_But as she gazing scans the gentle sighs, The stir of whose soft breathing she can mark, The smile that lurked around the beauteous eyes, Now closed (what then their living glances dark?), She pauses thrilled, then droops in tender guise, Beside him--quenched her hatred’s every spark, As rapt above that radiant brow inclining, She seems Narcissus o’er the fountain pining._ _The dew of heat there starting, she ne’er tires With tender fingers in her veil to dry; While his cheek softly fanning, she desires The heat to temper of the summer sky; Thus (who could have believed it?) smouldering fires Of hidden orbs dissolved the frost, whereby That adamantine heart its core did cover, And the harsh foe becomes the tender lover._ _Pale privet, roses red, and lilies white, Perennial blooming on that lovely shore, Blent with strange art, she wove in fetters light Yet close of clasp, and flung them softly o’er His neck and arms and feet; thus helpless quite She bound and held him fast, and sleeping bore Unto the prison of her car aerial, And carried in swift flight through realms ethereal._ Few of the great artificial epics of the world, those which have not been moulded out of songs and legends welling up spontaneously from the heart of the people, can sustain very strict criticism of their poetical economy, and the _Jerusalem Delivered_ perhaps less than any other. The subject of the Crusades, indeed, is a very great one, too vast even to be embraced in a single poem; and the capture of Jerusalem, though of all its incidents incomparably the most fit for poetical treatment, is not of itself sufficiently extensive for an epic poem. It must consequently be enriched by episodes, which in Tasso’s hands have the double fault of jarring with the spirit of the main action, and of obscuring its due predominance by their superior attractiveness. It might perhaps have been otherwise if Tasso had been cast in the mould of Milton or had lived in an austerer age. Italian poetry, however, was so saturated by the influence of Petrarch and Ariosto that any embellishments of the chief action must of necessity partake of the character of love and romance. The former class, however charming in themselves, inevitably depressed the character of an epic so largely depending upon them as the _Jerusalem_, below that proper to an heroic poem. The romance and sorcery, though recommended to Tasso as introducing the supernatural, then considered indispensable to epic poetry, provoke criticism by their inconsistency. If the enchanters Ismeno and Armida could do so much, they might have done a great deal more. Ismeno has all the infernal hosts at his command, and makes hardly any use of them. Pluto is a most lazy and incompetent devil. Armida might easily have made her magic island impregnable. The whole