"_Princess._--My Leonora, first you look at me
And smile, then at yourself, and smile again.
What is it? Let your friend partake. You seem
Very considerate, and much amused.
"_Leonora._--My Princess, I but smiled to see ourselves
Decked in these pastoral habiliments.
We look right happy shepherdesses both,
And what we do is still pure innocence.
We weave these wreaths. Mine, gay with many flowers,
Still swells and blushes underneath my hand;
Thou, moved with higher thought and greater heart,
Hast only wove the slender laurel bough.
"_Princess._--The bough which I, while wreathing thoughts, have
wreathed,
Soon finds a worthy resting-place. I lay it
Upon my Virgil's forehead.
[_Crowns the bust of Virgil._
"_Leonora._ And I mine,
My jocund garland, on the noble brow
Of Master Ludovico.
[_Crowns the bust of Ariosto._
Well may he,
Whose sportive verse shall never fade, demand
His tribute of the spring!
"_Princess._ 'Twas amiable
In the duke, my brother, to conduct us,
So early in the year, to this retreat.
Here we possess ourselves, here we may dream
Uninterrupted hours--dream ourselves back
Into the golden age which poets sing.
I love this Belriguardo; I have here
Pass'd many youthful, many happy days;
And the fresh green, and this bright sun, recall
The feelings of those times.
"_Leonora._ Yes, a new world
Surrounds us here. How it delights--the shade
Of leaves for ever green! how it revives--
The rushing of that brook! with giddy joy
The young boughs swing them in the morning air;
And from their beds the little friendly flowers
Look with the eye of childhood up to us.
The trustful gardener gives to the broad day
His winter store of oranges and citrons;
One wide blue sky rests over all; the snow
On the horizon, from the distant hills,
In light dissolving vapour steals away."
The conversation winds gracefully towards poetry and Tasso. We will
answer at once the interesting question, whether the poet has
represented Leonora d'Este, the princess, as being in love with Tasso.
He has; and very delicately has he made her express this sentiment. From
the moment when, doubtless thinking of the living poet, she twined the
laurel wreath which she afterwards deposited on the brow of Virgil, to
the last scene where she leads the unhappy Tasso to a fatal declaration
of his passion, there is a gentle _crescendo_ of what always remains,
however, a very subdued and meditative affection. She loves--but like a
princess; she muses over the danger to herself from suffering such a
sentiment towards one in so different a rank of life to grow upon her;
she never thinks of the danger to _him_, to the hapless Tasso, by her
betrayal of an affection which she is yet resolved to keep within
subjection. To be sure it may be said, that all women have something of
the princess in them at this epoch of their lives. There is a wonderful
selfishness in the heart, while it still asks itself whether it shall
love or not. The sentiment of the princess is very elegantly disguised
in the jesting vein in which she rallies Leonora Sanvitale--
"_Leonora._--Your mind embraces wider regions; mine
Lingers content within the little isle,
And 'midst the laurel grove of poesy.
"_Princess._--In which fair isle, in which sweet grove, they say,
The myrtle also flourishes. And though
There wander many muses there, we choose
Our friend and playmate not alone from _them_,
We rather greet the poet there himself,
Who seems indeed to shun us, seems to fly,
Seeking we know not what, and he himself
Perhaps as little knows. 'Tis pretty when,
In some propitious hour, the enraptured youth
Looking with better eyes, detects in _us_
The treasure he had been so far to seek.
"_Leonora._--The jest is pleasant--touches, but not near.
I honour each man's merit; and to Tasso
Am barely just. His eye, that covets nothing,
Light ranges over all; his ear is fill'd
With the rich harmony great nature makes;
What ancient records, what the living scene,
Disclose, his open bosom takes it all;
What beams of truth stray scattered o'er this world,
His mind collects, converges. How his heart
Has animated the inanimate!
How oft ennobled what we little prize,
And shown how poor the treasures of the great!
In this enchanted circle of his own
Proceeds the wondrous man; and us he draws
Within, to follow and participate.
He seems to near us, yet he stays remote--
Seems to regard us, and regards instead
Some spirit that assumes our place the while.
