romantic journey which has been so often celebrated by pen and pencil

We can fancy we see the solitary figure traversing a lonely path at the foot of the mountains, towards Villetri, as the summer evening closes in. Behind him are the rugged hills mantled in purple shadow, home and cradle of the great Latin people whose story has filled every gorge and crowned every peak of them with immortal memories. In front stretches the mysterious and quiet Campagna towards the unquiet and mysterious sea. On the horizon Rome sits brooding on her seven hills, but the great dome of St. Peter's does not yet loom in supreme majesty above the city. It is still unfinished, the drum of the cupola alone being as yet completed. The soil is strewn with colossal fragments of a colossal past; mighty receptacles of dead ashes and living waters, the tombs and aqueducts glimmer white through the brief southern twilight. All is still, silent, forlorn; only at intervals some savage buffalo raises his sullen front from the coarse herbage at the unwonted sound of a footstep, or a wild bird flutters with swift scared flight across the wanderer's path. Infinite sadness on the vast dim plain, infinite sadness in the poet's heart-poor weary human heart, turning from the cruel glitter of courts and the vain glories of public praise, with a sick yearning for love, and truth, and peace!

In

Near Velletri, Tasso changed clothes with a shepherd, in whose canethatched hut he passed the night, and next morning pursued his journey. After four days of toilsome travel he reached Gaeta, nearly spent with fatigue, and here, by good chance, he found a bark of Sorrento about to return to that port without touching at Naples. company with a number of humble passengers-peasants, fishermen, and the like-he embarked in her, and after a prosperous voyage, sailing all night upon the calm summer sea, he reached Sorrento and landed there at sunrise. He went at once to his sister's house. She had married, the reader will remember, Marzio Sersale, a noble cavalier of Sorrento, and was now a widow with two sons. Torquato found her alone, and, feigning to be a messenger from her brother, gave her so lamentable an account of his state and his fortunes that the poor woman, overcome with grief and agitation, swooned away.

If Tasso's object had been to ascertain his sister's true sentiments towards him, he had certainly attained it. He hastened to reassure her as soon as she recovered consciousness, and by degrees revealed himself as the long-absent brother whom she so tenderly loved, and told her all the particulars of his flight from Ferrara, and its cause. He conjured her to keep his presence in Sorrento secret, and she promised to obey him, only making an exception in favour of her sons, Antonio and Alessandro, to whom she confided that the poorly-clad and wretched-looking messenger was no other than their illustrious uncle, with whose fame all Europe was ringing. To the world she gave out that a cousin of hers from Bergamo was come to visit her.

And now fortune, weary of tormenting her victim, allowed Torquato to

enjoy three months of peace and rest amidst the devoted affection of his family and the exquisite beauties of that lovely spot. His two nephews were his constant companions in many an excursion in the neighbourhood, and from the lips of the eldest of them, Antonio, the Marchese Manso gathered the foregoing particulars of Tasso's flight and arrival at Sorrento, which he records in his biography of the poet. But Tasso had not been there above three months before there arrived missives urging him to return to the Court of Ferrara. He himself states distinctly that Madonna Eleonora wrote to persuade him to go back. But for a time he resisted, although his passion for the princess was by no means quenched even by the "heroic" method (as Italian doctors phrase it) taken by Duke Alfonso to cure him of any over-weening attachment to the house of Este. He caused his sister Cornelia to reply to the princess's letter for him, imploring her Highness to permit her to retain her brother with her yet a while after so long an absence, and appealing to her Highness's compassion in moving terms. Tasso himself also wrote to the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara, and to Lucrezia Duchess of Urbino, in the same sense, none of these great personages answering his letters except Madonna Eleonora, who wrote again, urging, nay, commanding him, in the most peremptory terms, to return to her brother's court. This fact, it will at once be perceived, is very important, inasmuch as it proves that there was great anxiety at the Court of Ferrara to get Tasso into their power again; and also that an appeal from Eleonora was deemed the most efficacious means for attaining that object-as, in fact, it proved to be. Tasso could not resist the influence of the princess. But at the moment of setting out from Sorrento he said to his sister, that "he was going to submit himself to a voluntary imprisonment." A remarkable phrase, all the circumstances considered! He reached Rome early in the spring of 1578, and there fell sick of a tertian fever, of which he was not yet wholly cured when he set out again in company with the Cavaliere Gualengo (ambassador of Duke Alfonso in Rome), and finally arrived in Ferrara about the end of March, or a little later.

