The Romance of Biography Volume I Part 23

Marring the sun-beams with its hideous shade,

is a semicircular window, strongly cross-barred with iron; it looks into a court-yard, so built up, if I remember rightly, that the noon-day sun could scarce reach it. Even without the hallowed a.s.sociations connected with the spot, it would have chilled and saddened me. With them, the very air had a suffocating weight; and the cold dark walls, and low-bowed roof, struck a s.h.i.+vering awe through the blood. Upon the plaster outside the grated window, I observed several names written in pencil; among the rest, those of Byron and Rogers. I must observe here, that the "Lament of Ta.s.so" is, in fact, a cento taken from Ta.s.so's minor poems. Almost every sentiment there expressed, may be found in the Italian; but the soul of the poet has been transfused with such a glowing impulse into its new mould, it never seems to have been adapted to another; the precious metal is the same, only the impress is different, and it has been stamped by a kindred and a master spirit.

Lord Byron says,

Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate To be entwined for ever; but too late!

Ta.s.so had said, that his name and that of Leonora should be united and soar to fame together.

"Ella miei versi, ed io Circondava al suo nome altere piume, E l'un per l'altro and volando a prova;"

--and a long list of corresponding pa.s.sages and sentiments might easily be pointed out.

The inscription on the door of Ta.s.so's cell, _lies_, I believe, like many other inscriptions. Ta.s.so was _not_ confined in this cell for seven years; but here it was that he addressed that affecting Canzone to Leonora and her sister Lucrezia, which begins "Figlie di Renata,"--"daughters of Rene!" Thus in the very commencement, by this delicate and tender apostrophe, bespeaking their compa.s.sion, by awakening the remembrance of their mother, like him so long a wretched prisoner. He reminds them of the years he spent at their side--"their n.o.ble servant and their dear companion,"

Gli anni miei tra voi spese,-- Qual son,--qual fui,--che chiedo--ove mi trovo![136]

He was, after the first year, removed to a larger cell, with better accommodations. Here he made a collection of his smaller poems lately written, and dedicated them to the two Princesses. But Leonora was no longer in a state to be charmed by the verses, or flattered or touched by the admiring devotion of her lover,--her poet,--her faithful servant: she was dying. A slow and cureless disease preyed on her delicate frame, and she expired in the second year of Ta.s.so's imprisonment. When the news of her danger was brought to him, he requested his friend Pignarola to kiss her hand in his name, and ask her whether there was any thing which, in his sad state, he could do for her ease or pleasure? We do not know how this tender message was received or answered; but it was too late. Leonora died in February 1581, after lingering from the November previous.

Thus perished, of a premature decay, the woman who had been for seventeen years the idol of a poet's imagination--the wors.h.i.+p of a poet's heart; she who was not unworthy of being enshrined in the rich tracery-work of sweet thoughts and bright fancies she had herself suggested. The love of Ta.s.so for the Princess Leonora might have appeared, in his own time, something like the "desire of the night-moth for the star;" but what is it _now_? what was it _then_ in the eyes of her whom he adored? How far was it permitted, encouraged, repaid in secret? This we cannot know; and perhaps had we lived at the time,--in the very Court, and looked daily into her own soft eyes, practised to conceal,--we had been no wiser. Yet one more observation.

When Leonora died, all the poets of Ferrara pressed forward with the usual tribute of elegy and eulogium; but the voice of Ta.s.so was not heard among the rest. He alone flung no garland on the bier of her, whose living brow he had wreathed with the brightest flowers of song.

This is adduced by Sera.s.si as a proof that he had never loved her.

Ginguen himself can only account for it, by the presumption that he was piqued by that coldness and neglect, which I have shown was merely supposit.i.tious. Strange reasoning! as if Ta.s.so, while his heart bled over his loss, in his solitary cell, could have deigned to join this crowd of courtly mourners! as if, under such circ.u.mstances, in such a moment, the greatness of his grief could have burst forth in any terms that must not have exposed himself to fresh rigours, and the fame, at least the discretion, of her he had loved, to suspicion! No! nothing remained to him but silence;--and he was silent.

FOOTNOTES:

[120] See the Rinaldo, c. 8.

[121]

----From my very birth My soul was drunk with love, &c.

LAMENT OF Ta.s.sO.

[122]

Rose, che l' arte invidiosa mira. &c.

[123]

Alteremente umile Te chiudi ne' tuoi cari alti soggiorni.

[124] The daughter of Louis XII. She was closely imprisoned during twelve years, on suspicion of favouring the early reformers.

[125] Ganymede.

[126] Sonnet 37.

[127] Sonnet 29.

