ating circumstance that to have done so might have endangered her own position in her brother's court, and might even have resulted in her own imprisonment in some dull cloister, which Madonna Eleonora would have found a dreary exchange for her brilliant, luxurious, flattered existence in Ferrar.. Let the excuse count for what it is worth, but after reading the earlier story of Tasso's intercourse with her, the blank, implacable silence with which she received his cries from prison chills and oppresses one after three centuries. After his return from France Tasso continued to work at the "Gerusalemme Liberata," and produce also a very different species of poem in the charming dramatic pastoral of "Aminta," which has furnished the model for innumerable other dramas of the same kind. It was repre sented for the first time in Ferrara, in the year 1573, with great pomp and splendour. Afterwards it was played at Florence, the scenery and decorations being under the direction of the celebrated architect Bontalenti. It was received with universal applause, and no sooner was it printed than it was translated into several European languages. The Duchess of Urbino (Lucrezia, sister of Alfonso and Eleonora d'Este) sent for the poet to her court, in order that he might read it to her himself; and he spent some pleasant and tranquil months with this princess, partly at Urbino, and partly in a country seat near to it. He returned, in company with the Duchess Lucrezia, to Ferrara, and not long afterwards made part of the suite of gentlemen who accompanied the reigning Duke Alfonso when the latter went into the Venetian Provinces to meet Henry III. of France, who had then newly succeeded to that throne, on his way from Poland. There was a great gathering of grandees at Venice, and later at Ferrara, whither the Duke invited Henry III., the Cardinal of San Sisto (nephew of Pope Gregory XIII.), Duke Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga of Mantua, and many other notable and puissant seigneurs, to accompany him. The great heats (it was the month of July under an I'alian sun), or the fatigues of the journey, or the much banqueting in Venice, or all three causes combined, gave our Tasso a quartan fever, accompanied by so great a languor and weakness as to compel him to renounce all studious application for a time. His health was not fully re-established until the spring of 1575, in which year he had the satisfaction of completing his great poem of the "Jerusalem Delivered." And respecting the completion of this fine work, certain facts have to be recorded, which it is well to warn the reader are facts: for here the authentic narrative takes upon itself an air of impertinent irony, which might well be attributed to the innocent transcriber of historic events as a flippant attempt to hold up to ridicule the whole race of critics! than whom no variety of the human species are less mirthinspiring to a righ'-minded author. Tasso, then, distrustful of his own powers, thought fit to submit his yet unpublished epic to the judgment of various learned men of letters, who, although it does not appear that they have ever produced any thing themselves which posterity delights to honour, yet had a great reputation in their day as holding the secret of the only authentic road by which to reach readers in centuries yet unborn. Unfortunately, it turned out that these erudite persons differed in opinion among themselves to a degree quite fatally confusing to the minds of those who consulted them. For example, it may interest readers of the "Jerusalem Delivered," whether in the original or in Fairfax's translation, to know that several critics considered that the protagonist too manifestly eclipsed all the secondary heroes of the poem; that Scipio Gonzaga pronounced the episode of Erminia too improbable; that Sperone Speroni found the "unity of action" defective; that another objected to the descriptions of Armida and her enchanted garden as too glowing; and that Silvio Antoniano wished that not only all the enchantments, but all the love scenes of whatever nature, should be ruthlessly cut out altogether. Moreover, the episode of Sofronia and Olindo, now deemed one of the most touching and beautiful in the whole poem, very narrowly escaped excision, because the otherwise conflicting critics were nearly unanimous in condemning it. Fortunately for us of these later times, Tasso, after undergoing a great deal of annoyance, and many struggles with his better judgment, resolved to pay as little heed to his censors as possible. His dilemma, however, is one which will recur again and again; for the ideal conceptions of a great genius will always be so far above and beyond his performance as to make the suggestion of amendments in the latter seem very possible to him. But the discontent and diffidence of an extraordinary mind as to its own work is a very different matter from the power of an ordinary mind to better it. The anxiety and curiosity with which the publication of the "Jernsalem Delivered" was expected indirectly caused Tasso endless pain and mortification, for the cantos were seized upon one by one as they were finished, and before the poet had time to revise or