Chapter XIII: Part V: Rinaldo disenchants the forest, and has the chief hand in the (2)

Rinaldo returned to the camp, his aspect that of a conqueror; the silver wings of his crest, the white eagle, glittering in the sun. The hermit Peter came forward to greet him; a shout was sent up by the whole camp; Godfrey gave him high reception; nobody envied him. Workmen, no longer trembling, were sent to the forest to cut wood for the machines of war; and the tower was rebuilt, together with battering-rams and balistas, and catapults, most of them an addition to what they had before. The tower also was now clothed with bulls-hides, as a security against being set on fire; and a bridge was added to the tower, from which the besiegers could at once step on the city-walls.

With these long-desired invigorations of his strength, the commander of the army lost no time in making a general assault on Jerusalem; for a dove, supernaturally pursued by a falcon, had brought him letters intended for the besieged, informing them, that if they could only hold out four days longer, their Egyptian allies would be at hand. The Pagans beheld with dismay the resuscitated tower, and all the new engines coming against them. They fought valiantly; but Rinaldo and Godfrey prevailed. The former was the first to scale the walls, the latter to plant his standard from the bridge. The city was entered on all sides, and the enemy driven, first into Solomon's Temple, and then into the Citadel, or Tower of David. Before the assault, Godfrey had been vouchsafed a sight of armies of angels in the air, accompanied by the souls of those who had fallen before Jerusalem; the latter still fighting, the former rejoicing; so that there was no longer doubt of triumph; only it still pleased Heaven that human virtue should be tried.

And now, after farther exploits on both sides, the last day of the war, and the last hope of the Infidels, arrived at the same time; for the Egyptian army came up to give battle with the Christians, and to restore Jerusalem, if possible, to its late owners, now cramped up in one corner of it--the citadel. The besiegers in their narrow hold raised a shout of joy at the sight; and Godfrey, leaving them to be detained in it by an experienced captain, went forth to meet his new opponents. Crowns of Africa and of Persia were there, and the king of the Indies; and in the midst of all, in a chariot surrounded by her knights and suitors, was Armida.

The battle joined, and great was the bravery and the slaughter on both sides. It seemed at first all glitter and gaiety--its streamers flying, its arms flashing, drums and trumpets rejoicing, and horses rushing with their horsemen as to the tournament. Horror looked beautiful in the spectacle. Out of the midst of the dread itself there issued a delight. But soon it was a bloody, and a turbulent, and a raging, and a groaning thing:--pennons down, horses and men rolling over, foes heaped upon one another, bright armour exchanged for blood and dirt, flesh trampled, and spirit fatigued. Brave were the Pagans; but how could they stand against Heaven? Godfrey ordered every thing calmly, like a divine mind; Rinaldo swept down the fiercest multitudes, like an arm of God. The besieged in the citadel broke forth, only to let the conquerors in. Jerusalem was won before the battle was over. King after king fell, and yet the vanquished did not fly. Rinaldo went every where to hasten the rout; and still had to fight and slay on. Armida beheld him coming where she sat in the midst of her knights; he saw her, and blushed a little: she turned as cold as ice, then as hot as fire. Her anger was doubled by the slaughter of her friends; and with her woman's hand she sent an arrow out of her bow, hoping, and yet even then hoping not, to slay or to hurt him. The arrow fell on him like a toy; and he turned aside, as she thought, in disdain. Yet he disdained not to smite down her champions. Hope of every kind deserted her. Resolving to die by herself in some lonely spot, she got down from her chariot to horse, and fled out of the field. Rinaldo saw the flight; and though one of the knights that remained to her struck him such a blow as made him reel in his saddle, he despatched the man with another like a thunderbolt, and then galloped after the fugitive.

