017 



TASSO, TORQUATO. 



TAS30, TORQUATO. 



suona." In October 1578, he left Urbino, and went to Piedmont 

 under an assumed name; but he was soon known, and his fame as a 

 poet secured him a flattering reception from Charles Emmanuel, 

 prince of Piedmont, who offered to take him into his service upon the 

 same terms as the Duke of Ferrara. But poor Tasso had still his 

 eyes and his heart fixed upon Ferrara, and in spite of the advice of his 

 friends at Turin, and, among others, of the Marquis Filippo d'Este, 

 Alfonso's relative, he determined to go to Ferrara. He was encouraged 

 to do so by letters from the Cardinal Albano, who it appears had been 

 commissioned by the duke to induce him to return, promising him a 

 kind reception. He arrived at Ferrara on the 21st of February 1579, 

 on the eve of the arrival of Margarita Gonzaga, the new bride of Duke 

 Alfonso. The court was busy about the preparations to receive the 

 duchess. The duke refused to see Tasso, the princesses also denied 

 themselves, his old apartments in the palace were closed to him, and 

 the courtier and court attendants treated him with rudeness and con- 

 tempt. Tasso now became furious, and he uttered impertinent words 

 against the duke and the whole house of Este, which being reported to 

 Alfonso, he gave orders to arrest him and confine him in the hospital 

 of St. Anna as a declared madman. 



Tasso remained a prisoner in the hospital full seven years, till July 

 1586. From some obscure passages of his own letters he appears to 

 have been treated very harshly at first by the attendants of the hos- 

 pital. He wrote to the duke, and to the princesses, but in vain. At 

 last he grew more calm, and was treated with greater leniency. The 

 wretched hole which is shown at Ferrara as having been his prisqn is 

 no longer believed by competent judges to be the identical place of 

 his confinement. (Valery, 'Voyages Litteraires en Italic,' book vii., 

 ch. 14.) Political party -feeling in our age has contributed to exagge- 

 rate the hardships of Tasso's confinement, as religious party-feeling 

 has exaggerated the suffering.-* of Galileo in a similar condition. There 

 was hardship no doubt in both instances, and the hardship in Tasso's 

 case was aggravated by the state of his own sore and unsettled mind. 

 When Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga visited Tasso at St. Anna, in the 

 spring of 1580, he was lodged in a large and commodious apartment, 

 where he could write and correct his compositions. In November of 

 the same year he was visited by Montaigne, who speaks of him as a 

 man whose reason was overcome by the vivacity of his imagination. 

 In July 1581, the Lady Marfisa d'Este obtained leave of Alfonso to 

 take Tasso with her for a few days to her country-house, where he had 

 a philosophical discussion with her and her two ladies of honour, Tar- 

 quinia Molza, a learned woman, and Ginevra Marzia, upon the nature 

 of love. From the recollection of this conversation, Tasso afterwards 

 composed his dialogue, which he entitled 'La Molza, ovvero dell' 

 Amore.' In September 1582 Tasso received at St. Anna the visit of 

 Aldo the younger, who brought him copies of some of the finest 

 editions which had come out of his press, and they spent two days 

 together in speaking of their respective studies. Tasso in the mean- 

 time was busy writing, or correcting his various poetical compositions 

 which were printed at Venice, but very inaccurately, to his great 

 annoyance. He wrote in his confinement several philosophical dis- 

 courses or treatises, such as ' II Gonzaga, ossia del Piacere Onesto,' ' II 

 Padre di Famiglia,' the discourse ' Delia Virtu Eroica e della Carita,' 

 the dialogue ' Della Nobilta,' and others. In his discourse to Gon- 

 zaga he says that it was wished that he should become insane, and 

 that the cause, or at least one of the causes, of this persecution was 

 some lascivious verses of his. 



In 1583 Tasso grew seriously ill, he complained of his head, of his 

 digestion, of singing in his ears, and other symptoms of a like nature. 

