No More Learning

On his recovery he hastened to Ferrara, and arrived in that city on the
last day of October, 1565, the first of many years of glory and misery.

The cardinal of Este was the brother of the reigning Duke of Ferrara,
Alfonso the Second, grandson of the Alfonso of Ariosto. It is curious
to see the two most celebrated romantic poets of Italy thrown into
unfortunate connexion with two princes of the same house and the same
respective ranks. Tasso's cardinal, however, though the poet lost his
favour, and though very little is known about him, left no such bad
reputation behind him as Ippolito. It was in the service of the duke that
the poet experienced his sufferings.

This prince, who was haughty, ostentatious, and quarrelsome, was, at the
time of the stranger's arrival, rehearsing the shows and tournaments
intended to welcome his bride, the sister of the Emperor Maximilian the
Second. She was his second wife. The first was a daughter of the rival
house of Tuscany, which he detested; and the marriage had not been happy.
The new consort arrived in the course of a few weeks, entering the city
in great pomp; and for a time all went happily with the young poet. He
was in a state of ecstasy with the beauty and grandeur he beheld around
him--obtained the favourable notice of the duke's two sisters and the
duke himself--went on with his _Jerusalem Delivered_, which, in spite of
the presence of Ariosto's memory, he was resolved to load with praises of
the house of Este; and in this tumult of pride and expectation, he beheld
the duke, like one of the heroes of his poem, set out to assist the
emperor against the Turks at the head of three hundred gentlemen, armed
at all points, and mantled in various-coloured velvets embroidered with
gold.

To complete the young poet's happiness, or commence his disappointments,
he fell in love, notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with
the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have
loved in return; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli. Among his
rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and
who accused him on this occasion of courting two ladies at once.

Guarini's accusation has been supposed to refer to the duke's sister
Leonora, whose name has become so romantically mixed up with the poet's
biography; but the latest inquiries render it probable that the allusion
was to Laura Peperara. [3] The young poet, however, who had not escaped
the influence of the free manners of Italy, and whose senses and vanity
may hitherto have been more interested than his heart, rhymed and
flattered on all sides of him, not of course omitting the charms of
princesses. In order to win the admiration of the ladies in a body, he
sustained for three days, in public, after the fashion of the times,
_Fifty Amorous Conclusions_; that is to say, affirmations on the subject
of love; doubtless to the equal delight of his fair auditors and himself,
and the creation of a good deal of jealousy and ill-will on the part of
such persons of his own sex as had not wit or spirits enough for the
display of so much logic and love-making.

In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia
by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness; but the
continuation of his _Jerusalem_, an _Oration_ spoken at the opening of
the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora's sister Lucrezia with the
Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired
life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men
of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections; and a
journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into
scenes that were not only totally new, but otherwise highly interesting
to the singer of Godfrey of Boulogne. The occasion of it was a visit of
the cardinal, his master, to the court of his relative Charles the Ninth.
It is supposed that his Eminence went to confer with the king on matters
relative to the disputes which not long afterwards occasioned the
detestable massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Before his departure, Tasso put into the hands of one of his friends a
document, which, as it is very curious, and serves to illustrate perhaps
more than one cause of his misfortunes, is here given entire.

_Memorial left by Tasso on his departure to France. _

"Since life is frail, and it may please Almighty God to dispose of me
otherwise in this my journey to France, it is requested of Signor Ercole
Rondinelli that he will, in that case, undertake the management of the
following concerns:

"In the first place, with regard to my compositions, it is my wish that
all my love-sonnets and madrigals should be collected and published; but
with regard to those, whether amatory or otherwise, _which I have written
for any friend_, my request is, that _they should be buried with myself_,
save only the one commencing "_Or che l'aura mia dolce altrove spira_. " I
wish the publication of the _Oration_ spoken in Ferrara at the opening of
the academy, of the four books on _Heroic Poetry_, of the six last cantos
of the _Godfrey_ (the _Jerusalem_), and of those stanzas of the two first
which shall seem least imperfect. All these compositions, however, are to
be submitted to the review and consideration of Signor Scipio Gonzaga, of
Signor Domenico Veniero, and of Signor Battista Guarini, who, I persuade
myself, will not refuse this trouble, when they consider the zealous
friendship I have entertained for themselves.

"Let them be informed, too, that it was my intention that they should
cut and hew without mercy whatever should appear to them defective or
superfluous. With regard to additions or changes, I should wish them
to proceed more cautiously, since, after all, the poem would remain
imperfect. As to my other compositions, should there be any which, to
the aforesaid Signor Rondinelli and the other gentlemen, might seem not
unworthy of publication, let them be disposed of according to their
pleasure.

"In respect to my property, I wish that such part of it as I have
_pledged to Abram --_ for twenty-five lire, and seven pieces of arras,
which are _likewise in pledge to Signor Ascanio for thirteen scudi_,
together with whatever I have in this house, should be sold, and that the
overplus of the proceeds should go to defray the expense of the following
epitaph to be inscribed on a monument to my father, whose body is in St.
Polo. And should any impediment take place in these matters, I entreat
Signor Ercole _to have recourse to the favour of the most excellent
Madame Leonora, whose liberality I confide in, for my sake. _

"I, Torquato Tasso, have written this, Ferrara, 1570. "

I shall have occasion to recur to this document by and by. I will merely
observe, for the present, that the marks in it, both of imprudence in
money-matters and confidence in the goodwill of a princess, are very
striking. "Abram" and "Signor Ascanio" were both Jews. The pieces of
arras belonged to his father; and probably this was an additional reason
why the affectionate son wished the proceeds to defray the expense of the
epitaph. The epitaph recorded his father's poetry, state-services, and
vicissitudes of fortune.

Tasso was introduced to the French king as the poet of a French hero and
of a Catholic victory; and his reception was so favourable (particularly
as the wretched Charles, the victim of his mother's bigotry, had himself
no mean poetic feeling), that, with a rash mixture of simplicity and
self-reliance (respect makes me unwilling to call it self-importance),
the poet expressed an impolitic amount of astonishment at the favour
shewn at court to the Hugonots--little suspecting the horrible design it
covered. He shortly afterwards broke with his master the cardinal; and
it is supposed that this unseasonable escape of zeal was the cause. He
himself appears to have thought so. [4] Perhaps the cardinal only wanted
to get the imprudent poet back to Italy; for, on Tasso's return to
Ferrara, he was not only received into the service of the duke with
a salary of some fifteen golden scudi a-month, but told that he was
exempted from any particular duty, and might attend in peace to his
studies. Balzac affirms, that while Tasso was at the court of France, he
was so poor as to beg a crown from a friend; and that, when he left it,
he had the same coat on his back that he came in. [5] The assertions of a
professed wit and hyperbolist are not to be taken for granted; yet it is
difficult to say to what shifts improvidence may not be reduced.

