Chapter VII: Torquato Tasso (2)

Tasso met with his usual fortunes at the Court of Charles IX. That is to say, he was petted and caressed, wrote verses, and paid compliments. It was just two years before the Massacre of S. Bartholomew, and France presented to the eyes of earnest Catholics the spectacle of truly horrifying anarchy. Catherine de'Medici inclined to compromise matters with the Huguenots. The social atmosphere reeked with heresy and cynicism. In that Italianated Court, public affairs and religious questions were treated from a purely diplomatic point of view. Not principle, but practical convenience ruled conduct and opinion. The large scale on which Machiavellism manifested itself in the discordant realm of France, the apparent breakdown of Catholicism as a national institution, struck Tasso with horror. He openly proclaimed his views, and roundly taxed the government with dereliction of their duty to the Church. An incurable idealist by temperament, he could not comprehend the stubborn actualities of politics. A pupil of the Jesuits, he would not admit that men like Coligny deserved a hearing. An Italian of the decadence, he found it hard to tolerate the humors of a puissant nation in a state of civil warfare. But his master, Luigi d'Este, well understood the practical difficulties which forced the Valois into compromise, and felt no personal aversion for lucrative transaction with the heretic. Though a prince of the Church, he had not taken priest's orders. He kept two objects in view. One was succession to the Duchy of Ferrara, in case Alfonso should die without heirs.[10]

[Footnote 10: Cardinal Ferdinando de'Medici succeeded in a like position to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. But Luigi d'Este did not survive his brother.]

The other was election to the Papacy. In the latter event France, the natural ally of the Estensi, would be of service to him, and the Valois monarchs, his cousins, must therefore be supported in their policy. Tasso had been brought to Paris to look graceful and to write madrigals. It was inconvenient, it was unseemly, that a man of letters in the Cardinal's train should utter censures on the Crown, and should profess more Catholic opinions than his patron. Without the scandal of a public dismissal, it was therefore contrived that Tasso should return to Italy; and after this rupture, the suspicious poet regarded Luigi d'Este as his enemy. During his confinement in S. Anna he even threw the chief blame of his detention upon the Cardinal.[11]

After spending a short time at Rome in the company of the Cardinals Ippolito d'Este and Albano, Tasso returned to Ferrara in 1572. Alfonso offered him a place in his own household with an annual stipend worth about 88 _l_. of our money. No duties were attached to this post, except the delivery of a weekly lecture in the university. For the rest, Tasso was to prosecute his studies, polish his great poem, and augment the luster of the court by his accomplishments.[12] It was of course understood that the _Gerusalemme_, when completed, should be dedicated to the Duke and shed its splendor on the House of Este. Who was happier than Torquato now? Having recently experienced the discomforts of uncongenial service, he took his place again upon a firmer footing in the city of his dreams. The courtiers welcomed him with smiles. He was once more close to Leonora, basking like Rinaldo in Armida's garden, with golden prospects of the fame his epic would achieve to lift him higher in the coming years.

[Footnote 11: See _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 80: to Giacomo Buoncompagno.]

[Footnote 12: 'Egli mi disse, allor che suo mi fece: Tu canta, or che se' 'n ozio.']

No wonder that the felicity of this moment expanded in a flower of lyric beauty which surpassed all that Tasso had yet published. He produced _Aminta_ in the winter of 1572-3. It was acted with unparalleled applause; for this pastoral drama offered something ravishingly new, something which interpreted and gave a vocal utterance to tastes and sentiments that ruled the age. While professing to exalt the virtues of rusticity, the _Aminta_ was in truth a panegyric of Court life, and Silvia reflected Leonora in the magic mirror of languidly luxurious verse. Poetry melted into music. Emotion exhaled itself in sensuous harmony. The art of the next two centuries, the supreme art of song, of words subservient to musical expression, had been indicated. This explains the sudden and extraordinary success of the _Aminta_. It was nothing less than the discovery of a new realm, the revelation of a specific faculty which made its author master of the heart of Italy. The very lack of concentrated passion lent it power. Its suffusion of emotion in a shimmering atmosphere toned with voluptuous melancholy, seemed to invite the lutes and viols, the mellow tenors, and the trained soprano voices of the dawning age of melody. We may here remember that Palestrina, seven years earlier in Rome, had already given his Mass of Pope Marcello to the world.

Lucrezia d'Este, now Duchess of Urbino, who was anxious to share the raptures of _Aminta_, invited Tasso to Pesaro in the summer of 1573, and took him with her to the mountain villa of Casteldurante. She was an unhappy wife, just on the point of breaking her irksome bonds of matrimony. Tasso, if we may credit the deductions which have been drawn from passages in his letters, had the privilege of consoling the disappointed woman and of distracting her tedious hours. They roamed together through the villa gardens, and spent days of quiet in the recesses of her apartments. He read aloud passages from his unpublished poem, and composed sonnets in her honor, praising the full-blown beauty of the rose as lovelier than its budding charm. The duke her husband, far from resenting this intimacy, heaped favors and substantial gifts upon his former comrade. He had not, indeed, enough affection for his wife to be jealous of her. Yet it is indubitable that if he had suspected her of infidelity the Italian code of honor would have compelled him to make short work with Tasso.[13]

[Footnote 13: This is how he wrote in his Diary about Lucrezia. 'Finally the Duke decided upon his marriage with Donna Lucrezia d'Este, which took place, though little to his taste, for she was old enough to have been his mother.' 'The Duchess wished to return to Ferrara, where she subsequently chose to remain, a resolution which gave no annoyance to her husband; for, as she was unlikely to bring him a family, her absence mattered little.' 'February 15, 1598. Heard that Madame Lucrezia d'Este, Duchess of Urbino, my wife, died at Ferrara during the night of the 11th.' (Dennistoun's _Dukes of Urbino_, vol. iii. pp. 127, 146, 156.) Francesco Maria had been attached in Spain to a lady of unsuitable condition, and his marriage with Lucrezia was arranged to keep him out of a _mesalliance_.]

