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which had already figured so largely in the more famous accounts by other poets of his later adventures? Accordingly-defying probability with as much boldness as heretofore he saves Bayard and Rinaldo's armour in the boat which brings the ship's crew to land before him. They are sold by the sailors to a knight, who speedily has to fight with their old owner for their possession, and is left senseless by him on the ground, though not till he has slightly wounded Rinaldo with his own sword. Bayard neighs with joy to feel his rightful master on his back again, and caresses him like a faithful dog.

After this Rinaldo rides back to Paris, where he finds Charlemagne-his campaign against the Saracens ended-once more holding peaceful jousts. As the young cavalier presents himself on the field, he is at once challenged by Grifon to acknowledge the superiority of an unnamed lady. "Less beautiful by much than my own,' is the instant reply; and suiting the action to the word, Rinaldo speedily lays his adversary in the dust. All beg to know the name of so stalwart a champion. The

knight raises his visor, and is received with great joy by his father and by the whole court. Only Clarice looks sad and draws back in tears. For she was herself the damsel whose charms Grifon-though not by her permission-had been so highly exalting.

She forgets that Rinaldo could not know this; and only remembers that he has avouched another lady to be her superior, whom she hastily concludes to be the fair one depicted on his shield. Now that shield was the property of the cavalier from whom Rinaldo reclaimed his horse and armour: in doing which, having spoiled his own, the paladin had seized on the shield of his vanquished antagonist, whose own lady-love is painted on it. The sight of this apparently successful rival to her charms stings Clarice with jealousy, "the cruel daughter of fear and love, that daughter who often slays her parent." Rinaldo comes forward to lift her on to her palfrey, and to guide it back to the city, as other favoured knights were doing to their ladies; but Clarice receives him with such coldness that he exclaims :

Ah! bad it is from beggar's hand to steal
The fruit of toil both wearisome and long;
Hard is the breast that can no pity feel,
Nor comfort give the wretch in anguish strong.
Thus, lady, I my thought with tears reveal,
Now that my labours find withheld by wrong
Their sole, sweet guerdon; now that in such grief
Your hand takes from me soothing and relief.

Shall then that pain in many wanderings borne,
And all in arms for you alone I wrought,

No recompense enjoy save angry scorn,
Scorn to this heart with bitter sorrow fraught?

Scorn that a cloud in this my state forlorn

Has o'er your beauteous eyes, sweet radiance brought; Eyes whence my wearied mind once strength could gain, Refreshment welcome, and escape from pain.

-Canto xi. 11, 12.

Clarice interrupts this expostulation sharply with the words—

Get aid in this your ill, get aid from her

Who gave you strength and courage me to spurn;
Whose face not only in your heart you wear,
But even emblazoned on your shield you bear ;

and, refusing to listen to any ex-
planation, she denies him leave to
visit her in Paris. To add to
Rinaldo's difficulties he is shortly
after engaged in a dispute for the
hand of the fair Alda in the dance,
-a privilege which he only sought
in order to invoke her intercession
with the offended Clarice; in con-
sequence of which he is insulted
by Anselm of Maganza, one of the
old enemies of his family, and pro-

Banished on

voked to kill him.
this account from the city, he de-
parts without having made his
peace with Clarice-nay, knowing
that she now holds him for wholly
false and fickle. Too late, he
flings the shield, the primary cause
of his troubles, into the Seine.
No consoling message from his
lady follows him. He rides on,

he knows not and cares not
whither,-

"The while eight times all vermeil in the sky
The dawn appeared, while pearly dew-drops flowed
From her bright hair of gold and radiant eye,
Straying by devious and uncertain road;"

and, on the ninth day, finds him-
self in the Valley of Grief.

This dolorous vale is shaded by weird trees, from amidst whose dark and poisonous leaves black ill-omened birds send cries which pierce the heart with a sense of desolation. Rinaldo, overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of unutterable sadness, flings himself from his horse and joins a sufferer, whom he finds crouching on the ground, in his lamentations. There he spends a miserable day and night amid the varied forms of horror which beset that woful dale. And there might the young warrior have easily mourned his life away, had not the ever-watchful Malagigi come timely to the res

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a master who gives way to sorrow like a woman. As he follows, he finds his way through the dark wood by the light of the captor's armour, which casts bright gleams through its gloomy recesses.

