OUR passing notice of Italian song would be incomplete without the name of Italy's favourite bard, even had Tasso[*178] found no hospitality at Urbino, no sympathy from its Duchess Lucrezia. Yet what shall we say of one whose loves and woes have filled many volumes,—whose life, character, and motives, after baffling biographers, and puzzling moralists, are still matter rather of controversy than of history, of speculation than of fact. That he was imbued with true genius, with its failings as well as its powers, is fixed by the unanimous verdict of posterity. That his misfortunes have tended greatly to enhance the sympathising veneration which hangs around his name, may be quoted in proof of the eternal justice of Providence. The rolls of Parnassus may exhibit names more gifted, the annals of human suffering are inscribed with greater calamities and deeper griefs, but in no other case, perhaps, have talents and trials been more mingled together on an equally prominent stage. His supposed persecutor was elevated enough to command the world's gaze, and upon him there accordingly has been heaped the blame of a wretchedness in a great measure self-imposed, and inseparable from a morbid and diseased temperament. The complaints of the poet have been embodied in notes alternately of wailing and of fire, by a poet of a nation whom he would have deemed barbarous.[179] The charge which history has recorded against Tasso is to this purpose. That, whilst a retainer of Alfonso II. of Ferrara, his heart was enslaved by that Duke's sister, Princess Leonora d'Este, and that his passion was ill-concealed in the verses it inspired. That Alfonso having suspected the audacious fault, harshly visited it with a series of persecutions, and finally shut him up for seven years in bedlam as a lunatic.

From infancy he manifested decided symptoms of "a genius to madness near allied." Indifferent to toys, he seemed exempt from the emotions and the tastes of childhood. Precocious in all mental powers, he spoke intelligibly at six months, knew Greek and wrote verses at seven years, and at eighteen published the Rinaldo, a sustained and applauded epic.[*180] The reverses of his early days on which we have already dwelt in our notice of his father, the premature loss of his mother, the injudicious liberty of thought and action allowed him by Bernardo, and the rough criticisms to which his writings were subjected ere his character and knowledge of mankind were developed—all these tinged deeper the gloom of his constitutional sadness, and formed a training the most fatal to one of innately morbid sensibilities. The results were obvious. Bald before his time, his digestion enervated, subject to faintings and fevers intermittent or delirious, his health at thirty was ruined, his nerves and brain shattered. The natural consequence of his precocity was an overweening pride in his accomplishments, which rendered him jealous, touchy, and quarrelsome; and though destined from youth to wander in search of given bread, nature had neither granted him the humble resignation required for such a lot, nor imbued him with a daring spirit to rise above it. Men who live in courts must be prepared to encounter intrigues; those who publish poetry should lay their account with unsparing strictures; and the smaller the court, or the more prominent their poetic merits, so much the greater need have they of forbearance and philosophy. But Tasso possessed neither; and the jealousies of Pigna and Guarini, the malice of the della Crusca critics, stung him to the quick.[*181] A slight or fancied affront, which he met with from one of the courtiers of Ferrara, though avenged by a duel, brought his symptoms to a head.[*182] From that moment, when in his thirty-third year, we find him a victim to the restlessness, suspicions, fears, sad forebodings, and hopeless misery, which afflict lipemaniacs.

