Thus perished, of a premature decay, the woman who had been for seventeen years the idol of a poet's imagination--the worship of a poet's heart; she who was not unworthy of being enshrined in the rich tracery-work of sweet thoughts and bright fancies she had herself suggested. The love of Tasso for the Princess Leonora might have appeared, in his own time, something like the "desire of the night-moth for the star;" but what is it _now_? what was it _then_ in the eyes of her whom he adored? How far was it permitted, encouraged, repaid in secret? This we cannot know; and perhaps had we lived at the time,--in the very Court, and looked daily into her own soft eyes, practised to conceal,--we had been no wiser. Yet one more observation. When Leonora died, all the poets of Ferrara pressed forward with the usual tribute of elegy and eulogium; but the voice of Tasso was not heard among the rest. He alone flung no garland on the bier of her, whose living brow he had wreathed with the brightest flowers of song. This is adduced by Serassi as a proof that he had never loved her. Ginguené himself can only account for it, by the presumption that he was piqued by that coldness and neglect, which I have shown was merely supposititious. Strange reasoning! as if Tasso, while his heart bled over his loss, in his solitary cell, could have deigned to join this crowd of courtly mourners! as if, under such circumstances, in such a moment, the greatness of his grief could have burst forth in any terms that must not have exposed himself to fresh rigours, and the fame, at least the discretion, of her he had loved, to suspicion! No! nothing remained to him but silence;--and he was silent. FOOTNOTES: [120] See the Rinaldo, c. 8. [121] ----From my very birth My soul was drunk with love, &c. LAMENT OF TASSO. [122] Rose, che l' arte invidiosa mira. &c. [123] Alteremente umile Te chiudi ne' tuoi cari alti soggiorni. [124] The daughter of Louis XII. She was closely imprisoned during twelve years, on suspicion of favouring the early reformers. [125] Ganymede. [126] Sonnet 37. [127] Sonnet 29. [128] I am told the original idea is in Plato; prettier, however, than either, was the speech of a modern lover, whose mistress was gazing pensively on a star: "Ne la regardez pas tant, chère amie!--je ne puis pas te la donner!" [129] The Canzono which is, I believe, esteemed the finest of those addressed to Leonora, Mentre ch' a venerar muovon le gente, concludes with this play upon her name-- Costei LE ONORA col bel nome sante. She does them HONOUR by her sacred name. [130] "Foreign Phoenix." [131] Translated by a friend. [132] Translated by a friend. [133] Near Naples: thus, in his pathetic Canzone on himself,-- Sassel la gloriosa alma Sirena Appresso il cui sepolcro, ebbi la cuna! [134] The wife of Bernardo Tasso. See an account of her in Black's Life of Tasso.