people and reduced himself, if Ordericus Vitalis is to be believed, tơ a state bordering on indigence. The historian I have just cited reports a circumstance which it will be difficult to believe, but which is equally descriptive of the prince and of the age he lived in; He sometimes lay a-bed for want of clothes, and often missed the mass because his nakedness prevented him from his assisting at it.' It was not the ambition of conquering kingdoms in Asia, but his inconstant and adventurous humour that made him take the cross. The Normans, a restless and warlike people, who had rendered themselves remarkable among all the nations of Europe by the devotion of pilgrimages, ran together in crowds under his banners. As Duke Robert had not wherewithal to defray the expenses of his armament, he pledged Normandy in the hands of his brother, William Rufus. William, whom the age he lived in accused of impiety, and who derided the knight errantry of the crusaders, seized with joy upon the opportunity of governing a province which he hoped one day to reunite to his kingdom. He raised contributions on the clergy which he did not love, and melted down the church silver to pay the sum of 10,000 marks to Robert, who took his departure for the Holy Land, followed by almost all the nobility of his dukedom." . P. 153.

The characters of Robert, Earl of Flanders, surnamed "The Lance and Sword of the Christians," and of the rich Count of Blois and Chartres, the number of whose castles was compared to that of the days in the year, but who was more nobly distinguished in this rude age by the protection which he afforded, and the inclination which he evinced, to learning and learned individuals, we are unable to dwell upon for the present, and pass to a more eminent and important personage.

First, of the princes of Italy, whose zeal was awakened by the passage of the French crusades through their dominions,

"Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, determined to partake in their fortunes and in the glory of this holy enterprise." * * * He had neither less courage nor less genius than his father, Robert Guiscard. Cotemporary authors, who never fail to speak of the physical qualities of their heroes, inform us, that he surpassed in stature the tallest of his followers; his eyes were blue, and appeared full of anger and arrogance. His presence, says Anna Comnena, struck the sight as much as his reputation astonished the mind. When he spoke, one would have said that he had studied the art of eloquence; when he showed himself under arms, it might have been believed that he had passed his life in learning the management of the lance and sword. Educated in the school of the Norman heroes, he concealed the combinations of policy under the exterior of violence; and, although by nature fierce and haughty, he knew how to dissemble an injury when vengeance was unprofitable to him.

"Whatever could lead to the accomplishment of his designs appeared to him to be just. He had learned of his father to regard as his enemies all those whose estates or riches were the objects of his covetousness: he was restrained, neither by the fear of God, nor by the opinion of men, nor by his own oaths. He had followed Robert in the war against the Emperor Alexis, and had distinguished himself in the battles of Durazzo and Larissa: but, disinherited by will, nothing remained for him at the death of his father but the remembrance of his exploits, and the example of his family. He had declared war against his brother Roger, and had just compelled him to cede the principality of Tarentum, when they began to speak in Europe about the expedition to the east. The deliverance of the sepulchre of Jesus Christ was not that which inflamed his zeal, or decided him to take the cross. As he had vowed an eternal hatred against the Grecian emperors, he smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the head of an army; and, full of confidence in his fortune, he hoped to erect for himself a kingdom before he should arrive at Jerusalem." P. 159.

This artful and ambitious character is poetically contrasted with that of the most celebrated of the knights who ranged themselves under his standard, and who furnished the model for one of the most interesting personages in the immortal poem of Tasso.

"All these warriors were already renowned for their exploits; but none among them deserved to fix the attention of posterity so much as the brave Tancred.* Although he belonged to a family in which ambition was hereditary, he had no other passion than that of combating the infidels. Piety, glory, and perhaps his friendship for Bohemond, were alone able to conduct him into Asia. His cotemporaries admired his romantic loftiness, and his uncultivated pride. He never yielded except to the empire of virtue and sometimes to that of beauty. A stranger to all considerations and all the interests of policy, he knew no law but those of religion and honour, and was always ready to lay down his life for their sake. The annals of chivalry offer no model more accomplished; poetry and history have joined in his celebration, and have bestowed on him the same praises." P.162.