Under such sinister influences the crisis speedily arrived. Whilst seated in the Duchess of Urbino's apartment, in her mother's palace, he rushed with his dagger on an attendant who chanced to enter. This, whether a premeditated assault, or an idle hallucination, seems to have been the ground on which he was, by order of Alfonso, placed under restraint; but when the paroxysm was passed, he was reconducted to the Duke's presence with ample assurances of pardon. The iron had, however, entered into his soul, and the idea that he was in disgrace, owing to the malicious backbiting of foes real or imaginary, could not be driven from his mind. He retired from their supposed persecutions to a Franciscan convent,[*183] but, finding in its quiet no peace for his troubled spirit, he fled in disguise from these illusions, and, led perhaps by the bright memory of his early days, arrived on the sunny shores of Sorrento, where he sought a refuge with his married sister. But alas! the charms of that radiant land shed no gladsome influence on his soul. Ere a few months passed, he returned to Ferrara, in hopes of proving to the Duke that the crimes and the frenzy, of which he believed himself accused, were equally calumnies. In the festive and kindly reception with which he was greeted, the wayward poet found new grounds for jealousy, imagining a plot to be formed against his literary fame, by plunging him in a round of dissipation, whilst "others" (meaning his patron) should reap the glory and profits due to his creative genius. That conduct so provoking should have brought upon him real slights, in addition to his imagined wrongs, can scarcely be doubted; and, wounded at heart, he again had recourse to flight, wandering aimlessly by Mantua, Padua, and Venice, to Pesaro, the refuge of his happier youth. We shall elsewhere introduce the letter which he there addressed to the Duke of Urbino; though it obtained him a compassionate welcome, his new host naturally counselled his return to the home of his adoption, as the place where he was most certain to be cared for. But in a fresh access of disease, he escaped from such suggestions, and obeyed them not until after he had visited Turin, disguised by poverty and filth.

If these views of Tasso's malady[*184] are as conformable to truth as they appear to be with the representations of his biographers, the time seems to have been now fully arrived for his seclusion, as a measure of justice to himself and of security to others. It is quite another question how far the treatment he met with at Sant'Anna was that best suited to his symptoms. Had he lived in times when the pathology of mind was more fully understood, and more ably managed, his genius might, by timely care, have been saved from a miserable wreck; but his brain surely then required such aid as medical science could afford. If this be granted, the defence of Duke Alfonso is complete, whatever might have been the discipline resorted to in the hospital. Yet it may be well to remember, from the testimony of the poor maniac, as well as of others, that the delusions which for years had haunted him, regarding wrongs supposed to have been received from that sovereign and his courtiers, had given bitterness to his words, and pungency to his pen, little in accordance with the fulsome language of his age, or the haughty temper of his patron; that if the poet was a victim of imaginary affronts, the Duke had met at his hands with real insults. But even were Alfonso's motives not those of unmixed kindness, the necessity of seclusion for Tasso cannot be affected by any such consideration, nor by the consequent aggravation of his malady from defective skill.

An admission of Tasso's mental alienation was made by his intimate friend Manso, and has been repeated by various writers; yet other biographers, anxious to relieve their hero from the reproach of madness, have essayed to screen him by charges of cruelty against the Duke of Ferrara. Whilst Verga's theory appears to place the poet's malady upon its proper footing, and, by implication, to absolve his patron, that author goes a step further, and maintains that the oldest and best informed authorities bear out a belief in the uniform and considerate kindness of Alfonso towards his wayward laureate, and prove that the allegations of Torquato's insanity having been but the pretext of a stern tyrant, bent on punishing the presumption of an unworthy aspirant to his sister's love, were piquant additions of after writers. We shall presently have a few words to add in regard to this entanglement; meanwhile, let us see the conclusion drawn by Dr. Verga, from his able argument. "We may, therefore, infer that the Duke shut up Tasso in Sant'Anna, neither as a punishment for ambitious love, or unguarded and offensive expressions, nor as an obstacle to his conferring the illustration of his genius on rival courts, but simply because he saw that the poet's melancholy rendered him beside himself, dependent upon skilful treatment, and perhaps dangerous to others. I repeat, in the name of common sense, that his madness was the sole cause of his seclusion, not the effect of it, as some would persuade us."