A series of disappointments and mortifications awaited him here. The duke appeared to treat him with cool contempt; he was denied access to him and to the princesses; and not only so, but was frequently repulsed by the servants with insolence and indignities. But the real key of the enigma is contained in the following passage from the previously quoted letter to the Duke of Urbino :- "He" (the duke) "would fain have had me aspire to no praise of intellect, to no fame of letters, and that amidst ease and comfort and pleasures I should lead a soft and luxurious life, passing, like an exile, from honour, from Parnassus, the Lyceum, and the Academy, to the school of Epicurus, and especially to that part of his school which neither Virgil, nor Catullus, nor Horace, nor Lucretius himself ever frequented." In a word, the duke having declared him mad, insisted that he should continue to pass for such, on pain not only of losing his sovereign favour but of being severely pun

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ished. There is no other explanation of these words. Tasso's original claim to the duke's favour was his genius; and his genius only. The duke had invited him to his court, and had shown him honour there, solely because he was acknowledged to be a man of such eminence that his fame would shed a new lustre even on the illustrious house of Este. The greater the poet, the greater the patron! And now this same Duke Alfonso desires to stifle Tasso's genius, to smother his writings, to drag him from Parnassus down to "Epicurus' sty.' He is to lead a merely

animal life, well-fed, well-clothed, well-lodged, and all that the good duke asks in return is the sacrifice of his genius, his fame, his heart, his mind, and his soul! Unreasonable and irritable poet! Will it be believed that Tasso found the bargain intolerable, and once more fled from his benefactor?

He fled to Mantua, to Venice, to Urbino, to Piedmont, wandering from court to court, and finding mostly but cold comfort; for, as he piteously says in the often-quoted letter to the Duke of Urbino, "interest and the desire to be pleasing to princes shut the door against compassion." An exception must be made to this statement in favour of Charles Emanuel, Prince of Piedmont, who received Tasso with the honours due to his merit, and offered him the same brilliant position that he had enjoyed at first at the court of Ferrara, if he would enter his service. But it was not to be. Alfonso spared no effort to recover the fugitive. He sent a gentleman after him to Pesaro to persuade him to go back, and other temp tations were not wanting. In an ode addressed to the Princesses of Ferrara, the poet says himself that he was "deluded" by false promises. But the main accomplice in seconding the duke's desire was in Tasso's own breast-his unconquerable passion for Eleonora, and yearning to see her again. In brief, despite the "strong dissuasions" of the Prince of Piedmont and other gentlemen, Tasso returned once more to fatal Ferrara on February 21, 1579, and two days after was arrested on a charge of having uttered "false, insane, and audacious words against the duke," and imprisoned in the madhouse of St. Anna.

And here the unhappy poet remained for seven years; seven years of misery such as few human beings have been subjected to. Despite what has been said in mitigation of the horrors of his imprisonment, it is but too clear that it was hard and cruel and harsh beyond measure. Tasso's own words on this subject are, alas! too explicit to be mistaken. Heartrending, in truth, are the terms in which he laments and complains to the deaf ears of his former patrons. To the Duchess Marguerita Gonzaga, third wife of Alfonso, he speaks of making his “gloomy cell" resound with weeping. In a letter to Gonzaga he says that, "oppressed by the weight of so many afflictions, he has abandoned all thought of glory and honour;" that "tormented by thirst, he envies even the condition of the brutes who can freely quench theirs at rivers and fountains:" and that "the horror of his state is aggravated by the squalor of his hair and beard and clothes, and the sordidness and filth which he sees around him." Still more horrible are certain phrases which occur in

