All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed,

Even by the sufferer - and, in each event,

Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, where scarcely soil sufficient

for its nourishment can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater height than any other mountain tree.

[The reference is to the Edeltanne (Abies pectinata), which is not a native of this country, but grows at a great height on the Swiss Alps and throughout the mountainous region of Central Europe.]

XXXIV.

Or, it may be, with Demons,' who impair

The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey

In melancholy bosoms such as were Of moody texture from their earliest day,

And loved to dwell in darkness and dis may,

Deeming themselves predestined to a doom

Which is not of the pangs that pass

away;

Making the Sun like blood, the Earth a tomb,

The tomb a hell and Hell itself a murkier gloom.

XXXV.

Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown

streets,

Whose symmetry was not for solitude,

There seems as 'twere a curse upon the Seats

Of former Sovereigns, and the antique brood

Of Este, which for many an age made good

Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore

Patron or Tyrant, as the changing mood

The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke pre ferred the presence of a child to complet solitude.

2

[He always chose to have company with him, if it were only a child; for he loved children and took pleasure in talking with those that ha been well trained" (Life of John Locke, by H R. Fox-Bourne, ii. 537). Lady Masham daughter Esther, and "his wife" Betty Clarke aged eleven years, were among his child-friends. [Of the ancient family of Este, Marquesso of Tuscany, Azzo V. was the first who obtaine power in Ferrara in the twelfth century. remote descendant, Alfonso 1. (1486-1534 who married Lucrezia Borgia, 1502, honoure himself by attaching Ariosto to his court, an it was his grandson, Alfonso II. (d. 1597), wh first befriended and afterwards, on the score o lunacy, imprisoned Tasso in the Hospital o Sant' Anna (1579-86).]

Of petty power impelled, of those who

wore

The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.

XXXVI.

And Tasso is their glory and their

shame

Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell!!

And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame,

And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell:

[It is a fact that Tasso was an involuntary inmate of the Hospital of Sant' Anna at Ferrara for seven years and four months from March, 1579, to July, 1586 but the causes, the character, and the place of his imprisonment have been subjects of legend and misrepresentation. It has long been known and acknowledged that a real or feigned passion for Duke Alfonso's sister, Leonora d'Este, was not the cause or occasion of his detention, and that the famous cell or dungeon ("nine paces by six, and about seven high") was not "the original place of the poet's confinement, but the original charge of injustice and tyranny remained unrefuted if not unquestioned. The publication of Tasso's letters by Guasti, in 1853, and, more recently, Signor Angelo Solerti's monumental work, Vita di Torquato Tasso (1893), which draws largely upon the letters of contemporaries and the accounts of the ducal court, have in a great measure exonerated the duke at the expense of the unhappy poet himself. Briefly, Tasso's intrigues with rival powers- the Medici at Florence, the papal court, and the Holy Office at Bologna -aroused the alarm and suspicion of the duke, whilst his general demeanour and his outbursts of violence and temper compelled, rather than afforded, a pretext for his confinement; and, to quote his own words, "in a fit of madness" he broke out into execrations of the ducal court and family, and of the people of Ferrara. For this offence he was shut up in the Hospital of Sant' Anna, and for many months treated as an ordinary lunatic. Of the particulars of his treatment during these first eight months of his confinement, apart from Tasso's own letters, there is no evidence. accounts of the hospital are lost, and the Libri di spesa do not commence till November 20, 1579- Two years later, the Libri di spenderia, from January, 1582, onward, show that he was put on a more generous diet; and it is known that a certain measure of liberty and other indulgences were gradually accorded. There can, however, be little doubt that for many months his food was neglected and medical attendance withheld. His statement, that he was denied the rites of the Church, cannot be gainsaid. He was regarded as a lunatic, and, as such, he would not be permitted either to make his confession or to communicate. Worse than all, there was the terrible solitude, S

The

"his

cruel, his natural enemy." No wonder the attacks of delirium, the "unwonted lights," the conference with a familiar spirit, followed in due course. Byron was ignorant of the facts; and we know that his scorn and indignation was exaggerated and misplaced. But the "pity of it" remains, that the grace and glory of his age was sacrificed to ignorance and fear, if not to animosity and revenge.]

[Boileau contrasts "le clinquant du Tasse." the tinsel of Tasso, with the pure gold of Virgil.]

Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;

Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,

[Sir Walter Scott. The key-note of "the harpings of the north," the chivalrous strain of "shield, lance, and brand, and plume and scarf." of "gentle courtesy," of "valour, lion-mettled lord," which the "Introduction to Marmion" preludes, had been already struck in the opening lines of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso

"Le Donne, i Cavalier', l'arme, gli amori, Le cortesic, l'audaci imprese io canto."]

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,

The Roman friend of Rome's leastmortal mind,2

The two stanzas xlii. and xliii. are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja: -"Italia, Italia, O tu, cui feo la sorte!"-Poesie Toscane, 1823,

p. 149.

The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in dif