---

Although we have passed rapidly over those circumstances that impart to Tasso's life its romantic and mysterious interest, we must detail somewhat more fully the various links connecting the thread of his chequered existence with the ducal house of Urbino. The arrival of his father, Bernardo, at the court of Pesaro, in 1556, has been already mentioned[185]; and six months later he was joined by Torquato, then completing his thirteenth year, who was permitted to share the education of the hereditary Prince, and to mingle occasionally with the accomplished circle at the Imperiale, until Bernardo carried him to Venice, in 1559. On a mind of such premature powers these opportunities were not wasted, and the remembrance of them cheered many an after hour of despondency. The homeless position and unsettled habits of his father, whose wanderings he generally accompanied, interfered somewhat with his education, which was then directed to the law, as his future profession. But whilst supposed to be engrossed by canonists and civilians, the youth was secretly devoting his hours of study to the muses. Fearing to avow these derelictions to his father, he imparted his boyish efforts to Duke Guidobaldo, who showed them to Bernardo in 1562, when the latter came to offer him a printed copy of his Amadigi. It was not, however, for two years more that the paternal sanction was obtained for publishing the Rinaldo, a dedication of which is said to have been declined by the Duke, perhaps from a fastidiousness which ere long he had to regret. Encouraged by the unlooked-for success of this poem, written by him in ten months at the university of Padua, Torquato began his great epic, of which he had already selected the theme. Whilst pursuing his studies at Bologna, in 1563, he is believed to have transcribed the first sketch of it, under the title of "Il Gierusalem," which is now No. 413 of the Urbino Library at the Vatican. It is preceded by a short notice of the subject, and consists of a hundred and sixteen stanzas, eventually incorporated into the three opening cantos of the poem; but its variations from the printed version are so extensive, that it has been given entire in the collected works, published at Venice, in twelve vols. 4to, 1735. The dedication was this time accepted by Guidobaldo.

At twenty-one, he first saw the court of Ferrara,[*186] which, in honour of his marriage with the Archduchess Barbara, the magnificent Alfonso was then rendering

"The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy."

It was in these festive scenes that the bard made acquaintance with the Princess Lucrezia. Among the portraits in the Palace of Courtesy, whither Rinaldo was conducted, and which, by an ingenious turn of flattery, are made to represent those personages whom Tasso was most disposed to conciliate, were those of Duke Guidobaldo and his son, with their respective consorts. The passage may be thus literally rendered:—

"He of expression stern and brow severe, His mien ennobled by a royal state, The great Francesco Maria's son, is here, In peace superior, in the field his mate; Beneath whose prudent sway, no peril ere Urbino's favoured duchy shall await, While o'er her happy vales, and golden plains, A joyous and enduring summer reigns. "Such is the sire to whom our planet owes Yon youthful gallant, with expression bright, Second to none, a terror to his foes, A wary leader though a dauntless knight: On him the weight of thousand wars repose, A thousand armies guiding to the fight. Whoe'er is doomed to immortality Shrined in men's hearts and mouths, HE may not die. "Turn your admiring gaze to yonder side On all that heaven of loveliness can yield, Elsewhere unmatched within Sol's circuit wide, From whose bright beams no beauty lies concealed; The ducal crown and robe can scarcely hide The regal bearing on that brow revealed: Vittoria she, from great Farnese traced, Courteous and gentle, generous and chaste. "Lucrezia d'Este is yon other fair, Whose dazzling tresses seem a treasure given For guileless love therewith to weave a snare And toils, purveyed by Him who rules in heaven. Say, do Minerva and the Muses share Praise and disparagement in portions even,— Praise, since she them to imitate is fain; Blame, that their rivalry with her is vain? "These dames, in charms and chastity compeers, And proudly rich in every virtue rare"—

Such compliments from a poet of promising fame could not be indifferent to one taught to prize genius as almost the equal of rank; nor were they the less acceptable to a lady of thirty-one, that their author had barely attained manhood. She received him with her sweetest smile, and presented him to her father the Duke, and to her sister Leonora, in terms which secured him a most flattering reception. Love and chivalry were fashions of the day, cultivated in common by all who strove to shine in the brilliant atmosphere of Ferrara, and the genius of Torquato lent itself gracefully to both. In many phases of Italian literature, it has been difficult for posterity to decide whether the fervour of amorous poetry was kindled by successful passion, or fanned by affected sentiment. The like mystery overhangs the love-notes which Tasso warbled in these palace-bowers. That his aspirations were not free from pedantry is proved by their, on one occasion, selecting the form of a public disputation, after the most approved scholastic models, wherein, during three days, he maintained against all comers, a series of abstract propositions regarding love and its developments. And though such singular exhibitions may sometimes have been suggested by deeper feelings, or accepted as the incense of the heart, they were doubtless in other cases but tournaments of gallantry, in which the name of some fair lady was adopted, to inspire the combatants to a victory extending not beyond the lists. Equally platonic might have been such love-tissued lyrics as our minstrel ever and anon dedicated to the sister Princesses, without any scandal, and probably without compromise of their purity. One of these, in supposed allusion to the favoured sister, having been specially excepted from the sentence of posthumous destruction pronounced upon many of his fugitive pieces by the poet when about to take a journey, must have ranked high in his estimation, and is thus translated by Glassford:—

