The love of Tancred, the tenderness of Erminia, the heroism of Rinaldo, are indelibly engraven in the recollection of every sensitive reader of Tasso; but no man ever saw such characters, or any thing resembling them, in real life. They are aerial beings, like Miranda in the "Tempest," or Rosalind in the forest; but they recall no traits of actual existence. The enchantment of Armida, the death of Clorinda, belong to a different class. They rise to the highest flights of the epic muse; for female fascination is the same in all ages; and Tasso drew from the life in the first, while his exquisite taste and elevated soul raised him to the highest moral sublimity and pathos which human nature can reach in the second. Considered, however, as the poetic history of the Crusades, as the Iliad of modern times, the _Jerusalem Delivered_ will not bear any comparison with its immortal predecessor. It conveys little idea of the real events; it embodies no traits of nature; it has enshrined no traditions of the past. The distant era of the Crusades, separated by three centuries from the time when he wrote, had come down to Tasso, blended with the refinements of civilization, the courtesy of chivalry, the graces of antiquity, the conceits of the troubadours. In one respect only he has faithfully portrayed the feelings of the time when his poem was laid. In the uniform elevation of mind in Godfrey of Bouillon; his constant forgetfulness of self; his sublime devotion to the objects of his mission, is to be found a true picture of the spirit of the Crusades, as it appeared in their most dignified champions. And it is fortunate for mankind that the noble portrait has been arrayed in such colours as must render it as immortal as the human race.