T A S 93 



mystery about the whole story resembling that which 

 hangs over Ovid's banishment. Professor Rosini has col- 

 lected with the greatest patience and care the discordant 

 opinions, as well as the evidence resulting from Tasso's 

 own writings, published and unpublished, and from those 

 of his contemporaries; and the conclusion which he ar- 

 rives at by the help of sound criticism is, that the Duke, 

 having in his hands the loose compositions of Tasso 

 already mentioned, which joined to his other compo- 

 sitions addressed to the same person, and his other 

 strange sayings and doings, furnished full evidence that 

 his sister Eleonora was the person alluded to in them, 

 was naturally enough incensed against the poet, and 

 thought that the only reparation that he could make to 

 her injured honour was to make it be supposed that Tasso 

 was mad. This gives the clue to his subsequent treat- 

 ment of the poet. He must also have been confident 

 that his sister was guiltless, otherwise, as Rosini observes, 

 he would have taken a different sort of vengeance, ac- 

 cording to the manners of the age. From the convent of 

 St. Francis, Tasso wrote to the duke, saying, ' that the 

 clemency of his highness had forgiven him his faults, and 

 that thenceforth if he spoke to anyone, he should acknow- 

 ledge to all that which he clearly knew, that he was 

 under a sanitary treatment.' He adds, that he had re- 

 solved, when the treatment was over, to turn monk ; and 

 in a postscript he says, that he earnestly wishes that the 

 Duke may know all the truth, that he may not think him 

 more mad than he is. In a long letter which he after- 

 wards wrote to the Duke of Urbino, he says, that ' in 

 order to please Duke Alfonso, he thought it no disgrace 

 to imitate the example of Brutus and Solon.' Both those 

 personages, according to Livy and Plutarch, feigned mad- 

 ness. Receiving no answer from either Duke Alfonso or 

 the Duke of Urbino, Tasso, about the 20th of July, ran 

 away from the convent, quitted Ferrara, and made his 

 way alone and mostly on foot to Naples, and thence to 

 Sorrento, where his sister was married. Having by kind 

 treatment recovered his health and his spirits, he went to 

 Rome, where he applied through some agent of the Duke 

 to be allowed to return to Ferrara. Duke Alfonso wrote 

 in reply, that he was willing to receive Tasso again into 

 . if he would allow himself to be treated by the 

 physicians: but that if he continued his subterfuges, and 

 to talk as be had done before, he would immediately turn 

 him out of his territories, and never allow him to return, 

 i, ii]'<m this, returned to Ferrara in the spring of 1578, 

 with the Cavaliere Gualengo. He was civilly but coldly 

 received by the Duke, who gave him to understand that 

 he ought now to try to compose himself and to lead a 

 quiet life, and to avoid all excitement. He attempted to 

 get an interview with the Princess Eleonora and the 

 Duchess of Urbino, but was prevented. Tasso, tired of 

 this manner of life, having lost the favour which he used 

 to enjoy at court, ran away again from Ferrara in the 

 summer of 1;77H, wandered to Mantua, Padua, and Venice, 

 and then went to Urbino.where he wrote to the duke of Ur- 

 bino, who appears to have been then on bad terms with his 

 own wife and with the court of Ferrara, entreating him 

 to make the truth known, and to contradict the reports 

 maliciously ' circulated of his madness,' saying that he had 

 submitted to it in obedience to Duke Alfonso's wishes, 

 but that he could not consent any longer to lead an 

 animal life, far from literature and from the Muses. He 

 wrote in similar terms to his friend Scipione Gonzaga at 

 Rome, to his own sister at Sorrento, and to the Arciprete 

 Lamberti, to whom he sent a sonnet, beginning ' Falso e 

 il minor che 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 

 ime terms as the Duke of Ferrara. But. poor Tasso 

 had still his eyes and his heart fixed upon Ferrara, and in 

 of the advice of his friends at Turin, and, among 

 s, of the Marquis Filippo d'Este, Alfonso's relative. 

 In; determined to go to Ferrara. He was encouraged to 

 I I'rom tin- Cardinal Albano, who it. appears 

 hud been commissioned by the duke to induce him to 

 r"tum, promising him a kind reception. He arrived at 

 ira on (hi! 21st February, 1.77!), on the eve of the 

 '! of Margant: the new bride of Duke 



Alfonso. The court was busy about the preparations 



T A S 



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 courtiers and 

 court attendants treated him with rudeness and con- 

 tempt. Tasso now became furious, and he uttered im- 

 pertinent 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 hospital. 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 prison is no longer believed by competent judges to 

 be the identical place of his confinement. (Valery, 

 Voyages Littcraires en Italic, book vii., ch. 14.) Political 

 party-feeling in our age has contributed to exaggerate the 

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

 has exaggerated the sufferings of Galileo in a similar con- 

 dition. 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 apart- 

 ment, where he could write and correct his compositions. 

 In November of the same year he was visited by Mon- 

 taigne, 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, Tarquinia Molza, a learned 

 woman, and Ginevra Marzia, upon the nature of love. 

 From the recollection of this conversation, Tasso after- 

 wards 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 inac- 

 curately, to his great annoyance. He wrote in his con- 

 finement several philosophical discourses or treatises, such 

 as ' II Gonzaga, ossia del Piacere Onesto,' ' II Padre di Famig- 

 lia,' the discourse 'Delia Virtu Eroica e della Carita,' the 

 dialogue ' Delia Nobilta,' and others. In his discourse to 

 Gonzaga 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 Mcr- 

 curiale, a physician of Padua, but Tasso was not a very 

 docile patient ; he wished for none but pleasant medica- 

 ments, 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 at large during the Carnival season, 

 and he wrote a curious dialogue on that circumstance en- 

 titled ' 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 Femira. 

 He wrote about that time the dialogues 'II Beltramo, 

 ovvero della Cortesia;' ' II Malpigho, ovvero della Corf e ;' 

 'II Ghirlinsone, ovvero dell' Epitaffio ;' 'La Cavalletta, 

 ovvero della Poesia Toscana ;' and ' II Rangone, ovvero 

 della Pace,' which last, addressed to BiancaCapello, grand- 

 duchess of Tuscany, is dated from his apartments of St. 

 Anna, 'Dalle sue stanze in St.. Anna.' He was now tolera- 

 bly composed and reconciled, and could hardly be called 

 a prisoner. In one of his autograph letters, written to the 

 Marquis Huoncompagni, in April, 1585, and which is in 

 the library of Ferrara, there is a passage copied by Val6ry, 

 in which he says that 'the duke does not keep me in 

 prison, but in the hospital of St. Anna, where 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 Tor his ward- 

 robe or his table, and shows a refined taste in both. But 