Meanwhile it seemed as though Leonora had been forgotten by her servant. We possess one letter written to her from Casteldurante on September 3, 1573, in which he encloses a sonnet, disparaging it by comparison with those which he believes she has been receiving from another poet (Guarino probably), and saying that, though the verses were written, not for himself, but 'at the requisition of a poor lover, who, having been for some while angry with his lady, now is forced to yield and crave for pardon,' yet he hopes that they 'will effect the purpose he desires.'[14] Few of Tasso's letters to Leonora have survived. This, therefore, is a document of much importance; and it is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was indirectly begging Leonora to forgive him for some piece of petulance or irritation. At any rate, his position between the two princesses at this moment was one of delicacy, in which a less vain and more cautious man than Tasso might have found it hard to keep his head cool.

[Footnote 14: _Lettere_, vol. i, p. 47. The sonnet begins, 'Sdegno, debil guerrier.']

Up to the present time his life had been, in spite of poverty and domestic misfortunes, one almost uninterrupted career of triumph. But his fiber had been relaxed in the irresponsible luxurious atmosphere of Courts, and his self-esteem had been inflated by the honors paid to him as the first poet of his age in Europe. Moreover, he had been continuously over-worked and over-wrought from childhood onwards. Now, when he returned to Ferrara with the Duchess of Urbino at the age of twenty-nine, it remained to be seen whether he could support himself with stability upon the slippery foundation of princely favor, whether his health would hold out, and whether he would be able to bring the publication of his long expected poem to a successful issue.

In 1574 he accompanied Duke Alfonso to Venice, and witnessed the magnificent reception of Henri III, on his return from Poland. A fever, contracted during those weeks of pleasure, prevented him from working at the epic for many months. This is the first sign of any serious failure in Tasso's health. At the end of August 1574, however, the _Gerusalemme_ was finished, and in the following February he began sending the MS. to Scipione Gonzaga at Rome. So much depended on its success, that doubts immediately rose within its author's mind. Will it fulfill the expectation raised in every Court and literary coterie of Italy? Will it bear investigation in the light of the Dialogues on Epic Poetry? Will the Church be satisfied with its morality; the Holy Office with its doctrine? None of these diffidences assailed Tasso when he flung _Aminta_ negligently forth and found he had produced a masterpiece. It would have been well for him if he had turned a deaf ear to the doubting voice on this occasion also. But he was not of an independent character to start with; and his life had made him sensitively deferent to literary opinion. Therefore, in an evil hour, yielding to Gonzaga's advice, he resolved to submit the _Gerusalemme_ in MS. to four censors--Il Borga, Flaminio de'Nobili, vulpine Speroni with his poisoned fang of pedantry, precise Antoniano with his inquisitorial prudery. They were to pass their several criticisms on the plot, characters, diction, and ethics of the _Gerusalemme_; Tasso was to entertain and weigh their arguments, reserving the right of following or rejecting their advice, but promising to defend his own views. To the number of this committee he shortly after added three more scholars, Francesco Piccolomini, Domenico Veniero, and Celio Magno.[15] Not to have been half maddened by these critics would have proved Tasso more or less than human. They picked holes in the structure of the epic, in its episodes, in its theology, in its incidents, in its language, in its title. One censor required one alteration, and another demanded the contrary. This man seemed animated by an acrid spite; that veiled his malice in the flatteries of candid friendship. Antoniano was for cutting out the love passages: Armida, Sofronia, Erminia, Clorinda, were to vanish or to be adapted to conventual proprieties. It seemed to him more than doubtful whether the enchanted forest did not come within the prohibitions of the Tridentine decrees. As the revision advanced, matters grew more serious. Antoniano threw out some decided hints of ecclesiastical displeasure; Tasso, reading between the lines, scented the style of the Collegium Germanicum.

[Footnote 15: Tasso consulted almost every scholar he could press into his service. But the official tribunal of correction was limited to the above named four acting in concert with Scipione Gonzaga.]

Speroni spoke openly of plagiarism--plagiarism from himself forsooth!--and murmured the terrible words between his teeth, 'Tasso is mad!' He was in fact driven wild, and told his tormentors that he would delay the publication of the epic, perhaps for a year, perhaps for his whole life, so little hope had he of its success.[16] At last he resolved to compose an allegory to explain and moralize the poem. When he wrote the _Gerusalemme_ he had no thought of hidden meanings; but this seemed the only way of preventing it from being dismembered by hypocrites and pedants.[17] The expedient proved partially successful. When Antoniano and his friends were bidden to perceive a symbol in the enchanted wood and other marvels, a symbol in the loves of heroines and heroes, a symbol even in Armida, they relaxed their wrath. The _Gerusalemme_ might possibly pass muster now before the Congregation of the Index. Tasso's correspondence between March 1575 and July 1576 shows what he suffered at the hands of his revisers, and helps to explain the series of events which rendered the autumn of that latter year calamitous for him.[18] There are, indeed, already indications in the letters of those months that his nerves, enfeebled by the quartan fever under which he labored, and exasperated by carping or envious criticism, were overstrung.

[Footnote 16: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 114.]

[Footnote 17: _Ib_. vol. i. p. 192.]

[Footnote 18: Vol. i. pp. 55-215.]

