Throughout the year 1594 the poet was so manifestly breaking down, both in his bodily and mental faculties, that his early dissolution was anticipated by all his friends. He arrived at Rome on the 10th of November; when on being introduced to the pope, his holiness, in the most condescending terms, told him that he intended to bestow upon him "the crown of laurel, that from him it might receive as much honour as, in times past, it had conferred on others." The winter proving very tempestuous, the ceremonial was deferred till the succeeding spring. As the time approached when all his dreams of ambition were to be thus consummated, Tasso drooped daily both in spirits and in strength, so that from the 10th of April, when he was seized with violent fever, no hope could be entertained of preserving his life. Being informed of his danger, he thanked the physician for communicating tidings so welcome. Instead, then, of the vain glories of coronation in this world, he set himself to prepare, according to his religious views, for his last change to that eternal state, where nothing could avail him but to have found that mercy, which is the only hope of sinful man beyond the grave. On the 25th of April he quietly expired, with the words upon his lips (of which the last were inaudible), "_Into thy hands, O Lord! I commend my spirit._" He was aged fifty-one years. The personal and poetical character of Tasso are so strikingly betokened in the incidents of his life, that, in a memoir, necessarily so circumscribed as the present, no further remark on either need be introduced here. To enter into a critical examination of his writings, which should at all do justice to their extent, their diversity and their excellence, of various kinds whether in prose or verse, would require a distinct essay, equal in length to the whole of this article. This, however, is little to be regretted, for, of all the Italian poets, Tasso is the best known in our country; indeed, he has been almost naturalised, for his greatest work has been oftener translated than any other continental poem,--so that the style, the story, the sentiments, the actors, the scenes, the whole fable, with all its embellishments and adjuncts, are better known to general readers than those of the "Faerie Queene," and, perhaps, it may be said, than those of "Paradise Lost" itself, except among that "fit audience," which, "though few," Spenser and Milton must for ever "find," while English poetry holds its place--and that the highest, hitherto--in the literature of Christendom.