clothing of profoundly felt ideas.  The sublimity, the seriousness, the spiritual dignity is in their thought, not in its expression; whereas Tasso too frequently leaves us with the certainty that he has sought by ceremonious language to realize more than he could grasp with the imagination.  In his council of the powers of hell, for instance, he creates monsters of huge dimensions and statuesque distinctness; but these are neither grotesquely horrible like Dante’s, nor are they spirits with incalculable capacity for evil like Milton’s.

Stampano alcuni il suol di ferine orme,
E in fronte umana ban chiome d’angui attorte;
E lor s’aggira dietro immensa coda,
Che quasi sferza si ripiega e snoda.

Against this we have to place the dreadful scene of Satan with his angels transformed to snakes (Par.  Lost, x. 508-584), and the Dantesque horror of the ’vermo reo che ‘l mondo fora’ (Inf. xxxiv. 108).  Again when Dante cries—­

                  O Sommo Giove,
    Che fosti in terra per noi crocifisso!

we feel that the Latin phrase is accidental.  The spirit of the poet remains profoundly Christian.  Tasso’s Jehovah-Jupiter is always ’il Re del Ciel’; and the court of blessed spirits which surrounds his ’gran seggio,’ though described with solemn pomp of phrase, cannot be compared with the Mystic Rose of Paradise (ix. 55-60).  What Tasso lacks is authenticity of vision; and his heightened style only renders this imaginative poverty, this want of spiritual conviction, more apparent.

His frequent borrowings from Virgil are less unsuccessful when the matter to be illustrated is not of this exalted order.  Many similes (vii. 55, vii. 76, viii. 74) have been transplanted with nice propriety.  Many descriptions, like that of the approach of night (ii-96), of the nightingale mourning for her young (xii. 90), of the flying dream (xiv. 6), have been translated with exquisite taste.  Dido’s impassioned apostrophe to Aeneas reappears appropriately upon Armida’s lips (xvi. 56).  We welcome such culled phrases as the following: 

                   l’orticel dispensa
    Cibi non compri alia mia parca mensa (vii. 10).

Premer gli alteri, e sollevar gl’imbelli (x. 76).

E Tisaferno, il folgore di Marte (xvii. 31).

Va, vedi, e vinci (xvii. 38).

Ma mentre dolce parla e dolce ride (iv. 92).

Che vinta la materia e dal lavoro (xvi. 2).

Non temo io te, ne tuoi gran vanti, o fero: 
Ma il Cielo e il mio nemico amor pavento (xix. 73).

It may, however, be observed that in the last of these passages Tasso does not show a just discriminative faculty.  Turnus said: 

                     Non me tua fervida terrent
    Dicta, ferox:  Di me terrent et Jupiter hostis.

From Jupiter to Amor is a descent from sublimity to pathos.  In like manner when Hector’s ghost reappears in the ghost of Armida’s mother,