The singer of the house of Este would now, it might have been supposed,
be happy. He had leisure; he had money; he had the worldly honours that
he was fond of; he occupied himself in perfecting the _Jerusalem_; and he
wrote his beautiful pastoral, the _Aminta_, which was performed before
the duke and his court to the delight of the brilliant assembly. The
duke's sister Lucrezia, princess of Urbino, who was a special friend of
the poet, sent for him to read it to her at Pesaro; and in the course of
the ensuing carnival it was performed with similar applause at the
court of her father-in-law. The poet had been as much enchanted by the
spectacle which the audience at Ferrara presented to his eyes, as the
audience with the loves and graces with which he enriched their stage.
The shepherd Thyrsis; by whom he meant himself, reflected it back upon
them in a passage of the performance. It is worth while dwelling on this
passage a little, because it exhibits a brief interval of happiness in
the author's life, and also chews us what he had already begun to
think of courts at the moment he was praising them. But he ingeniously
contrives to put the praise in his own mouth, and the blame in another's.
The shepherd's friend, Mopsus (by whom Tasso is thought to have meant
Speroni), had warned him against going to court

"Però, figlio,
Va su l'avviso," &c.

"Therefore, my son, take my advice. Avoid
The places where thou seest much drapery,
Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries,
And such new-fanglements. But, above all,
Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering
Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble. "
"What place is that? " said I; and he resumed;--
"Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see
Things as they are not, ay and hear them too.
That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold
Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver,
Heavy with wealth, are baskets full of bladders. [6]

* * * * *

The very walls there are so strangely made,
They answer those who talk; and not in syllables,
Or bits of words, like echo in our woods,
But go the whole talk over, word for word,
With something else besides, that no one said[7].
The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers,
Chairs, and whatever furniture there is
In room or bedroom, all have tongues and speech,
And are for ever tattling. Idle Babble
Is always going about, playing the child;
And should a dumb man enter in that place,
The dumb would babble in his own despite.
And yet this evil is the least of all
That might assail thee. Thou might'st be arrested
In fearful transformation to a willow,
A beast, fire, water,--fire for ever sighing,
Water for ever weeping. "--Here he ceased:
And I, with all this fine foreknowledge, went
To the great city; and, by Heaven's kind will,
Came where they live so happily. The first sound
I heard was a delightful harmony,
Which issued forth, of voices loud and sweet;--Sirens,
and swans, and nymphs, a heavenly noise
Of heavenly things;--which gave me such delight,
That, all admiring, and amazed, and joyed,
I stopped awhile quite motionless. There stood
Within the entrance, as if keeping guard
Of those fine things, one of a high-souled aspect,
Stalwart withal, of whom I was in doubt

Whether to think him better knight or leader. [8]
He, with a look at once benign and grave,
In royal guise, invited me within;
He, great and in esteem; me, lorn and lowly.
Oh, the sensations and the sights which then
Shower'd on me! Goddesses I saw, and nymphs
Graceful and beautiful, and harpers fine
As Linus or as Orpheus; and more deities,
All without veil or cloud, bright as the virgin
Aurora, when she glads immortal eyes,
And sows her beams and dew-drops, silver and gold.

In the summer of 1574, the Duke of Ferrara went to Venice to pay his
respects to the successor of Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, then on
his way to France from his kingdom of Poland. Tasso went with the duke,
and is understood to have taken the opportunity of looking for a printer
of his _Jerusalem_, which was now almost finished. Writers were anxious
to publish in that crafty city, because its government would give no
security of profit to books printed elsewhere. Alfonso, who was in
mourning for Henry's brother, and to whom mourning itself only suggested
a new occasion of pomp and vanity, took with him to this interview five
hundred Ferrarese gentlemen, all dressed in long black cloaks; who
walking about Venice (says a reporter) "by twos and threes," wonderfully
impressed the inhabitants with their "gravity and magnificence. "[9] The
mourners feasted, however; and Tasso had a quartan fever, which delayed
the completion of the _Jerusalem_ till next year. This was at length
effected; and now once more, it might have been thought, that the writer
would have reposed on his laurels.

But Tasso had already begun to experience the uneasiness attending
superiority; and, unfortunately, the strength of his mind was not equal
to that of his genius. He was of an ultra-sensitive temperament, and
subject to depressing fits of sickness. He could not calmly bear envy.
Sarcasm exasperated, and hostile criticism afflicted him. The seeds of a
suspicious temper were nourished by prosperity itself. The author of the
_Armida_ and the _Jerusalem_ began to think the attentions he received
unequal to his merits; while with a sort of hysterical mixture of demand
for applause, and provocation of censure, he not only condescended to
read his poems in manuscript wherever he went, but, in order to secure
the goodwill of the papal licenser, he transmitted it for revisal to
Rome, where it was mercilessly criticised for the space of two years by
the bigots and hypocrites of a court, which Luther had rendered a very
different one from that in the time of Ariosto.

This new source of chagrin exasperated the complexional restlessness,
which now made our author think that he should be more easy any where
than in Ferrara; perhaps more able to communicate with and convince
his critics; and, unfortunately, he permitted himself to descend to a
weakness the most fatal of all others to a mind naturally exalted
and ingenuous. Perhaps it was one of the main causes of all which he
suffered. Indeed, he himself attributed his misfortunes to irresolution.
What I mean in the present instance was, that he did not disdain to adopt
underhand measures. He skewed a face of satisfaction with Alfonso, at the
moment that he was taking steps to exchange his court for another. He
wrote for that purpose to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, now a prelate at the
court of Rome, earnestly begging him, at the same time, not to commit him
in their correspondence; and Scipio, who was one of his kindest and most
indulgent friends, and who doubtless saw that the Duke of Ferrara and his
poet were not of dispositions to accord, did all he could to procure him
an appointment with one of the family of the Medici.

Most unhappily for this speculation (and perhaps even the good-natured
Gonzaga took a little more pleasure in it on that account), Alfonso
inherited all the detestation of his house for that lucky race; and it is
remarkable, that the same jealousies which hindered Ariosto's advancement
with the Medici were still more fatal to the hopes of Tasso; for they
served to plunge him into the deepest adversity. In vain he had warnings
given him, both friendly and hostile. The princess, now Duchess of
Urbino, who was his particular friend, strongly cautioned him against the
temptation of going away. She said he was watched. He himself thought his
letters were opened; and probably they were. They certainly were at a
subsequent period. Tasso, however, persisted, and went to Rome. Scipio
Gonzaga introduced him to Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici, afterwards Grand
Duke of Tuscany; and Ferdinand made him offers of protection so handsome,
that they excited his suspicion. The self-tormenting poet thought they
savoured more of hatred to the Este family, than honour to himself. [10]
He did not accept them. He did nothing at Rome but make friends, in order
to perplex them; listen to his critics, in order to worry himself;
and perform acts of piety in the churches, by way of shewing that the
love-scenes in the _Jerusalem_ were innocent. For the bigots had begun to
find something very questionable in mixing up so much love with war. The
bloodshed they had no objection to. The love bearded their prejudices,
and excited their envy.

