Songs of the Gondoliers of Venice

For more than two hundred years the gondoliers of Venice sang no other songs than strophes from Tasso's immortal epic, "Jerusalem Delivered." This poem commemorates the delivery of Jerusalem from the Saracens; and the hero of the poem is Godfrey de Bouillon (1060-1100), the first Christian king of Jerusalem.

Torquato Tasso, the author of "Jerusalem Delivered," was born at Sorrento, in 1544. Venice cannot, therefore, claim him as her son; but he has always been the favorite poet of the Venetians, and is still read and studied in the city of the Adriatic.

Tasso became melancholy, and was for seven years confined by the duke, Alfonso, in an insane-asylum. When released, he went to Naples. Pope Clement VIII. invited him to Rome, to receive the laurel-crown of poet; but he died before the ceremony took place, April, 1595, and was buried on the very day on which he was to have been crowned.