"_Princess._--Finely and delicately hast thou limn'd
The poet, moving in his world of thought.
And yet, methinks, some fair reality
Has wrought upon him here. Those charming verses
Found hanging here and there upon our trees,
Like golden fruit, that to the finer sense
Breathes of a new Hesperides: think you
These are not tokens of a genuine love?
* * * * *
And when he gives a name to the fair object
Of all this praise, he calls it Leonora!
"_Leonora._--Thy name, as well as mine. I, for my part,
Should take it ill were he to choose another.
Here is no question of a narrow love,
That would engross its solitary prize,
And guards it jealously from every eye
That also would admire. When contemplation
Is deeply busy with thy graver worth,
My lighter being haply flits across,
And adds its pleasure to the pensive mood.
It is not us--forgive me if I say it--
Not us he loves; but down from all the spheres
He draws the matter of his strong affection,
And gives it to the name we bear. And we--
We seem to love the man, yet love in him
That only which we highest know to love.
"_Princess._--You have become an adept in this science,
And put forth, Leonora, such profundities
As something more than penetrate the ear,
yet hardly touch the thought.
"_Leonora._ --Thou, Plato's scholar!
Not apprehend what I, a neophyte,
Venture to prattle of"--
Alphonso enters, and enquires after Tasso. Leonora answers, that she had
seen him at a distance, with his book and tablets, writing and walking,
and adds that, from some hint he had let fall, she gathered that his
great work was near its completion; and, in fact, the princess soon
after descries him coming towards them:--
"Slowly he comes,
Stands still awhile as unresolved, then hastes,
With quicken'd step, towards us; then again
Slackens his pace, and pauses."
Tasso enters, and presents his _Jerusalem Delivered_ to his patron, the
Duke of Ferrara. Alphonso, seeing the laurel wreath on the bust of
Virgil, makes a sign to his sister; and the princess, after some
remonstrance on the part of Tasso, transfers it from the statue to the
head of the living poet. As she crowns him, she says--
"Thou givest me, Tasso, here the rare delight,
With silent act, to tell thee what I think."
But the poet is no sooner crowned than he entreats that the wreath
should be removed. It weighs on him, it is a burden, a pressure, it
sinks and abashes him. Besides, he feels, as the man of genius must
always feel, that not to wear the crown but to earn it, is the real joy
as well as task of his life. The laurel is indeed for the bust, not for
the living head.
"Take it away!
Oh take, ye gods, this glory from my brow!
Hide it again in clouds! Bear it aloft
To heights all unattainable, that still
My whole of life for this great recompense,
Be one eternal course."
He obeys, however, the will of the princess, who bids him retain it. We
are now introduced to the antagonist, in every sense of the word, of
Tasso,--Antonio, secretary of state. In addition to the causes of
repugnance springing from their opposite characters, Antonio is jealous
of the favour which the young poet has won at the court of Ferrara, both
with his patron and the ladies. This representative of the practical
understanding speaks with admiration of the court of Rome, and the
ability of the ruling pontiff. He says--
"No nobler object is there in the world
Than this--a prince who ably rules his people,
A people where the proudest heart obeys,
Where each man thinks he serves himself alone,
Because what fits him is alone commanded.
Alphonso speaks of the poem which Tasso has just completed, and points
to the crown which he wears. Then follow some of the unkindest words
which a secretary of state could possibly bestow on the occasion.
"_Antonio._--You solve a riddle for me. Entering here
I saw to my surprise _two_ crowned.
[_Looking towards the bust of Ariosto._
"_Tasso._ I wish
Thou could'st as plainly as thou see'st my honours,
Behold the oppress'd and downcast spirit within.
"_Antonio_--I have long known that in his recompenses
Alphonso is immoderate; 'tis thine
To prove to-day what all who serve the prince
Have learn'd, or will."
Antonio then launches into an eloquent eulogium upon the _other_ crowned
one--upon Ariosto--which has for its object as well to dash the pride of
the living, as to do homage to the dead. He adds, with a most cruel
ambiguity,
"Who ventures near this man to place himself,
Even for his boldness may deserve a crown."