Tasso returned to Ferrara, and endeavoured to solace himself
with eulogising two fair strangers who had arrived at Alfonso's
court,--Eleonora Sanvitale, who had been newly married to the Count of
Scandiano (a Tiene, not a Boiardo, whose line was extinct), and Barbara
Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, who
was a Juno-like beauty, wore her hair in the form of a crown. The still
more beautiful daughter-in-law had an under lip such as Anacreon or Sir
John Suckling would have admired,--pouting and provoking,--[prokaloymenon
phileama]. Tasso wrote verses on them both, but particularly to the lip;
and this Countess of Scandiano is the second, out of the three Leonoras,
with whom Tasso was said by his friend Manso to have been in love. The
third, it is now ascertained, never existed; and his love-making to the
new, or second Leonora, goes to shew how little of real passion there was
in the praises of the first (the Princess Leonora), or probably of
any lady at court. He even professed love, as a forlorn hope, to the
countess's waiting-maid. Yet these gallantries of sonnets are exalted
into bewilderments of the heart.

His restlessness returning, the poet now condescended to craft a second
time. Expecting to meet with a refusal, and so to be afforded a
pretext for quitting Ferrara, he applied for the vacant office of
historiographer. It was granted him; and he then disgusted the Medici by
pleading an unlooked-for engagement, which he could only reconcile to his
applications for their favour by renouncing his claim to be believed. If
he could have deceived others, why might he not have deceived them?

All the lurking weakness of the poet's temperament began to display
itself at this juncture. His perplexity excited him to a degree of
irritability bordering on delirium; and circumstances conspired to
increase it. He had lent an acquaintance the key of his rooms at court,
for the purpose (he tells us) of accommodating some intrigue; and
he suspected this person of opening cabinets containing his papers.
Remonstrating with him one day in the court of the palace, either on that
or some other account, the man gave him the lie. He received in return
a blow on the face, and is said by Tasso to have brought a set of his
kinsmen to assassinate him, all of whom the heroical poet immediately put
to flight. At one time he suspected the duke of jealousy respecting
the dedication of his poem, and at another, of a wish to burn it. He
suspected his servants. He became suspicious of the truth of his friend
Gonzaga. He doubted, even, whether some praises addressed to him by
Orazio Ariosto, the nephew of the great poet, which, one would have
thought, would have been to him a consummation of bliss, were not
intended to mystify and hurt him. At length he fancied that his
persecutors had accused him of heresy to the Inquisition; and, as he had
gone through the metaphysical doubts, common with most men of reflection
respecting points of faith and the mysteries of creation, he feared that
some indiscreet words had escaped him, giving colour to the charge. He
thus beheld enemies all around him. He dreaded stabbing and poison; and
one day, in some paroxysm of rage or horror, how occasioned it is not
known, ran with a knife or dagger at one of the servants of the Duchess
of Urbino in her own chamber.

Alfonso, upon this, apparently in the mildest and most reasonable manner,
directed that he should be confined to his apartments, and put into the
hands of the physician. These unfortunate events took place in the summer
of 1577, and in the poet's thirty-third year.

Tasso shewed so much affliction at this treatment, and, at the same time,
bore it so patiently, that the duke took him to his beautiful country
seat of Belriguardo; where, in one of his accounts of the matter, the
poet says that he treated him as a brother; but in another, he accuses
him of having taken pains to make him criminate himself, and confess
certain matters, real or supposed, the nature of which is a puzzle with
posterity. Some are of opinion (and this is the prevailing one), that he
was found guilty of being in love with the Princess Leonora, perhaps of
being loved by herself. Others think the love out of the question, and
that the duke was concerned at nothing but his endeavouring to transfer
his services and his poetic reputation into the hands of the Medici.
Others see in the duke's conduct nothing but that of a good master
interesting himself in the welfare of an afflicted servant.

It is certain that Alfonso did all he could to prevent the surreptitious
printing of the _Jerusalem Delivered_ in various towns of Italy, the
dread of which had much afflicted the poet; and he also endeavoured,
though in vain, to ease his mind on the subject of the Inquisition;
for these facts are attested by state-papers and other documents, not
dependent either on the testimony of third persons or the partial
representations of the sufferer. But Tasso felt so uneasy at Belriguardo,
that he requested leave to retire a while into a convent. He remained
there several days, apparently so much to his satisfaction, that he wrote
to the duke to say that it was his intention to become a friar; and, yet
he had no sooner got into the place, than he addressed a letter to the
Inquisition at Rome, beseeching it to desire permission for him to come
to that city, in order to clear himself from the charges of his enemies.
He also wrote to two other friends, requesting them to further his
petition; and adding that the duke was enraged with him in consequence of
the anger of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, it is supposed, had accused
Tasso of having revealed to Alfonso some indecent epithet which his
highness had applied to him. [11] These letters were undoubtedly
intercepted, for they were found among the secret archives of Modena,
the only principality ultimately remaining in the Este family; so that,
agreeably to the saying of listeners hearing no good of themselves, if
Alfonso did not know the epithet before, he learnt it then. The reader
may conceive his feelings. Tasso, too, at the same time, was plaguing
him with letters to similar purpose; and it is observable, that while
in those which he sent to Rome he speaks of Cosmo de' Medici as "Grand
Duke," he takes care in the others to call him simply the "Duke of
Florence. " Alfonso had been exasperated to the last degree at Cosmo's
having had the epithet "Grand" added by the Pope to his ducal title;
and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by
a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a
detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred
of bitter "physic," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age
for giving it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in a manner which it is
humiliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The
duke at length forbade his writing to him any more; and Tasso, whose
fears of every kind of ill usage had been wound up to a pitch unbearable,
watched an opportunity when he was carelessly guarded, and fled at once
from the convent and Ferrara.

The unhappy poet selected the loneliest ways he could find, and directed
his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sister lived. He was
afraid of pursuit; he probably had little money; and considering his ill
health and his dread of the Inquisition, it is pitiable to think what he
may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of
the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of
Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd; and as
he feared even his sister at first, from doubting whether she still
loved him, his interview with her was in all its circumstances painfully
dramatic. Cornelia Tasso, now a widow, with two sons, was still residing
at Sorrento, where the poet, casting his eyes around him as he
proceeded towards the house, must have beheld with singular feelings of
wretchedness the lovely spots in which he had been a happy little boy. He
did not announce himself at once. He brought letters, he said, from the
lady's brother; and it is affecting to think, that whether his sister
might or might not have retained otherwise any personal recollection
of him since that time (for he had not seen her in the interval), his
disguise was completed by the alterations which sorrow had made in his
appearance. For, at all events, she did not know him. She saw in him
nothing but a haggard stranger who was acquainted with the writer of the
letters, and to whom they referred for particulars of the risk which
her brother ran, unless she could afford him her protection. These
particulars were given by the stranger with all the pathos of the real
man, and the loving sister fainted away. On her recovery, the visitor
said what he could to reassure her, and then by degrees discovered
himself. Cornelia welcomed him in the tenderest manner. She did all that
he desired; and gave out to her friends that the gentleman was a cousin
from Bergamo, who had come to Naples on family affairs.