"Now that my charmer breathes another air In woods and fields, how barbarous to remain In this deserted place, where grief, and pain, And darkness dwell, a region of despair! Nothing is joyful here, and nothing fair: Love grows a boor, and with the rustic train Now feeds his flock, and now in sultry plain Handles the scythe, or guides the pondrous share. O, happy wood! O smiling banks and gay, Where every beast, and every plant and stone, Have learned the use of generous customs mild. What shall not yield to her whose eyes alone Can, as they lend or take their light away, Polish the groves, and make the town a wild."

During the four years which glided by in this charmed existence, the youthful bard appears to have remained faithful to his first friend Lucrezia; and it was not until her marriage to the Prince of Urbino in 1571, that the superior charms of her younger and more sedate sister effected for her that alleged conquest of his heart, which long-continued assertions have almost established as a truth.

It would be interesting could we fix the comparative encouragement which the bard enjoyed from the sisters, and ascertain the amount of favour severally vouchsafed him; on this much contested but conjectural ground we shall not, however, enter.[*187] Love-making, which is frequently a science rather than a passion, becomes almost invariably so where its flame is habitually fed by poetry or pedantry, and such were naturally the loves of Tasso in the atmosphere of a court whose polish was heightened by these accomplishments. The siren-notes of Italian song draw their melody from epithets calculated to soothe the ear even when they reach not the heart, and seldom afford evidence as to which of these organs they are meant to fascinate. This uncertainty gives life to a tribe of commentators, and has originated volumes of idle speculation as to the material existence of Laura and Beatrice, the platonic or passionate intercourse of Torquato with the Princesses of Este. The language of sonnets and canzoni is equally suited to express or to feign, to indicate or to veil, heartfelt homage; and those of Tasso thus are capable of whatever interpretation best accords with the temperament or the theory of his critics. Such, for example, are the tributes of his muse on the marriage of Lucrezia, wherein, however, a suspicion of somewhat undue tenderness might attach to such lines as—

"Sad as a mourning convoy seems to me Your merry dances, and your Hymen's torch Will to my funeral pile a flame supply."[188]

In a canzone of the same date, he makes that god descend from Parnassus to preside at her nuptials[189]; but the deity seems to have turned a deaf ear to this tuneful invocation, and we have elsewhere seen that no favour of his crowned the inauspicious union.

On his return from France in 1572, Tasso was, by intercession of the Princesses, received at Ferrara as a salaried courtier; and in the following spring, his pastoral drama, the Aminta,[*190] was performed at the palace. Anxious to witness a representation elsewhere so universally applauded, the Princess of Urbino invited him to Pesaro, where he recited his poem in presence of the old Duke, who hailed in him the honoured son of his former protÉgÉ. From thence he accompanied Francesco Maria and his consort to their villeggiatura at Castel Durante, and it was then, perhaps, that their domestic peace was most endangered by the poet. The field-sports and manly exercises which attracted the Prince to that secluded spot had no charm for Lucrezia, long accustomed to a life of artificial splendour; and whilst he passed his days in the far-spreading forests, she was exposed to the temptations of ennui, added to the perils of opportunity. It is, therefore, not surprising that a warmer tone pervades the componimenti addressed to the Princess in this retirement. Two sonnets, in particular, sing, in cadences of sweetest harmony, her hand imparting perfume to the scented glove, that enviously veiled, from her minstrel's greedy eyes, a whiteness before which the snow would blush, and her bosom, the garden of love, the paradise of the poet, its ripened charms surpassing the budding beauties of early spring.[191]

To write amatory verses on a lady of appearance as matronly as her years, required singular tact; but Tasso boldly met the difficulties of his theme. In another sonnet, excelled by nothing in the whole range of passionate song, after seeking for a parallel to her "unripe" youth in the opening rosebud, or in the unearthly beauty of the early dawn, that gilds the mountains and scatters pearls along the plain, he avows the flower to be most attractive when its leaves have unfolded their odours, just as the mid-day sun outshines its morning lustre. The same delicacy of allusion was needful in regard to both the princesses, of whom Leonora appears to have had the advantage in looks more than in age, for she was but a year younger than her married sister. We again avail ourselves of Mr. Glassford's paraphrase, in order to present it to such readers as are not acquainted with the charming original.