Presently the dusky shades are left behind, and he finds himself in an open and smiling country where all looks cheerful and glad, and where he feels his mind lightened of his burden. Bayard is restored to him; and hope revives in his heart at the sight of the fish darting through clear water, the gay flowers that enliven the mead and the fresh green grass in which they bloom.

For

Nor do the happy presentiments so inspired deceive him. when, on hearing a sudden clang of arms, Rinaldo hastens to the fray, and helps a single knight beset by many assailants to complete their overthrow, he has the delight of discovering in him the Florindo whom he believed (as the other believed him) to have been drowned

in their shipwreck. He learns from his equally delighted friend, how, cast inanimate on the seabeach near Ostia and tenderly nursed by a Roman knight, the descendant of Scipio, he had been discovered, by means of an indelible mark on his side, to be that very knight's long-lost son Lelius,

who had been stolen from him in his infancy by corsairs. Nor had he refused to embrace the faith of his ancestors when his father entreated him to do so: the piety so conspicuous afterwards in the 'Jerusalem Delivered' appearing, as in germ, when Lelius says of his conversion,

I, by his wise paternal counsel led,
Or rather by God's mighty will impelled,
And with a light divine upon me shed

To scatter clouds that o'er me darkness held,
Resolved to worship him who for us, dead
And living, showed his love, and Pluto quelled:
So was I washed in clear and holy wave
Which, the soul cleansing, doth the body lave.

The reason why Lelius (as he is henceforth called) has so speedily left his new-found home, and been met by Rinaldo in the south of France, is his hope that Olinda may now no longer despise his suit, which he is on his way to Spain to prosecute. As he cannot explain why the strange soldiers attacked him, Rinaldo asks the reason of one of the few who have survived the combat, and hears from him heavy tidings. Mambrino himself is their leader, come to Europe both for love of the as yet unseen Clarice, and from hate to Rinaldo; upon whom he burns to avenge the rescue of Auristella from his sailors, and the death of his own three brothers. And though he has not as yet attained his second object, yet, as the soldier says, he has been completely successful in his first; for, as Clarice fearlessly disported herself in the open air not far from Paris, Mambrino, who was lurking near in ambush, rushed forth and carried her away. Swiftly traversing France, he had come near to the Mediterranean, on which he meant to put to sea with her, when, see

-Canto xi. 95.

ing the brave show in arms of Lelius, he detached this unlucky troop to capture and bring him after him. Their defeat can give Rinaldo no pleasure now that he has learned his lady's imminent peril. For a moment he feels a chill as of death strike through him; the next instant, flaming with wrath, he is spurring Bayard forward, with but faint hope of intercepting Clarice and her captors before they can reach the sea. An impassable torrent after a while bars the road against him and the faithful Lelius. They are ferried across it, nevertheless, by the everready Malagigi; who has provided, moreover, a strong horse for the one, and a fresh suit of armour for the other. Galloping on through the night, the cavaliers come up at daybreak with the enemy's squadron; in the midst of which rides fair Clarice, sad, and so weary that she can hardly keep her seat upon her palfrey. Overcome by wrath and pity, Rinaldo rushes forward to deliver her; and unhappy in very deed, says the poet, was he who first opposed himself to his fury. The usual catalogue

follows of the mighty Eastern princes who fell before it. Mambrino, invulnerable in his enchanted vermilion armour, his turban surmounted by a crown, and his shield displaying a wounded lion with this device, "I know who wounded me, and I never forgive," stands a while amazed to see Rinaldo mowing down his troops "like a countryman plying his scythe in a green meadow," ably seconded

by Lelius and Malagigi. But at length he comprehends the critical nature of the situation, and comes forward himself to defy the champion of Clarice; and a fight ensues which the poet likens to one between an elephant and a lion. Rinaldo's dexterous and rapid movements give him at first an advantage over his ponderous antagonist :

The giant, amid thousand strokes, at last
On the knight's forehead dealt one mighty blow,
Just as, his courser spurring forward fast,
Rinaldo came to work him shame and woe.
Like to Typhoeus 'neath the mountain vast,
He all but sank, by weighty steel laid low;
While, like to night obscure the world o'ershading,
Came mists and darkness dim his eyes invading.