Armida was in the act of putting a shaft to her bosom, in order to die upon it, when her arm was arrested by a mighty grasp; and turning round, she beheld with a shriek the beloved face of him who had caused the ruin of her and hers. She closed her disdainful eyes and fainted away. Rinaldo supported her; he loosened her girdle; he bathed her bosom and her eyelids with his tears. Coming at length to herself, still she would not look at him. She would fain not have been supported by him. She endeavoured with her weak fingers to undo the strong ones that clasped her; she wept bitterly, and at length spoke, but still without meeting his eyes.

"And may I not," she said, "even die? must I be followed and tormented even in my last moments? What mockery of a wish to save me is this! I will not be watched; I believe not a syllable of such pity; and I will not be made a sight of, and a by-word. I ask my life of thee no longer; I want nothing but death; and death itself I would not receive at such hands; they would render even that felicity hateful. Leave me. I could not be hindered long from putting an end to my miseries, whatever barbarous restraint might be put upon me. There are a thousand ways of dying; and I will be neither hindered, nor deceived, nor flattered--oh, never more!"

Weeping she spoke--weeping always, and sobbing, and full of wilful words. But yet she felt all the time the arm that was round her.

"Armida," said Rinaldo, in a voice full of tenderness, "be calm, and know me for what I am--no enemy, no conqueror, nothing that intends thee shame or dishonour; but thy champion, thy restorer--he that will preserve thy kingdom for thee, and seat thee in house and home. Look at me--look in these eyes, and see if they speak false. And oh, would to Heaven thou wouldst indeed be as I am in faith. There isn't a queen in all the East should equal thee in glory."

His tears fell on her eyelids as he spoke--scalding tears; and she looked at him, and her heart re-opened to its lord, all love and worship; and Armida said, "Behold thy handmaid; dispose of her even as thou wilt."

And that same day Godfrey of Boulogne was lord of Jerusalem, and paid his vows on the sepulchre of his Master.

[Footnote 1:

"Chiama gli abitator' de l'ombre eterne
Il rauco suon de la tartarea tromba.
Treman le spaziose atre caverne,
E l'aer cieco a quel romor rimbomba.
Nè sì stridendo mai da le superne
Regioni del cielo il folgor piomba:
Nè sì scossa già mai trema la terra,
Quando i vapori in sen gravida serra."
Canto iv. st. 3.

The trump of Tartarus, with iron roar,
Called to the dwellers the black regions under:
Hell through its caverns trembled to the core,
And the blind air rebellowed to the thunder:
Never yet fiery bolt more fiercely tore
The crashing firmament, like rocks, asunder;
Nor with so huge a shudder earth's foundations
Shook to their mighty heart, lifting the nations.

The tone of this stanza (suggested otherwise by Vida) was caught from a fine one in Politian, the passage in which about the Nile I ought to have called to mind at page 168.

"Con tal romor, qualor l'aer discorda,
Di Giove il foco d'alta nube piomba:
Con tal tumulto, onde la gente assorda,
Da l'alte cataratte il Nil rimbomba:
Con tal orror del Latin sangue ingorda
Sonò Megera la tartarea tromba."

_Fragment on the Jousting of Giuliano de' Medici_.

Such is the noise, when through his cloudy floor
The bolt of Jove falls on the pale world under;
So shakes the land, where Nile with deafening roar
Plunges his clattering cataracts in thunder;
Horribly so, through Latium's realm of yore,
The trump of Tartarus blew ghastly wonder.]

[Footnote 2:

"La bella Armida, di sua forma altiera,
E de' doni del sesso e de l'etate,
L' impresa prende: e in su la prima sera
Parte, e tiene sol vie chiuse e celate:
E 'n treccia e 'n gonna femminile spera
Vincer popoli invitti e schiere armate."
Canto iv. st. 27.]

[Footnote 3:

"That sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes."
_Parad. Lost_, b. iv.

It was famous for the most luxurious worship of antiquity. Vide Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 198.]

[Footnote 4: I omit a point about "fires" of love, and "ices" of the heart; and I will here observe, once for all, that I omit many such in these versions of Tasso, for the reason given in the Preface.]

