To seek Achilles and his poet flies.
Might I behold their meeting!"
But he is a reed shaken with the wind. Antonio reaches the Court of Ferrara at this crisis, in all the importance of a successful negociation with the Vatican. He strikes down the wing of the poet's delicate imagination with the arrows of a careless irony; and Tasso is for a time completely dazzled and overpowered by the worldly science of the skilful diplomatist. The deeper wisdom of his own simplicity is yet veiled from his eyes. Life seems to pass before him, as pourtrayed by the discourse of Antonio, like a mighty triumphal procession, in the exulting movements and clarion sounds of which he alone has no share; and, at last, the forms of beauty peopling his own spiritual world seem to dissolve into clouds, even into faint shadows of clouds, before the strong glare of the external world, leaving his imagination as a desolate house, whence light and music have departed. He thus pours forth, when alone with the Princess Leonora, the impressions produced upon him by Antonio's descriptions:—
"They still disturb my heart,—
Still do they crowd my soul tumultuously,—
The troubling images of that vast world,
Which,—living, restless, fearful as it is,—
Yet, at the bidding of one Master-Mind,
E'en as commanded by a demi-god,
Seems to fulfil its course.—With eagerness,
Yea, with a strange delight, my soul drank in
The strong words of th' experienced; but, alas!
The more I listen'd still the more I sank
In mine own eyes;—I seem'd to die away
As into some faint echo of the rocks,—
A shadowy sound—a nothing!"
There is something of a very touching beauty in the character of the Princess Leonora d'Este. She does not, indeed, resemble some of the lovely beings delineated by Shakspeare—the females "graceful without design, and unforeseeing," in whom, even under the pressure of heaviest calamity, it is easy to discern the existence of the sunny and gladsome nature which would spring up with fawn-like buoyancy, were but the crushing weight withdrawn. The spirit of Leonora has been at once elevated and subdued by early trial: high thoughts, like messengers from heaven, have been its visitants in the solitude of the sick chamber; and, looking upon life and creation, as it were, through the softening veil of remembered suffering, it has settled into such majestic loveliness as the Italian painters delight to shadow forth on the calm brow of their Madonna. Its very tenderness is self-resignation; its inner existence serene, yet sad,—"a being breathing thoughtful breath." She is worshipped by the poet as his tutelary angel, and her secret affection for him might almost become that character. It has all the deep devotedness of a woman's heart, with the still purity of a seraphic guardian, taking no part in the passionate dreams of earthly happiness. She feels his genius with a reverential appreciation; she watches over it with a religious tenderness, for ever interposing to screen its unfolding powers from every ruder breath. She rejoices in his presence as a flower filling its cup with gladness from the morning light; yet, preferring his well-being to all earthly things, she would meekly offer up, for the knowledge of his distant happiness, even the fulness of that only and unutterable joy. A deep feeling of woman's lot on earth,—the lot of endurance and of