For a little while, the affection of his sister, and the beauty and
freshness of Sorrento, rendered the mind of Tasso more easy: but his
restlessness returned. He feared he had mortally offended the Duke of
Ferrara; and, with his wonted fluctuation of purpose, he now wished to be
restored to his presence for the very reason he had run away from it. He
did not know with what vengeance he might be pursued. He wrote to the
duke; but received no answer. The Duchess of Urbino was equally silent.
Leonora alone responded, but with no encouragement. These appearances
only made him the more anxious to dare or to propitiate his doom; and he
accordingly determined to put himself in the duke's hands. His sister
entreated him in vain to alter his resolution. He quitted her before the
autumn was over; and, proceeding to Rome, went directly to the house of
the duke's agent there, who, in concert with the Ferrarese ambassador,
gave his master advice of the circumstance. Gonzaga, however, and another
good friend, Cardinal Albano, doubted whether it would be wise in the
poet to return to Ferrara under any circumstances. They counselled him
to be satisfied with being pardoned at a distance, and with having his
papers and other things returned to him; and the two friends immediately
wrote to the duke requesting as much. The duke apparently acquiesced in
all that was desired; but he said that the illness of his sister, the
Duchess of Urbino, delayed the procuration of the papers, which, it
seems, were chiefly in her hands. The upshot was, that the papers did not
come; and Tasso, with a mixture of rage and fear, and perhaps for more
reasons than he has told, became uncontrollably desirous of retracing the
rest of his steps to Ferrara.

Love may have been among these reasons--probably was; though it does not
follow that the passion must have been for a princess. The poet now,
therefore, petitioned to that effect; and Alfonso wrote again, and said
he might come, but only on condition of his again undergoing the ducal
course of medicine; adding, that if he did not, he was to be finally
expelled his highness's territories.

He was graciously received--too graciously, it would seem, for his
equanimity; for it gave him such a flow of spirits, that the duke appears
to have thought it necessary to repress them. The unhappy poet, at this,
began to have some of his old suspicions; and the unaccountable detention
of his papers confirmed them. He made an effort to keep the suspicions
down, but it was by means, unfortunately, of drowning them in wine and
jollity; and this gave him such a fit of sickness as had nearly been his
death. He recovered, only to make a fresh stir about his papers, and
a still greater one about his poems in general, which, though his
_Jerusalem_ was yet only known in manuscript, and not even his _Aminta_
published, he believed ought to occupy the attention of mankind. People
at Ferrara, therefore, not foreseeing the respect that posterity would
entertain for the poet, and having no great desire perhaps to encourage a
man who claimed to be a rival of their countryman Ariosto, now began to
consider their Neapolitan guest not merely an ingenious and pitiable, but
an overweening and tiresome enthusiast. The court, however, still seemed
to be interested in its panegyrist, though Tasso feared that Alfonso
meant to burn his _Jerusalem_. Alfonso, on the other hand, is supposed to
have feared that he would burn it himself, and the ducal praises with it.
The papers, at all events, apparently including the only fair copy of the
poem, were constantly withheld; and Tasso, in a new fit of despair,
again quitted Ferrara. This mystery of the papers is certainly very
extraordinary.

The poet's first steps were to Mantua, where he met with no such
reception as encouraged him to stay. He then went to Urbino, but did not
stop long. The prince, it is true, was very gracious; and bandages for
a cautery were applied by the fair hands of his highness's sister; but,
though the nurse enchanted, the surgery frightened him. The hapless poet
found himself pursued wherever he went by the tormenting beneficence
of medicine. He escaped, and went to Turin. He had no passport; and
presented, besides, so miserable an appearance, that the people at the
gates roughly refused him admittance. He was well received, however, at
court; and as he had begun to acknowledge that he was subject to humours
and delusions, and wrote to say as much to Cardinal Albano, who returned
him a most excellent and affecting letter, full of the kindest regard
and good counsel, his friends entertained a hope that he would become
tranquil. But he disappointed them. He again applied to Alfonso for
permission to return to Ferrara--again received it, though on worse than
the old conditions--and again found himself in that city in the beginning
of the year 1579, delighted at seeing a brilliant assemblage from all
quarters of Italy on occasion of a new marriage of the duke's (with a
princess of Mantua). He made up his mind to think that nothing could be
denied him, at such a moment, by the bridegroom whom he meant to honour
and glorify.

Alas! the very circumstance to which he looked for success, tended to
throw him into the greatest of his calamities. Alfonso was to be married
the day after the poet's arrival. He was therefore too busy to attend to
him. The princesses did not attend to him. Nobody attended to him. He
again applied in vain for his papers. He regretted his return; became
anxious to be any where else; thought himself not only neglected but
derided; and at length became excited to a pitch of frenzy. He broke
forth into the most unmeasured invectives against the duke, even in
public; invoked curses on his head and that of his whole race; retracted
all he had ever said in the praise of any of them, prince or otherwise;
and pronounced him and his whole court "a parcel of ingrates, rascals,
and poltroons. "[12] The outbreak was reported to the duke; and the
consequence was, that the poet was sent to the hospital of St. Anne,
an establishment for the reception of the poor and lunatic, where he
remained (with the exception of a few unaccountable leave-days) upwards
of seven years. This melancholy event happened in the March of the year
1579.

Tasso was stunned by this blow as much as if he had never done or
suffered any thing to expect it. He could at first do nothing but wonder
and bewail himself, and implore to be set free. The duke answered, that
he must be cured first. Tasso replied by fresh entreaties; the duke
returned the same answers.
The unhappy poet had recourse to every friend,
prince, and great man he could think of, to join his entreaties; he
sought refuge in composition, but still entreated; he occasionally
reproached and even bantered the duke in some of his letters to his
friends, all of which, doubtless, were opened; but still he entreated,
flattered, adored, all to no purpose, for seven long years and upwards.
In time he became subject to maniacal illusions; so that if he was not
actually mad before, he was now considered so. He was not only visited
with sights and sounds, such as many people have experienced whose brains
have been over-excited, but he fancied himself haunted by a sprite, and
become the sport of "magicians. " The sprite stole his things, and the
magicians would not let him get well. He had a vision such as Benvenuto
Cellini had, of the Virgin Mary in her glory; and his nights were so
miserable, that he ate too much in order that he might sleep. When he
was temperate, he lay awake. Sometimes he felt "as if a horse had thrown
himself on him. " "Have pity on me," he says to the friend to whom he
gives these affecting accounts; "I am miserable, because the world is
unjust. "[13]

The physicians advised him to leave off wine; but he says he could not do
that, though he was content to use it in moderation. In truth he required
something to support him against the physicians themselves, for they
continued to exhaust his strength by their medicines, and could not
supply the want of it with air and freedom. He had ringings in the ears,
vomits, and fluxes of blood. It would be ludicrous, if it were not
deplorably pathetic, to hear so great a man, in the commonest
medical terms, now protesting against the eternal drenches of these
practitioners, now humbly submitting to them, and now entreating like a
child, that they might at least not be "so bitter. " The physicians, with
the duke at their head, were as mad for their rhubarbs and lancets as the
quacks in Molière; and nothing but the very imagination that had nearly
sacrificed the poet's life to their ignorance could have hindered
him from dashing his head against the wall, and leaving them to the
execrations of posterity. It is the only occasion in which the noble
profession of medicine has not appeared in wise and beneficent connexion
with the sufferings of men of letters. Why did Ferrara possess no
Brocklesby in those days? no Garth, Mead, Warren, or Southwood Smith?

