[135] Manso, Vita di T. Tasso. [136] Part of this Canzone has been elegantly translated by Mr. Wiffen in his Life of Tasso, p. 83. CHAPTER XIX. MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI. The Marquis Manso of Naples, who in his early youth had entertained Tasso in his palace, had cherished and honoured him when that great but unhappy man was wandering, brain-struck with misery, from one court to another,--was, in his old age, the host and admirer of Milton; thus, by a singular good fortune, allying his name to two of the most illustrious of earth's diviner sons: while theirs, linked together by the recollection of this common friend, follow each other in our memory by a natural transition. We can think of them as pressing, though at an interval of many years, the same friendly hand, and gracing the same hospitable board with "colloquy sublime." Tasso, from the romance of his story, and his personal character, is the most interesting of the two; yet Milton, besides standing highest in the scale of moral dignity, sits nearest to our hearts as an Englishman, whose genius, speaking through our native accents, strikes upon our sense, Like the large utterance of the early gods. * * * * * We rise from reading Johnson's Biography of Milton, either with the most painful and indignant feeling of the malignity of the critic,[137] or with an impression of Milton's character, as false as it is odious. Of moral inconsistency and weakness, blended with splendid genius, we have proofs lamentable and numerous enough: to be obliged to regard the mighty father of English verse,--him "who rode sublime upon the seraph wings of ecstasy,"--him, whose harmonious soul was tuned to the music of the spheres, though when struck in evil times, and by an adverse hand, it sent forth a crash of discord,--him, who has left us the most exquisite pictures of tenderness and beauty--to think of such a being as a petty domestic tyrant, a coarse-minded fanatic, stern and unfeeling in all the relations of life, were enough to confound all our ideas of moral fitness. When we figure to ourselves the author of Rasselas trampling over the ashes of Milton, lending his mighty powers to degrade the majestic, to disfigure the beautiful, and to darken the glorious, it is with the same feeling of concentrated disgust with which we recall the violation of the poet's grave, some years ago, when vulgar savages defaced and carried off his sacred and venerable remains piece-meal.[138] Let us for a moment imagine our Milton descending to earth to assert his injured fame, and confronted with his great biographer-- Look here upon this picture, and on this--