 He consulted his friend Mercuriale, a physician of Padua, but Tasso 

 was not a very docile patient ; he wished for none but pleasant 

 medicaments, and he would not submit to a total abstinence from 

 wine. One of his vagaries was that he had a familiar spirit who 

 appeared to him to comfort him. In 1584 he was allowed to be out 

 u at large during the Caruival season, and he wrote a curious dialogue 

 on that circumstance entitled ' II Gianluca, o della Maschere.' He 

 enjoyed the society of Tarquinia Molza, of Count Girolamo Pepoli, and 

 other noblemen and ladies of the court of Ferrara. He wrote 

 about that time the dialogues, ' II Beltramo, ovvero della Cortesia;' 

 ' II Malpiglio, ovvero della Corte ;' ' II Ghirlinsone, ovvero dell' 

 Epitafno ;' ' La Cavalletta, ovvero della Poesia Toscana ;' and ' II 

 Rangone, ovvero della Pace,' which last, addressed to Bianca Capello, 

 grand-duchess of Tuscany, is dated from his apartments of St. Anna, 

 ' Dalle sue stanze in St. Anna.' He was now tolerably composed and 

 reconciled, and could hardly be called a prisoner. In one of his 

 autograph letters, written to the Marquis Buoncompagni, in April, 

 1585, and which is in the library of Ferrara, there is a passage copied 

 by Valery, in which he says " the duke does not keep me in prison, 

 but in the hospital of St. Anna, whore priests and monks can visit me 

 at their pleasure, and no one prevents them from doing me good." 

 In several of his unpublished letters he gives directions about some 

 articles for his wardrobe or his table, and shows a refined taste in 

 both. But in that same year, 1585, a fresh source of vexations 

 opened upon him. His great epic poem, ' La Gerusalemme Liberata,' 

