[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).]

The seven years and four months of Tasso's imprisonment may be passed over briefly. With regard to his so-called dungeon, it is certain that, after some months spent in a narrow chamber, he obtained an apartment of several rooms. He was allowed to write and receive as many letters as he chose. Friends paid him visits, and he went abroad under surveillance in the city of Ferrara. To extenuate the suffering which a man of his temper endured in this enforced seclusion would be unjust to Tasso. There is no doubt that he was most unhappy. But to exaggerate his discomforts would be unjust to the duke. Even Manso describes 'the excellent and most convenient lodgings' assigned him in S. Anna, alludes to the provision for his cure by medicine, and remarks upon the opposition which he offered to medical treatment. According to this biographer, his own endeavors to escape necessitated a strict watch upon his movements.[53] Unless, therefore, we flatly deny the fact of his derangement, which is supported by a mass of testimony, it may be doubted whether Tasso was more miserable in S. Anna than he would have been at large. The subsequent events of his life prove that his release brought no mitigation of his malady.

[Footnote 53: Op. cit. p. 155.]

It was, however, a dreary time. He spent his days in writing letters to all the princes of Italy, to Naples, to Bergamo, to the Roman Curia, declaiming on his wretchedness and begging for emancipation. Occasional poems flowed from his pen. But during this period he devoted his serious hours mainly to prose composition. The bulk of his Dialogues issued from S. Anna. On August 7, 1580, Celio Malaspina published a portion of the Gerusalemme at Venice, under the title of Il Gottifredo di M. Torquato Tasso. In February of the following year, his friend Angelo Ingegneri gave the whole epic to the world. Within six months from that date the poem was seven times reissued. This happened without the sanction or the supervision of the luckless author; and from the sale of the book he obtained no profit. Leonora d'Este died upon February 10, 1581. A volume of elegies appeared on this occasion; but Tasso's Muse uttered no sound.[54] He wrote to Panigarola that 'a certain tacit repugnance of his genius' forced him to be mute.[55] His rival Guarini undertook a revised edition of his lyrics in 1582. Tasso had to bear this dubious compliment in silence. All Europe was devouring his poems; scribes and versifiers were building up their reputation on his fame. Yet he could do nothing. Embittered by the piracies of publishers, infuriated by the impertinence of editors, he lay like one forgotten in that hospital. His celebrity grew daily; but he languished, penniless and wretched, in confinement which he loathed. The strangest light is cast upon his state of mind by the efforts which he now made to place two of his sister's children in Court-service. He even tried to introduce one of them as a page into the household of Alfonso. Eventually, Alessandro Sersale was consigned to Odoardo Farnese, and Antonio to the Duke of Mantua. In 1585 new sources of annoyance rose. Two members of the Delia Crusca Academy in Florence, Leonardo Salviati and Bastiano de'Rossi, attacked the Gerusalemme. Their malevolence was aroused by the panegyric written on it by Cammillo Pellegrini, a Neapolitan, and they exposed it to pedantically quibbling criticism. Tasso replied in a dignified apology. But he does not seem to have troubled himself overmuch with this literary warfare, which served meanwhile to extend the fame of his immortal poem. At this time new friends gathered round him. Among these the excellent Benedictine, Angelo Grillo, and the faithful Antonio Costantini demand commemoration from all who appreciate disinterested devotion to genius in distress. At length, in July 1586, Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir apparent to the Duchy of Mantua, obtained Tasso's release. He rode off with this new patron to Mantua, leaving his effects at S. Anna, and only regretting that he had not waited on the Duke of Ferrara to kiss his hand as in duty bound.[56] Thus to the end he remained an incorrigible courtier; or rather shall we say that, after all his tribulations, he preserved a doglike feeling of attachment for his master?

[Footnote 54: Lacrime di diversi poeti volgari, &c. (Vicenza, 1585).]

[Footnote 55: Lettere, vol. ii. p. 103. The significance of this message to Panigarola is doubtful. Did Tasso mean that the contrast between past and present was too bitter? 'Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.']

[Footnote 56: All the letters written from Mantua abound in references to this neglect of duty.]