[Footnote 5: In the original, an impetuous gust of wind carries away the sword of Tancred; a circumstance which I mention because Collins admired it (see his Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands). I confess I cannot do so. It seems to me quite superfluous; and when the reader finds the sword conveniently lying for the hero outside the wood, as he returns, the effect is childish and pantomimic. If the magician wished him not to fight any more, why should he give him the sword back? And if it was meant as a present to him from Clorinda, what gave her the power to make the present? Tasso retained both the particulars in the _Gerusalemme Conquistata_.]

[Footnote 6:

"Giace l'alta Cartago: appena i segni
De l'alte sue ruine il lido serba.

Muoiono le città: muoiono i regni:
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba:
E l'uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni.
Oh nostra mente cupida e superba!"

Canto xv. st. 20.

Great Carthage is laid low. Scarcely can eye
Trace where she stood with all her mighty crowd
For cities die; kingdoms and nations die;
A little sand and grass is all their shroud;
Yet mortal man disdains mortality!
O mind of ours, inordinate and proud!

Very fine is this stanza of Tasso; and yet, like some of the finest writing of Gray, it is scarcely more than a cento. The commentators call it a "beautiful imitation" of a passage in Sannazzaro; and it is; but the passage in Sannazzaro is also beautiful. It contains not only the "Giace Cartago," and the "appena i segni," &c., but the contrast of the pride with the mortality of man, and, above all, the "dying" of the cities, which is the finest thing in the stanza of its imitator.

"Qua devictae Carthaginis arces
Procubuere, jacentque infausto in littore turres
Eversae; quantum ille metus, quantum illa laborum
Urbs dedit insultans Latio et Laurentibus arvis!
Nunc passim vix reliquias, vix nomina servans,
Obruitur propriis non agnoscenda ruinis.
Et querimur genus infelix, humana labare
Membra aevo, cum regna palam moriantur et urbes."

_De Partu Virginis_, lib. ii.

The commentators trace the conclusion of this passage to Dante, where he says that it is no wonder families perish, when cities themselves "have their terminations" (termin hanuo): but though there is a like germ of thought in Dante, the mournful flower of it, the word "death," is not there. It was evidently suggested by a passage (also pointed out by the commentators) in the consolatory letter of Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter Tullia;--"Heu nos homunculi indignamur, si quis nostrum interiit, aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant." (Alas! we poor human creatures are indignant if any one of us dies or is slain, frail as are the materials of which we are constituted; and yet we can see, lying together in one place, the dead bodies of I know not how many cities!) The music of Tasso's line was indebted to one in Petrarch's _Trionfo del Tempo, v. 112

_" Passan le signorie, passano i regni;"

and the fine concluding verse, "Oh nostra mente," to another perhaps in his _Trionfo della Divinità, v. 61_, not without a recollection of Lucretius, lib. ii. v. 14:

"O miseras hominum menteis! o pectora caeca!"]

[Footnote 7: A fountain which caused laughter that killed people is in Pomponius Mela's account of the Fortunate Islands; and was the origin of that of Boiardo; as I ought to have noticed in the place.]

[Footnote 8: All this description of the females bathing is in the highest taste of the voluptuous; particularly the latter part:

"Qual mattutina stella esce de l'onde
Rugiadosa e stillante: o come fuore
Spuntò nascendo già da le feconde
Spume de l'ocean la Dea d'Amore:
Tale apparve costei: tal le sue bionde
Chiome stillavan cristallino umore.
Poi girò gli occhi, e pur allor s'infinse
Que' duo vedere, e in se tutta si strinse:

E 'l crin the 'n cima al capo avea raccolto
In un sol nodo, immantinente sciolse;
Che lunghissimo in giù cadendo, e folto,
D'un aureo manto i molli avori involse.
Oh che vago spettacolo è lor tolto!
Ma mon men vago fu chi loro il tolse.
Così da l'acque e da capelli ascosa,
A lor si volse, lieta e vergognosa.

Rideva insieme, e insieme ella arrossia;
Ed era nel rossor più bello il riso,
E nel riso il rossor, the le copria
Insino al mento il delicato viso."
Canto xv. st. 60.

