Thus piety in Tasso appears superficial and conventional rather than profoundly felt or originally vigorous; while the scholarship which supplied his epic style is scrupulous and timid.
The enduring qualities of Tasso as a modern poet have still to be indicated; and to this more grateful portion of my argument I now address myself.

Much might be said in the first place about his rhetorical dexterity--the flexibility of language in his hands, and the copiousness of thought, whereby he was able to adorn varied situations and depict diversity of passions with appropriate diction.

Whether Alete is subtly pleading a seductive cause, or Goffredo is answering his sophistries with well-weighed arguments; whether Pluto addresses the potentates of hell, or Erminia wavers between love and honor; whether Tancredi pours forth the extremity of his despair, or Armida heaps reproaches on Rinaldo in his flight; the musical and luminously polished stanzas lend themselves without change of style to every gradation of the speaker's mood.

In this art of rhetoric, Tasso seems to have taken Livy for his model; and many of his speeches which adorn the graver portions of his poem are noticeable for compact sententious wisdom.
In fancy Tasso was not so naturally rich and inventive as the author of _Orlando Furioso_.

Yet a gallery of highly-finished pictures might be collected from his similes and metaphors.