THE INSPIRATION OF TASSO. TASSO! I feel thy phrenzy-yes, 'tis there, She leaves the home the stars conceal from earth, Eternal love that melting lip display'd; And like sweet music which a dreamer wakes At night, when through a cloud the moonlight breaks. And rapture's spell has disenchanted fear. "The angels' lyres," she said, "had ceased to thrill: A strain arose, which (but its theme was wo!) A shade of pity fill'd the glory's place, As from a sigh to nought the measure stole, When thus spake he who breath'd to sound its soul:- Where half his life in gloom fallen man must mourn; There but alike his kind in form, not mind, Tasso, the Minstrel of the Cross, thou 'lt find; And as his sorrows charm'd the sons of bliss, And say, 'tis written in futurity Thy chains shall fall; and those who taunted thee, Like seraph hovering o'er the gathering storm, * Every one knows that Tasso expired the day before he was to have been crowned in the capitol; but it has not been, perhaps, so generally remarked, that his beautiful Invocation to Jesus, seems to anticipate this event. O musa, tu, che di caduchi allori Who knows that soon the ever-changing wave Each arm-the smile of Triumph from each visage flee, And to thy drooping forehead shall be given A crown more worth-unperishing-in Heaven." TALES OF THE CRUSADERS.* THERE is, we think, a broader and more essential distinction between this work and those which have preceded it than has appeared in any other series from the same liberal hand. A sort of progressive declension had been remarked by the public; yet inferiority was rather in degree than in kind; and though the great author was sometimes vapid, and at others extravagant, he did not condescend to narrow his general outline, or confess his store of original observation exhausted by applying for aid to the ordinary materials of romance. The tints, indeed, grew fainter; the humour was more strained and fantastical; the pathos was more lachrymose and less profound; and the master-touches more rarely and carelessly thrown in; but still there was simplicity of manner, and boldness of design which we looked for elsewhere in vain But these tales are written in another and a lower style-more elaborately finished in the minuter parts than some of the author's best works, but with less of the vital spirit that animated and redeemed his worst. For improbable incidents, inconsistent superstitions, and violent catastrophes, experience had prepared us; but we did not expect to find his descriptions, which used to be so clear, obscured by tawdry language; his figures, deteriorated with similes till they are well nigh hidden; and the interest of his story, broken by perpetual attempts to produce a succession of little effects by petty means. The work is so much more flowery and metaphorical than any of its predecessors, that, but for the announcement, we should have attributed it to a younger hand. Part of the failure of which we complain may, however, be ascribed to the subject on which the author has wrought. He has indeed, excelled in reviving, or seeming to revive the manners and the feelings of time long past: in bidding the train of ancient glories, follies and pleasures to pass before us in processional array; and in making us witnesses, and almost partakers of the feasts, the councils, the darings, and the sufferings of the great of old. But the age of the Crusaders is at once too vast and too visionary to be subjected to that process by which he has given reality and present life to distant periods. It is the fairy-land of history, over which a dreamlike glory hovers, and which is sacred to airy fancies. We think not of its persons as beings moulded like ourselves, but as bright abstractions of certain qualities, of which they gave the first examples; and regard * Tales of the Crusaders, by the Author of "Waverley," "Quentin Durward," &c. In 4 vols. the world merely as a stage in which they were to exhibit them in all their purity. We are on enchanted ground, into which synpathy scarcely enters, and admiration only is awake. Now our author, at his best, deals with flesh and blood, and surrounds us with the massive and the real. It is true that he weaves into his tale wild and appalling superstitions; but they are such as have not yet lost their hold on the homely imagination, and which yet chill us, because they are mingled with incidents and forms which seem palpable to feeling and to sight. Not so the visions which encircled the cradle of chivalry, and which mock the robust grasp of Scottish power. We care not for them but as the gay creatures of a childish dream, and endure them only when every thing about them is equally impossible, brilliant, and shadowy. For the Knights and the Ladies of their love, we only desire to see them in picturesque attitudes and striking situations, and desire not to investigate feelings which we did not understand when we learned to admire them. The novelist, therefore, who