The seeds of enmity, it is manifest, are plentifully sown between
Antonio and Tasso. Here ends the 1st Act.
At the commencement of the 2d Act, the princess is endeavouring to heal
the wound that has been inflicted on the just pride of the poet, and she
alludes, in particular, to the eulogy which Antonio had so invidiously
passed upon Ariosto. The answer of Tasso deserves attention. It is
peculiar to the poetic genius to estimate very differently at different
times the value of its own labours. Sometimes do but grant to the poet
his claim to the possession of genius, and his head strikes the stars.
At other times, when contemplating the lives of those men whose actions
he has been content to celebrate in song, he doubts whether he should
not rank himself as the very prince of idlers. He is sometimes tempted
to think that to have given one good stroke with the sword, were worth
all the delicate touches of his pen. This feeling Tasso has finely
expressed.
"_Princess._--When Antonio knows what thou hast done
To honour these our times, then will he place thee
On the same level, side by side, with him
He now depicts in so gigantic stature.
"_Tasso._--Believe me, lady, Ariosto's praise
Heard from his lips, was likely more to please
Than wound me. It confirms us, it consoles,
To hear the man extoll'd whom we have placed
Before us as a model: we can say
In secret to ourselves--gain thou a share
Of his acknowledged merit, and thou gain'st
As certainly a portion of his fame.
No--that which to its depths has stirr'd my spirit,
What still I feel through all my sinking soul,
It was the picture of that living world,
Which restless, vast, enormous, yet revolves
In measured circle round the one great man,
Fulfils the course which he, the demi-god,
Dares to prescribe to it. With eager ear
I listen'd to the experienced man, whose speech
Gave faithful transcript of a real scene.
Alas! the more I listen'd, still the more
I sank within myself: it seem'd my being
Would vanish like an echo of the hills,
Resolved to a mere sound--a word--a nothing.
"_Princess._--Poets and heroes for each other live,
Poets and heroes seek each other out,
And envy not each other: this thyself,
Few minutes past, did vividly portray.
True, it is glorious to perform the deed
That merits noble song; yet glorious too
With noble song the once accomplish'd deed
Through all the after-world to memorize."
When she continues to urge Tasso to make the friendship of Antonio, and
assures him that the return of the minister has only procured him a
friend the more, he answers:--
"_Tasso._--I hoped it once, I doubt it now.
Instructive were to me his intercourse,
Useful his counsel in a thousand ways:
This man possesses all in which I fail.
And yet--though at his birth flock'd every god,
To hang his cradle with some special gift--
The graces came not there, they stood aloof:
And he whom these sweet sisters visit not,
May possess much, may in bestowing be
Most bountiful, but never will a friend,
Or loved disciple, on his bosom rest."
The tendency of this scene is to lull Tasso into the belief that he is
beloved of the princess. Of course he is ardent to obey the latest
injunctions he has received from her, and when Antonio next makes his
appearance, he offers him immediately "his hand and heart." The
secretary of state receives such a sudden offer (as it might be expected
a secretary of state would do) with great coolness; he will wait till he
knows whether he can return the like offer of friendship. He discourses
on the excellence of moderation, and in a somewhat magisterial tone,
little justified by the relative intellectual position of the speakers.
Here, again, we have a true insight into the character of the man of
genius. He is modest--very--till you become too overbearing; he
exaggerates the superiority in practical wisdom of men who have mingled
extensively with the world, and so invites a tone of dictation; and yet
withal he has a sly consciousness, that this same superiority of the man
of the world consists much more in a certain fortunate limitation of
thought than in any peculiar extension. The wisdom of such a man has
passed through the mind of the poet, with this difference, that in his
mind there is much beside this wisdom, much that is higher than this
wisdom; and so it does not maintain a very prominent position, but gets
obscured and neglected.
"_Tasso._--Thou hast good title to advise, to warn,
For sage experience, like a long-tried friend,
Stands at thy side. Yet be assured of this,
The solitary heart hears every day,
Hears every hour, a warning; cons and proves,
And puts in practice secretly that lore
Which in harsh lessons you would teach as new,
As something widely out of reach."
