Honor and love, and
the favor of princes, and enthusiastic praise, dazzled his youth. Envy,
malice, and treachery, tedious imprisonment and imputed madness, insult,
poverty, and persecution, clouded his manhood. The evening of his days
was saddened by a troubled spirit, want, sickness, bitter memories, and
deluded hopes; and when at length a transient gleam of sunshine fell
upon his prospects, death substituted the immortal for the laurel crown.
Mystery adds its fascination to his story. The causes of his
imprisonment are hidden in obscurity; it is still disputed whether he
was insane or not.
Few points of literary history, therefore, are more interesting, or more
obscure, than the love, the madness, and the imprisonment of Tasso.
* * * * *
=_George Ticknor, 1791-1871._= (Manual, p. 502.)
From "The History of Spanish Literature."
=_187._= DESIGN OF CERVANTES IN WRITING DON QUIXOTE.
His purpose in writing the Don Quixote has sometimes been enlarged by
the ingenuity of a refined criticism, until it has been made to embrace
the whole of the endless contrast between the poetical and the prosaic
in our natures,--between heroism and generosity on one side, as if they
were mere illusions, and a cold selfishness on the other, as if it were
the truth and reality of life.
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