We should add to these the pictures of the warlike Bishop of Puy, (Adhemar de Monteil,) and of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, the Nestor of Tasso. But, for want of room, we pass them over, and hasten to that of the Emperor Alexis Comnenus, which our author appears to have estimated with more impartiality than either the zeal of the cotemporary Latin historians, or the equally unjust though less pardonable prejudices of modern philosophers, would admit.

*Raoul de Caen has written, half in prose, half in verse, the Acts of Tancred. (See the Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum of Martenne, Tom. 1. or the Collection of Muratori, Tom. III.)

"Seated on a throne from which he had precipitated his master and benefactor, he could not believe in virtue, and knew better than others the counsels of ambition. He had displayed some courage in the acquisition of the purple, and governed only by dissimulation, the ordinary weapon of the Greeks, as of all weak states. His daughter, Anna Comnena, has made an accomplished prince of him; the Latins have represented him as perfidious and cruel. Impartial history, which rejects the exaggeration both of praise and satire, sees in Alexis only a weak monarch, of a superstitious mind, more led away by the love of a vain representation than by the love of glory. He might have placed himself at the head of the crusade, and reconquered Asia Minor by accompanying the Latins in their march to Jerusalem. This great enterprise alarmed his weakness. His timid prudence imagined that it sufficed to deceive the crusaders, in order to have nothing to apprehend from them, and that to receive their empty homage was enough to profit by their victories. Every thing appeared to him good and just that could help to extricate him from a situation, the dangers of which were increased by the line of policy he pursued, and which was rendered every day more embarrassing by the uncertainty of his projects. The more he endeavoured to inspire confidence, the more he rendered his good faith suspected. In seeking to inspire terror, he made the discovery of all the alarms he himself experienced. P. 166,

In his account of the progress of the christian army through Asia Minor, and above all in the history of the establishment of the first Latin principality of Edessa, by Baldwin, the brother of Godfrey, our author has derived considerable assistance from a curious MS. in the Armenian language, written by one Matthew of Edessa, which is among the treasures of the imperial library, and does not appear to have been resorted to by any previous historian. This is a circumstance which undoubtedly impresses no small value on this portion of his work. We shall leave these details, however, and many others of equal and greater interest and importance behind us, and seek our concluding specimens of the style and spirit in which the work is composed amidst the long and eventful narrative of the siege of Jerusalem. This narrative is throughout illustrated by references to the poem of Tasso, and its details are rendered tenfold more interesting and attractive to the reader of taste by pursuing them with a view of forming a proper estimate of the advantages derived by the poet from the materials which history furnished, and for what portions of his noble composition he is solely indebted to the fertile resources of his own powerful imagi

nation.

With this object in sight it will be one of the first objects of curiosity to ascertain how far the supernatural agency which forms so striking and poetical a feature in the "Jerusalem Delivered," may have had its foundation in wonders actually credited by the

crusaders, and reported by cotemporary historians; and many doubtless would be little surprised to find the chroniclers of that dark and superstitious age abounding with the marvellous as much as Tasso himself. For our own part, we felt some disappointment in finding that the enchanted forest has no more substantial foundation than the dry mention of the accidental discovery of a wood lying between the valleys of Samaria and Sichem, at a time when the materials it furnished for the construction of warlike machines were of the utmost importance to the operations of the siege, but which materials "were defended from the axe of the crusaders, neither by the incantations of Ismeno, nor by the arms of the Saracens. In like manner, Armida vanishes from our eyes into air, into thin air," when we are told, that a story incidentally told by William of Tyre, concerning two witches, "who were seen upon the ramparts of the city conjuring the elements, but who were speedily despatched by the arrows of the christians," is almost the solitary passage to be found among all the historians of the holy war in which any mention is made of our belief attached to the existence of magical powers. The reflection drawn from our author by this curious circumstance proves an intimate acquaintance with the character of our ancient historians, and deserves to be attended to by all who are interested in the antiquities of the middle ages.