tries to realize them and their adventures, will probably make an unpleasant compromise, divesting the magnificent fiction of half its wonders, and making the remainder look absurd, by dragging them into a light which they cannot sustain. The first of these tales, indeed, has its scenes on English ground, and the Crusade only glimmers in the distance. From its title "The Betrothed," it may be guessed, by the few who have not read it, to contain the story of some fair one left to be persecuted and tempted at home, while her intended bridegroom is fighting for the Holy Sepulchre. This heroine is Eveline Berenger, the daughter of a noble Norman Knight, who, seated in a border castle of Shropshire, gives up himself and almost all his band to certain slaughter at the hands of the Welsh invaders, to fulfil a drunken boast which he has made to their chief in a season of truce; a piece of folly and injustice which well becomes a tale of the Seven Champions, but which is really provoking when attributed to an old gentleman for whom we had begun to feel a particular regard. The castle is invested, and, of course, we have a minute and lively journal of the siege, which is interesting as all tolerable accounts of sieges are, but is very inferior to its prototype in “Old Mortality." The chief defender is a huge Fleming, called Wilkin Flammock, who is made to produce some of the best effects in the tale, by the contrast of his sturdy fidelity and his mercantile habits, and of his broad portly person and his chivalrous occupations. He has a lovely daughter, by far the most real and charming person in the book, a little warm-hearted and warm-tempered beauty, who, as she attends on Eveline, is often required to enliven a dull scene or complete a pretty picture. The following scene, by night, on the battlements of the castle, in which these ladies are the principal figures, will give a fair specimen of the kind of effect which the author frequently labours to produce. Eveline has just declared to her companion that "this moment is at least hers, to think upon and to mourn her father." "So saying, and overpowered by the long-repressed burst of filial sorrow, she sunk down on the banquette which ran along the inside of the embattled parapet of the platform, and murmuring to herself, "He is gone for ever!" abandoned herself to the extremity of grief. One hand grasped unconsciously the weapon which she held, and served, at the same time, to prop her forehead, while the tears, by which she was now for the first time relieved, flowed in torrents from her eyes, and her sobs seemed so convulsive, that Rose almost feared her heart was bursting. Her affection and sympathy dictated at once the kindest course which Eveline's condition permitted. Without attempting to control the torrent of grief in its full current, she gently sat her down beside the mourner, and possessing herself of the hand which had sunk motionless by her side, she alternately pressed it to her lips, her bosom, and her brow-now covered it with kisses, now bedewed it with tears, and amid these tokens of the most devoted and humble sympathy, waited a more composed moment to offer her little stock of consolation in such deep silence and stillness, that as the pale light fell upon the two beautiful young women, it seemed rather to shew a group of statuary, the work of some eminent sculptor, than beings whose eyes still wept, and whose hearts still throbbed. At a little distance, the gleaming corslet of the Fleming, and the dark garments of Father Aldrovand, as they lay prostrate on the stone steps, might represent the bodies of those for whom the principal figures were mourning." This is obviously a picture beneath so great a writer; and, so intent is the writer on the effect, that he actually makes the fat Fleming and priest, who are sleeping in the back-ground, enact dead bodies, as if the real situation were not sufficiently tragic. The siege is raised by the Constable of Chester, whose nephew, Damian de Lacy, conducts the funeral of the old chief, and falls in love with the daughter. She is betrothed, however, to the uncle, who goes for three years to Palestine, leaving her to the guardianship of his nephew, who duteously keeps aloof till he is wounded in rescuing her from the Welsh, and tended at her castle. The youth is suspected of treason; but Eveline protects him even against the forces of the king; and the constable returns to find his territories desolate, and himself a stranger, and to hear that his bride has transferred her affections to his nephew. There is something very touching in this return: the desolation makes one shiver; and the manliness with which the warrior overmasters his sorrows, is noble in itself, and more striking from the loneliness in which he seems to breathe. But the following scenes, in which the Welsh harper, who has attended him through his journey, stabs, in open day, his cousin, instead of him, to avenge the daughter