Republic of Genoa, and to all the
Italian princes who had any authority in the case, to put a stop to
the publication of a work which had been circulated without his
sanction, but in vain. Even the first complete edition, which was
issued in 1581, seems to have been without his consent; for the author
complains that he was compelled, by the surreptitious publication of
parts of his poem, to finish the work in haste, and he wished for more
time to elaborate the plot and polish the style. In the later
editions, no less than seven of which appeared the same year, Tasso
seems to have been to some extent consulted; but it may be said that
the great epic was given to the world in the form in which we now have
it, without the author's imprimatur, and without the benefit of his
finishing touches. But in spite of this disadvantage it took the whole
country at once by storm. Two thousand copies were sold in two days.
Throughout literary circles nothing else was spoken of. The exquisite
stanzas, full of the true chivalric spirit, touched a responsive chord
in every Italian bosom. Not only in the academies of the learned was
the poem discussed, not only was it recited before princes amid the
splendours of courts, but priests mused over it in the solitude of the
cloister, and peasants chanted its sonorous strains as they worked in
the fields. Quotations from it, we are told, might be heard from the
gondolier on the Grand Canal of Venice, as he greeted his neighbour in
passing by, and from the brigand on the far heights of the Abruzzi, as
he lay in wait for the unsuspecting traveller; and "a portion of the
Crusader's Litany was a favourite chant of the galley-slaves of
Leghorn, as, chained together, they dragged their weary steps along
the shore."

There is no book which it is easier to find fault with than the
_Gerusalemme_ when estimated by the satiated critical spirit of modern
times, which insists upon brevity, and demands in each line a certain
poetic excellence; especially if the poem is known only through the
medium of a translation, which, however faithful, is but the turning
of the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. We may object to the want of
originality in the leading characters, to the occasional inflated
style, and the conceits and plays upon words now and then introduced,
to the apparently disproportionate influence of love upon the action
of the poem, as Hallam has remarked, giving it an effeminate tone,
and, above a