invited him to her delightful retirement of Casteldurante, where she heard the pastoral strains from his own lips, which, though not eloquent from natural infirmity, would yet convey the soul and passion, the delicacy and pathos, of every passage, with an impression which no actor on the stage, nor indeed any reader but himself, could give. The living voice, in this case, would be the actual language of the spirit that conceived the thoughts, speaking to the spirit of her who received them through the ear, fresh and flowing from the fountain in his heart; for the written copy, to the eye, would be but a translation, wanting the incommunicable accompaniments of tone, look, expression, and perfect intelligence of the whole in all its bearings and meanings, such as the original author alone could possess; for, as Dr. Johnson said, "no _words_ can convey _sounds_;" and both sounds and words were requisite to do justice to such verse as his. Tasso remained several months with the duchess. All Italy soon echoed with the fame of this poetical phenomenon, which, though not the first of the kind, (an indifferent model having been produced six years before, by one Arienti,) it was the first that had power to compel almost universal admiration, and establish a precedent and authority for that fantastic species of literary composition. Imitations, by the most gifted of his contemporaries, sprang up in rapid succession, and passed away as rapidly, with the exception of one, the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, which not only maintained its ground, but even disputed that on which its forerunner stood, and from which no rivalry has ever yet been able to remove it. The renown which Tasso acquired by the "Aminta" naturally exasperated envy in proportion as it commanded applause, and among the multitude of competitors who could not soar to his elevation, there were not wanting those who employed every artifice to bring him down to their level, that they might trample him under foot. Whatever were the causes, Tasso to the end of his life was persecuted as much by unmerciful critics as he was oppressed by hard-hearted patrons. But the "Aminta" was not the only episodal enterprise of Tasso, while he was slowly but unweariedly proceeding with the "Gerusalemme." Flushed with the success of his pastoral drama, he set earnestly about the construction of a regular tragedy; but he had not advanced far in the second act, when the project was suspended, and the fragment of fine promise which remains, compared with the completed performance long afterwards, when his faculties were on the decline, exhibits a brilliant but melancholy contrast of "the change" that had come "o'er the spirit of his dream"--his dream of life, love, and glory, blighting his "May of youth," and causing him in the prime of manhood to "fall into the sere and yellow leaf." His "Torindo," as this failure was styled, was less a failure than the "Torrismondo," as the resumed and perfected task was called.