"We saw thee in thy yet unripened green, Like folded rose, whose damask leaf unspread To the warm sun, still in its virgin bed Retires and blushes in the bud unseen. Or rather—for such earthly type is mean— Like to Aurora, who with earthly red Pearls the plain and gilds the mountain head, Kindling with smiles the dewy sky serene. Nor is thy riper year in aught less fair; No youthful beauty in her choice attire Can so engage, or equal charms display. Thus sweetest is the flower when to the air Unbosomed; thus the sun's meridian fire Exceeds the lustre of its morning ray."

But these seductions did not divert Torquato from the loftier theme which engaged his muse. Far from the gaieties and the squabbles of Ferrara, he drew a fresher inspiration from glorious nature, and among the delightful descriptions suggested by the scenery around Castel Durante are generally numbered those of the gardens of Armida. Whatever may have been the true footing on which the poet's devotion was received by the Princess, and whatever the secret cause of her domestic misunderstandings, her husband never showed, on this or any future occasion, jealousy of his early playmate; and in 1574 Tasso returned to Ferrara, laden with compliments and presents from the august circle at Pesaro, including a jewel of price from the Princess, which his necessities afterwards obliged him to dispose of.

Lucrezia had become Duchess of Urbino in 1574, and her separation from the Duke took place three years later, in circumstances of which we have elsewhere spoken.[192] Released from ties in which affection had never any part, she sought in her brother's palace distractions more suited to her lively temperament, and renewed her intimacy with its silver-tongued laureate. Among the reasons which incline us to believe that this connection was chiefly sought upon her side, is the desire which Tasso about this time manifested of exchanging the protection of the d'Este for a residence at Rome. His intention was not realised, for his visit to the Eternal City did not extend beyond a month, and before the close of 1575 he was at Florence.

On returning to Ferrara in January, 1576, a new tie was created to the reigning family, by his appointment as its historiographer, on the death of Pigna. This was the turning point of his existence, whence the symptoms of mental disease gradually and fatally advanced until June, 1577, when, after that outbreak of insanity in presence of the Duchess of Urbino, to which we have already alluded, he was interdicted by Alfonso from corresponding with her. This command she observed, but Leonora occasionally consoled him by letters during his flight to Naples, of which we have spoken in tracing the progress of his lipemania. It was in the autumn of 1578 that he arrived at Pesaro, after his second flight; and, in this melodious but unfinished canzone, bespoke shelter under the mighty oak [della Rovere] watered by the Metauro:—

"To the River Metauro.

"O thou illustrious child Of mighty Apennine, humble though you lie, In story brighter than thy silver tide; O stranger fleet and wild, To this thy friendly and protecting side, Well pleased, for safety and repose I fly. The lofty Oak, with mantling branches wide, Bathed by thy stream, and from thy cisterns fed, Shadowing the mountains and the seas between,— Embower me with its screen! Inviolate screen, and hospitably spread, Thy cool recesses undisturbed and sweet Shroud me in deepest covert, thick entwined, So hid from blind and cruel fortune; blind, But not for me, whom still she sees to meet, Though far by hill or valley I should stray, Or in the lonely way Have passed at midnight, and with noiseless feet; And by this bleeding side well understood, Her aim unerring, as her shaft is good. "Since first I breathed this air, Ah me! since first I met the glorious light, Which never to these eyes unclouded shone, I was her fatal care, Chosen to be her mark and her despite; Nor yet those early hurts by time outgrown. Well to that spirit pure my words are known, Beside whose sainted tomb my cradle stood. Might they have laid me in the peaceful ground When I received the wound! Me from my mother's bosom fortune rude Tore while a child: O yet I feel those last Kisses and burning tears upon my cheek, With sighs remembered; still I hear that weak And ardent prayer, caught by the rising blast, Then parted ever; no more face to face Folded in strict embrace And held by close and loving arms so fast, Ah! but like Ilus or Camilla hied, With steps unequal, by my father's side. "In banishment I grew And rigid want, instructed by our strange Disastrous flight to shed untimely tears, Nor childhood's pleasure knew; But bitterness to me of chance and change Brought immature the bitterness of years. Despoiled and bare, his feeble age appears Before me still. Alas! and is my store Of griefs become so scanty, that my own Are not enough to moan? That others than myself I must deplore? But seldom, though I bid, will come the sigh, Or from these wells the gushing water spring, In measure suited to my suffering. Dear father; now my witness from the sky, Whom sick thou knowest how I moaned, and dead Poured on thy grave and bed My ardent heart; thee, in thy mansions high All bliss beseems, and unalloyed with pain; Only for me the sighs and tears remain."[193]