The rest of Tasso's life was an Odyssey of nine years. He seemed at first contented with Mantua, wrote dialogues, completed the tragedy of Torrismondo and edited his father's Floridante. But when Vincenzo Gonzaga succeeded to the dukedom, the restless poet felt himself neglected. His young friend had not leisure to pay him due attention. He therefore started on a journey to Loreto, which had long been the object of his pious aspiration. Loreto led to Rome, where Scipione Gonzaga resided as Patriarch of Jerusalem and Cardinal. Rome suggested Southern Italy, and Tasso hankered after the recovery of his mother's fortune. Accordingly he set off in March 1588 for Naples, where he stayed, partly with the monks of Monte Oliveto, and partly with the Marchese Manso. Rome saw him again in November; and not long afterwards an agent of the Duke of Urbino wrote this pitiful report of his condition. 'Every one is ready to welcome him to hearth and heart; but his humors render him mistrustful of mankind at large. In the palace of the Cardinal Gonzaga there are rooms and beds always ready for his use, and men reserved for his especial service. Yet he runs away and mistrusts even that friendly lord. In short, it is a sad misfortune that the present age should be deprived of the greatest genius which has appeared for centuries. What wise man ever spoke in prose or verse better than this madman?[57] In the following August, Scipione Gonzaga's servants, unable to endure Tasso's eccentricities, turned him from their master's house, and he took refuge in a monastery of the Olivetan monks. Soon afterwards he was carried to the hospital of the Bergamasques. His misery now was great, and his health so bad that friends expected a speedy end.[58] Yet the Cardinal Gonzaga again opened his doors to him in the spring of 1590. Then the morbid poet turned suspicious, and began to indulge fresh hopes of fortune in another place. He would again offer himself to the Medici. In April he set off for Tuscany, and alighted at the convent of Monte Oliveto, near Florence. Nobody wanted him; he wandered about the Pitti like a spectre, and the Florentines wrote: actum est de eo.[59] Some parting compliments and presents from the Grand Duke sweetened his dismissal. He returned to Rome; but each new journey told upon his broken health, and another illness made him desire a change of scene. This time Antonio Costantini offered to attend upon him. They visited Siena, Bologna and Mantua. At Mantua, Tasso made some halt, and took a new long poem, the Gerusalemme Conquistata, seriously in hand. But the demon of unrest pursued him, and in November 1591 he was off again with the Duke of Mantua to Rome. From Rome he went to Naples at the beginning of the following year, worked at the Conquistata, and began his poem of the Sette Giornate.[60] He was always occupied with the vain hope of recovering a portion of his mother's estate. April saw him once more upon his way to Rome. Clement VIII. had been elected, and Tasso expected patronage from the Papal nephews.[61]

[Footnote 57: Lettere, vol. iv. p. 147.]

[Footnote 58: Ibid. p. 229.]

[Footnote 59: Lettere, vol. iv. p. 315.]

[Footnote 60: Yet he now felt that his genius had expired. 'Non posso piu fare un verso: la vena e secca, e l'ingegno e stanco' (Lettere, vol. v. p. 90).]

[Footnote 61: During the whole period of his Roman residence, Tasso, like his father in similar circumstances, hankered after ecclesiastical honors. His letters refer frequently to this ambition. He felt the parallel between himself and Bernardo Tasso: 'La mia depressa condizione, e la mia infelicita, quasi ereditaria' (vol. iv. p. 288).]

He was not disappointed. They received him into their houses, and for a while he sojourned in the Vatican. The year 1593 seems, through their means, to have been one of comparative peace and prosperity. Early in the summer of 1594 his health obliged him to seek change of air. He went for the last time to Naples. The Cardinal of S. Giorgio, one of the Pope's nephews, recalled him in November to be crowned poet in Rome. His entrance into the Eternal City was honorable, and Clement granted him a special audience; but the ceremony of coronation had to be deferred because of the Cardinal's ill health.