Spenser, among the other obligations which it delighted him to owe to this part of Tasso's poem, has translated these last twelve lines:

"With that the other likewise up arose,
And her fair locks, which formerly were bound
Up in one knot, she low adown did loose,
Which, flowing long and thick, her cloth'd around,
And th' ivory in golden mantle gown'd:
So that fair spectacle from him was reft;
Yet that which reft it, no less fair was found.
So hid in locks and waves from looker's theft,
Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.

Withal she laughèd, and she blush'd withal;
That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,
And laughter to her blushing."
Fairy Queen, book ii. canto 12, St. 67.

Tasso's translator, Fairfax, worthy both of his original and of Spenser, has had the latter before him in his version of the passage, not without a charming addition of his own at the close of the first stanza:

"And her fair locks, that in a knot were tied
High on her crown, she 'gan at large unfold;
Which falling long and thick, and spreading wide,
The ivory soft and white mantled in gold:
Thus her fair skin the dame would clothe and hide;
And that which hid it, no less fair was hold.
Thus clad in waves and locks, her eyes divine
From them ashamed would she turn and twine.

Withal she smilèd, and she blush'd withal;
Her blush her smiling, smiles her blushing graced."]

[Footnote 9:

"E quel che 'l bello e 'l caro accresce a l'opre,
L'arte, the tutto fa, nulla si scopre.

Stimi (si misto il culto è col negletto)
Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti.
Di natura arte par, the per diletto
L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti."

The idea of Nature imitating Art, and playfully imitating her, is in Ovid; but that of a mixture of cultivation and wildness is, as far as I am aware, Tasso's own. It gives him the honour of having been the first to suggest the picturesque principle of modern gardening; as I ought to have remembered, when assigning it to Spenser in a late publication (_Imagination and Fancy, p. 109_). I should have noticed also, in the same work, the obligations of Spenser to the Italian poet for the passage before quoted about the nymph in the water.]

[Footnote 10:

"Par che la dura quercia e 'l casto alloro,
E tutta la frondosa ampia famiglia,
Par the la terra e l'acqua e formi e spiri
Dolcissimi d'amor sensi e sospiri."
St. 16.

Fairfax in this passage is very graceful and happy (in the first part of his stanza he is speaking of a bird that sings with a human voice--which I have omitted):

"She ceased: and as approving all she spoke,
The choir of birds their heavenly tunes renew;
The turtles sigh'd, and sighs with kisses broke;
The fowls to shades unseen by pairs withdrew;
It seem'd the laurel chaste and stubborn oak,
And all the gentle trees on earth that grew,
It seem'd the land, the sea, and heaven above,
All breath'd out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love."]

[Footnote 11:

"Ecco tra fronde e fronde il guardo avante
Penetra, e vede, o pargli di vedere,
Vede per certo," &c.
St. 17.]

[Footnote 12: The line about the peacock,

"Spiega la pompa de l'occhiute piume,"
Opens wide the pomp of his eyed plumes,

was such a favourite with Tasso, that he has repeated it from the _Aminta_, and (I think) in some other place, but I cannot call it to mind.]

[Footnote 13:

"Teneri sdegni, e placide e tranquille
Repulse, e cari vezzi, e liete paci,
Sorrisi, e parolette, e dolci stille
Di pianto, e sospir' tronchi, e molli baci." St. 5

This is the cestus in Homer, which Venus lends to Juno for the purpose of enchanting Jupiter

Greek: N kai apo staethesphin elusato keston himanta
Poikilon' entha de ohi thelktaeria panta tetukto'
Enth' heni men philotaes, en d' himeras, en d' oaristus,
Parphasis, hae t' eklepse noon puka per phroneonton.]

Iliad, lib. xiv. 214.

She said; and from her balmy bosom loosed
The girdle that contained all temptinguess--
Love, and desire, and sweet and secret talk
Lavish, which robs the wisest of their wits.]