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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
poet , who comes to present him with a grateful return for his protection , —the * Jerusalem Delivered / The offering is accepted with grace , as it was presented with dignity ; and the Duke desires his sister to take from the head of Virgil , the laurel crown which she had just placed there , and put it on the brow of Tasso . She obeys . But the gift operates instantly like poison on the too susceptible frame of the poet : he exclaims , —
* Oh take it from my worthless brow away ! Remove it far ! it does but singe my locks ! And , as a sunbeam which in mid-day heat Has reach'd my brow , it burns the vital force Of thought from out my brain . ' «^ f ^^* ^^* * V * ^^ K
Unworthy such a cooling wreath am I , Which only on the hero ' s brow should wave : Oh take it off , ye Gods ! And let it shine Amidst the clouds , till high and higher it May float unreachable ; that thus my life May ever wander after this bright aim V
This is the first indication of the disease that is so soon to . break out to his destruction , the virus of which is further quicks ened by the arrival of Antonio , secretary of state . Having wrought services to the sovereign as a warrior and a statesman ,. Antonio beholds with jealousy and anger the reward , which he
deems due to himself , on the forehead of a maker of sonnets , and betrays his hostility by an untimely though eloquent eulogy of the departed Ariosto , whose crowned statue adorned the garden . Thus the elements of evil are all in activity in the first act . In the second act , after another dialogue of
* Linked sweetness long drawn out , * between the Princess and Tasso , and a soliloquy in which the poet betrays the passion that is boiling within him , a sterner dialogue follows between the poet and the man of the world . Antonio insults Tasso as the ignoble usurper of the laurel which belongs to himself , and the poet draws his sword on the soldier , and challenges him to single combat . The Duke enters , and Tasso is put under arrest for his offence .
In the third act there is no incident . The ladies consult on the means of restoring harmony , by reconciling a due submission to the laws of decorum , indispensable in a court in the sixteenth century , with the indulgence required by the infirmities of the highminded and sensitive poet . Antonio joins with them in their endeavours .
In the fourth act an apparent reconciliation takes place between the warrior and the poet . But the only use that Tasso makes of Antonio ' s offer to serve him , is that he requires him to obtain from the Duke his permission to leave the court . In this act are seen the workings of' the strong disease that must subdue at
Untitled Article
5 $ 6 Goethe ' s Work * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1832, page 596, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1820/page/20/
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