his "Discourse" to Scipio Gonzaga. Here he says, "I do not refuse to suffer this punishment, but it hurts me that an unwonted severity is used towards me, and that a new method of castigation is invented for me;" and after those last dreadful words follows a blank filled up with asterisks. The same thing occurs again and again in the course of this "Discorso," and the reason is that Sandelli, who first published it, deemed it prudent to suppress certain phrases and statements which would have furnished too tremendous an indictment against the "magnanimous "Alfonso d'Este, and others of his house. The original MS. from which Sandelli printed his version of the Discourse has eluded the most zealous search, and in all probability was purposely destroyed. A cell, lighted only by one small grated window, has for generations been shown to visitors in the hospital of Santa Anna as the place of Tasso's imprisonment. A gloomy and terrible place indeed for such a man to pass seven years of his life in! Of late it has become the fashion to deny the authenticity of "Tasso's prison," as the cell is called. You are told that the poet never lived there; that he had excellent light and airy rooms in another part of the hospital-what part is not known-and that the compassion excited by the view of the cell is quite superfluous. Even the guardian who now shows it to the stranger (I revisited Ferrara in the late autumn of 1876), although he clings to the statement that Tasso was veritably confined within those narrow massive walls, declares that in the poet's time there was a larger window looking on the courtyard, and plenty of light and air. Now, for my own part, I see no reason whatever to doubt that tradition is in this, as in so many similar cases, a trustworthy guide. The aspect of the cell agrees perfectly with that which Tasso himself says of his prison. It does not agree with that which courtly gentlemen writing within the times, and by no means beyond reach of the influence of the house of Este, have said of it. The reader is at liberty to choose between these conflicting statements.

Here, then, sighed and wept, and perhaps raved, in the bitter de spair and indignation of his soul, Torquato Tasso, an honourable gentleman, a faithful friend, and incomparably the greatest poet of his day. To punish him for the crime of loving his sister, Duke Alfonso gave him obloquy in exchange for glory, solitude for the brilliant society of a court, and instead of the sound of lutes and harmonious voices, the clanking of chains and the howls of maniacs. I cannot presume to decide whether or not there were some morbid strain in Tasso's intellect before he entered St. Anna, but that he did not become a frenzied lunatic before he left it seems to me to indicate a most amazing force of mind.

It is a sickening task to con over the numerous appeals which the wretched prisoner made to the outside world for help. He petitioned the princesses, the Duke of Urbino, the Duke and Duchess of Mantua, various persons at the court of the Emperor Rudolph and at that of Pope Gregory XIII., the Dukes of Savoy and Tuscany, and the su

preme council of the city of his ancestors, Bergamo, to intercede with his princely gaoler. The good citizens of Bergamo did in truth accede to his prayer. His petition (a very touching one) was read in the council amidst tears of pity. They sent a special ambassador to Alfonso to beg him to release Tasso, and the duke received the ambassador very graciously, and promised to fulfil his request, and the poor prisoner was so elated with hope at the report of this princely promise (strange that he should have believed it even then!) as to be in hourly expectation of release for several days! And then-and then he was plunged back again into the gloom of despair, and months and years passed by and found him still in his dungeon.

The

At length he left it, with spirits shattered and body enfeebled. chief instrument of his release was the Abbate Angelo Grillo, whose name should be known and honoured for this good work. The abbate importuned the Emperor and the Pope, and all the great ones of the earth whom he thought likely to assist his object. And finally, in the year of our Lord 1586, and the forty-second of his age, he was allowed to quit the scene of so much misery and degradation. Ferrara was holding high festival on the occasion of the nuptials of Cesare d'Este with Virginia de Medici; amongst the guests gathered there was young Vincenzo Gonzago, Prince of Mantua, the son and heir of Guglielmo Bernardo Tasso's old patron. This youth, induced by the zealous representations of the Abbate Grillo, begged and obtained from Alfonso the permission to carry Tasso with him to Mantua, on condition, however, of keeping him there under strict supervision. After a time this was relaxed, and he was free to go whither he would, except back to Ferrara.

Little is to be said here of the remaining years of our poet's life. He revisited Naples, made a brief sojourn in Florence, and finally came to Rome, whither he was invited to receive the laurel crown in the Capitol. But a pale, inexorable hand withheld the wreath from those worn temples. Tasso came to Rome but to die. He took up his abode among the monks of Sant' Onofrio, the monastery which stand on the Janiculum and dominates the city and the winding course of the Tiber for many a mile.

In the convent garden an ancient oak-tree stood up to the year 1842, which tradition said had been a favorite haunt of the poet. It was greatly injured by a storm in that year, but something of it still remains. There remain, too, the grand outlines of the Sabine and Alban Hills, on which his eyes must often have rested, looking from that lofty garden terrace on to the superb panorama it commands. The sunset light, too, was not different three hundred years ago. Often he must have sat in its rosy glow whilst the spring was smiling around him, and thought of the fast-coming moment when for him the sunshine and the scent of violets and the song of birds should be no more. He died on April 25, 1595, aged fifty-one years. The symbolic crowning in the Capitol was destined not to be, yet none the less do the voices of fame and posterity