“So we, if children young diseased we find,
Anoint with sweets the vessel's foremost parts
To make them taste the potions sharp we give;
They drink deceived, and so deceived, they live.”

— Torquato Tasso

Cosi all' egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
Di soave licor gli orli del vaso;
Succhi ainari, ingannato, in tanto ei bene,
E da l'inganno iuo, vita ricere.
Canto I, stanza 3 (tr. Edward Fairfax)
Anthony Esolen's translation:
As we brush with honey the brim of a cup, to fool
a feverish child to take his medicine:
he drinks the bitter juice and cannot tell—
but it is a mistake that makes him well.
Compare:
Sed vel uti pueris absinthia taetra medentes / cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum / contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore, / ut puerorum aetas inprovida ludificetur / labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum / absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur, / sed potius tali facto recreata valescat.
When a doctor is trying to give unpleasant medicine to a child, he smears the rim of the cup with honey. And the child, not suspecting any trick, tastes it; and at first he is misled by the sweetness on his lips into swallowing it, however sour it is. But even though he is deceived, he is not distraught; and soon enough he gets better and regains his strength.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book I, lines 936–942 (tr. G. B. Cobbold)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Original

Cosi all' egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi Di soave licor gli orli del vaso; Succhi ainari, ingannato, in tanto ei bene, E da l'inganno iuo, vita ricere.

Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Torquato Tasso 94

Italian poet 1544–1595

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