Sleepless they lie: but far above the rest,
The rage of thirst their fainting souls oppress'd:
For vers'd in guile, Judæa's impious king
With poisonous juice had tainted every spring;
Whose currents now with dire pollution flow,
Like Styx and Acheron in realms below.

The slender stream where Siloa's gentle wave
Once to the Christians draughts untainted gave,
Now scarcely murmurs, in his channels dry,
And yields their fainting host a small supply.
But not the Po, when most his waters swell,
Would seem too vast their raging thirst to quell :
Nor mighty Ganges, nor the sev'n-mouth'd Nile
That with his deluge glads th' Egyptian soil.

If e'er their eyes in happier times have view'd
Begirt with grassy turf some crystal flood;
Or living waters foam from Alpine hills,
Or through soft herbage purl the limpid rills;
Such flattering scenes again their fancies frame,
And add new fuel to increase their flame,
Still in the mind the wish'd idea reigns:
But still the fever rages in their veins.

Then might you see on earth the warriors lie,
Whose limbs robust could every toil defy;
Inur'd the weight of pond'rous arms to bear,
Inur'd in fields the hostile steel to dare:
Deep in their flesh the hidden furies prey,
And eat by slow degrees their lives away.

The courser late with generous pride endued,
Now loaths the grass, his once delighted food:
With feeble steps he scarcely seems to tread,
And prone to earth is hung his languid head.
No memory now of ancient fame remains,
No thirst of glory on the dusty plains:

The conquer'd spoils and trappings once bestow'd,
His joy so late, are now a painful load.

Now pines the faithful dog, nor heeds the board,
Nor heeds the service of his dearer lord;
Outstretch'd he lies, and as he pants for breath,
Receives at every gasp new draughts of death.
In vain has nature's law the air assign'd
T'allay the inward heat of human kind :
What, here, alas! can air mankind avail,
When fevers float on every burning gale!

Here is a specimen of the truly grand and sublime in poetry. This picture, so exquisitely imitated in Paul and Virginia, possesses the double merit of being appropriate to the climate of Judea, and representing an historical fact: the Christians actu

ally experienced such a drought during the siege of Jerusalem. Robert has left us a description of it, which I shall presently lay before the reader.

In the fourteenth book, we shall look for a river that runs near Ascalon, and at the bottom of which resided the magician who revealed to Ubald and the Danish knight the fortunes of Rinaldo. This stream is the river of Ascalon, or some other torrent more to the north, which was not known except in the times of the crusades, as D'Anville asserts.

In the voyage of the two knights, geographical order is wonderfully well preserved. Setting sail from a port between Jaffa and Ascalon, and steering towards Egypt, they must successively have seen Ascalon, Gaza, Raphia, and Damietta. The poet represents their course as westerly, though it was at first southward; but he could not descend to such minute particulars. At any rate, I perceive that all epic poets have been men of extensive erudition, and had, above all, profoundly studied the works of their predecessors in the career of the epopee: Virgil translates Homer; Tasso imitates, in every stanza, some passage of Homer, Virgil, Lucan, Statius; Milton borrows from them all, and enlarges his own stores with the stores of those who had gone before him.

The sixteenth book, which comprehends a delineation of the gardens of Armida, furnishes nothing for our present subject. In the seventeenth, we find the description of Gaza, and the recapitulation of the Egyptian army: an epic subject, in which Tasso displays the genius of a master, and at the same time a perfect acquaintance with history and geography. In my voyage from Jaffa to Alexandria, our vessel steered southward till we came exactly opposite to Gaza, the sight of which reminded me of these verses of the Jerusalem:

Plac'd where Judæa's utmost bounds extend
Tow'rds fair Pelusium, Gaza's tow'rs ascend:
Fast by the breezy shore the city stands,
Amid unbounded plains of barren sands,

Which, high in air, the furious whirlwinds sweep,
Like mountain billows of the stormy deep;

That scarce th' affrighted trav'ller, spent with toil,
Escapes the tempest of th' unstable soil.

The last assault in the nineteenth book is perfectly consistent with history. Godfrey attacked the city in three places at once. The old Count de Toulouse assailed the walls between the west and south, facing the castle of the city, near the Jaffa gate. Godfrey forced the gate of Ephraim, while Tancred directed his ef forts against the corner tower, which afterwards assumed the name of Tancred's tower.

་

Tasso likewise follows the chronicles in the circumstances and the result of the assault. Ismeno, accompanied by two magicians, is killed by a stone hurled from an engine: two sorceresses actually met that fate on the walls at the taking of Jerusalem. Godfrey looks up, and beholds celestial warriors fighting for him on every side. This is a fine imitation of Homer and Virgil, but it is also a tradition from the times of the crusades. 'The dead,' says Father Nau, entered with the living; for several crusaders, who died before their arrival, and among the rest Ademar, the virtuous and zealous bishop of Puy, in Auvergne, appeared upon the walls; as if the glory which they enjoyed in the heavenly Jerusalem required the accession of that to be derived from visiting the terrestrial one, and adoring the Son of God upon the scene of his ignominy and sufferings, as they worshipped him on the throne of his majesty and power.'

