But perhaps Tasso's greatest triumph over his jealous detractors has been the continued preference of his earlier and greater work to his continuation of the same theme, in which he studied to profit by their criticisms. Many Italians, among whom the romantic school took its origin and maintained its influence, have preferred Ariosto, whilst transalpine critics have more generally given their suffrages to the poem of Tasso, as more regular in its plan, and better preserving the elevation and the unities observed by the best classic models. It has been the boast of some minstrels to mould the temper of the age to the tone of their poetry. Tasso chose a less hazardous aim, and, seizing in his great epic upon a theme at once the most fertile and the most popular, gained the sympathies of all. The Crescent, once more in the ascendant, had swept the Mediterranean, overrun Greece, and threatened Vienna. The spirit of the crusades revived. The often-mooted movement of all Christendom in the holy cause was at length carried into effect, and victory crowned the Cross at the great naval conflict of Lepanto. But alas! his was the last great name in Italian poetry;[*197] and thenceforward genius fled from the land of song, or bowed unresisting before an all-prevailing mediocrity. Morbid repetition, redundant verbiage, far-fetched figures,--all those faults for which its liquid language afforded such fatal facilities, sprang up in rank deformity, and smothered generous inspiration. The academies sent out their many songsters, who poured forth notes artfully sweet, but rarely thrilling; and already "Their once-loved minstrels scarce may claim The transient mention of a dubious name." [Footnote *197: This, of course, is nonsense. Leopardi, at any rate, was yet to come, and in our own day we have heard the eager and noble voice of Carducci in verse that, it might seem, is not less great than Tasso's and far more in touch with life.] Nor did they merit a better fate; for their conceptions were extravagant, their imagery redundant, their execution alternately glaring and languid. Unnatural contrasts, startling conceits, ill compensated in them for vigorous diction and the stamp of genius. Yet the lyric muse was not utterly extinct, and from time to time its warblings may yet be heard in the orange groves and laurel bosquets of that bright land. * * * * *