Suspicions began to invade his mind. He complained of headache. His spirits alternated between depression and hysterical gayety. A dread lest the Inquisition should refuse the imprimatur to his poem haunted him. He grew restless, and yearned for change of scene.

The events of 1575, 1576, and 1577 require to be minutely studied: for upon our interpretation of them must depend the theory which we hold of Tasso's subsequent misfortunes. It appears that early in the year 1575 he was becoming discontented with Ferrara. A party in the Court, led by Pigna, did their best to make his life there disagreeable. They were jealous of the poet's fame, which shone with trebled splendor after the production of _Aminta_. Tasso's own behavior provoked, if it did not exactly justify their animosity. He treated men at least his equals in position with haughtiness, which his irritable temper rendered insupportable. We have it from his own pen that 'he could not bear to live in a city where the nobles did not yield him the first place, or at least admit him to absolute equality'; that 'he expected to be adored by friends, served by serving-men, caressed by domestics, honored by masters, celebrated by poets, and pointed out by all.'[19]

[Footnote 19: _Lettere_, vol. iii. p. 41, iv. p. 332.]

He admitted that it was his habit 'to build castles in the air of honors, favors, gifts and graces, showered on him by emperors and kings and mighty princes'; that 'the slightest coldness from a patron seemed to him a tacit act of dismissal, or rather an open act of violence.'[20] His blood, he argued, placed him on a level with the aristocracy of Italy; but his poetry lifted him far above the vulgar herd of noblemen. At the same time, while claiming so much, he constantly declared himself unfit for any work or office but literary study, and expressed his opinion that princes ought to be his tributaries.[21] Though such pretensions may not have been openly expressed at this period of his life, it cannot be doubted that Tasso's temper made him an unpleasant comrade in Court-service. His sensitiveness, as well as the actual slenderness of his fortunes, exposed him only too obviously to the malevolent tricks and petty bullyings of rivals. One knows what a boy of that stamp has to suffer at public schools, and a Court is after all not very different from an academy.

Such being the temper of his mind, Tasso at this epoch turned his thoughts to bettering himself, as servants say. His friend Scipione Gonzaga pointed out that both the Cardinal de'Medici and the Grand Duke of Tuscany would be glad to welcome him as an ornament of their households. Tasso nibbled at the bait all through the summer; and in November, under the pretext of profiting by the Jubilee, he traveled to Rome. This journey, as he afterwards declared, was the beginning of his ruin.[22] It was certainly one of the principal steps which led to the prison of S. Anna.

[Footnote 20: _Lettere_, vol. iii. p. 164, v. p. 6.]

[Footnote 21: _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 85, 86, 88, 163, iv. pp. 8, 166, v. p. 87.]

[Footnote 22: Letter to Fabio Gonzaga in 1590 (vol. iv. p. 296).]

There were many reasons why Alfonso should resent Tasso's entrance into other service at this moment. The House of Este had treated him with uniform kindness. The Cardinal, the duke and the princesses had severally marked him out by special tokens of esteem. In return they expected from him the honors of his now immortal epic. That he should desert them and transfer the dedication of the _Gerusalemme_ to the Medici, would have been nothing short of an insult; for it was notorious that the Estensi and the Medici were bitter foes, not only on account of domestic disagreements and political jealousies, but also because of the dispute about precedence in their titles which had agitated Italian society for some time past. In his impatience to leave Ferrara, Tasso cast prudence to the winds, and entered into negotiations with the Cardinal de'Medici in Rome. When he traveled northwards at the beginning of 1576, he betook himself to Florence. What passed between him and the Grand Duke is not apparent. Yet he seems to have still further complicated his position by making political disclosures which were injurious to the Duke of Ferrara. Nor did he gain anything by the offer of his services and his poem to Francesco de'Medici. In a letter of February 4, 1576, the Grand Duke wrote that the Florentine visit of that fellow, 'whether to call him a mad or an amusing and astute spirit, I hardly know,'[23] had been throughout a ridiculous affair; and that nothing could be less convenient than his putting the _Gerusalemme_ up to auction among princes. One year later, he said bluntly that 'he did not want to have a madman at his Court.'[24] Thus Tasso, like his father, discovered that a noble poem, the product of his best pains, had but small substantial value. It might, indeed, be worth something to the patron who paid a yearly exhibition to its author; but it was not a gem of such high price as to be wrangled for by dukes who had the cares of state upon their shoulders. He compromised himself with the Estensi, and failed to secure a retreat in Florence.

[Footnote 23: _Lettere_, vol. iii. p. viii.]

Meanwhile his enemies at Ferrara were not idle. Pigna had died in the preceding November. But Antonio Montecatino, who succeeded him as ducal secretary, proved even a more malicious foe, and poisoned Alfonso's mind against the unfortunate poet. The two princesses still remained his faithful friends, until Tasso's own want of tact alienated the sympathies of Leonora. When he returned in 1576, he found the beautiful Eleonora Sanvitale, Countess of Scandiano, at Court. Whether he really fell in love with her at first sight, or pretended to do so in order to revive Leonora d'Este's affection by jealousy, is uncertain.[25] At any rate he paid the countess such marked attentions, and wrote for her and a lady of her suite such splendid poetry, that all Ferrara rang with this amour. A sonnet in Tasso's handwriting, addressed to Leonora d'Este and commented by her own pen, which even Guasti, no credulous believer in the legend of the poet's love, accepts as genuine, may be taken as affording proof that the princess was deeply wounded by her servant's conduct.[26]

[Footnote 24: _Lettere_, vol. iii. p. xxx. note 34.]