The city was taken, as the poet relates, by means of bridges, which were projected from engines and fell upon the ramparts. Godfrey and Gaston de Foix had furnished the plan of these machines, which were constructed by Pisan and Genoese sailors. The whole account of this assault, in which Tasso has displayed the ardour of his chivalrous genius, is true, except what relates to Rinaldo; that hero being a mere fiction of the poet, his actions must also be imaginary. There was no warrior of the name of Rinaldo d'Este at the siege of Jerusalem; the first Christian that scaled the walls was not a knight named Rinaldo, but Letolde, a Flemish gentleman, of Godfrey's retinue. He was followed by Guicher, and Godfrey himself. The stanza in which Tasso describes the standard of the cross overshadowing the towers of Jerusalem Delivered, is truly sublime:

The conquering banner to the breeze unroll'd
Redundant streams in many a waving fold:
The winds with awe confess the heavenly sign,
With purer beams the day appears to shine:
The swords seem bid to turn their points away,
And darts around it innocently play:
The sacred Mount the purple cross adores,
And Sion owns it from her topmost tow'rs.

All the historians of the crusades record the piety of Godfrey, the generosity of Tancred, and the justice and prudence of the Count de St. Gilles. Anna Comnena herself speaks with commendation of the latter: the poet has therefore adhered to history, in the delineation of his heroes. When he invents characters, he at least makes them consistent with manners. Argantes is a genuine Mameluke:

The other chief from fair Circassia came
To Egypt's court, Argantes was his name ;

Exalted midst the princes of the land,
And first in rank of all the martial band;
Impatient, fiery, and of rage unquell'd,

In arms unconquer'd, matchless in the field;
Whose impious soul contempt of heaven avow'd,
His sword his law, his own right hand his God.

In Solyman is faithfully pourtrayed a sultan of the early times of the Turkish empire. The poet, who fails not to avail himself of every historical recollection, makes the Sultan of Nice an ancestor of the great Saladin; and it is obvious that he meant to delineate Saladin himself in the character of his progenitor. Should the work of Dom Bertheleau ever be laid before the public, we shall be better acquainted with the Mahometan heroes of Jerusalem. Dom Bertheleau translated the Arabian authors who have written the history of the crusades. This valuable performance was intended to form part of the collection of French historians.

I am not able to fix the exact spot where the ferocious Argantes is slain by the generous Tancred; but it must be sought in the valleys between the west and north. It cannot be placed to the west of the corner tower which Tancred assaulted; for in this case, Erminia could not have met the wounded hero as she was returning from Gaza with Vafrino.

The last action of the poem, which in reality took place near Ascalon, Tasso has laid with exquisite judgment under the walls of Jerusalem. Historically considered, this action is of little importance; but in a poetical point of view, it is a battle superior to any in Virgil, and equal to the grandest of Homer's combats.

I shall now give the siege of Jerusalem, extracted from our old chronicles, so that the reader may have an opportunity of comparing the poem with history.

Of all the historians of the crusades, Robert the monk is most frequently quoted. The anonymous writer, in the collection entitled 'Gesta Dei per Francos, is more ancient; but his narrative is too dry. William of Tyre falls into the contrary defect. For these reasons Robert is consulted in preference: his style is affected; he copies the turns of the poets, but on this very account, notwithstanding his points and his puns,* he is less barbarous than his contemporaries; he has, moreover, a certain degree of taste and a brilliant imagination.

The army encamped in this order about Jerusalem. The Counts of Flanders and Normandy pitched their tents on the north side, not far from the churcht erected on the spot where

Papa Urbanus urbano sermone peroravit, &c. Vallis spaciosa et speciosa, &c. Our old hymns are full of these plays upon words: Quo carne carnis conditor, &c.

The text has juxta ecclesiam: which I have translated not far from the church, because this church is not to the north, but to the east of Jerusalem;

Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned. Godfrey and Tancred placed themselves on the west, and the Count de St. Gilles took a position to the south, on Mount Sion,* round about the church of Mary, the mother of our Saviour, formerly the house in which the Lord held the last Supper with his disciples. The tents being thus disposed, while the troops, fatigued with their march, rested themselves, and constructed the machines necessary for the attack, Raimond Pilet, and Raimond de Turenne, proceeded from the camp with several others to reconnoitre the neighbouring country, lest the enemy should fall upon the crusaders before they were prepared. They met by the way with three hundred Arabs, they killed many of them, and took thirty horses. The second day of the third week, June 13th, 1099, the French attacked Jerusalem, but they could not take it that day. Their efforts, however, were not wholly useless: they threw down the outer wall, and set up ladders against the principal one. they but possessed a sufficient number of them, this first attempt had been the last. Those who ascended the ladders maintained a long conflict against the enemy with swords and spears. Many of our people fell in this assault, but the loss of the Saracens was much more considerable. Night put an end to the action, and gave rest to both sides. The failure of this first attempt certainly occasioned our army much toil and trouble, for our troops were without bread for ten days, till our ships arrived in the port of Jaffa. They, moreover, suffered exceedingly from thirst; the fountain of Siloe, at the foot of Mount Sion, could scarcely sup ply the troops, and they were obliged to send the horses and other animals, attended by a numerous escort, six miles from the camp to water.

Had

Though the fleet which arrived at Jaffa furnished the besiegers with provisions, they still suffered as much as ever from thirst. So great was the drought during the siege, that the soldiers dug holes in the ground, and pressed the damp clods to their lips; they licked the stones wet with dew; they drank the putrid water which had stood in the fresh hides of buffaloes and other animals; and many abstained from eating, in the hope of mitigating by hunger the pangs of thirst.

'Meanwhile the generals caused large pieces of timber to be brought from a great distance for the construction of engines and

and all the other historians of the crusades relate that the Counts of Normandy and Flanders placed themselves between the east and the north.

The text says, Scilicet in monte Sion. This proves that the city, built by Adrian, did not include the whole of Mount Sion, and that the site of Jerusa lem at that time was exactly the same as it is at present.

Piletus, or, as he is elsewhere called, Pilitus and Pelez.