----"lived an hour In ocean, self-upheld; And ever, as the minutes flew, Entreated help, or cried 'adieu.'" * * * * "At length he drank The stifling wave, and then he sank."
The melancholy poet adds, in reference to himself, that
"Misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case. * * * * No voice divine the storm allay'd, No light propitious shone, When snatch'd from all effectual aid, _We_ perish'd, _each alone_; _But I beneath a rougher sea_, _And 'whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he._"
Both of Tasso's parents had early and deeply impressed upon his mind and his affections veneration and love to God. In his tenth year the Jesuit fathers, following up the religious instructions of this child of promise according to their views of the Gospel, admitted him to the sacrament; on which occasion, though he acknowledges, in one of his epistles, that he could not enter into the mystery of "the real presence," according to the Roman interpretation of the true and simple scripture doctrine of "the _communion_ of the body and the blood of Christ," yet, impressed with awe by the pomp of the spectacle, and elevated almost to transport by sympathy of devotion with the surrounding multitude, he received the symbol, according to his own ingenuous account, with "a certain indescribable and unwonted satisfaction." This circumstance deserves particular mention, because, assuredly, by such a course of domestic and school discipline the boy was trained up in what he understood to be genuine piety, and of which, through after life, he became a zealous professor, however lax on some other subjects his writings, and even his actions, may have been. In the latter respect, however, he was countenanced by the licentious manners of the age, and especially of that class of society, refined and exalted as it was, in which his lot was cast, but in which he was rather entertained as a guest than recognised as a member of the privileged order. His father, in one of his letters to his mother, says, "It is of the utmost importance to impress, with all your influence and authority, upon the infantine mind the name, the love, and the fear of God, that the child may learn to love and honour Him from whom he has received, not life only, but all the benefits and mercies of providence and grace, which can render man happy in this world, and blessed in that which is to come." In the same letter he says, "I condemn those who beat their children, not less than if they should dare to lay hands on the image of God."