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reader's acquaintance in too short and light a way for such a part as he is to sustain.

"Rodamir est son nom; Vitikind est son père,
Dès l'age le plus tendre Armélie eut sa foi;
Charle est pour lui l'objet d'une aveugle colère:
Le combattre, lui nuire est son unique loi."

In these four lines, the 3d of which is neither epic nor poetical, we have the description of one of the first rate warriors, and of one of the most important personages of the poem. He is brave and great, like the Achilles of Homer; but the anger of Rodamir is not either so well grounded, nor so necessary to the success of the undertaking. Tasso, in his Rinaldo, has given to Achilles a more worthy successor. Another great fault in the character of Rodamir is the inconsistent way in which Lucien has made him die. In order to raise the character of Charles, who kills him in battle, our poet, by an ill-judged sentiment, makes him tremble long before the attack commences, to which he himself had challenged his opponent, and afterwards die like a coward.

The most perfect character however in the whole is Adalgise, the son of Desiderius; he is the Tancredi of the Gerusalemme; he is brave, humane, generous, and a prey to a hopeless passion for a sister of Charlemagne. There is something very affecting in the manner in which this Lombard Prince obeys the com mand of his father; while he knows too well that by so doing he will lose all hopes of ever obtaining the object of his af fection.

Besides these instances that we have remarked, in which our poet has imitated the Gerusalemme, there are others in which this imitation is equally striking. The Pope, fortifying one corner of Rome at the approach of the Lombards, is a copy of Aladino fortifying one side of Jerusalem at the approach of the Christians. The episode of the loves of Monclar and Oriande, and the way by which this French Knight becomes enamoured of the Saracen Queen has for pattern Tancredi, who falls in love with Clorinda. Both these knights, for the first time, see the object of their attachment in the midst of the tumult of arms; Monclar in the middle of a battle, Tancredi after the combat with the Persians: both the ladies are represented as valiant warriors; both free their golden tresses from the pressure of the casques, and both the poets express the same sentiment, which in Charlemagne is rendered by

"Un moment a suffi pour allumer șa flamme,

with this difference, that Monclar being rewarded with the hand

of

of Oriande, loses all interest which he might have produced, whilst in Gerusalemme, Tasso, by representing Tancredi as a prey to an hopeless passion, paves the way to the most distressing event that has ever been sung by the epic muse-the tragical end of an adored woman, expiring under the hand of her unconscious lover,

In the 12th canto Grimoald relates to Charles the defeat of Raimond and the victory of Rodamir and Armélie, and in the 8th canto of the Gerusalemme, Carlo tells to Gotfredo the defeat of Sveno and his troops. But the melancholy interest which we take in the simple recital of the fall of this brave Danish prince, is entirely destroyed in Charlemagne by the intricacy of the details, and by the extent of the answer, contained in no less than three pages and a half, in which Charles gives a long string of precepts concerning military discipline, and which may be found better explained, and much better situated, in the poem of L'art de la guerre, by the philosopher of Sans Souci.

Again, the whole character of Longin, and especially the advice he gives to Almansor, in the 13th canto, is a copy of Ismeno, who is the counsellor of Aladino in the Gerusalemme. The invisible car which Elias offers to Adelard to convey him from Monte Casino to Paris, bears a close resemblance to the car in which Ismeno conveys unseen the Soldano within the walls of Jerusalem. The oath of Rodamir, by which he engages himself to revenge Armélie, is taken from the oath of Tissaferno, in which he swears to avenge on Rinaldo the wrongs of Armida. Ulric appearing in a dream to Vitikind, surrounded by all the glory which is the inheritance of those who live and die according to the dictates of the Gospel, recalls to our recollection the dream of Tancredi, in which this Christian prince beholds amongst the blessed, her, whom he has so unfortunately slain, but to whom he has given immortal life by baptism. The idol of Irmensul, exposed on the altar of the Roman Catholic Church at Argente by the order of Ormes, puts us in mind of the images of the holy Virgin hung up in the Mosch by the advice of Ismeno. Tasso represents Tancredi alighting from his horse in his duel against Clorinda, and our poet describes Charlemagne doing the same in his duel with Ezelin. Charles struck in the arm by

an arrow,

...."voit tranquille tonder sa blessure;"

Gotfredo having his leg transfixed by a dart endures the pain with the utmost composure. The wounded Tancredi weak and feeble, urged by his courage and by the cause of religion hardly capable to indure the weight of his shield and his sword, without

any

any armour, goes to animate his men in the last combat against the Turks, and Charles confined by the same cause, equally feeble and equally weak-without arms goes to the assistance of his Franks in the last battle against the Lombards. In the middle of this battle Charles secs in a vision the angel of God protecting with an immense shield the city of Rome, and thus rendering vain, the attack of the impious: Gotfredo, in the midst of a battle in a similar vision sees the host of heaven urging the Christians to scale the walls of Jerusalem in spite of the opposition of the Infidels.-Iu this same engagement Armélie lifts up her hand against Charles-and in the same battle Armida lets an arrow fly at Rinaldo. "Sur le brassard" of Charles "la pique s'est rompue," and on the shield of Rinaldo the arrow loses its point. Charles sends some of his knights to protect his deserted wife, and Rinaldo goes himself to take care of his mistress.

