have the effect of making that appear obstinacy which was in fact delirium.

At length, unregarded by the duke and princesses; neglected, as he thought, by his friends, and derided by his foes; this unhappy man found his patience sink under the trial. Accordingly, giving full scope to his indignation, he burst forth, even in public, into the most keen expressions he could invent against the duke, the whole house of Este, and the principal people of the court. He cursed his former services; retracted all the praises he had been lavish of in his verses; and affirmed that the duke of Ferrara, and all his court, were a mean and worthless crew of thieves, and ungrateful monsters.'

Such expressions as these coming to the ear of Alphonso, be ordered that Tasso should be conducted to the Hospital of Saint Anne, a place devoted to the reception of lunaticks. This happened about the middle of March, 1579,-the same year in which the author of the Lusiad finished in a hospital, his career of glory and of misery. The blow, says the author, stunned him at first, and completely overpowered all his faculties, but he soon recovered a sense of his misery. The following passages are taken from letters written to some of his friends shortly after his confinement.

Ah! wretched me! I had designed to write, besides two heroic poems of most noble argument, four tragedies of which I had formed the plan. I had schemed, too, many works in prose, on subjects the most lofty, and most useful to human life; I had designed to unite philosophy with eloquence in such a manner, that there might remain of me an eternal memory in the world. Alas! I had expected to. close my life with glory and renown; but now, oppressed by the burden of so many calamities, I have lost every prospect of reputation and honour. The fear, too, of perpetual imprisonment increases my melancholy; the indignities which I suffer augment it; and the squalor of my beard, my hair, and habit, the sordidness and filth, exceedingly annoy me. But, above all, I am afflicted by solitude, my cruel and natural enemy; which, even in my best state, was sometimes so tormenting, that, often at the most unseasonable hours, I have gone in search of company. Nor do I lament that my heart is deluged with almost constant misery; that my head is always heavy, and often painful; that my sight and hearing are much impaired; and that all my frame is meagre and extenuated; but passing all this with a short sigh, what I would bewail is the infirmity of my mind, which slumbers instead of thinking. My fancy is chill, and forms no pictures; my negligent senses will no longer furnish the images of things; my hand is slugglish in writing, and my pen seems as if it shrunk from the office. I feel as if I were chained in all my operations, and as if I were overcome by an unwonted numbness and oppressive stupor.'

After a time he recovered in some degree from his dejection his mind grew more tranquil; and he beguiled the hours by employing himself in different kinds of com

position. His principal amusement during his confinement was writing dialogues in prose.

For

And now the Jerusalem found its way into the world. Seven large impressions were disposed of in 1581; six in the year following; and the diligence of the printers, we are informed, could scarcely keep pace with the avidity of the public. While editors and book-sellers were thus enriching themselves by means of his poem, the author himself was languishing in a hospital. his Paradise Lost Milton received only ten pounds, and for the Jerusalem Delivered Tasso received nothing! Yet, however injurious in point of emolument, it was fortunate for the poet's reputation, that he was prevented from publishing the work himself. In compliance with the taste of his critics, Tasso had actually begun to mutilate and deface the most beautiful parts of his poem, when his mental disorder and consequent flight from Ferrara prevented him from completing the destruction of his offspring. The poem was now introduced to the public in its original state, or at least in the state in which it was left after the first revision. From this revision, which was conducted in a more mild and liberal manner than the other, the poem, we are told, derived considerable benefit. At a subsequent period, having new-modelled his work in strict conformity to the judg ment of his critics, Tasso gave it to the world, under the title of Gerusalemme Conquistata; but the second Jerusalem is greatly inferior to the first, and is now but little noticed.

In his seventeenth chapter the author gives a detail of the controversy which arose between the academy Della Crusca and the admirers of Tasso, on the subject of his poem; in the course of which are introduced some judicious remarks on the comparative merit the comparative merit of that poet and Arisoto. He gives the following account of the origin of he academy alluded to..

It was a general practice among the literati of Italy, to gather themselves into societies, for the purpose of conversation, and of reading to each other their poetical and other productions. These assemblies they distinguished by some quaint title; and every member was wont to assume some classical or other name, sometimes relating to the general designation of his academy; sometimes to what he conceived to be his own peculiar genius or character. In the year 1582, a few literary persons had formed themselves into a club, to which they gave the name of Crusca, or Bran, in conformity to which denomination, they took a sieve for their device; alluding to the supposed skill with which, in estimating the merits of literary works, they separated the flour from the

bran.'

At the first publication of the Jerusalem Delivered, says our author, envy, like a serpent upon which one has trod, lay for some time stunned and astonished; but she soon recovered, unclosed her fangs, and collected her venom. The Delia Cruscans fell without mercy upon the work, condemning it as a poem not merely abounding with defects, but absolutely without merit, and pronouncing it inferior in all respects, not only to to the Orlando Furioso, but to the rhapsodies of Pulci and Boyardo. The Jerusalem Delivered, according to them, is a poor and sterile, and rickety, and obscure, and disagreeable work.' They add that the author knows nothing of construction; that he is cold, and forced, and languid; that in fine, he is a wretched pedant, whose work would immediately perish. Tasso however, had many partizans, and for several years the dispute was continued with much keenness. Mr. Black affirms that what many writers conceive to have been a solemn and impartial decision of the critics of the Italian nation in favour of Ariosto, was nothing but the cavil of a a single splenetic individual; for that most of the writings on the side of the academy, though printed under different names, were composed by one person, who is stated to have been under the influence of private animosity. He also affirms, contrary to the general opinion, that Tasso is not only preferred by foreigners, but that he is in Italy much more generally admired than Ariosto.

