Hence came involved octaves like the following (vi.

109): Siccome cerva, ch'assetata il passo Mova a cercar d'acque lucenti e vive, Ove un bel fonte distillar da un sasso O vide un fiume tra frondose rive, Se incontra i cani allor che il corpo lasso Ristorar crede all'onde, all'ombre estive, Volge indietro fuggendo, e la paura La stanchezza obbliar face e l'arsura.
The image is beautiful; but the diction is elaborately intricate, rhetorically indistinct.

We find the same stylistic involution in these lines (xii.

6): Ma s'egli avverra pur che mia ventura Nel mio ritorno mi rinchiuda il passo, D'uom che in amor m'e padre a te la cura E delle fide mie donzelle io lasso.
The limpid well of native utterance is troubled at its source by scholastic artifices in these as in so many other passages of Tasso's masterpiece.

Nor was he yet emancipated from the weakness of _Rinaldo_.
Trying to soar upon the borrowed plumes of pseudo-classical sublimity, he often fell back wearied by this uncongenial effort into prose.