His own beliefs had been tested in no red-hot crucible, before he recoiled with terror from their analysis.

The man, to put it plainly, was incapable of honest revolt against the pietistic fashions of his age, incapable of exploratory efforts, and yet too intelligent to rest satisfied with gross dogmatism or smug hypocrisy.

Neither as a thinker, nor as a Christian, nor yet again as that epicene religious being, a Catholic of the Counter-Reformation, did this noble and ingenuous, but weakly nature attain to thoroughness.
[Footnote 81: Tasso's diffuse paraphrase of the _Stabat Mater_ might be selected to illustrate the sentimental tenderness rather than strength of his religious feeling.] Tasso's mind was lively and sympathetic; not penetrative, not fitted for forming original or comprehensive views.

He lived for no great object, whether political, moral, religious, or scientific.

He committed himself to no vice.