[Footnote 25: Guarino, in a sonnet, hinted at the second supposition. See Rosini's _Saggio sugli Amori_, &c. vol. xxxiii. of his edition of Tasso, p. 51.]

[Footnote 26: _Lettere_, vol. iii. p. xxxi.]

It is obvious that, though Tasso's letters at this period show no signs of a diseased mind, his conduct began to strike outsiders as insane. Francesco de'Medici used the plain words _matto_ and _pazzo_. The courtiers of Ferrara, some in pity, some in derision, muttered 'Madman,' when he passed. And he spared no pains to prove that he was losing self-control. In the month of January 1577, he was seized with scruples of faith, and conceived the notion that he ought to open his mind to the Holy Office. Accordingly, he appeared before the Inquisitor of Bologna, who after hearing his confession, bade him be of good cheer, for his self-accusations were the outcome of a melancholy humor. Tasso was, in fact, a Catholic molded by Jesuit instruction in his earliest childhood; and though, like most young students, he had speculated on the groundwork of theology and metaphysic, there was no taint of heresy or disobedience to the Church in his nature. The terror of the Inquisition was a morbid nightmare, first implanted in his mind by the experience of his father's collision with the Holy Office, enforced by Antoniano's strictures on his poem, and justified to some extent by the sinister activity of the institution which had burned a Carnesecchi and a Paleario. However it grew up, this fancy that he was suspected as a heretic took firm possession of his brain, and subsequently formed a main feature of his mental disease. It combined with the suspiciousness which now became habitual. He thought that secret enemies were in the habit of forwarding delations against him to Rome.

All through these years (1575-1577) his enemies drew tighter cords around him. They were led and directed by Montecatino, the omnipotent persecutor, and hypocritical betrayer. In his heedlessness Tasso left books and papers loose about his rooms. These, he had good reason to suppose, were ransacked in his absence. There follows a melancholy tale of treacherous friends, dishonest servants, false keys, forged correspondence, scraps and fragments of imprudent compositions pieced together and brought forth to incriminate him behind his back. These arts were employed all through the year which followed his return to Ferrara in 1576. But they reached their climax in the spring of 1577. He had lost his prestige, and every servant might insult him, and every cur snap at his heels. Even the _Gerusalemme_, became an object of derision. It transpired that the revisers, to whom he had confided it, were picking the poem to pieces; ignoramuses who could not scan a line, went about parroting their pedantries and strictures. At the beginning of 1576 Tasso had begged Alfonso to give him the post of historiographer left vacant by Pigna. It was his secret hope that this would be refused, and that so he would obtain a good excuse for leaving Ferrara.[27] But the duke granted his request. In the autumn of that year, one of the band of his tormentors, Maddalo de'Frecci, betrayed some details of his love-affairs. What these were we do not know. Tasso resented the insult, and gave the traitor a box on the ears in the courtyard of the castle. Maddalo and his brothers, after this, attacked Tasso on the piazza, but ran away before they reached him with their swords. They were outlawed for the outrage, and the duke of Ferrara, still benignant to his poet, sent him a kind message by one of his servants. This incident weighed on Tasso's memory. The terror of the Inquisition blended now with two new terrors. He conceived that his exiled foes were plotting to poison him. He wondered whether Maddalo's revelations had reached the duke's ears, and if so, whether Alfonso would not inflict sudden vengeance. There is no sufficient reason, however, to surmise that Tasso's conscience was really burdened with a guilty secret touching Leonora d'Este. On the contrary, everything points to a different conclusion. His mind was simply giving way. Just as he conjured up the ghastly specter of the Inquisition, so he fancied that the duke would murder him. Both the Inquisition and the duke were formidable; but the Holy Office mildly told him to set his morbid doubts at rest, and the duke on a subsequent occasion coldly wrote: 'I know he thinks I want to kill him. But if indeed I did so, it would be easy enough.' The duke, in fact, had no sufficient reason and no inclination to tread upon this insect.

[Footnote 27: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 139.]

In June 1577, the crisis came. On the seventeenth evening of the month Tasso was in the apartments of the Duchess of Urbino. He had just been declaiming on the subject of his imaginary difficulties with the Inquisition, when something in the manner of a servant who passed by aroused his suspicion. He drew a knife upon the man--like Hamlet in his mother's bedchamber. He was immediately put under arrest, and confined in a room of the castle. Next day Maffeo Veniero wrote thus to the Grand Duke of Tuscany about the incident. 'Yesterday Tasso was imprisoned for having drawn a knife upon a servant in the apartment of the Duchess of Urbino. The intention has been to stay disorder and to cure him, rather than to inflict punishment. He suffers under peculiar delusions, believing himself guilty of heresy and dreading poison; which state of mind arises, I incline to think, from melancholic blood forced in upon the heart and vaporing to the brain. A wretched case, in truth, considering his great parts and his goodness!'[28]

Tasso was soon released, and taken by the duke his villa of Belriguardo. Probably this excursion was designed to soothe the perturbed spirits of the poet. But it may also have had a different object. Alfonso may have judged it prudent to sift the information laid before him by Tasso's enemies. We do not know what passed between them. Whether moral pressure was applied, resulting in the disclosure of secrets compromising Leonora d'Este, cannot now be ascertained; nor is it worth while to discuss the hypothesis that the Duke, in order to secure his family's honor, imposed on Tasso the obligation of feigning madness.[29] There is a something not entirely elucidated, a sediment of mystery in Tasso's fate, after this visit to Belriguardo, which criticism will not neglect to notice, but which no testing, no clarifying process of study, has hitherto explained. All we can rely upon for certain is that Alfonso sent him back to Ferrara to be treated physically and spiritually for derangement; and that Tasso thought his life was in danger. He took up his abode in the Convent of S. Francis, submitted to be purged, and began writing eloquent letters to his friends and patrons.