The morbid feeling and heart-stricken melancholy which, in the language of Gibbon, "disordered his reason without clouding his genius," and which thus exaggerated the trials of his early life, gave way to another train of thought in the following letter, addressed by him, about the same time, to Duke Francesco Maria, which we insert as the most satisfactory record left us of the friendship and protection bestowed on him by that Prince.

The expectations which dictated this touching letter were amply realised. After a reception of singular kindness, the good Duke recommended medical advice for Tasso's now obvious malady; and an issue prescribed for his arm was dressed by the Princess Lavinia della Rovere, whose sedulous care was rewarded in a madrigal. By such solace his restlessness, however, prevented him from long profiting. After reaching Ferrara some months later, his mania broke out in more threatening symptoms, and, on the 21st February, 1579, he was consigned to the hospital of Sant'Anna.

From the sadder scenes and secrets of his life it were useless to raise the veil. Even the year after he entered it, Montaigne, a shrewd and unbiased witness, whose testimony may countervail much hearsay and conjecture, found him in "most pitiable state, surviving himself, neglectful of his person and works." Seven years had worn away in pitiable isolation, when a violent fever nearly closed his darkened existence, after which, whether from an abatement of his phrenetic symptoms, or in the hope of contributing to his physical restoration, Alfonso sanctioned his liberation, at the request of Prince Vincenzo of Mantua, the supposed assassin of our Admirable Crichton, who undertook the watchful care which his case required. Princess Leonora died in 1581, and, on various subsequent occasions, Duchess Lucrezia interfered with little success in his behalf, but, from the time of his leaving the hospital, his intercourse with her family was at an end. He had written from thence several letters to the Duke of Urbino, and, after his convalescence, addressed to him a rambling discourse on his real and imaginary grievances, which shows a mind still shaken, if not unhinged. But, though the kind feelings of his early playmate underwent no change, Tasso returned not to Urbino during many after wanderings, fearing perhaps to revisit, in circumstances so altered, the scenes of his brighter days.[195] The nine remaining years of his life were, on the whole, less afflicted; for, though ever restless in body, and often haunted by imaginary evils and visions, he enjoyed intervals of comparative serenity, especially in his beloved Bay of Naples, and at the house of his kind friend and biographer Manso, of which, half a century later, John Milton was the honoured guest.

His death partook of the melancholy shade that had overhung his career. Declining a new invitation from Duke Francesco Maria, in 1594, he brought to Rome all that mental and bodily sufferings had left him of broken health and blighted genius, to receive the honours of a laurel crown; and, in the monastery of S. Onofrio, he awaited the issue of arrangements which the warning voice of exhausted nature told him were made in vain. From thence he addressed to his friend Constantini[*196] the following touching farewell:—"What shall my Antonio say, when he hears the death of his Tasso? Nor, in my opinion, will the news be long delayed; for I feel my end to be at hand, having found no remedy for this troublesome malady, which, added to my many habitual ailments, is evidently sweeping me away like an impetuous and irresistible torrent. To say nothing of the world's ingratitude, which would prove its triumph by consigning me in penury to the tomb, the time is now past for speaking of my inveterate fortune; yet, when I think of the glory which this age will derive from my writings, in despite of all opposition, I cannot be left entirely unrequited. I have had myself brought to this convent of S. Onofrio, not only because the air is commended by the faculty more than that of any other part of Rome, but also, to begin as it were from this elevated spot, and in the conversation of these holy fathers, my celestial intercourse. Pray to God in my behalf, and rest assured that, as I have ever loved and respected you in this life, I shall do the like towards you in a better, as is the part of true and unfeigned affection; and to the Divine grace I commend you and myself. From Rome, at S. Onofrio."