Tasso enabled himself to endure his imprisonment with composition. He
supported it with his poetry and his poem, and what, alas! he had been
too proud of during his liberty, the praises of his admirers. His genius
brought him gifts from princes, and some money from the booksellers:
it supported him even against his critics. During his confinement the
_Jerusalem Delivered_ was first published; though, to his grief, from
a surreptitious and mutilated copy. But it was followed by a storm of
applause; and if this was succeeded by as great a storm of objection and
controversy, still the healthier part of his faculties were roused, and
he exasperated his critics and astonished the world by shewing how coolly
and learnedly the poor, wild, imprisoned genius could discuss the most
intricate questions of poetry and philosophy. The disputes excited by his
poem are generally supposed to have done him harm; but the conclusion
appears to be ill founded. They diverted his thoughts, and made him
conscious of his powers and his fame. I doubt whether he would have
been better for entire approbation: it would have put him in a state of
elevation, unfit for what he had to endure. He had found his pen
his great solace, and he had never employed it so well. It would be
incredible what a heap of things he wrote in this complicated torment of
imprisonment, sickness, and "physic," if habit and mental activity had
not been sufficient to account for much greater wonders. His letters
to his friends and others would make a good-sized volume; those to his
critics, another; sonnets and odes, a third; and his Dialogues after
the manner of Plato, two more. Perhaps a good half of all he wrote was
written in this hospital of St. Anne; and he studied as well as composed,
and had to read all that was written at the time, _pro_ and _con_, in the
discussions about his _Jerusalem_, which, in the latest edition of his
works, amount to three out of six volumes octavo! Many of the occasions,
however, of his poems, as well as letters, are most painful to think
of, their object having been to exchange praise for money. And it is
distressing, in the letters, to see his other little wants, and the
fluctuations and moods of his mind. Now he is angry about some book not
restored, or some gift promised and delayed. Now he is in want of some
books to be lent him; now of some praise to comfort him; now of a little
fresh linen. He is very thankful for visits, for respectful letters, for
"sweetmeats;" and greatly puzzled to know what to do with the bad sonnets
and panegyrics that are sent him. They were sometimes too much even for
the allowed ultra courtesies of Italian acknowledgment. His compliments
to most people are varied with astonishing grace and ingenuity; his
accounts of his condition often sufficient to bring the tears into
the manliest eyes; and his ceaseless and vain efforts to procure his
liberation mortifying when we think of himself, and exasperating when we
think of the petty despot who detained him in so long, so degrading, and
so worse than useless a confinement.

Tasso could not always conceal his contempt of his imprisoner from the
ducal servants. Alfonso excelled the grandiloquent poet himself in his
love of pomp and worship; and as he had no particular merits to warrant
it, his victim bantered his love of titles. He says, in a letter to the
duke's steward, "If it is the pleasure of the Most Serene Signor Duke,
Most Clement and Most Invincible, to keep me in prison, may I beg that he
will have the goodness to return certain little things of mine, which
his Most Invincible, Most Clement, and Most Serene Highness has so often
promised me. [14]

But these were rare ebullitions of gaiety, perhaps rather of bitter
despair. A playful address to a cat to lend him her eyes to write by,
during some hour in which he happened to be without a light (for it
does not appear to have been denied him), may be taken as more probable
evidence of a mind relieved at the moment, though the necessity for
the relief may have been very sad. But the style in which he generally
alludes to his situation is far different. He continually begs his
correspondents to pity him, to pray for him, to attribute his errors to
infirmity. He complains of impaired memory, and acknowledges that he has
become subject to the deliriums formerly attributed to him by the enemies
that had helped to produce them. Petitioning the native city of his
ancestors (Bergamo) to intercede for him with the duke, he speaks of the
writer as "this unhappy person;" and subscribes himself,--

"Most illustrious Signors, your affectionate servant, Torquato Tasso, a
prisoner, and infirm, in the hospital of St. Anne in Ferrara. "

In one of his addresses to Alfonso, he says most affectingly:

"I have sometimes attributed much to myself, and considered myself as
somebody. But now, seeing in how many ways imagination has imposed on
me, I suspect that it has also deceived me in this opinion of my own
consequence. Indeed, methinks the past has been a dream; and hence I am
resolved to rely on my imagination no longer. "

Alfonso made no answer.

The causes of Tasso's imprisonment, and its long duration, are among
the puzzles of biography. The prevailing opinion, notwithstanding the
opposition made to it by Serassi and Black, is, that the poet made love
to the Princess Leonora--perhaps was beloved by her; and that her brother
the duke punished him for his arrogance. This was the belief of his
earliest biographer, Manso, who was intimately acquainted with the poet
in his latter days; and from Manso (though he did not profess to receive
the information from Tasso, but only to gather it from his poems) it
spread over all Europe. Milton took it on trust from him;[15] and so have
our English translators Hoole and Wiffen. The Abbé de Charnes, however,
declined to do so;[16] and Montaigne, who saw the poet in St. Anne's
hospital, says nothing of the love at all. He attributes his condition
to poetical excitement, hard study, and the meeting of the extremes of
wisdom and folly. The philosopher, however, speaks of the poet's having
survived his reason, and become unconscious both of himself and his
works, which the reader knows to be untrue. He does not appear to have
conversed with Tasso. The poet was only shewn him; probably at a sick
moment, or by a new and ignorant official. [17] Muratori, who was in the
service of the Este family at Modena, tells us, on the authority of
an old acquaintance who knew contemporaries of Tasso, that the "good
Torquato" finding himself one day in company with the duke and his
sister, and going close to the princess in order to answer some question
which she had put to him, was so transported by an impulse "more than
poetical," as to give her a kiss; upon which the duke, who had observed
it, turned about to his gentlemen, and said, "What a pity to see so great
a man distracted! " and so ordered him to be locked up. [18] But this
writer adds, that he does not know what to think of the anecdote: he
neither denies nor admits it. Tiraboschi, who was also in the service of
the Este family, doubts the truth of the anecdote, and believes that
the duke shut the poet up solely for fear lest his violence should do
harm. [19] Serassi, the second biographer of Tasso, who dedicated his
book to an Este princess inimical to the poet's memory, attributes the
confinement, on his own shewing, to the violent words he had uttered
against his master. [20] Walker, the author of the _Memoir on Italian
Tragedy_, says, that the life by Serassi himself induced him to credit
the love-story:[21] so does Ginguéné. [22] Black, forgetting the age and
illnesses of hundreds of enamoured ladies, and the distraction of lovers
at all times, derides the notion of passion on either side; because, he
argues, Tasso was subject to frenzies, and Leonora forty-two years of
age, and not in good health. [23] What would Madame d'Houdetot have said
to him? or Mademoiselle L'Espinasse? or Mrs. Inchbald, who used to walk
up and down Sackville Street in order that she might see Dr. Warren's
light in his window? Foscolo was a believer in the love;[24] Sismondi
admits it;[25] and Rosini, the editor of the latest edition of the poet's
works, is passionate for it. He wonders how any body can fail to discern
it in a number of passages, which, in truth, may mean a variety of other
loves; and he insists much upon certain loose verses (_lascivi_) which
the poet, among his various accounts of the origin of his imprisonment,
assigns as the cause, or one of the causes, of it. [26]

