Already when only sixteen years old, he had felt the ambition to write a poem which should combine the merits of the regular epic (such as the Iliad and Æneid), and the romantic interest of the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto. His Rinaldo, written when he was only nineteen years old, was remarkable both on account of the youth of its author and as a promise of what was to follow. For a number of years after this, however, he devoted himself almost exclusively to the task of preparing himself, by reading, study, and thought, to write the great poem which he had in mind. His choice of a subject was a happy one. The fear of the Turk at that time was widespread; the wars between Christian and Saracen, which filled the old romances, were now occurring again on the eastern borders of Europe. The Turks had conquered Hungary, and their piratic ships had ravaged the coast of Italy, often destroying entire populations; a short time before Sorrento, Tasso's birthplace, had been attacked, and his sister escaped only by a miracle. Tasso himself must have heard many a story of the crusades, when a child at Sorrento, where Pope Urban, who had published the first crusade, was buried. His choice of the deliverance of Jerusalem from the unbeliever then was a natural one. Contrary to the Orlando Furioso, the story of Jerusalem Delivered, is a simple one. Yet the main plot, _i. e._, the military operations of Godfrey, the various battles, and the final capture of Jerusalem, are not so effective or interesting as the various romantic episodes introduced from time to time; the reader to-day is disposed to hurry over the early cantos and to linger over the beautiful pages which tell the loves of Tancred and Clorinda, Olindo and Sophronia, Rinaldo, Armida, and Erminia. The poem begins with the usual invocation: I sing the pious arms and Chief, who freed The Sepulcher of Christ from thrall profane: Much did he toil in thought, and much in deed; Much in the glorious enterprise sustain; And hell in vain opposed him; and in vain Afric and Asia to the rescue poured Their mingled tribes;--Heaven recompensed his pain, And from all fruitless sallies of the sword, True to the Red-Cross flag his wandering friends restored. O, thou, the Muse, that not with fading palms Circlest thy brows on Pindus, but among The Angels warbling their celestial psalms, Hast for thy coronal a golden throng Of everlasting stars! make thou my song Lucid and pure; breathe thou the flame divine Into my bosom; and forgive the wrong, If with grave truth light fiction I combine, And sometimes grace my page with other flowers than thine. The poet then plunges into the midst of the action, We learn how the Christian army has been in Holy Land for six years and had made many conquests: