Life of Torquato Tasso

may be thought inadequately to represent the beauties of the originals; but, gratified as he would be, if this work shall, as a literary performance, gain the suffrage of the public, it is as a work of enquiry and research upon which he is desirous to rest its claims.

As the principal materials for this production were the work of Serassi, and especially the writings of Tasso himself, I could, from the nature of the subject, be less indebted to the communications of friends than I should have been, had the materials been more dispersed. I have received, however, several proofs of benevolence from different literary men, in naming whom I satisfy at once my vanity and gratitude. Of these, I have been chiefly indebted to Lord Woodhouselee, whose active and condescending friendship has formed, and forms, one of the principal blessings of my life. The literary courtesy of Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq. has been recorded in many works; and the author of these volumes has also to thank him for those zealous exertions, which he is ever ready to make

in behalf of him, who labours in any department of literature, especially in that which his own writings have contributed to promote. To the flattering kindness of William Hayley, Esq. I am indebted, besides other proofs of his benevolence, for the two portraits of Tasso, that decorate this work, which had been sent to him from Rome, by Flaxman, who copied them in the Monastery of St Onofrio, where the poet died, and where his ashes repose. And had not the embellishment of these volumes been thus fortunately accomplished, the Life of Tasso would have been adorned by a portrait of that poet, from a painting in the possession of the biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici, to whom Tuscan and English literature is so much indebted, and to whose labours, perhaps, it will have been chiefly owing, if ever the Italian muses shall resume their former dignity in this island.

Whatever may be the success of this work, I shall never regret having employed my labour on it. That person would have written the life of Tasso to little purpose, whose feverish thirst

of literary reputation, the frequent contemplation of that poet's fate has not assuaged, and whose chagrin at being obscure and undistinguished, it has not consoled. has not consoled. No more strik

ing example has ever been afforded to the world, that happiness is not the certain attainment of intellectual, any more than of civil greatness: -that, like the violet, it is not to be found upon the mountain, where the oak combats with the storm, but diffuses its odours in the vale of life, where, satisfied with the past, and delighted with the future, unassuming Virtue pursues the noiseless tenor of her way.

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