Meanwhile his prospects seemed likely to improve. Clement conferred on him a pension of one hundred ducats, and the Prince of Avellino, who had detained his mother's estate, compounded with him for a life-income of two hundred ducats. This good fortune came in the spring of 1595. But it came too late; for his death-illness was upon him. On the first of April he had himself transported to the convent of S. Onofrio, which overlooks Rome from the Janiculan hill. 'Torrents of rain were falling with a furious wind, when the carriage of Cardinal Cinzio was seen climbing the steep ascent. The badness of the weather made the fathers think there must be some grave cause for this arrival. So the prior and others hurried to the gate, where Tasso descended with considerable difficulty, greeting the monks with these words: 'I am come to die among you.''[62] The last of Tasso's letters, written to Antonio Costantini from S. Onofrio, has the quiet dignity of one who struggles for the last time with the frailty of his mortal nature.[63]

'What will my good lord Antonio say when he shall hear of his Tasso's death? The news, as I incline to think, will not be long in coming; for I feel that I have reached the end of life, being unable to discover any remedy for this tedious indisposition which has supervened on the many others I am used to—like a rapid torrent resistlessly sweeping me away. The time is past when I should speak of my stubborn fate, to mention not the world's ingratitude, which, however, has willed to gain the victory of bearing me to the grave a pauper; the while I kept on thinking that the glory which, despite of those that like it not, this age will inherit from my writings, would not have left me wholly without guerdon. I have had myself carried to this monastery of S. Onofrio; not only because the air is commended by physicians above that of any other part of Rome, but also as it were upon this elevated spot and by the conversation of these devout fathers to commence my conversation in heaven. Pray God for me; and rest assured that as I have loved and honored you always in the present life, so will I perform for you in that other and more real life what appertains not to feigned but to veritable charity. And to the Divine grace I recommend you and myself.'

[Footnote 62: Manso op. cit. p. 215.]

[Footnote 63: This letter proves conclusively that, whatever was the nature of Tasso's malady, and however it had enfeebled his faculties as poet, he was in no vulgar sense a lunatic.]

On April 25, Tasso expired at midnight, with the words In manus tuas, Domine, upon his lips. Had Costantini, his sincerest friend, been there, he might have said like Kent:

O, let him pass! he hates him much That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.

But Costantini was in Mantua; and this sonnet, which he had written for his master, remains Tasso's truest epitaph, the pithiest summary of a life pathetically tragic in its adverse fate—

Friends, this is Tasso, not the sire but son; For he of human offspring had no heed, Begetting for himself immortal seed Of art, style, genius and instruction.

In exile long he lived and utmost need; In palace, temple, school, he dwelt alone; He fled, and wandered through wild woods unknown; On earth, on sea, suffered in thought and deed.

He knocked at death's door; yet he vanquished him With lofty prose and with undying rhyme; But fortune not, who laid him where he lies.

Guerdon for singing loves and arms sublime, And showing truth whose light makes vices dim, Is one green wreath; yet this the world denies.

The wreath of laurel which the world grudged was placed upon his bier; and a simple stone, engraved with the words Hic jacet Torquatus Tassus, marked the spot where he was buried.

The foregoing sketch of Tasso's life and character differs in some points from the prevalent conceptions of the poet. There is a legendary Tasso, the victim of malevolent persecution by pedants, the mysterious lover condemned to misery in prison by a tyrannous duke. There is also a Tasso formed by men of learning upon ingeniously constructed systems; Rosini's Tasso, condemned to feign madness in punishment for courting Leonora d'Este with lascivious verses; Capponi's Tasso, punished for seeking to exchange the service of the House of Este for that of the House of Medici; a Tasso who was wholly mad; a Tasso who remained through life the victim of Jesuitical influences. In short, there are as many Tassos as there are Hamlets. Yet these Tassos of the legend and of erudition do not reproduce his self-revealed lineaments. Tasso's letters furnish documents of sufficient extent to make the real man visible, though something yet remains perhaps not wholly explicable in his tragedy.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE GERUSALEMME LIBERATA.

