claimed and removed for interment. Twenty
only had been saved out of the gay, light-
hearted one hundred and fifty that had started
from Liverpool.

The loss of this steamer caused a profound
sensation through Lancashire and a great part
of Wales. It led to greater precautions against
wreck being taken on board the Mersey steamers,
and several worn-out boats were removed before
government could examine and condemn them.
In August, 1832, the Eisteddfod, or meeting of
the Welsh bards, was held in Beaumaris, and
the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria
awarded the prizes. The chief medal was given
for the best ode on the wreck of the Rothsay
Castle. The duchess and princess also visited
the spot upon which the steamer was lost, and
took a great interest in the catastrophe. Many
wrecks have involved greater loss of life, but
no wreck of the last century has, perhaps, been
described more fully, or from more points of
view, sixteen educated survivors having written
their fullest recollections of their various modes
of escape.

INFLUENCE OF TASSO ON MILTON
AND SPENSER.

MILTON has been accused by more than
one Italian writer of having taken an
Italian poem, published in the year 1590, as the
groundwork of his Paradise Lost. The name of
that poem is The Angeleïda; the author, Erasmus
di Valvazone. Maffei unhesitatingly
asserts that Milton borrowed from it. The
Angeleïda consists of three cantos, in which the
contest between the good and the fallen angels is
described. We know that Milton was a good
Italian scholar, and that he visited Florence,
Rome, and Naples, about the year 1639. The
first edition of the Paradise Lost was published
in London in the year 1667. Maffei says:

"It has been most reasonably supposed by
critics that Milton turned the Angeleïda to
account to weave (per tissere) his Paradise Lost,
and certainly in the arrangement and disposal of
his plot there is great similitude between these
two poets; the language used by the leaders of
the adverse factions, and the idea of a regular
battle with various chances, especially the quaint
idea of making the rebel angels use artillery,
which is the case in both poems, make us
suspect that Milton must have seen the Angeleïda."

Hallam makes no mention of the Angeleïda.
He says, respecting Milton: "In the numerous
imitations, and still more traces of elder poetry
which we perceive in Paradise Lost, it must be
always kept in mind that he had only his
recollection to rely upon. His blindness seems to
have been complete before 1654; and I scarcely
think that he had begun his poem before the
anxiety and trouble into which the public strife
of the Commonwealth and of the Restoration
had thrown him gave leisure for immortal
occupations. Then the remembrance of early reading
came over his dark and lonely path like the
moon emerging from the clouds. Then it was
that the muse was truly his; not only as she
poured her native inspiration into his mind, but
as the daughter of memory, coming with
fragments of ancient melodies, the voice of
Euripides, Homer, and Tasso." We have in vain
looked through Sismondi and Guinguené for
some mention of the Angeleïda. The influence
of Tasso upon Milton, on the other hand, is
undeniable. He occupied the same rooms,
formerly the dwelling of the Italian poet, at the
house of Manso, Marquis de Villa, at Naples.
Manso wrote a life of Tasso, to which Milton
alludes in his poem Mansus:

Describis vitam, moresque et dona Minervæ
Æmulus illius, Mycalen qui natus ad altam
Rettulit Æolii vitam facundus Homeri.

Black, in his preface to his Life of Tasso, makes
the following trite observations: "The Life of
Tasso is worthy of a long detail, not merely on
account of his own eminence, but from the influence
of his writings on the best of our own bards.
Even to literary men, the Italian language is, in
general, not, like the French, quite familiar; and,
in spite of all that has been effected, much still
remains to be done, before we shall have become
sufficiently acquainted with the masters of the
fathers of our poetry; yet, till this be done, we
shall have but a comparatively imperfect notion of
the noblest production of English literature."

The influence of Tasso upon Milton is a
subject for much interesting investigation. Manso
was a warm admirer of Tasso, and doubtless,
extolled his merits. The imagination of our
great bard may have been fired by the fame
achieved by the Italian poet. Whilst a guest
in Manso's house, Tasso, at the request of his
host's mother, commenced an epic poem, scarcely
known in England, entitled The Creation. His
aim was to sing in exalted verse the wonders of
the seven days. In the fourth canto of the
Jerusalem Delivered, Satan invokes a council to
concert measures to help the infidels against the
Christians. If we turn to the second book of
Paradise Lost, we find a description of a council
held by Satan. A comparison of the two is
interesting.

In the ninth canto of Jerusalem Delivered,
Tasso soars to the most daring description.
When the battle between the Christians and
Pagans is at its height, but undecided, the Creator
sends for the Archangel Michael, and orders
him to disperse the evil spirits who favour the
infidels. Milton's description of the Deity,
in the third book of Paradise Lost, is very
similar. Dante shrank from describing the
Almighty. Led by Beatrice, he is allowed a
glimpse of the great mystery of the hypostatical
union of Christ's human nature with his divine
being. Spenser is supposed to have borrowed
largely from Tasso; but it may with equal
justness be said, that Ariosto and Tasso borrowed
from Homer and Virgil. In addition to the
Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso wrote a poem
entitled Rinaldo. The Valley of Despair, in the
eleventh canto of Torquato's work, bears a