Yet soon his limbs their strength, his eyes their sight
Regained, its wonted courage too his heart;
Such evil chance made sad at soul the knight,
And bade his breast with wrath fresh kindled smart;
So much the more as Clarice' cheeks turned white

He saw, her eyes made dim by tears that start;
Hence struck he so the foe that, though unwounded,
His every bone felt by the pain confounded.

Fearing his cruel death, her own disgrace,

Clarice stands gazing on her lover dear,

And as she views his combat's changeful case,

So change her look and heart from hope to fear:

Now deadly pallor covers all her face,

Now colours bright and roseate there appear,

Like as, while frosts keep from the spring retreating, March skies show gleams of light and dark clouds fleeting.

At last Rinaldo wins the day; and Mambrino lies on the ground, stupefied, although unwounded, by his blows. To cut the laces of his helmet and then sever his head from his body would seem only the work of a few moments. But those few moments cannot be spared. The vast host prepares to rush down, and the choice is left to the knight between love and vengeance. Seeing that he cannot secure both, he wisely gives Clarice the pre

-Canto xii. 60-62.

ference; and at once placing her behind him on Bayard, bids her intrust herself fearlessly to one to whom her honour is dearer than his own life. Even so, however, their escape seems doubtful; so numerous are the foes who try to intercept it. But Malagigi is determined that his cousin shall not have parted with the honour of slaying the gigantic Mambrino for nothing. He hastily mutters a charm, and sprinkles some magic

drops on the advancing soldiers; of the Brenta; and with its rewhen they instantly begin to fight spectful dedication to his patron with one another. Rinaldo, amazed the cardinal, and to Bernardo beyond measure, recognises his sor- Tasso, that dear and honoured cerer kinsman by his handiwork, father, to whom his son gladly and at once implores him to reverse acknowledges that he Owes any his spell, nor thus ignobly destroy merits which it may possess. such brave and noble warriors.

The wizard consents, and, turning thrice to the east and thrice to the west, once more pronounces words of power, and scatters herbs of occult virtue. Forthwith the Saracens desist from their mutual blows, and rush with one accord towards Rinaldo; but between them and him arises a wall of fire which makes their assault impossible, and which even the paladin, though eager for the conflict, finds that he cannot traverse.

Malagigi bids him come at once to his own sumptuous castle, which is near at hand, and look forward to renewing the combat on a fast approaching day, when there shall be none to impede its being fairly fought out. For Mambrino's troops are but the advanced-guard of that great invasion of France by the Moslems, whereof Ariosto sang. Rinaldo's work will for many a long day be in the tented field; and the short breathing-time left cannot be more wisely employed than in securing the hand of Clarice. To such union the lady, disabused by her knight of her wrongful suspicions of his fidelity, consents; all the more gladly, we may suppose, from her painful experience of the perils of her unprotected position. And so the poem ends with the joyful wedding of Rinaldo and Clarice; with the young poet's affectionate farewell to them and to the little book, the companion of his brief leisures from severer studies by the banks

Doubtless the death of the giant Mambrino would have formed a more imposing close, than does his mere overthrow, to the story. But here, as elsewhere, its author was hampered by respect for the work of his predecessors. Nor can his invention have felt otherwise than straitened throughout by the fertility of Ariosto's, so that he must all along have seemed to himself a mere gleaner in a very thoroughly reaped field; driven to ghastly sources of interest, like the corpse of the murdered Clytia, by finding all the sunnier spaces already preoccupied.

6

Like the 'Floridante'

Rinaldo' of

'Amadis' and the

of Bernardo, the Torquato Tasso is after all but an arrow shot at a near mark from the bow which, in the hands of a mightier master, had amazed the world by the distance reached by its feathered messengers, and the force with which they had been speeded to their goal. No wonder therefore, that, despite the very considerable charm of its versification, and of its, on the whole, pleasing stories, of its "lively and delicate descriptions, of its numerous and often original and striking comparisons,"1 the Rinaldo's' popularity proved short-lived, and that the poem was little remembered among its author's greater successes. It wants the fibre of which great poems are made. It is too purely and simply a love-tale to satisfy the mind of any but a very young

1 Panizzi.

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