Problem of Creating Heroic Poetry—The Preface to Tasso's Rinaldo—Subject of Rinaldo—Blending of Romantic Motives with Heroic Style—Imitation of Virgil—Melody and Sentiment—Choice of Theme for the Gerusalemme—It becomes a Romantic Poem after all—Tancredi the real Hero—Nobility of Tone—Virgilian Imitation—Borrowings from Dante—Involved Diction—Employment of Sonorous Polysyllabic Words—Quality of Religious Emotion in this Poem—Rhetoric—Similes—The Grand Style of Pathos—Verbal Music—The Chant d'Amour—Armida—Tasso's Favorite Phrase, Un non so che—His Power over Melody and Tender Feeling—Critique of Tasso's Later Poems—General Survey of his Character.

In a previous portion of this work, I attempted to define the Italian Romantic Epic, and traced the tale of Orlando from Pulci through Boiardo and Ariosto to the burlesque of Folengo. There is an element of humor more or less predominant in the Morgante Maggiore, the Orlando Innamorato, and the Orlando Furioso. This element might almost be regarded as inseparable from the species. Yet two circumstances contributed to alter the character of Italian Romance after the publication of the Furioso. One of these was the unapproachable perfection of that poem. No one could hope to surpass Ariosto in his own style, or to give a fresh turn to his humor without passing into broad burlesque. The romantic poet had therefore to choose between sinking into parody with Folengo and Aretino, or soaring into the sublimities of solemn art. Another circumstance was the keen interest aroused in academic circles by Trissino's unsuccessful epic, and by the discussion of heroic poetry which it stimulated. The Italian nation was becoming critical, and this critical spirit lent itself readily to experiments in hybrid styles of composition which aimed at combining the graces of the Romantic with the dignity of the Heroic poem. The most meritorious of these hybrids was Bernardo Tasso's Amadigi, a long romance in octave stanzas, sustained upon a grave tone throughout, and distinguished from the earlier romantic epics by a more obvious unity of subject. Bernardo Tasso possessed qualities of genius and temper which suited his proposed task. Deficient in humor, he had no difficulty in eliminating that element from the Amadigi. Chivalrous sentiment took the place of irony; scholarly method supplied the want of wayward fancy.

It was just at this point that the young Torquato Tasso made his first essay in poetry. He had inherited his father's temperament, its want of humor, its melancholy, its aristocratic sensitiveness. At the age of seventeen he was already a ripe scholar, versed in the critical questions which then agitated learned coteries in Italy. The wilding graces and the freshness of the Romantic Epic, as conceived by Boiardo and perfected by Ariosto, had forever disappeared. To 'recapture that first fine careless rapture' was impossible. Contemporary conditions of society and thought rendered any attempt to do so futile. Italy had passed into a different stage of culture; and the representative poem of Tasso's epoch was imperatively forced to assume a different character. Its type already existed in the Amadigi, though Bernardo Tasso had not the genius to disengage it clearly, or to render it attractive. How Torquato, while still a student in his teens at Padua, attacked the problem of narrative poetry, appears distinctly in his preface to Rinaldo. 'I believe,' he says, 'that you, my gentle readers, will not take it amiss if I have diverged from the path of modern poets, and have sought to approach the best among the ancients. You shall not, however, find that I am bound by the precise rules of Aristotle, which often render those poems irksome which might otherwise have yielded you much pleasure. I have only followed such of his precepts as do not limit your delight: for instance, in the frequent use of episodes, making the characters talk in their own persons, introducing recognitions and peripeties by necessary or plausible motives, and withdrawing the poet as far as possible from the narration. I have also endeavored to construct my poem with unity of interest and action, not, indeed, in any strict sense, but so that the subordinate portions should be seen to have their due relation to the whole.' He then proceeds to explain why he has abandoned the discourses on moral and general topics with which Ariosto opened his Cantos, and hints that he has taken Virgil, the 'Prince of Poets,' for his model. Thus the Romantic Epic, as conceived by Tasso, was to break with the tradition of the Cantastorie, who told the tale in his own person and introduced reflections on its incidents. It was to aim at unity of subject and to observe classical rules of art, without, however, sacrificing the charm of variety and those delights which episodes and marvelous adventures yielded to a modern audience. The youthful poet begs that his Rinaldo should not be censured on the one hand by severely Aristotelian critics who exclude pleasure from their ideal, or on the other by amateurs who regard the Orlando Furioso as the perfection of poetic art. In a word, he hopes to produce something midway between the strict heroic epic, which had failed in Trissino's Italia Liberata through dullness, and the genuine romantic epic, which in Ariosto's masterpiece diverged too widely from the rules of classical pure taste. This new species, combining the attractions of romance with the simplicity of epic poetry, was the gift which Tasso at the age of eighteen sought to present in his Rinaldo to Italy. The Rinaldo fulfilled fairly well the conditions propounded by its author. It had a single hero and a single subject—