Tasso's mind was habitually under devotional influences, which grew upon him as he experienced the delusive results of his early ambition, the emptiness of success, and the bitterness of failure. Religion was in him a deeply rooted sentiment; it soothed long hours of suffering, cheered the decline of life, and brightened those hopes for which the laurel crown had lost its charm. Gazing from the convent garden over a scene of all others the most inspiring to the poet, the most solemn to the moralist, he caught the seeds of malaria fever. His springs of life were already dried up by twenty long years of suffering, and, after a few days of peaceful and resigned preparation for a change that to him had no terrors, his spirit was released from its shattered tenement. He died on the 25th April, 1595, wept by many warmly attached and pitying friends, and lamented by the citizens, who lost in his death the spectacle of his coronation, to which they had long looked forward with an anxiety unusual even among the fÊte-loving populace of Rome.

Tasso's was a life of painful contrasts and of blighted hopes. The prospects of his childhood, bright as the sky which witnessed his birth, were quickly shadowed by a storm of tropical violence. The courtly favour that met his manhood proved baneful as a siren's smiles. The greenest garland that Italy could offer to her favourite minstrel was reserved until his brow was clammy with the dews of death. The honours lavished on his funeral have been grudged to his tomb. His resplendent genius was linked to the saddest and most humbling of human afflictions. The fame for which he felt more than a poet's thirst, and which he challenged as his due, was withheld by envy until no trumpet-note could reach his dull cold ear. But time, the avenger, has rendered him tardy justice, and Torquato is the popular bard of Italy, whilst the cumbrous pedantry of his della Crusca impugners is consigned to contemptuous oblivion.

Of works so universally known as those of Tasso it would be presumptuous to offer new analyses, and superfluous to encumber our pages with trite criticism. The edition of them by Rosini extends to thirty quarto volumes, a startling testimony to the copiousness of his commentators, as well as to his own wonderful fertility. His pen ranged over a wide field both in prose and verse,—the former including essays—moral, literary, and political,—dialogues, and letters; the latter touching upon themes sacred, heroic, romantic, sylvan, pastoral, and lyric. It is, however, as an epic poet that he has gained a niche in Parnassus, and the admiration of posterity. No rivalry could arise with Dante, in whose Vision the things of time are strangely interwoven with revelations of eternity; and his muse is of a nobler caste, though less touching character, than that of the bard of Arqua. But it is otherwise with the fourth great name of Italian minstrelsy, and no one discusses the merits of Tasso without keeping those of Ariosto in view. This, however, arises from habit rather than necessity. The latter name was dragged forward by the della Crusca Academicians as a stalking-horse to mask the malice of their attacks upon the later of Ferrara's two laureates, whose successive appearance on that stage alone induced a contrast for which their respective works were by no means adapted. The comparison thus forced upon the world has been declined by Tiraboschi, who, in the exercise of a sounder criticism, has assigned to each his peculiar excellence. Bearing in mind that the Orlando is intrinsically a romantic poem, whilst the Jerusalem is composed upon the epic model, there can be but little technical analogy between them, and the beauties of the one would become blemishes in the other. The striking and unlooked-for episodes of the former, running ever into extravagance and burlesque, must have outraged the grave unities required in the latter, and have proved more serious faults than any which the jaundiced optics of the academicians were able to discover. But perhaps Tasso's greatest triumph over his jealous detractors has been the continued preference of his earlier and greater work to his continuation of the same theme, in which he studied to profit by their criticisms. Many Italians, among whom the romantic school took its origin and maintained its influence, have preferred Ariosto, whilst transalpine critics have more generally given their suffrages to the poem of Tasso, as more regular in its plan, and better preserving the elevation and the unities observed by the best classic models.