We are surprised to find some anachronisms and inaccuracies which we should not have expected in such a poem. In the 8th canto, at the 15th stanza, we find that Charles on the Alps having given to his troops the order of marching→

"Devant le premier corps de la nombreuse armée,
Marche des fleurs de lis le brillant etendard-"

Now it is certain that the French kings did not begin to use the fleurs de lis as their armorial before the 12th century. Philippe Augustus is the first who employed one of these flowers as his contre-signet. This example was imitated by his successors, Louis VIII. and Louis IX.-more known by the appellation of St. Louis. By degrees this contre-signet found its way in the escutcheon of their kings, in which they placed a numberless quantity of the flower de lis, until Charles VIII. reduced them to three their present number.

In the 10th canto he speaks of Irmensul, and we may forgive his considering this idol of the Germans as a real deity, which they actually worshipped. The little we know about this Irmensul or Irminsul is so obscure, and the opinions of the learned are so various and so different, that though in all probability this Irmensul was nothing more than a monument raised to the memory of Irmin, whom the Romans called Arminius, the conqueror of Varus and the avenger of German liberty-yet we might have forgiven, perhaps applauded the poet for having followed that opinion which would suit best the developement of his plan, and afford more striking images for poetical composition; but when he gives us a terrible description of the statue of this deity, of whom we know literally nothing, when he says that . "son effroyable tête Des arbres les plus hauts semble toucher le faîte,"

then

then we imagine that we see the Devil of the Gerusalemme, to whom Tasso has given a pair of horns higher than Mount Atlas, an image which has been very properly criticised by our poet, note the 1st, canto 9.

At the same time we should have been very glad if he had spared a little of the high colours which have been employed in the description of the Suevian prisoners, slain at the altar of Irmensul. It is certain that the feasts which were celebrated in honour of this Irmensul either as a deity, or in memory of their brave general, were never disgraced by human victims. And though human victims have polluted the religion of the Druids as of all other nations of the globe; yet upon enquiry we shall find that our poet's hero, this very Charlemague, has spilt more blood in one year, than all the Druids together in a century. At the taking of Vesburg, in the year 772, Charles ordered many thousands of the unfortunate Germans to be murdered in cold blood, because they would not or could not understand the Gospel. After so much of pious murder he caused a chapel to be built in the place of the temple, which however he took care to pillage before it was razed to the ground. This chapel in course of time was consecrated by Paul III. perhaps on the ground that his predecessor had approved of this deed of Charles; just as another pope took from the institution of this monarch against the Saxons, the pattern of the Inquisition, a tribunal which to all intents and purposes has renewed amongst the Christians the human sacrifices of the ancients: and indeed since the Spanish government is so blind to its own interest, and the court of Rome to the true spirit of the Christian religion, it is to be wished that our ministers in the very first treaty of commerce, peace, or alliance, which they shall enter into with Spain, would stipulate for the total and immediate abolition of their abominable auto-da-fe; just as they have lately stipulated for the abolition of the slave-trade; and just as Gelon stipulated with the Carthaginians of Sicily for the abolition of the inhuman sacrifices of their children. On this subject we shall say more in a future Number; now to return.

In the 8th canto, stanza 7th, our poet refers the origin of Venice to the incursion of the Lombards, under Alboin; when the people of Padua and adjacent country, in order to avoid the fury of the conqueror, retired amongst the marshes of the Adriatic sea, where they built a town; and in the 7th note, by way of an explanation, the epoch of such an establishment is fixed at the end of the 6th century; adding that Charlemagne confirmed its republican government, and Pepin his son gave to it the name of Venezia. But the fact is that both the name and the foundation of Venice is due to the irruption of the Huns,

under

under Attila, which happened more than a century before the arrival of the Lombards. It was then that the people residing on the north-east of Italy, retired on the rocks, and laid the foundation of that town ;-but even then, they did not coin this name: the country from which they came had long been so called from the people who had been its first inhabitants. The learned author of the Origini Venete considers the origin of this nation to be lost in the most remote antiquity. He affirms that long before the irruption of the Venedi, Vindi, or Veneti, who having issued from the marshes of the Mæotis, and from the Caucascus, settled on the shores of the Adriatic, these countries were already inhabited by a nation of the name of Heneti.

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In the distribution of time our poet has again followed more the flight of the imagination than real possibility. He appears to have furnished all his heroes with nine league boots, and the short period in which the greatest deeds and the longest journies are performed would puzzle the most daring commentators, and would hardly suit the Morgante or Orlando. The action of the whole poem happens in 112 days. In the 5th canto, that is on the 13th day of the action, Charles resolves on the war against the Lombards; and in 14 days he and his whole army are already on the Alps, and fight the enemy. Now even supposing that every thing was so ready as to allow the army to march at a moment's notice, it is evident that a distance of 600 miles requires at least a month; without taking into consideration the time for climbing the Alps. In the same canto, and on the same day, Armélie leaves Paris, and in 13 days crosses the Alps, and meets Rodamir under Pavia. Rodamir himself in the 7th canto, leaves Soma, a mountain near Rome, and reaches Pavia in a few hours, while a courier generally wants six days, though he travels both by day and by night. In the 8th canto the old and decrepit hermit crosses the whole of Italy from Monte Casino to the top of Mont Cenis, in three days. In the 7th, Adalgise separates from Rodamir, and is not able to reach Pavia in the same period of time in which this Saxon warrior arrives in Germany; and thus without any apparent cause the one cannot in a given time perform one third of the journey, which is easily done by the other. These and other inconsistences of the same species are so palpable, that our poet himself endea vours to excuse them by some saying or other which he puts in the mouth either of the Saxons or Lombards, by which they shew their unbelief of Charles coming from so far in so short a time. Thus Rodamir is surprised to find Charles on the Alps; Desiderius to see him on the Tyber; Vitikind to hear him under the walls of Argente.

Perhaps here our poet might plead the example of Tasso,

who

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