor yet in its form, which departs from the romantic tradition in details so insignificant as to be inessential.  We find it rather in his touch upon the old material, in his handling of the familiar form.  The qualities of style, sympathy, sentiment, selection in the use of phrase and image, which determined his individuality as a poet, rendered the Rinaldo a novelty in literature.  It will be therefore well to concentrate attention for a while upon those subjective peculiarities by right of which the Rinaldo ranks as a precursor of the Gerusalemme.