Well might Bernardo be astonished and delighted, yet humbled and chagrined (in some measure), when the manuscript of his son's poem was presented to him, seeing himself already eclipsed in his meridian altitude (which he fondly imagined he had attained in the "Amadigi") by this morning-star of promise just "flaming in the forehead of the orient sky;" and perceiving, as he must have done, that his purpose was for ever thwarted, of placing the boy in that path where fortune scatters her golden apples before the feet of competitors in the race for her favour, rather than indulging them with golden dreams under the shadows of laurels planted by the wayside, the most precious rewards which she bestows on the most successful among poets. The father, however, was too great a lover of song to ruin a good poet in making a bad lawyer, as might have been the case had he persevered in his former views with his son. Wherefore, after some delay, he reluctantly, yet willingly, (a state of mind perfectly possible, though hard to reconcile,) gave his consent to the publication of the "Rinaldo." He who in the letter to his daughter formerly quoted, so tenderly and beautifully anticipated the happiness of being himself, with his very features, perpetuated in her infant progeny, could not but be transported to see himself, with the features of his very soul, perpetuated in the glorious offspring of his son's congenial yet surpassing mind. With a smile and a sigh, therefore, he permitted the poem to appear, surrendering at the same time his cherished expectation of seeing that son as eminent in the law as he was now likely to be in that which is remotest from law practice and law profits. "Let who will make the laws," said Fletcher of Saltoun, "let me make the songs of a people, and by these I will govern them." Tasso's songs have assuredly had larger dominion, and had deeper, wider, more enduring influence in modifying the subsequent character of his countrymen than any legislative enactments, in which it may be imagined that he would never have been concerned, could have exercised. But then he might have enriched and ennobled himself; he might have escaped most of the calamities which hunted him to death in the midst of life; and he might not only have been happier himself, but a more useful member of that society in which he was born, which he served in his day, and in which he died without any monument except some splendid sculpture to record his name. It came otherwise to pass; and whether the world has been made better or worse by his labours, it must be acknowledged that the fame which he sought, and for which he sacrificed all beside, was dearly purchased to himself by the sufferings which it cost him to win. It is reported that when Bernardo remonstrated with him on his indiscreet preference of philosophy (for with him philosophy and poetry were identified) to jurisprudence, and angrily demanded, "What has your