reconsider them, and passed from hand to hand until they reached some publisher of the day who gave them to the press full of errors and even with huge gaps here and there of an entire stanza. Manso says that the MSS. of his poem were got from Tasso in this fragmentary manner partly by the importunity of friends, partly by the commands of his sovereign masters. Alas, poor poet! Then, too, there assailed him a furious warfare waged by the Academicians of the Crusca against the "Jerusalem Liberated." This critical body was not exempt from the destiny which appears to afflict all similar institutions, namely, a strange adjustment of the focus of their "mind's eye," which makes them unable to perceive genius at a lesser distance than one or two centuries back. One of their number, a Florentine, Lionardo Salviati, published a pamphlet in which he pronounces Tasso inferior not only to Ariosto, which might be a tenable opinion, but to Bojardo and Pulci! Upon which one of Tasso's biographers mildly observes that this is a judgment "most unworthy of one who had the reputation of being learned in the Greek, Latin, and Italian literatures, and of a first-rate critic' (un crico di prim' ordine). And he subjoins farther on, "If criticisms dictated by a spirit of party serve to retard the justice due to an original writer, the latter can, however, easily console himself by the certain hope of occupying that place in the temple of glory which posterity, severe and infallible in its judgments, will assign to him." A comfortable doctrine of the all-the-same-a-hundred-years-hence pattern with which certain minds "6 easily console themselves" for the misfortunes of other people! Some time before the completion of his great poem Tasso had the grief of losing his father. Bernardo Tasso had continued uninterruptedly in the service Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, and died on September 4, 1569, at a place called Ostia, on the Po, of which town he was governor. Torquato hastened to his father, attended him lovingly in his last illness, and after his death consecrated some of his finest verses to his memory. And now follow thickly on each other's heels misfortune after misfortune, morification after mortification, treachery after treachery. Envy, hatred, malice, and all the uncharitableness which haunt a court, made Torquato Tasso the chief mark for their poisoned shafts; he stood high enough above the crowd to be well aimed at. Guarini (the author of the "Pastor Fido") set up to be his rival not only in poetry but in the good graces of the Princess Eleonora, and Guarini was a man who might well make the lover, if not the poet, jealous. In 15. l'asso visited the court of Urbino, and refrained during several months from writing to Eleonora; and that his silence was due to the pain and indignation he felt at seeing (or fancying he saw-the effect on his mind was the same) a rival preferred to himself by a lady whom he had so long and devotedly served, is abundantly set forth by Professor Rosini. But the proofs he has patiently accumulated are far too voluminous for even a portion of them to be given here; and I advise any reader who is interested in the subject to consult Rosini's "Saggio sugli Amori di Torquato Tasso," inserted in the seventeenth volume of the Pisan edition of Tasso's works published by Niccolo Caparro. Envy, base intrigues, and the blackest treachery, prepared and forged the first link in the chain of misery with which henceforward Tasso was bound. Towards the clos of the year 1576 (when Tasso was thirty-three years old) a gentleman of the court of Ferrara, his trusted and cherished friend, with whom, in the words of Manso, "he had held all things in common, even his thoughts," betrayed certain secrets, which Tasso had confided to him, to the duke. These "secrets" appear to have been love verses addressed to the Duchess Eleonora, without any superscription, or else, in several cases, with a misleading one, such as "verses written for a friend to his mistress," and so forth. The poems which are still extant are very impassioned, and such as, when addressed by a subject to a woman of Eleonora's rank, were certain to excite the haughty indignation of a despotic prince. By way of exa.np may suffice to indicate Sonnet 185, the dialogue entitled "Dubbio Sciolto" (Rime, vol. ii. p. 119), and the sonnets numbered 258 and 259. Tasso meets this false friend in the courtyard of the ducal palace in Ferrara, upbraids him with his treachery, and, infuriated by the cynical coolness of his betrayer, strikes him on the face. A duel ensues, in which Tasso (who was a fine swordsman) is manifestly getting the best of it, when two brothers of his adversary come up. All three attack Tasso, who valorously defends himself, and in the midst of a great tumult the combatants are finally separated by the populace. It does not appear that any immediate punishment was inflicted on Tasso, but on the 17th of June in the following year (1577) he was arrested on the accusation of having drawn a dagger on a servant in the apartments of the Duchess of Urbino. He was imprisoned in a room of the palace looking upon the interior courtyard. But after about ten days' confinement