Yet, spurred on by the injunction of the princess, he still makes an
attempt to grasp at the friendship of Antonio.
"_Tasso._--Once more! here is my hand! clasp it in thine!
Nay, step not back, nor, noble sir, deny me
The happiness, the greatest of good men,
To yield me, trustful, to superior worth,
Without reserve, without a pause or halt.
"_Antonio._--You come full sail upon me. Plain it is
You are accustomed to make easy conquests,
To walk broad paths, to find an open door.
Thy merit--and thy fortune--I admit,
But fear we stand asunder wide apart.
"_Tasso._--In years and in tried worth I still am wanting;
In zeal and will, I yield to none.
"_Antonio._ The will
Draws the deed after by no magic charm,
And zeal grows weary where the way is long:
Who reach the goal, they only wear the crown.
And yet, crowns are there, or say garlands rather,
Of many sorts, some gather'd as we go,
Pluck'd as we sing and saunter.
"_Tasso._ But a gift
Freely bestow'd on this mind, and to that
As utterly denied--this not each man,
Stretching his hand, can gather if he will.
"_Antonio._--Ascribe the gift to fortune--it is well.
* * * * *
The fortunate, with reason good, extol
The goddess Fortune--give her titles high--
Call her Minerva--call her what they will--
Take her blind gifts for just reward, and wear
Her wind-blown favour as a badge of merit.
"_Tasso._--No need to speak more plainly. 'Tis enough.
I see into thy soul--I know thee now,
And all thy life I know. Oh, that the princess
Had sounded thee as I! But never waste
Thy shafts of malice of the eye and tongue
Against this laurel-wreath that crowns my brow,
The imperishable garland. 'Tis in vain.
First be so great as not to envy it,
Then perhaps thou may'st dispute.
"_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_.
Are all mankind to us so reasonable?
No, no! Man in his narrow being needs
Both feelings, love, and hate. Needs he not night
As well as day? and sleep as well as waking?
No! I will hold this man for evermore
As precious object of my deepest hate,
And nothing shall disturb the joy I have
In thinking of him daily worse and worse."
_Act. 4, Scene 2._
We conclude with a passage in which Tasso speaks of the irresistible
passion he feels for his own art. He has sought permission of the Duke
to retire to Rome, on the plea that he will there, by the assistance of
learned men, better complete his great work, which he regards as still
imperfect. Alphonso grants his request, but advises him rather to
suspend his labour for the present, and partake, for a season, of the
distractions of the world. He would be wise, he tells him, to seek the
restoration of his health.
"_Tasso._--It should seem so; yet have I health enow
If only I can labour, and this labour
Again bestows the only health I know.
It is not well with me, as thou hast seen,
In this luxuriant peace. In rest I find
Rest least of all. I was not framed,
My spirit was not destined to be borne
On the soft element of flowing days,
And so in Time's great ocean lose itself
Uncheck'd, unbroken.
"_Alphonso._--All feelings, and all impulses, my Tasso,
Drive thee for ever back into thyself.
There lies about us many an abyss
Which Fate has dug; the deepest yet of all
Is here, in our own heart, and very strong
Is the temptation to plunge headlong in.
I pray thee snatch thyself away in time.
Divorce thee, for a season, from thyself.
The man will gain whate'er the poet lose.
"_Tasso._--One impulse all in vein I should resist,
Which day and night within my bosom stirs.
Life is not life if I must cease to think,
Or, thinking, cease to poetize.
Forbid the silk-worm any more to spin,
Because its own life lies upon the thread.
Still it uncoils the precious golden web,
And ceases not till, dying, it has closed
Its own tomb o'er it. May the good God grant
We, one day, share the fate of that same worm!--
That we, too, in some valley bright with heaven,
Surprised with sudden joy, may spread our wing.
* * * * *
I feel--I feel it well--this highest art
Which should have fed the mind, which to the strong
Adds strength and ever new vitality,--
It is destroying me, it hunts me forth,
Where'er I rove, an exile amongst men."
_Act V. Scene 2._