(To be concluded in the next Number.)

Art. II. Speech of the Right Hon. W. Windham in the House of Com mons, June 13, 1809, on Lord Erskine's Bill for the more effectual Prevention of Crüelty towards Animals. 8vo. pp. 34. Price 1s. 6d. Budd. 1810.

THE proposal of this Bill to the House of Commons, and its prompt and unceremonious dismissal are sufficiently fresh in recollection. Its fate would doubtless have been the same in that Imperial Assembly, though the author of this speech had been summoned from his seat there before the subject came into discussion. Had it, however, been possible that a great, enlightened, and humane legislator, could have felt any slight degree of hesitation to reject à motion for a law to abridge the licence of cruelty; it may well be believed that a speech like this would materially contribute to rid them of the sentimental weakness of entertaining such a scruple. It would have been a truly girlish and laughable thing in a venerable Council-before which an enormous mass of cruelty was incontrovertibly al

leged to be habitually perpetrated among the people over whom that Council presided-to have given themselves any trouble about the matter, after witnessing this capital display of that acuteness, that talent for representing a serious subject in a ludicrous light, that power of securing tolerance for a large quantity of fallacy, under protection of a certain portion of important truth, which so remarkably characterized this statesman; we suppose we ought to say lamented statesman: for we observe it is the fashion among all sorts of people-Christian or infidel-high political party or lowins or outs as soon as a man whose talents have made a figure is gone, to extol him in the topmost epic and elegiac phrases; even though the general operation of his talents had been through life what these very persons had a thousand times execrated as pernicious.

The speech begins with asserting, that the treatment of brute animals by men, is not a fit subject for legislative enactments; and by citing, as a strong sanction of the rule of exclusion, the conduct of all nations and legislators, none of whom, according to our Senator, ever appointed any laws for the protection of animals, on the pure principle of humane guardianship,-an assertion which he makes in the most unqualified manner, and which his extensive learning would make it rash in us to call in question; since it could not have escaped his knowledge if any national code of laws bad, ever contained such a sentence as this'thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.' From this universal avoidance to enact laws for the protection of brute animals, Mr. W. argues, that what lord Erskine mentions, in somewhat exulting terms, as a recommendation of his bill," that it would form a new æra of legislation," is rather a ground for suspicion and rejection; since it is not unfair to presume that what all legislators have avoided to do, is something not proper to be done. With plenty of cold shrewdness he adds,

We ought to have a reasonable distrust of the founders of such eras, lest they should be a little led away by an object of such splendid ambition, and be thinking more of themselves than of the credit of the laws or the interests of the community. To have done that which no one yet had ever thought of doing; to have introduced into legislation, at this period of the world, what had never yet been found in the laws of any country, and that too for a purpose of professed humanity, (or rather of something more than humanity, as commonly understood and practised ;) to be the first who had stood up as the champion of the rights of brutes, was as marked a distinction, even though it should not turn out upon examination to be as proud a one, as a man could well aspire to.' p. 4.

'The

The sentence which immediately follows is this: Legislature, however, must not be carried away with these impulses, of whatever nature they might be, &c." Those who heard and saw Mr. W. while uttering this, could probably. judge whether it was said sarcastically, or in simple honest gravity. The only thing that can make this a question in the minds of those who can merely read the speech, is the recollection of Mr. W.'s notorious propensity to sarcasm;-for that there was a propriety in uttering the sentence gravely, is sufficiently obvious. There was the greatest need of a caution against the too precipitate impulses of humanity in a Legislature which had, through twenty years of most ample discussion and exposure, maintained the Slave-Trade, with its infinite. combination of horrors, in easy and sometimes jocular contempt of the appeals to feeling, in a thousand affecting forms, in contempt of the demonstrations of impolicy, and of the references to an Almighty Avenger; and which, when approaching at last, under the ascendency of administration for the time being, to the long desired abolition, had still such a character in the public opinion that, even when the vast influence of the ministry was taken into the account, the friends of humanity were nevertheless, according to Mr. Clarkson's relation, in a perfect agony of fear till the decision was past. It had been a neglect of duty not to have cautioned, against too hasty and undigested measures. for the repression of cruelty, a Legislature which had scouted, during the greatest part of a long series of years, every suggestion of an effort for the termination of war. And (to descend to an inferior circumstance,) the manner in which the Legislature had entertained Mr. W.'s own assertion of the moral and political benefits of bull-baiting, with all its inseparable blackguardism and profaneness, as contrasted with the mischievous effects of going to the conventicle, to hear about the worth of the soul, preparation for a future state, and such like matters-had fully shewn him the propriety of admonishing that Legislature not to be rashly impetuous in their enactments even against barbarous practices. There was no lesson so becoming in the veteran senator, so near the end of his labours, to give, nor half so needful to the assembly which he addressedas that which virtuous and ardent minds so reluctantly learn, the wisdom of being sometimes a little more slow and deliberate even in doing good, than the first generous 'impulses' would be willing to permit. There is no knowing to what dangerous lengths such impulses may lead, if unrestrained by such wisdom. Had this bill, for instance, for 4 D

Vol. VI.