I confess, after a reasonable amount of inquiry into this subject, that
I can find no proofs whatsoever of Tasso's having made love to Leonora;
though I think it highly probable. I believe the main cause of the duke's
proceedings was the poet's own violence of behaviour and incontinence
of speech. I think it very likely that, in the course of the poetical
love-making to various ladies, which was almost identical in that age
with addressing them in verse, Torquato, whether he was in love or not,
took more liberties with the princesses than Alfonso approved; and it is
equally probable, that one of those liberties consisted in his indulging
his imagination too far. It is not even impossible, that more gallantry
may have been going on at court than Alfonso could endure to see alluded
to, especially by an ambitious pen. But there is no evidence that such
was the case. Tasso, as a gentleman, could not have hinted at such a
thing on the part of a princess of staid reputation; and, on the other
hand, the "love" he speaks of as entertained by her for him, and
warranting the application to her for money in case of his death, was
too plainly worded to mean any thing but love in the sense of friendly
regard. "Per amor mio" is an idiomatical expression, meaning "for my
sake;" a strong one, no doubt, and such as a proud man like Alfonso might
think a liberty, but not at all of necessity an amatory boast. If it was,
its very effrontery and vanity were presumptions of its falsehood. The
lady whom Tasso alludes to in the passage quoted on his first confinement
is complained of for her coldness towards him; and, unless this was
itself a gentlemanly blind, it might apply to fifty other ladies besides
the princess. The man who assaulted him in the streets, and who is
supposed to have been the violator of his papers, need not have found any
secrets of love in them. The servant at whom he aimed the knife or the
dagger might be as little connected with such matters; and the sonnets
which the poet said he wrote for a friend, and which he desired to be
buried with him, might be alike innocent of all reference to Leonora,
whether he wrote them for a friend or not. Leonora's death took
place during the poet's confinement; and, lamented as she was by the
verse-writers according to custom, Tasso wrote nothing on the event. This
silence has been attributed to the depth of his passion; but how is the
fact proved? and why may it not have been occasioned by there having been
no passion at all?

All that appears certain is, that Tasso spoke violent and contemptuous
words against the duke; that he often spoke ill of him in his letters;
that he endeavoured, not with perfect ingenuousness, to exchange his
service for that of another prince; that he asserted his madness to have
been pretended in the first instance purely to gratify the duke's whim
for thinking it so (which was one of the reasons perhaps why Alfonso,
as he complained, would not believe a word be said); and finally, that,
whether the madness was or was not so pretended, it unfortunately became
a confirmed though milder form of mania, during a long confinement.
Alfonso, too proud to forgive the poet's contempt, continued thus to
detain him, partly perhaps because he was not sorry to have a pretext for
revenge, partly because he did not know what to do with him, consistently
either with his own or the poet's safety. He had not been generous enough
to put Tasso above his wants; he had not address enough to secure his
respect; he had not merit enough to overlook his reproaches. If Tasso had
been as great a man as he was a poet, Alfonso would not have been reduced
to these perplexities. The poet would have known how to settle quietly
down on his small court-income, and wait patiently in the midst of his
beautiful visions for what fortune had or had not in store for him. But
in truth, he, as well as the duke, was weak; they made a bad business of
it between them; and Alfonso the Second closed the accounts of the
Este family with the Muses, by keeping his panegyrist seven years in a
mad-house, to the astonishment of posterity, and the destruction of his
own claims to renown.

It does not appear that Tasso was confined in any such dungeon as they
now exhibit in Ferrara. The conduct of the Prior of the Hospital is more
doubtful. His name was Agostino Mosti; and, strangely enough, he was
the person who had raised a monument to Ariosto, of whom he was an
enthusiastic admirer. To this predilection has been attributed his
alleged cruelty to the stranger from Sorrento, who dared to emulate the
fame of his idol;--an extraordinary, though perhaps not incredible, mode
of skewing a critic's regard for poetry. But Tasso, while he laments
his severity, wonders at it in a man so well bred and so imbued with
literature, and thinks it can only have originated in "orders. "[27]
Perhaps there were faults of temper on both sides; and Mosti, not liking
his office, forgot the allowance to be made for that of a prisoner and
sick man. His nephew, Giulio Mosti, became strongly attached to the poet,
and was a great comfort to him.

At length the time for liberation arrived. In the summer of 1586, Don
Vincenzo Gonzaga, Prince of Mantua, kinsman of the poet's friend Scipio,
came to Ferrara for the purpose of complimenting Alfonso's heir on his
nuptials. The whole court of Mantua, with hereditary regard for Tasso,
whose father had been one of their ornaments, were desirous of having
him among them; and the prince extorted Alfonso's permission to take him
away, on condition (so hard did he find this late concession to humanity,
and so fearful was he of losing the dignity of jailor) that his deliverer
should not allow him to quit Mantua without obtaining leave. A young and
dear friend, his most frequent visitor, Antonio Constantini, secretary
to the Tuscan ambassador, went to St. Anne's to prepare the captive by
degrees for the good news. He told him that he really might look for his
release in the course of a few days. The sensitive poet, now a premature
old man of forty-two, was thrown into a transport of mingled delight and
anxiety. He had been disappointed so often that he could scarcely believe
his good fortune. In a day or two he writes thus to his visitor

"Your kindness, my dear friend, has so accustomed me to your precious and
frequent visits, that I have been all day long at the window expecting
your coming to comfort me as you are wont. But since you have not yet
arrived, and in order not to remain altogether without consolation, I
visit you with this letter. It encloses a sonnet to the ambassador,
written with a trembling hand, and in such a manner that he will not,
perhaps, have less difficulty in reading it than I had in writing. "

