When nations so powerful, leaders so renowned, forces so vast, courage so unshaken in the contending parties, were brought into collision, under the influence of passions so strong, enthusiasm so exalted, devotion so profound, it was impossible that innumerable deeds of heroism should not have been performed on both sides. If a poet equal to Homer had arisen in Europe to sing the conflict, the warriors of the Crusades would have been engraven on our minds like the heroes of the Iliad; and all future ages would have resounded with their exploits, as they have with those of Achilles and Agamemnon, of Ajax and Ulysses, of Hector and Diomede. But though Tasso has with incomparable beauty enshrined in immortal verse the feelings of chivalry, and the enthusiasm of the Crusades, he has not left a poem which has taken, or ever can take, the general hold of the minds of men, which the Iliad has done. The reason is, it is not founded in nature--it is the ideal--but it is not the ideal based on the real. Considered as a work of imagination, the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ is one of the most exquisite conceptions of human fancy, and will for ever command the admiration of romantic and elevated minds. But it wants that yet higher excellence, which arises from a thorough knowledge of human nature--a graphic delineation of actual character, a faithful picture of the real passions and sufferings of mortality. It is the most perfect example of poetic _fancy_; but the highest species of the epic poem is to be found not in poetic fancy, but _poetic history_. The heroes and heroines of the _Jerusalem Delivered_ are noble and attractive. It is impossible to study them without admiration; but they resemble real life as much as the Enchanted Forest and spacious battle-fields, which Tasso has described in the environs of Jerusalem, do the arid ridges, waterless ravines, and stone-covered hills in the real scene, which have been painted by the matchless pens of Chateaubriand and Lamartine.