[Footnote 28: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 228.]

[Footnote 29: This is Rosini's hypothesis in the Essay cited above. The whole of his elaborate and ingenious theory rests upon the supposition that Alfonso at Belriguardo extorted from Tasso an acknowledgment of his _liaison_ Leonora, and spared his life on the condition of his playing a fool's part before the world. But we have no evidence whatever adequate to support the supposition.]

Those which he addressed to the Duke of Ferrara at this crisis, weigh naturally heaviest in the scale of criticism.[30] They turn upon his dread of the Inquisition, his fear of poison, and his diplomatic practice with Florence. While admitting 'faults of grave importance' and 'vacillation in the service of his prince,' he maintains that his secret foes have exaggerated these offenses, and have succeeded in prejudicing the magnanimous and clement spirit of Alfonso. He is particularly anxious about the charge of heresy. Nothing indicates that any guilt of greater moment weighed upon his conscience.[31] After scrutinizing all accessible sources of information, we are thus driven to accept the prosaic hypothesis that Tasso was deranged, and that his Court-rivals had availed themselves of a favorable opportunity for making the duke sensible of his insanity.

After the middle of July, the Convent of S. Francis became intolerable to Tasso. His malady had assumed the form of a multiplex fear, which never afterwards relaxed its hold on his imagination. The Inquisition, the duke, the multitude of secret enemies plotting murder, haunted him day and night like furies. He escaped, and made his way, disguised in a peasant's costume, avoiding cities, harboring in mountain hamlets, to Sorrento.

[Footnote 30: _Lettere_, vol. i. 257-262.]

[Footnote 31: Those who adhere to the belief that all Tasso's troubles came upon him through his _liaison_ with Leonora, are here of course justified in arguing that on _this_ point he could not write openly to the Duke. Or they may question the integrity of the document.]

Manos, who wrote the history of Tasso's life in the spirit of a novelist, has painted for us a romantic picture of the poet in a shepherd's hut.[32] It recalls Erminia among the pastoral people. Indeed, the interest of that episode in the _Gerusalemme_ is heightened by the fact that its ill-starred author tested the reality of his creation ofttimes in the course of this pathetic pilgrimage. Artists of the Bolognese Academy have placed Erminia on their canvases. But, up to the present time, I know of no great painter who has chosen the more striking incident of Tasso exchanging his Court-dress for sheepskin and a fustian jacket in the smoky cottage at Velletri.

He reached Sorrento safely--'that most enchanting region, which at all times offers a delightful sojourn to men and to the Muses; but at the warm season of the year, when other places are intolerable, affords peculiar solace in the verdure of its foliage, the shadow of its woods, the lightness of the fanning airs, the freshness of the limpid waters flowing from impendent hills, the fertile expanse of tilth, the serene air, the tranquil sea, the fishes and the birds and savory fruits in marvelous variety; all which delights compose a garden for the intellect and senses, planned by Nature in her rarest mood, and perfected by art with most consummate curiosity.'[33] Into this earthly paradise the wayworn pilgrim entered.

[Footnote 32: Rosini's edition of Tasso, vol. xxx. p. 144.]

[Footnote 33: Manso, _ib._ p. 46.]

It was his birthplace; and here his sister still dwelt with her children. Tasso sought Cornelia's home. After a dramatic scene of suspense, he threw aside his disguise, declared himself to be the poet of Italy and her brother; and for a short while he seemed to forget Courts and schools, pedants and princes, in that genial atmosphere.

Why did he ever leave Sorrento? That is the question which leaps to the lips of a modern free man. The question itself implies imperfect comprehension of Tasso's century and training. Outside the Court, there was no place for him. He had been molded for Court-life from childhood. It was not merely that he had no money; assiduous labor might have supplied him with means of subsistence. But his friends, his fame, his habits, his ingrained sense of service, called him back to Ferrara. He was not simply a man, but that specific sort of man which Italians called _gentiluomo_--a man definitely modified and wound about with intricacies of association. Therefore, he soon began a correspondence with the House of Este. If we may trust Manso, Leonora herself wrote urgently insisting upon his return.[34] Yet in his own letters Tasso says that he addressed apologies to the duke and both princesses. Alfonso and Lucrezia vouchsafed no answer. Leonora replied coldly that she could not help him.[35]

[Footnote 34: Manso, _ib._ p. 147.]

[Footnote 35: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 275.]

Anyhow, Ferrara drew him back. It is of some importance here to understand Tasso's own feeling for the duke, his master. A few months later, after he had once more experienced the miseries of Court-life, he wrote: 'I trusted in him, not as one hopes in men but as one trusts in God.... I was inflamed with the affection for my lord more than ever was man with the love of woman, and became unawares half an idolater.... He it was who from the obscurity of my low fortunes raised me to the light and reputation of the Court; who relieved me from discomforts, and placed me in a position of honorable ease; he conferred value on my compositions by listening to them when I read them, and by every mark of favor; he deigned to honor me with a seat at his table and with his familiar conversation; he never refused a favor which I begged for; lastly, at the commencement of my troubles, he showed me the affection, not of a master, but of a father and a brother.'[36] These words, though meant for publication, have the ring of truth in them. Tasso was actually attached to the House of Este, and cherished a vassal's loyalty for the duke, in spite of the many efforts which he made to break the fetters of Ferrara. At a distance, in the isolation and the ennui of a village, the irksomeness of those chains was forgotten. The poet only remembered how sweet his happier years at Court had been. The sentiment of fidelity revived. His sanguine and visionary temperament made him hope that all might yet be well.