Two days afterwards, the prince himself came again, requested of the poet
some verses on a given subject, expressed his esteem for his genius and
virtues, and told him that, on his return to Mantua, he should have the
pleasure of conducting him to that city. Tasso lay awake almost all
night, composing the verses; and next day enclosed them, with a letter,
in another to Constantini, ardently begging him to keep the prince in
mind of his promise. The prince had not forgotten it; and two or three
days afterwards, the order for the release arrived, and Tasso quitted his
prison. He had been confined seven years, two months, and several days.
He awaited the prince's departure for a week or two in his friend's
abode, paying no visits, probably from inability to endure so much
novelty. Neither was he inclined or sent for to pay his respects to the
duke. Two such parties could hardly have been desirous to look on each
other. The duke must especially have disliked the thought of it; though
Tasso afterwards fancied otherwise, and that he was offended at his
non-appearance. But his letters, unfortunately, differ with themselves on
this point, as on most others. About the middle of July 1586, the poet
quitted Ferrara for ever.

At Mantua Tasso was greeted with all the honours and attentions which his
love of distinction could desire. The good old duke, the friend of his
father, ordered handsome apartments to be provided for him in the palace;
the prince made him presents of costly attire, including perfumed silken
hose (kindred elegancies to the Italian gloves of Queen Elizabeth); the
princess and her mother-in-law were declared admirers of his poetry; the
courtiers caressed the favourite of their masters; Tasso found literary
society; he pronounced the very bread and fruit, the fish and the flesh,
excellent; the wines were sharp and brisk ("such as his father was fond
of"); and even the physician was admirable, for he ordered confections.
One might imagine, if circumstances had not proved the cordial nature of
the Gonzaga family, and the real respect and admiration entertained for
the poet's genius by the greatest men of the time, in spite of the rebuke
it had received from Alfonso, that there had been a confederacy to mock
and mystify him, after the fashion of the duke and duchess with Don
Quixote (the only blot, by the way, in the book of Cervantes; if, indeed,
he did not intend it as a satire on the mystifiers).

For a while, in short, the liberated prisoner thought himself happy.
He corrected his prose works, resumed and finished the tragedy of
_Torrismond_, which he had begun some years before, corresponded with
princes, and completed and published a narrative poem left unfinished by
his father. Torquato was as loving a son as Mozart or Montaigne. Whenever
he had a glimpse of felicity, he appears to have associated the idea of
it with that of his father. In the conclusion of his fragment, "O del
grand' Apennino," he affectingly begs pardon of his blessed spirit for
troubling him with his earthly griefs. [28]

But, alas, what had been an indulgence of self-esteem had now become the
habit of a disease; and in the course of a few months the restless poet
began to make his old discovery, that he was not sufficiently cared for.
The prince had no leisure to attend to him; the nobility did not "yield
him the first place," or at least (he adds) they did not allow him to be
treated "externally as their equal;" and he candidly confessed that he
could not live in a place where such was the custom. [29] He felt also,
naturally enough, however well it might have been intended, that it was
not pleasant to be confined to the range of the city of Mantua, attended
by a servant, even though he confessed that he was now subject to
"frenzy. " He contrived to stay another half-year by help of a brilliant
carnival and of the select society of the prince's court, who were
evidently most kind to him; but at the end of the twelvemonth he was in
Bergamo among his relations. The prince gave him leave to go; and the
Cavaliere Tasso, his kinsman, sent his chariot on purpose to fetch him.

Here again he found himself at a beautiful country-seat, which the family
of Tasso still possesses near that city; and here again, in the house of
his father, he proposed to be happy, "having never desired," he says,
"any journey more earnestly than this. " He left it in the course of a
month, to return to Mantua.

And it was only to wander still. Mantua he quitted in less than two
months to go to Rome, in spite of the advice of his best friends.
He vindicated the proceeding by a hope of obtaining some permanent
settlement from the Pope. He took Loretto by the way, to refresh himself
with devotion; arrived in a transport at Rome; got nothing from the Pope
(the hard-minded Sixtus the Fifth); and in the spring of the next year,
in the triple hope of again embracing his sister, and recovering the
dowry of his mother and the confiscated property of his father, he
proceeded to Naples.

Naples was in its most beautiful vernal condition, and the Neapolitans
welcomed the poet with all honour and glory; but his sister, alas, was
dead; he got none of his father's property, nor (till too late) any of
his mother's; and before the year was out, he was again in Rome. He
acquired in Naples, however, another friend, as attached to him and
as constant in his attentions as his beloved Constantini, to wit,
Giambattista Manso, Marquis of Villa, who became his biographer, and who
was visited and praised for his good offices by Milton. In the society of
this gentleman he seemed for a short while to have become a new man. He
entered into field-sports, listened to songs and music, nay, danced, says
Manso, with "the girls. " (One fancies a poetical Dr. Johnson with the two
country damsels on his knees. ) In short, good air and freedom, and no
medicine, had conspired with the lessons of disappointment to give him,
before he died, a glimpse of the power to be pleased. He had not got rid
of all his spiritual illusions, even those of a melancholy nature; but he
took the latter more quietly, and had grown so comfortable with the race
in general, that he encouraged them. He was so entirely freed from his
fears of the Inquisition and of charges of magic, that whereas he had
formerly been anxious to shew that he meant nothing but a poetical fancy
by the spirit which he introduced as communing with him in his dialogue
entitled the _Messenger_, he now maintained its reality against the
arguments of his friend Manso; and these arguments gave rise to the most
poetical scene in his history. He told Manso that he should have ocular
testimony of the spirit's existence; and accordingly one day while they
were sitting together at the marquis's fireside, "he turned his eyes,"
says Manso, "towards a window, and held them a long time so intensely on
it, that, when I called him, he did not answer. At last, 'Behold,' said
he, 'the friendly spirit which has courteously come to talk with me. Lift
up your eyes, and see the truth. ' I turned my eyes thither immediately
(continues the marquis); but though I endeavoured to look as keenly as I
could, I beheld nothing but the rays of the sun, which streamed through
the panes of the window into the chamber. Whilst I still looked around,
without beholding any object, Torquato began to hold, with this unknown
something, a most lofty converse. I heard, indeed, and saw nothing but
himself; nevertheless his words, at one time questioning, at another
replying, were such as take place between those who reason strictly on
some important subject. And from what was said by the one, the reply of
the other might be easily comprehended by the intellect, although it was
not heard by the ear. The discourses were so lofty and marvellous,
both by the sublimity of their topics and a certain unwonted manner of
talking, that, exalted above myself in a kind of ecstasy, I did not dare
to interrupt them, nor ask Tasso about the spirit, which he had announced
to me, but which I did not see. In this way, while I listened between
stupefaction and rapture, a considerable time had elapsed; till at last
the spirit departed, as I learned from the words of Torquato; who,
turning to me, said, 'From this day forward all your doubts will have
vanished from your mind. ' 'Nay,' said I, 'they are rather increased;
since, though I have heard many things worthy of marvel, I have seen
nothing of what you promised to shew me to dispel them. ' He smiled, and
said, 'You have seen and heard more of him than perhaps --,' and here
he paused. Fearful of importuning him with new questions, the discourse
ended; and the only conclusion I can draw is, what I before said, that
it is more likely his visions or frenzies will disorder my own mind than
that I shall extirpate his true or imaginary opinion. "[30]

