It is also the climax and conclusion of Italian romantic poetry, the resolution of its magic and marvels into the truths of human affection.

Notice, too, with what audacity Tasso has placed the words of Mary on the lips of his converted sorceress! Deliberately planning a religious and heroic poem, he assigns the spoils of conquered hell to love triumphant in a woman's breast.

Beauty, which in itself is diabolical, the servant of the lords of Hades, attains to apotheosis through affection.

In Armida we already surmise _das ewig Weibliche_ of Goethe's Faust, Gretchen saving her lover's soul before Madonna's throne in glory.
What was it, then, that Tasso, this 'child of a later and a colder age,' as Shelley called him, gave of permanent value to European literature?
We have seen that the _Gerusalemme_ did not fulfill the promise of heroic poetry for that eminently unheroic period.

We know that neither the Virgilian hero nor the laboriously developed theme commands the interest of posterity.