Without receiving direct encouragement from the duke, Tasso accordingly decided on returning.

[Footnote 36: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 278, ii. p. 26.]

His sister is said to have dissuaded him; and he is reported to have replied that he was going to place himself in a voluntary prison.[37] He first went to Rome, and opened negotiations with Alfonso's agents. In reply to their communications, the duke wrote upon March 22, 1578, as follows: 'We are content to take Tasso back; but first he must recognize the fact that he is full of melancholic humors, and that his old notions of enmities and persecutions are solely caused by the said humors. Among other signs of his disorder, he has conceived the idea that we want to compass his death, whereas we have always received him gladly and shown favor to him. It can easily be understood that if we had entertained such a fancy, the execution of it would have presented no difficulty. Therefore let him make his mind up well, before he comes, to submit quietly and unconditionally to medical treatment. Otherwise, if he means to scatter hints and words again as he did formerly, we shall not only give ourselves no further trouble about him, but if he should stay here without being willing to undergo a course of cure, we shall at once expel him from our state with the order not to return.'[38] Words could not be plainer than these. Yet, in spite of them, such was the allurement of the cage for this clipped singing-bird, that Tasso went obediently back to Ferrara. Possibly he had not read the letter written by a greater poet on a similar occasion: 'This is not the way of coming home, my father! Yet if you or others find one not beneath the fame of Dante and his honor, that will I pursue with no slack step. But if none such give entrance to Florence, I will never enter Florence. How! Shall I not behold the sun and stars from every spot of earth? Shall I not be free to meditate the sweetest truths in every place beneath the sky unless I make myself ignoble, nay, ignominious to the people and the state of Florence? Nor truly will bread fail.' These words, if Tasso had remembered them, might have made his cheek blush for his own servility and for the servile age in which he lived. But the truth is that the fleshpots of Egyptian bondage enticed him; and moreover he knew, as half-insane people always know, that he required treatment for his mental infirmities. In his heart of hearts he acknowledged the justice of the duke's conditions.

[Footnote 37: Manso, p. 147. Here again the believers in the Leonora _liaison_ may argue that by prison he meant love-bondage, hopeless servitude to the lady from whom he could expect nothing now that her brother was acquainted with the truth.]

[Footnote 38: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 233.]

An Epistle or Oration addressed by Tasso to the Duke of Urbino, sets forth what happened after his return to Ferrara in 1578.[39]

[Footnote 39: _Lettere_, i. pp. 271-290.]

He was aware that Alfonso thought him both malicious and mad. The first of these opinions, which he knew to be false, he resolved to pass in silence. But he openly admitted the latter, 'esteeming it no disgrace to make a third to Solon and Brutus.' Therefore he began to act the madman even in Rome, neglecting his health, exposing himself to hardships, and indulging intemperately in food and wine. By these means, strange as it may seem, he hoped to win back confidence and prove himself a discreet servant of Alfonso. Soon after reaching Ferrara, Tasso thought that he was gaining ground. He hints that the duke showed signs of raising him to such greatness and showering favors upon him so abundant that the sleeping viper of Court envy stirred. Montecatino now persuaded his master that prudence and his own dignity indicated a very different line of treatment. If Tasso was to be great and honored, he must feel that his reputation flowed wholly from the princely favor, not from his studies and illustrious works. Alfonso accordingly affected to despise the poems which Tasso presented, and showed his will that: 'I should aspire to no eminence of intellect, to no glory of literature, but should lead a soft delicate and idle life immersed in sloth and pleasure, escaping like a runaway from the honor of Parnassus, the Lyceum and the Academy, into the lodgings of Epicurus, and should harbor in those lodgings in a quarter where neither Virgil nor Catullus nor Horace nor Lucretius himself had ever stayed.' This excited such indignation in the poet's breast that: 'I said oftentimes with open face and free speech that I would rather be a servant of any prince his enemy than submit to this indignity, and in short _odia verbis aspera movi_.' Whereupon, the duke caused his papers to be seized, in order that the still imperfect epic might be prepared for publication by the hated hypocritical Montecatino. When Tasso complained, he only received indirect answers; and when he tried to gain access to the princesses, he was repulsed by their doorkeepers. At last: 'My infinite patience was exhausted. Leaving my books and writings, after the service of thirteen years, persisted in with luckless constancy, I wandered forth like a new Bias, and betook myself to Mantua, where I met with the same treatment as at Ferrara.'

This account sufficiently betrays the diseased state of Tasso's mind. Being really deranged, yet still possessed of all his literary faculties, he affected that his eccentricity was feigned. The duke had formed a firm opinion of his madness; and he chose to flatter this whim. Yet when he arrived at Ferrara he forgot the strict conditions upon which Alfonso sanctioned his return, began to indulge in dreams of greatness, and refused the life of careless ease which formed part of the programme for his restoration to health. In these circumstances he became the laughing-stock of his detractors; and it is not impossible that Alfonso, convinced of his insanity, treated him like a Court-fool. Then he burst out into menaces and mutterings of anger. Having made himself wholly intolerable, his papers were sequestrated, very likely under the impression that he might destroy them or escape with them into some quarter where they would be used against the interests of his patron. Finally he so fatigued everybody by his suspicions and recriminations that the duke forebore to speak with him, and the princesses closed their doors against him.