Did the "smile" of Tasso at the close of this extraordinary scene, and
the words which he omitted to add, signify that his friend had seen and
heard more, perhaps, than the poet _would have liked_ to explain? Did he
mean that he himself alone had been seen and heard, and was author of the
whole dialogue? Perhaps he did; for credulity itself can impose;--can
take pleasure in seeing others as credulous as itself. On the other
hand, enough has become known in our days of the phenomena of morbid
perception, to render Tasso's actual belief in such visions not at
all surprising. It is not uncommon for the sanest people of delicate
organisation to see faces before them while going to sleep, sometimes
in fantastical succession. A stronger exercise of this disposition in
temperaments more delicate will enlarge the face to figure; and there can
be no question that an imagination so heated as Tasso's, so full of the
speculations of the later Platonists, and accompanied by a state of body
so "nervous," and a will so bent on its fancies, might embody whatever
he chose to behold. The dialogue he could as easily read in the vision's
looks, whether he heard it or not with ears. If Nicholay, the Prussian
bookseller, who saw crowds of spiritual people go through his rooms, had
been a poet, and possessed of as wilful an imagination as Tasso, he might
have gifted them all with _speaking countenances_ as easily as with coats
and waistcoats. Swedenborg founded a religion on this morbid faculty; and
the Catholics worship a hundred stories of the like sort in the Lives of
the Saints, many of which are equally true and false; false in reality,
though true in supposition. Luther himself wrote and studied till he
saw the Devil; only the great reformer retained enough of his naturally
sturdy health and judgment to throw an inkstand at Satan's head,--a thing
that philosophy has been doing ever since.

Tasso's principal residence while at Naples had been in the beautiful
monastery of Mount Olivet, on which the good monks begged he would write
them a poem; which he did. A cold reception at Rome, and perhaps the
difference of the air, brought back his old lamentations; but here again
a monastery gave him refuge, and he set himself down to correct his
former works and compose new ones. He missed, however, the comforts of
society and amusement which he had experienced at Naples. Nevertheless,
he did not return thither. He persuaded himself that it was necessary to
be in Rome in order to expedite the receipt of some books and manuscripts
from Bergamo and other places; but his restlessness desired novelty. He
thus slipped back from the neighbourhood of Rome to the city itself, and
from the city back to the monastery, his friends in both places being
probably tired of his instability. He thought of returning to Mantua; but
a present from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, accompanied by an invitation to
his court, drew him, in one of his short-lived transports, to Florence.
He returned, in spite of the best and most generous reception, to Rome;
then left Rome for Mantua, on invitation from his ever-kind deliverer
from prison, now the reigning duke; tired again, even of him; returned to
Rome; then once more to Naples, where the Prince of Conca, Grand Admiral
of the kingdom, lodged and treated him like an equal; but he grew
suspicious of the admiral, and went to live with his friend Manso;
quitted Manso for Rome again; was treated with reverence on the way, like
Ariosto, by a famous leader of banditti; was received at Rome into the
Vatican itself, in the apartments of his friend Cintio Aldobrandino,
nephew of the new pope Clement the Eighth, where his hopes now seemed to
be raised at once to their highest and most reasonable pitch; but fell
ill, and was obliged to go back to Naples for the benefit of the air.
A life so strangely erratic to the last (for mortal illness was
approaching) is perhaps unique in the history of men of letters, and
might be therefore worth recording even in that of a less man than Tasso;
but when we recollect that this poet, in spite of all his weaknesses, and
notwithstanding the enemies they provoked and the friends they cooled,
was really almost adored for his genius in his own time, and instead
of refusing jewels one day and soliciting a ducat the next, might have
settled down almost any where in quiet and glory, if he had but possessed
the patience to do so, it becomes an association of weakness with power,
and of adversity with the means of prosperity, the absurdity of which
admiration itself can only drown in pity.

He now took up his abode in another monastery, that of San Severino,
where he was comforted by the visits of his friend Manso, to whom he had
lately inscribed a dialogue on _Friendship_; for he continued writing
to the last. He had also the consolation, such as it was, of having the
law-suit for his mother's dowry settled in his favour, though under
circumstances that rendered it of little importance, and only three
months before his death. So strangely did Fortune seem to take delight in
sporting with a man of genius, who had thought both too much of her and
too little; too much for pomp's sake, and too little in prudence. Among
his new acquaintances were the young Marino, afterwards the corrupter of
Italian poetry, and the Prince of Venosa, an amateur composer of music.
The dying poet wrote madrigals for him so much to his satisfaction, that,
being about to marry into the house of Este, he wished to reconcile him
with the Duke of Ferrara; and Tasso, who to the last moment of his life
seems never to have been able to resist the chance of resuming old
quarters, apparently from the double temptation of renouncing them, wrote
his old master a letter full of respects and regrets. But the duke, who
himself died in the course of the year, was not to be moved from his
silence. The poet had given him the last possible offence by recasting
his _Jerusalem_, omitting the glories of the house of Este, and
dedicating it to another patron. Alfonso, who had been extravagantly
magnificent, though not to poets, had so weakened his government, that
the Pope wrested Ferrara from the hands of his successor, and reduced
the Este family to the possession of Modena, which it still holds and
dishonours. The duke and the poet were thus fading away at the same time;
they never met again in this world; and a new Dante would have divided
them far enough in the next. [31]

The last glimpse of honour and glory was now opening in a very grand
manner on the poet--the last and the greatest, as if on purpose to give
the climax to his disappointments. Cardinal Cintio requested the Pope to
give him the honour of a coronation. It had been desired by the poet, it
seems, three years before. He was disappointed of it at that time; and
now that it was granted, he was disappointed of the ceremony. Manso says
he no longer cared for it; and, as he felt himself dying, this is not
improbable. Nevertheless he went to Rome for the purpose; and though the
severity of the winter there delayed the intention till spring, wealth
and honours seemed determined to come in floods upon the poor expiring
great man, in order to take away the breath which they had refused to
support. The Pope assigned him a yearly pension of a hundred scudi; and
the withholders of his mother's dowry came to an accommodation by which
he was to have an annuity of a hundred ducats, and a considerable sum
in hand. His hand was losing strength enough to close upon the money.
Scarcely was the day for the coronation about to dawn, when the poet felt
his dissolution approaching. Alfonso's doctors had killed him at last by
superinducing a habit of medicine-taking, which defeated its purpose.