It has been the boast of some minstrels to mould the temper of the age to the tone of their poetry. Tasso chose a less hazardous aim, and, seizing in his great epic upon a theme at once the most fertile and the most popular, gained the sympathies of all. The Crescent, once more in the ascendant, had swept the Mediterranean, overrun Greece, and threatened Vienna. The spirit of the crusades revived. The often-mooted movement of all Christendom in the holy cause was at length carried into effect, and victory crowned the Cross at the great naval conflict of Lepanto. But alas! his was the last great name in Italian poetry;[*197] and thenceforward genius fled from the land of song, or bowed unresisting before an all-prevailing mediocrity. Morbid repetition, redundant verbiage, far-fetched figures,—all those faults for which its liquid language afforded such fatal facilities, sprang up in rank deformity, and smothered generous inspiration. The academies sent out their many songsters, who poured forth notes artfully sweet, but rarely thrilling; and already

"Their once-loved minstrels scarce may claim The transient mention of a dubious name."

Nor did they merit a better fate; for their conceptions were extravagant, their imagery redundant, their execution alternately glaring and languid. Unnatural contrasts, startling conceits, ill compensated in them for vigorous diction and the stamp of genius. Yet the lyric muse was not utterly extinct, and from time to time its warblings may yet be heard in the orange groves and laurel bosquets of that bright land.

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Guarini's is another name shared between Ferrara and Urbino.[*198] He was born at the former city in 1537, of a family already possessing claims upon literary distinction during three generations, his great-grandfather having been Guarini of Verona. In conformity with the custom of employing men of learning upon diplomatic missions, he served Duke Alfonso II. at various courts, until, in 1575, he undeservedly lost his favour by the failure of a quixotic negotiation, having for its object to place the crown of Poland upon his brows. During the seclusion which followed, he wrote the Pastor Fido, a pastoral drama of more complex incident than had been hitherto produced, and whose refined polish and seductive strains, though misapplied upon a factitious style, long retained their popularity. It was composed in avowed emulation of Tasso's Aminta, and he carried the rivalry into ducal saloons, and even ladies' boudoirs, with the results naturally to be looked for among the peppery tribe of poets. But when Torquato's hour of darkness arrived, Guarini proved himself a generous opponent, and, in the edition of 1581, he did his utmost to rescue the cantos of Gerusalemme from the adulteration of unfriendly pens. When his country's subjugation had followed upon his patron's death, he was fain to seek other service with the Medici; and soon thereafter the Duke of Urbino wrote to AbbÉ Brunetti, his envoy at Venice, in the following terms: "We shall with much pleasure look over the pastoral which the Cavaliere Guarino has reprinted with notes and engravings, for we greatly esteem his meritorious works, and are aware how much we are indebted to his affection and courtesy. You will therefore thank him in our name for his remembrance of us."[199] This presentation copy procured the author a substantial reward in the following letter to Brunetti, dated some weeks later.

"Most magnificent and most reverend,

"In consequence of deaths and other circumstances, we find ourselves so ill provided with persons of such quality as was Albergato, that we must find some one as soon as may be. And recollecting the Cavaliere Guarino, who was known and entertained by us many years ago, we should be well pleased could we have him, provided his health be equal to his duties, not indeed for long journeys, but for attending upon our person, and accompanying us both in the carriage and on horseback, advising and conversing with us in all times and occasions. And we believe, if due means be adopted, this affair might be arranged to our mutual satisfaction, as we remember that, when lately quitting Tuscany, he seemed, from what he wrote to us, not averse to the idea of betaking himself hither, and in our answer we in no way discouraged the plan. We have, however, chosen to impart the matter to you, that you may manage it in whatever way you consider most proper for appearances; and should you think it well, we have no objection to your even going in person to Padua, on some other pretext. As to terms, we believe that the Cavaliere's modesty, and our partiality towards him, would readily bring everything to an issue; but you will give it all due consideration, answering separately this our letter, with whatever occurs to you on the subject. And so health to you. From Castel Durante, the 10th of June, 1602. Yours,

"Franco. Ma. Duca d’Urb."