From this moment Tasso was a ruined man; he had become that worst of social scourges, a courtier with a grievance, a semi-lunatic all the more dangerous and tiresome because his mental powers were not so much impaired as warped. Studying his elaborate apology, we do not know whether to despise the obstinacy of his devotion to the House of Este, or to respect the sentiment of loyalty which survived all real or fancied insults. Against the duke he utters no word of blame. Alfonso is always magnanimous and clement, excellent in mind and body, good and courteous by nature, deserving the faithful service and warm love of his dependents. Montecatino is the real villain. 'The princes are not tyrants--they are not, no, no: he is the tyrant.'[40]

After quitting Ferrara, Tasso wandered through Mantua, Padua, Venice, coldly received in all these cities; for 'the hearts of men were hardened by their interests against him.' Writing from Venice to the Grand Duke in July, Maffeo Veniero says: 'Tasso is here, disturbed in mind; and though his intellect is certainly not sound, he shows more signs of affliction than of insanity.'[41]

[Footnote 40: _Lettere_, ibid. p. 289.]

[Footnote 41: _Lettere_, ibid. p. 233.]

The sequestration of his only copy of the _Gerusalemme_ not unnaturally caused him much distress; and Veniero adds that the chief difficulty under which he labored was want of money. Veniero hardly understood the case. Even with a competence it is incredible that Tasso would have been contented to work quietly at literature in a private position.[42] From Venice he found his way southward to Urbino, writing one of his sublimest odes upon the road from Pesaro.[43]

[Footnote 42: Tasso declares his inability to live outside the Court. 'Se fra i mali de l'animo, uno de'piu gravi e l'ambizione, egli ammalo di questo male gia molti anni sono, ne mai e risanato in modo ch'io abbia potuto sprezzare affatto i favori e gli onori del mondo, e chi puo dargli' (_Lettere_, vol. iii. p. 56). 'Io non posso acquetarmi in altra fortuna di quella ne la quale gia nacqui' (_Ibid._ p. 243).]

[Footnote 43: It is addressed to the Metaurus, and begins: 'O del grand, Apennino.']

Francesco Maria della Rovere received him with accustomed kindness; but the spirit of unrest drove him forth again, and after two months we find him once more, an indigent and homeless pedestrian, upon the banks of the Sesia. He wanted to reach Vercelli, but the river was in flood, and he owed a night's lodging to the chance courtesy of a young nobleman. Among the many picturesque episodes in Tasso's wanderings none is more idyllically beautiful than the tale of his meeting with this handsome youth. He has told it himself in the exordium to his Dialogue _Il Padre di Famiglia_. When asked who he was and whither he was going, he answered: 'I was born in the realm of Naples, and my mother was a Neapolitan; but I draw my paternal blood from Bergamo, a Lombard city. My name and surname I pass in silence: they are so obscure that if I uttered them, you would know neither more nor less of my condition. I am flying from the anger of a prince and fortune. My destination is the state of Savoy.' Upon this pilgrimage Tasso chose the sobriquet of _Omero Fuggiguerra_. Arriving at Turin, he was refused entrance by the guardians of the gate. The rags upon his back made them suspect he was a vagabond infected with the plague. A friend who knew him, Angelo Ingegneri, happened to pass by, and guaranteed his respectability. Manso compares the journey of this penniless and haggard fugitive through the cities of Italy to the meteoric passage of a comet.[44] Wherever he appeared, he blazed with momentary splendor. Nor was Turin slow to hail the lustrous apparition. The Marchese Filippo da Este entertained him in his palace. The Archbishop, Girolamo della Rovere, begged the honor of his company. The Duke of Savoy, Carlo Emanuele, offered him the same appointments as he had enjoyed at Ferrara. Nothing, however, would content his morbid spirit. Flattered and caressed through the months of October and November he began once more in December to hanker after his old home. Inconceivable as it may seem, he opened fresh negotiations with the duke; and Alfonso, on his side, already showed a will to take him back. Writing to his sister from Pesaro at the end of September, Tasso stay that a gentleman had been sent from Ferrara expressly to recall him.[45] The fact seems to be that Tasso was too illustrious to be neglected by the House of Este. Away from their protection, he was capable of bringing on their name the slur of bad treatment and ingratitude. Nor would it have looked well to publish the _Gerusalemme_ with its praises of Alfonso, while the poet was lamenting his hard fate in every town of Italy. The upshot of these negotiations was that Tasso resolved on retracing his steps. He reached Ferrara again upon February 21, 1579, two days before Margherita Gonzaga, the duke's new bride, made her pompous entrance into the city. But his reception was far from being what he had expected. The duke's heart seemed hardened. Apartments inferior to his quality were assigned him, and to these he was conducted by a courtier with ill-disguised insolence. The princesses refused him access to their lodgings, and his old enemies openly manifested their derision for the kill-joy and the skeleton who had returned to spoil their festival. Tasso, querulous as he was about his own share in the disagreeables of existence, remained wholly unsympathetic to the trials of his fellow-creatures. Self-engrossment closed him in a magic prison-house of discontent.

[Footnote 44: _Op. cit._ p. 143.]

[Footnote 45: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 268.]

Therefore when he saw Ferrara full of merry-making guests, and heard the marriage music ringing through the courtyards of the castle, he failed to reflect with what a heavy heart the duke might now be entering upon his third sterile nuptials. Alfonso was childless, brotherless, with no legitimate heir to defend his duchy from the Church in case of his decease. The irritable poet forgot how distasteful at such a moment of forced gayety and hollow parade his reappearance, with the old complaining murmurs, the old suspicions, the old restless eyes, might be to the master who had certainly borne much and long with him. He only felt himself neglected, insulted, outraged:

Questa e la data fede?
Son questi i miei bramati alti ritorni?[46]

Then he burst out into angry words, which he afterwards acknowledged to have been 'false, mad and rash.'[47] The duke's patience had reached its utmost limit. Tasso was arrested, and confined in the hospital for mad folk at S. Anna. This happened in March 1579. He was detained there until July 19, 1586, a period of seven years and four months.

