to die.

Man. Old man ful ! 'tis not so difficult hich MANFRED expires. Abbot. He's gone -his soul hath ta'en its earthless flight; Whither? I dread to think but he is gone.

THE LAMENT OF TASSO.1

ADVERTISEMENT

AT Ferrara, in the Library, a re preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gerusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto, and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house, of the latter. But, as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the cotemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St Anna attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto

at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the cell itself, inviting, unnecessarily, the wonder and the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed and depopulated: the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon.

but

LONG years! frame to bear

I.

It tries the thrilling

And the Mind's canker in its savage mood,

When the impatient thirst of light and air

Parches the heart; and the abhorréd grate,

Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,

Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,

With a hot sense of heaviness and pain; And bare, at once, Captivity displayed II Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate,

Which nothing through its bars admits, save day,

And tasteless food, which I have eat alone

Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave
Which is my lair, and
it may be

Of minds and bodies in captivity.
And hark! the lash and the increasing

howl,