Goffredo, idealized into statuesque frigidity, repeats the virtues of Aeneas; but the episode of Dido, which enlivens Virgil's hero, is transferred to Rinaldo's part in Tasso's story.

The battles of Crusaders and Saracens are tedious copies of the battle in the tenth Aeneid; but the duels of Tancredi with Clorinda and Argante breathe the spirit and the fire of chivalry.

The celestial and infernal councils, adopted as machinery, recall the rival factions in Olympus; but the force by which the plot moves is love.

Pluto and the angel Gabriel are inactive by comparison with Armida, Erminia and Clorinda.
Tasso in truth thought that he was writing a religious and heroic poem.
What he did write, was a poem of sentiment and passion--a romance.

Like Anacreon he might have cried: thelo legein Atreidas thelo de Kadmon adein, ha barbitos de chordais Erota mounon echei.
He displayed, indeed, marvelous ingenuity and art in so connecting the two strains of his subject, the stately Virgilian history and the glowing modern romance, that they should contribute to the working of a single plot.