[Footnote 46: From the sonnet, _Sposa regal_ (_Opere_ vol. iii. p. 218).]

[Footnote 47: _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 67.]

No one who has read the foregoing pages will wonder why Tasso was imprisoned. The marvel is rather that the fact should have roused so many speculations. Alfonso was an autocratic princeling. His favorite minister Montecatino fell in one moment from a height of power to irrecoverable ruin. The famous preacher Panigarola, for whom he negotiated a Cardinal's hat, lost his esteem by seeking promotion at another Court, and had to fly Ferrara. His friend, Ercole Contrario, was strangled in the castle on suspicion of having concealed a murder. Tasso had been warned repeatedly, repeatedly forgiven; and now when he turned up again with the same complaints and the same menaces, Alfonso determined to have done with the nuisance. He would not kill him, but he would put him out of sight and hearing. If he was guilty, S. Anna would be punishment enough. If he was mad, it might be hoped that S. Anna would cure him. To blame the duke for this exercise of authority, is difficult. Noble as is the poet's calling, and faithful as are the wounds of a devoted friend and servant, there are limits to princely patience. It is easier to blame Tasso for the incurable idealism which, when he was in comfort at Turin, made him pine 'to kiss the hand of his Highness, and recover some part of his favor on the occasion of his marriage.'[48]

Three long letters, written by Tasso during the early months of his imprisonment, discuss the reasons for his arrest.[49] Two of these are directed to his staunch friend Scipione Gonzaga, the third to Giacomo Buoncompagno, nephew of Pope Gregory XIII. Partly owing to omissions made by the editors before publication, and partly perhaps to the writer's reticence, they throw no very certain light even on his own opinion.[50] But this much appears tolerably clear. Tasso was half-mad and altogether irritable. He had used language which could not be overlooked. The Duke continued to resent his former practice with the Medici, and disapproved of his perpetual wanderings. The courtiers had done their utmost to prejudice his mind by calumnies and gossip, raking up all that seemed injurious to Tasso's reputation in the past acts of his life and in the looser verses found among his papers. It may also be conceded that they contrived to cast an unfavorable light upon his affectionate correspondence with the two princesses. Tasso himself laid great stress upon his want of absolute loyalty, upon some lascivious compositions, and lastly upon his supposed heresies. It is not probable that the duke attached importance to such poetry as Tasso may have written in the heat of youth; and it is certain that he regarded the heresies as part of the poet's hallucinations. It is also far more likely that the Leonora episode passed in his mind for another proof of mental infirmity than that he judged it seriously. It was quite enough that Tasso had put himself in the wrong by petulant abuse of his benefactor and by persistent fretfulness. Moreover, he was plainly brain-sick. That alone justified Alfonso in his own eyes.

[Footnote 48: _Lettere_, vol. ii. 34.]

[Footnote 49: _Ibid._ pp. 7-62, 80-93.]

[Footnote 50: We are met here as elsewhere in the perplexing problem of Tasso's misfortunes with the difficulty of having to deal with mutilated documents. Still the mere fact that Tasso was allowed to correspond freely with friends and patrons, shows that Alfonso dreaded no disclosures, and confirms the theory that he only kept Tasso locked up out of harm's way.]

And brain-sick Tasso was, without a shadow of doubt.[51] It is hardly needful to recapitulate his terror of the Inquisition, dread of being poisoned, incapacity for self-control in word and act, and other signs of incipient disease. During the residence in S. Anna this malady made progress. He was tormented by spectral voices and apparitions. He believed himself to be under the influence of magic charms. He was haunted by a sprite, who stole his books and flung his MSS. about the room. A good genius, in the form of a handsome youth, appeared and conversed with him. He lost himself for hours together in abstraction, talking aloud, staring into vacancy, and expressing surprise that other people could not see the phantoms which surrounded him. He complained that his melancholy passed at moments into delirium (which he called _frenesia_), after which he suffered from loss of memory and prostration. His own mind became a constant cause of self-torture. Suspicious of others, he grew to be suspicious of himself. And when he left S. Anna, these disorders, instead of abating, continued to afflict him, so that his most enthusiastic admirers were forced to admit that 'he was subject to constitutional melancholy with crises of delirium, but not to actual insanity.'[52] At first, his infirmity did not interfere with intellectual production of a high order, though none of his poetry, after the _Gerusalemme_ was completed in 1574, rose to the level of his earlier work. But in course of time the artist's faculty itself was injured, and the creations of his later life are unworthy of his genius.

[Footnote 51: A letter written by Guarini, the old friend, rival and constant Court-companion of Tasso at Ferrara, upon the news of his death in 1595, shows how a man of cold intellect judged his case. 'The death by which Tasso has now paid his debt to nature, seems to me like the termination of that death of his in this world which only bore the outer semblance of life.' See Casella's _Pastor Fido_, p. xxxii. Guarini means that when Tasso's mind gave way, he had really died in his own higher self, and that his actual death was a release.]

[Footnote 52: Tasso's own letters after the beginning of 1579, and Manso's Life (_op. cit._ pp. 156-176), are the authorities for the symptoms detailed above. Tasso so often alludes to his infirmities that it is not needful to accumulate citations. I will, however, quote two striking examples. 'Sono infermo come soleva, e stanco della infermita, la quale e _non sol malattia del corpo ma de la mente_' (_Lettere_, vol. iii. p. 160). 'Io sono poco sano e tanto maninconico che _sono riputato matto da gli altri e da me stesso_' (_Ib._ p. 262).]