of the British chief, and in which De Lacy visits Damian in disguise, and finally announces that he has relinquished his claims to the lady in his favour, are too melo-dramatic. There is, however, a fearful interest about one chapter in the work which we have passed over, where Eveline visits an aged aunt in a vast Saxon mansion, who herself, "an awful woman," compels her to sleep in a chamber devoted to a spectral visitant, who has power over the destinies of the house. Nor must we forget a feminine and fervid scene, where the orphan, in the moment of peril, casts herself before the picture of the Virgin, vowing to place her hand at the disposal of her deliverer, and fancies that she sees the countenance change, the eyes become animated, and return to their suppliant entreaties, and the mouth visibly assume a smile of inexpressible sweetness, as assenting to her prayers. The second Tale has its scene in Palestine, and is full of strange accidents and wonderful disguises, of which we can afford only a few specimens. In the opening, a Scotch Knight, called Sir Kenneth, meets and combats an Emir, on the banks of the Dead Sea, and afterwards sups with him beside a fountain; and, in the end, one of these is discovered to be the heir to the throne of Scotland, and the other the Sultan Saladin. Sir Kenneth, after an interview with a crazy hermit in a cave, finds his way, among the rocks of Judea, into a chapel, where Edith Plantagenet, niece to the King of England, whom he has loved at humble distance, passes by him, and drops two rosebuds at his feet. Saladin, disguised as a physician, enters the camp of the Crusaders, and cures Richard of England, who lay sick, and works other wonders. The Scottish Prince, disguised as a poor Knight, is sentenced to die for leaving his post, on a hoax of the Queen, and chooses to be executed rather than break a vow by disclosing his rank; but he is saved by the entreaties of Saladin, disguised as a physician, and returned by him blacked all over as a dumb negro, in which disguise he saves the King's life, and obtains his own pardon. Among all these Asiatic wonders, there are many striking pictures which sort ill with them. Most of the scenes in which Richard is introduced, are finely executed, and one or two are extremely vivid. On the whole, much greater power is displayed than in "The Betrothed;" but the general effect is unpleasing. An Arabian tale is, no doubt, a good thing, and a true Scotch novel is still better; but the elements of the two cannot well be harmoniously blended. But it is not fair to dwell on errors which are easily pointed out, and pass over the excellencies of this tale in a sentence. Let our readers then, if perchance they have not skinimed the novel, take the beginning of a scene in which the Queen of Richard sues for the Scotchman's life. "The monarch was lying on his couch, and at some distance, as awaiting his farther commands, stood a man whose profession it was not difficult to conjecture. He was clothed in a jerkin of red cloth, which reached scantly below the shoulders, leaving the arms bare from about halfway above the elbow, and, as an upper garment, he wore, when about as at present to betake himself to his dreadful office, a coat or tabard without sleeves, something like that of a herald, made of dressed bull's hide, and stained in the front with many a broad spot and speckle of dull crimson. The jerkin, and the tabard over it, reached the knee, and the nether stocks, or covering of the legs, were of the same leather which composed the tabard. A cap of rough shag served to hide the upper part of a visage, which, like that of a screech-owl, seemed desirous to conceal itself from light-the lower part of the face being obscured by a huge red beard, mingling with shaggy hair of the same colour. What features were seen were stern and inisanthropical. The man's figure was short, strongly made, with a neck like a bull, very broad shoulders, arms of a great and disproportioned length, a huge square trunk, and thick bandy legs. This truculent official leant on a sword, the blade of which was nearly four feet and a half in length, while the handle of twenty inches, surrounded by a ring of lead plummets to counterpoise the weigh of such a blade, rose considerably above the man's head, as he rested his arm upon its hilt, waiting for King Richard's farther directions. "On the sudden entrance of the ladies, Richard, who was then lying on his couch, with his face towards the entrance, and resting on his elbow as he spoke to his griesly attendant, flung himself hastily, as if displeased and surprised, to the other side, turning his back to the Queen and the females of her train, and drawing around him the covering of his couch, which, by his own choice, or more probably the flattering selection of his chamberlains, consisted of two large lions' skins, dressed in Venice with such abmirable skill that they seemed softer than the hide of the deer. |