he was not only liberated, but the Duke carried him with him on a visit to is ducal villa of Belriguardo, where Tasso passed nearly a fortnight in the intimate companionship of his sovereign. But now mark the change, sudden and terrible as a clap of thunder from a serene sky. On July 11 Tasso is sent back under guard to Ferrara, where he is shut up in the monastery of San Francesco, and declared by the duke's secretary to be a confirmed maniac! (pazzo spacciato.) Now, it is to be particularly observed that up to that 17th of June, on which day he was arrested for threatening the servant (as it is said), no hint or suspicion appears to have been rife that Torquato Tasso was not completely sane. He walked, as Tennyson phrases it, "with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies," but not even the fertility in lying of envious courtiers had as yet invented the accusation of madness against him. No; this is only launched after the fortnight spent in intimate seclusion with Duke Alfonso at Belriguardo. The explanation given of this strange fact by Rosini reposes upon a mass of cvidence which neither time nor space permit us to examine here. Told with brevity and inevitable completeness, it is this: that the duke, being still doubtful as to the truth of the accusations against Tasso (which accusations were simply that he had not only loved the Princess Eleonora, but aspired and desired to be loved by her in return, and had written verses strongly implying that he was so), was determined to examine into the matter for himself; that for this purpose, and under the guise of sovereign grace and favour, he carried Tasso with him to a retired country house, and there subjected the unhappy poet to a kind of moral torture or question, as appears very clearly from the lines addressed by Tasso about this time to the spirit of Alfonso's father, the great Duke Hercules: Alma grande d'Alcide, io so che miri (Great soul of Alcides, I know thou dost behold the harsh rigour of thy royal scion, who with unusual arts, and acts, and words, seeks to draw from me that which inflames his wrath against me.) That, having satisfied himself as to the existence of the poet's presumptuous passion, Alfonso propos d to him, as the only method by which he could escape drawing worse evils on himself-and, what was infinitely more important in Alfonso d'Este's eyes, avoid raising any scandal against the Princess Eleonora-to feign madness! Extraordinary and incredible as such a theory appears at first sight, there are nevertheless a hundred circumstances, and a hundred passages in the writings of the unha py poet, which tend strongly to confirm its being the true one. Perhaps the most remarkable of all these occurs in the famous letter addressed by Tasso to the Duke of Urbino. In this he says that, in order to regain the duke's (Alfonso's) good graces, he did not think it shameful to be the third with Brutus and Solon." Now, of Solon Plutarch relates that he deliberated to feign himself out of his senses, and his servants spread the report throughout the city that he had gone mad; and Brutus is represented by Livy, ex industria factus ad imitationem stultitia. Surely this is very striking and remarkable! And what follows in Tasso's letter is not less so. He says:-"I hoped thus by this confession of madness to open so large a road to the benevolence of the duke, as that, with time, the opportunity should not fail me of undeceiving him and others-if any others there were who held so false and unmerited an opinion of me." Under what conceivable circumstance could it open a way to the benevolence of the duke for Tasso to confess himself mad, save on the hypothesis that the duke desired him to appear so! However, Torquato, either finding himself unable to keep up the ignoble comedy, or fearing that even the reputation of madness might not avail to secure him from worse treatment, fled from the Monastery of San Francesco a few days after his incarceration there, namely, on July 20, 1577. He departed alone and on foot, and at length, after a journey made in the midst of unspeakable trouble of mind and hardships of body, he reached Rome, where he remained a short time in the house of his old friend and tutor, Maurizio Cattaneo. But here anxieties and suspicions continued to torment him. He seems to have been haunted by the fear of being poisoned. Nor, when we remembe the frequent instances in which this sovereign receipt for getting rid of a dangerous foe or a troublesome friend had been applied in Italy, can we set down Tasso's fear as the mere figment of a diseased brain. The poet's heart turned longingly towards the home of his childhood, and towards his sister Cornelia, sole survivor of his family. But the decree of the Neapolitan government, which pronounced him and his father rebels, had never been repealed, and his paternal estates were still confiscated. Tasso was an outlaw in his native land. Nevertheless, the longiug to revisit Sorrento and to see his sister became irresistible, and he resolved to gratify it without revealing his purpose to any one. Having gone on a pleasure excursion to Frascati, he set off thence on foot, secretly, and quite alone, to make the |