 had been published complete at Parma in 1581, and afterwards at 

 Mantua in 1584. A host of critics fell upon it, and by their strictures 

 strove to obscure all the merits of the poem. At the head of them 

 stood Salviati, of the Crusca Academy. Tasso's language, his poetical 



style, his imagery, the plot of his poem, his episodes, everything was 

 rnade a subject of censure. Tasso, already weakened by mental and 

 bodily suffering, felt these attacks bitterly. He however took up his 

 pen and wrote in a measured and dignified tone a defence of his 

 poem. He was at the same time writing letters to all his friends to 

 obtain his final liberty from the duke. He wrote to the city of 

 Begarmo, to the duke of Mantua, to the grand-duke of Tuscany, to 

 the pope, to the emperor, who all employed their good offices on his 

 behalf with Duke Alfonso, who hesitated a long time before he con- 

 sented to his release. At last Vincenzo Gonzaga, son of the Duke of 

 Mantua, obtained, in July 1586, permission for Tasso to accompany 

 him to Mantua. His reception at that court was like a triumph. In 

 order to make some return for the kindness which he experienced 

 from the house of Gonzaga, he completed his tragedy of ' Torria- 

 mondo,' which he dedicated to his liberator Vincenzo, on bis accession 

 to the ducal throne of Mantua in 1587. The subject of the ' Tor- 

 rismondo' is a supposed Scandinavian legend. Some of the descrip- 

 tions have been admired. After some time spent at Mantua and in 

 his paternal town of Bergamo, Tasso, depressed by a settled melan- 

 choly, took leave of Duke Vincenzo, and repaired to Rome in the 

 latter part of 1587, and thence to Naples in the following year. The 

 poet appeared delighted with the beauties of his native country. At 

 Naples he began a lawsuit to recover his paternal property, which had 

 been seized when his father Bernardo became an exile. The Neapolitan 

 courts of law have been at all times proverbially known for their 

 dilatoriness, and justice was wretchedly administered under the 

 Spanish viceregal administration. Tasso made little progress in his 

 suit. But he found a sincere friend in the Marquis Gio. Batista 

 Manso, who took Lim in the autumn to his estate of Bisaccio, where 

 they spent the time sporting, listening to the rustic improvvisatori, 

 and conversing in the evening upon various topics, especially about 

 Tasso's pretended familiar. It was at the request of Manso's mother 

 that Tasso undertook his ' Sette Giornate del Mondo Create,' which is 

 a poetical paraphrase of the narrative of the creation of the world in 

 the first two chapters of Genesis. In 1589, Tasso, always restless, 

 repaired to Rome ; but finding himself in great pecuniary distress, he 

 accepted an invitation of the grand-duke Ferdinand de' Medici to 

 go to Florence in the spring of 1590, where he was received with 

 great honour by the court and other persons of distinction, as if to 

 make amends for the annoyance given to him by Salviati and his 

 compeers. 



Towards the end of the same year however he went to Rome, and 

 in 1591 he returned to Naples, and then applied himself to re-write 

 his epic poem, under the title of ' Gerusalemme Conquistata,' in order 

 to satisfy the critics. However the first version of his poem is in the 

 hands of all, whilst few ever read his ' Gerusalemme Conquistata.' 

 Tasso intended to end his days at Naples; but in 1592, Cardinal 

 Aldobrandini having been made pope by the name of Clement VIIL, 

 his nephew, Cinzio Aldobrandini, afterwards cardinal, who was well 

 acquainted with Tasso, invited him in the most pressing manner to 

 Rome, where he came about the middle of that year. He was 

 stopped several days at Mola di Gaeta, the road being blocked up by 

 the bands of the famous robber chief Marco Sciarra, who was scouring 

 the country with perfect impunity. Sciarra, who was a man of birth 

 and education, having heard that Tasso was detained at Mola, sent 

 him a message to entreat him to proceed on his journey, assuring him 

 of perfect safety from his men, and offering him an escort, which 

 however Tasso declined ; upon which Sciarra withdrew his men from 

 the mountains of Itri, so as to leave the passage open for Tasso. Having 

 arrived safely at Rome, he completed his * Gerusalemme Conquistata,' 

 which he dedicated to Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandiui. In the summer 

 of 1594 he returned to Naples, and lodged first in the Benedictine 

 monastery of San Severino, and afterwards went to a country-seat of 

 his friend Maiiso. Meantime Cardinal Cinzio, out of affection and 

 gratitude towards Tasso, prevailed on Pope Clement to grant the poet 

 the honour of being solemnly crowned with the laurel-crown in the 

 Capitol, as Petrarch and others had been. This being agreed upon, 

 Cardinal Cinzio hastened to announce the news to Tasso, urging him 

 to repair to Rome as soon as possible. Tasso did not seem at all 

 elated; he observed to Manso that he thought it more glorious to 

 deserve honours than to receive them. He however assented, and 

 took an affectionate leave of his kind friend Manso, with a foreboding 

 that it would be the last. He spent the Christmas festivities at the 

 monastery of Monte Casino, and arrived at Rome in the beginning of 

 1595. He was met outside the gates by many gentlemen and 

 attendants of the Papal court, by whom he was led in a kind of 

 triumph to the Vatican palace, where he was introduced to the pope, 

 who told him that he had " awarded him the laurel-crown, in order 

 that it might be as much honoured by him, as in former times it had 

 served to honour others." Tasso was lodged in the Papal palace, and 

 treated with the greatest regard. While the day of the coronation was 

 anxiously expected, Cardinal Cinzio fell ill ; and Lent coming on, the 

 pageant was postponed, and then Tasso himself fell seriously ill. He 

 felt from the first a conviction that this illness would be his last ; and 

 wishing to compose himself in retirement for his last moments, he 

 expressed a wish to be taken to the monastery of St. Onofrio, on Mount 

 Janiculum. Having been carried thither in one of Cardinal Ciuzio's 

 carriages, he said to the prior and his monks who came to receive him 