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"We should add," he observes, "that magic was much less int Vogue in the twelfth century than in that in which Tasso lived. The crusaders were extremely superstitious, no doubt; but their superstition did not attach itself to trifles; they were struck by the phænomena which they beheld in the heavens, they believed in the apparition of saints, in revelations made by God himself, but not in magicians. The ideas of magic came long afterwards, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The chroniclers of this latter epoch, when they treat of anterior events, fill their recitals with whimsical and ridiculous fables which are not to be found in more ancient authors. The character of the middle ages must not be estimated by the chronicles of Robert Gaquin or of Archbishop Turpin, still less by the romances of that period." (Note p. 402.)

Beautiful as are the fictions of Tasso, we must, on this account, be compelled reluctantly to admit that his poem would have re flected more vividly the character of the times to which it refers, and would have therefore better fulfilled one of the greatest and most imperious obligations of the law of epic poetry, if the machinery of holy apparitions, of glorified saints and martyrs combating visibly in favour of the cross, of the dreams of inspiration, and powers of prophecy, had been substituted to the more pleasing but less characteristic fictions of Faërie. While we are observing upon this noble effort of human genius, it will, perhaps, appear

more extraordinary, however, that the poet should have overlooked so evident and fertile a source of poetical imagery as the description of the holy places visited by the christians in their celebrated procession round the walls of Jerusalem would have furnished. But the mention of this procession recalls us to the purpose from which we have too long wandered. Our historical readers will remember that it was a ceremony enjoined, as by express revelation from heaven, to all the army of the cross previous to the grand assault which was meditated.

"The pilgrims, persuaded that the gates of the besieged city would open themselves not less to devotion than to valour, listened with docility to the exhortations of the hermit, and all set themselves eagerly to follow his advice, which they looked upon as the language of God himself. After three days of a rigorous fast, they issued in arms from their quarters, and marched, barefooted and bareheaded, round the walls of the Holy City. They were preceded by their priests clad in white, bearing the images of the saints, and singing psalms and canticles. Their banners were displayed; their symbols and trumpets resounded afar. It was thus that the Jews formerly made the tour of Jericho, whose walls fell to pieces at the sound of their martial instruments.

"The crusaders began their march from the valley of Rephraim, which is in front of Calvary; they advanced northward and saluted, as they entered the valley of Jehoshaphat, the tombs of St. Mary, St. Stephen, and the first elect of God. Continuing their progress to wards the Mount of Olives, they contemplated with respect the grotto in which Jesus Christ exuded a bloody sweat, and the place where the Saviour of the world shed tears over Jerusalem. When they reached the summit of the mountain, the most imposing spectacle discovered itself to their eyes. To the east they beheld the plains of Jericho, the shores of the Dead Sea and of the river Jordan; to the west they surveyed at their feet the Holy City and her territory covered with sacred ruins. Assembled together in the very spot from whence Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, and on which they still looked for the marks of his feet, they heard the exhortations of their priests and bishops.

“Arnoul de Rohés, chaplain of the Duke of Normandy, addressed to them a pathetic discourse, conjuring them to redouble their zeal and perseverance. In concluding, he turned towards Jerusalem: 6 You behold,' he said, "the inheritance of Jesus Christ trampled upon by the impious; see here at last the worthy recompense of all your labours; see here the place in which God will pardon all your faults, and bestow his blessing upon all your victories. At the voice of the orator, who pointed out to them the church of the resurrection and the rocks of Calvary ready to receive them, the defenders of the cross humbled themselves before God, and kept their looks fixed on Jerusalem.

"When Arnoul invited them, in the name of Jesus, to forget their