Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

"Antonio. Thyself art prompt
To justify my slight esteem of thee.
The impetuous boy with violence demands
The confidence and friendship of the man.
Why, what unmannerly deportment this!

"Tasso.– Better what you unmannerly may deem,
Than what I call ignoble.

"Antonio. There remains
One hope for thee. Thou still art young enough
To be corrected by strict discipline.

"Tasso.– Not young enough to bow myself to idols
That courtiers make and worship; old enough
Defiance with defiance to encounter.

"Antonio.– Ay, where the tinkling lute and tinkling speech
Decide the combat, Tasso is a hero.

"Tasso.– I were to blame to boast a sword unknown
As yet to war, but I can trust to it.

"Antonio.– Trust rather to indulgence."

We are in the high way, it is plain, to a duel. Tasso insists upon an appeal to the sword. The secretary of state contents himself with objecting the privilege or sanctity of the place, they being within the precincts of the royal residence. At the height of this debate, Alphonso enters. Here, again, the minister has a most palpable advantage over the poet. He insists upon the one point of view in which he has the clear right, and will not diverge from it; Tasso has challenged him, has done his utmost to provoke a duel within the walls of the palace; and is, therefore, amenable to the law. The Duke can do no other than decide against the poet, whom he dismisses to his apartment with the injunction that he is there to consider himself, for the present, a prisoner.

In the three subsequent acts, there is still less of action; and we may as well relate at once what there remains of plot to be told, and then proceed with our extracts. Through the mediation of the princess and her friend, this quarrel is in part adjusted, and Tasso is released from imprisonment. But his spirit is wounded, and he determines to quit the court of Ferrara. He obtains permission to travel to Rome. At this juncture he meets with the princess. His impression has been that she also is alienated from him; her conversation removes and quite reverses this impression; in a moment of ungovernable tenderness he is about to embrace her; she repulses him and retires. The duke, who makes his appearance just at this moment, and who has been a witness to the conclusion of this interview, orders Tasso into confinement, expressing at the same time his conviction that the poet has lost his senses. He is given into the charge of Antonio, and thus ends the drama.

Glancing back over the three last acts, whose action we have summed up so briefly, we might select many beautiful passages for translation; we content ourselves with the following.

The princess and Leonora Sanvitale are conversing. There has been question of the departure of Tasso.

"Princess.– Each day was then itself a little life;
No care was clamorous, and the future slept.
Me and my happy bark the flowing stream,
Without an oar, drew with light ripple down.
Now – in the turmoil of the present hour,
The future wakes, and fills the startled ear
With whisper'd terrors.

"Leonora. But the future brings
New joys, new friendships.

"Princess. Let me keep the old.
Change may amuse, it scarce can profit us.
I never thrust, with youthful eagerness,
A curious hand into the shaken urn
Of life's great lottery, with hope to find
Some object for a restless, untried heart.
I honour'd him, and therefore have I loved;
It was necessity to love the man
With whom my being grew into a life
Such as I had not known, or dream'd before.
At first, I laid injunctions on myself
To keep aloof; I yielded, yielded still,
Still nearer drew – enticed how pleasantly
To be how hardly punish'd!

"Leonora. If a friend
Fail with her weak consolatory speech,
Let the still powers of this beautiful world,
With silent healing, renovate thy spirit.

"Princess.– The world is beautiful! In its wide circuit,
How much of good is stirring here and there!
Alas! that it should ever seem removed
Just one step off! Throughout the whole of life
Step after step, it leads our sick desire
E'en to the grave. So rarely do men find
What yet seem'd destined them – so rarely hold
What once the hand had fortunately clasp'd;
What has been giv'n us, rends itself away,
And what we clutch'd, we let it loose again;
There is a happiness – we know it not,
We know it – and we know not how to prize."

Tasso says, when he thought himself happy in the love of Leonora d'Este —

"I have often dream'd of this great happiness —
'Tis here! – and oh, how far beyond the dream!
A blind man, let him reason upon light,
And on the charm of colour, how he will,
If once the new-born day reveal itself,
It is a new-born sense."

And again on this same felicity,

"Not on the wide sands of the rushing ocean,
'Tis in the quiet shell, shut up, conceal'd,
We find the pearl."

It is in another strain that the poet speaks when Leonora Sanvitale attempts to persuade him that Antonio entertains in reality no hostility towards him. In what follows, we see the anger and hatred of a meditative man. It is a hatred which supports and exhausts itself in reasoning; which we might predict would never go forth into any act of enmity. It is a mere sentiment, or rather the mere conception of a sentiment. For the poet rather thinks of hatred than positively hates.

"And if I err, I err resolvedly.
I think of him as of my bitter foe;
To think him less than this would now distract,
Discomfort me. It were a sort of folly
To be with all men reasonable; 'twere
The abandonment of all distinctive self.