[128] I am told the original idea is in Plato; prettier, however, than either, was the speech of a modern lover, whose mistress was gazing pensively on a star: "Ne la regardez pas tant, chre amie!--je ne puis pas te la donner!"

[129] The Canzono which is, I believe, esteemed the finest of those addressed to Leonora,

Mentre ch' a venerar muovon le gente,

concludes with this play upon her name--

Costei LE ONORA col bel nome sante.

She does them HONOUR by her sacred name.

[130] "Foreign Phoenix."

[131] Translated by a friend.

[132] Translated by a friend.

[133] Near Naples: thus, in his pathetic Canzone on himself,--

Sa.s.sel la gloriosa alma Sirena Appresso il cui sepolcro, ebbi la cuna!

[134] The wife of Bernardo Ta.s.so. See an account of her in Black's Life of Ta.s.so.

[135] Manso, Vita di T. Ta.s.so.

[136] Part of this Canzone has been elegantly translated by Mr. Wiffen in his Life of Ta.s.so, p. 83.

CHAPTER XIX.

MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI.

The Marquis Manso of Naples, who in his early youth had entertained Ta.s.so in his palace, had cherished and honoured him when that great but unhappy man was wandering, brain-struck with misery, from one court to another,--was, in his old age, the host and admirer of Milton; thus, by a singular good fortune, allying his name to two of the most ill.u.s.trious of earth's diviner sons: while theirs, linked together by the recollection of this common friend, follow each other in our memory by a natural transition. We can think of them as pressing, though at an interval of many years, the same friendly hand, and gracing the same hospitable board with "colloquy sublime." Ta.s.so, from the romance of his story, and his personal character, is the most interesting of the two; yet Milton, besides standing highest in the scale of moral dignity, sits nearest to our hearts as an Englishman, whose genius, speaking through our native accents, strikes upon our sense,

Like the large utterance of the early G.o.ds.

We rise from reading Johnson's Biography of Milton, either with the most painful and indignant feeling of the malignity of the critic,[137] or with an impression of Milton's character, as false as it is odious. Of moral inconsistency and weakness, blended with splendid genius, we have proofs lamentable and numerous enough: to be obliged to regard the mighty father of English verse,--him "who rode sublime upon the seraph wings of ecstasy,"--him, whose harmonious soul was tuned to the music of the spheres, though when struck in evil times, and by an adverse hand, it sent forth a crash of discord,--him, who has left us the most exquisite pictures of tenderness and beauty--to think of such a being as a petty domestic tyrant, a coa.r.s.e-minded fanatic, stern and unfeeling in all the relations of life, were enough to confound all our ideas of moral fitness. When we figure to ourselves the author of Ra.s.selas trampling over the ashes of Milton, lending his mighty powers to degrade the majestic, to disfigure the beautiful, and to darken the glorious, it is with the same feeling of concentrated disgust with which we recall the violation of the poet's grave, some years ago, when vulgar savages defaced and carried off his sacred and venerable remains piece-meal.[138] Let us for a moment imagine our Milton descending to earth to a.s.sert his injured fame, and confronted with his great biographer--

Look here upon this picture, and on this--

The one, like his own Adam, with fair large front and hyacinthine locks, serene and blooming as his own Eden; in all the dignified graces which temperance and self-conquest lend to youth,[139] in all the purity of his stainless mind, radiant like another Moses, with the reflected glories of the Empyreum,--and then look upon the other!--But it is an awful thing for little people, to meddle with great and sacred names; and so leaving the Hippopotamus of literature in his den--proceed we.

It relieves the heart from an oppressive contradiction to behold Milton, such as he is represented by his other biographers, and such as undoubtedly he really was. It is well known, that in his youth, and even at a late age, he had an uncommonly fine person, almost to effeminacy; and was as gracefully endowed in form and manners, as he was highly and holily gifted in mind. His natural mildness, cheerfulness, and courtesy, are commemorated by all who knew him, or lived near his time.[140] He whom Johnson accuses of a "Turkish contempt of females, as inferior beings," and whom he represents in a light so ungentle and gloomy, that we cannot imagine him under the influence of beauty, was early touched by the softest pa.s.sions, and during his whole life peculiarly sensible to the charm of female society: witness his successive marriages, and his friends.h.i.+p and intercourse with Lady Margaret Ley, and the all-accomplished Countess of Ranelagh, who supplied to him, as he says, the place of every friend:[141]--witness, too, a thousand most lovely and glorious pa.s.sages scattered through his works, which women may quote with triumph, as proofs that we had no small influence over the imagination of our great epic poet. What but the most reverential and lofty feeling of the graces and virtues proper to our s.e.x, could have embodied such an exquisite vision as the Lady in Comus? or created his delightful Eve? on whom, "as on a queen, a pomp of winning graces waited still."