Canto i felici affanni, e i primi ardori, Che giovinetto ancor soffri Rinaldo, E come il trasse in perigliosi errori Desir di gloria ed amoroso caldo.

The perilous achievements and the passion of Rinaldo in his youth form the theme of a poem which is systematically evolved from the first meeting of the son of Amon with Clarice to their marriage under the auspices of Malagigi. There are interesting episodes like those of young Florindo and Olinda, unhappy Clizia and abandoned Floriana. Rinaldo's combat with Orlando in the Christian camp furnishes an anagnorisis; while the plot is brought to its conclusion by the peripeteia of Clarice's jealousy and the accidents which restore her to her lover's arms. Yet though observant of his own classical rules, Tasso remained in all essential points beneath the spell of the Romantic Epic. The changes which he introduced were obvious to none but professional critics. In warp and woof the Rinaldo is similar to Boiardo's and Ariosto's tale of chivalry; only the loom is narrower, and the pattern of the web less intricate. The air of artlessness which lent its charm to Romance in Italy has disappeared, yielding place to sustained elaboration of Latinizing style. Otherwise the fabric remains substantially unaltered—like a Gothic dwelling furnished with Palladian window-frames. We move in the old familiar sphere of Paladins and Paynims, knights errant and Oriental damsels, magicians and distressed maidens. The action is impelled by the same series of marvelous adventures and felicitous mishaps. There are the same encounters in war and rivalries in love between Christian and Pagan champions; journeys through undiscovered lands and over untracked oceans; fantastic hyperboles of desire, ambition, jealousy, and rage, employed as motive passions. Enchanted forests; fairy ships that skim the waves without helm or pilot; lances endowed with supernatural virtues; charmed gardens of perpetual spring; dismal dungeons and glittering palaces, supply the furniture of this romance no less than of its predecessors. Rinaldo, like any other hero of the Renaissance, is agitated by burning thirst for fame and blind devotion to a woman's beauty. We first behold him pining in inglorious leisure[64]:—

Poi, ch'oprar non poss'io che di me s'oda Con mia gloria ed onor novella alcuna, O cosa, ond' io pregio n'acquisti e loda, E mia fama rischiari oscura e bruna.

The vision of Clarice, appearing like Virgil's Camilla, stirs him from this lethargy. He falls in love at first sight, as Tasso's heroes always do, and vows to prove himself her worthy knight by deeds of unexampled daring. Thus the plot is put in motion; and we read in well-appointed order how the hero acquired his horse, Baiardo, Tristram's magic lance, his sword Fusberta from Atlante, his armor from Orlando, the trappings of his charger from the House of Courtesy, the ensign of the lion rampant on his shield from Chiarello, and the hand of his lady after some delays from Malagigi.

[Footnote 64: Canto i. 17.]

No new principle is introduced into the romance. As in earlier poems of this species, the religious motive of Christendom at war with Islam becomes a mere machine; the chivalrous environment affords a vehicle for fanciful adventures. Humor, indeed, is conspicuous by its absence. Charles the Great assumes the sobriety of empire; and his camp, in its well-ordered gravity, prefigures that of Goffredo in the Gerusalemme.[65] Thus Tasso's originality must not be sought in the material of his work, which is precisely that of the Italian romantic school in general, nor yet in its form, which departs from the romantic tradition in details so insignificant as to be inessential. We find it rather in his touch upon the old material, in his handling of the familiar form. The qualities of style, sympathy, sentiment, selection in the use of phrase and image, which determined his individuality as a poet, rendered the Rinaldo a novelty in literature. It will be therefore well to concentrate attention for a while upon those subjective peculiarities by right of which the Rinaldo ranks as a precursor of the Gerusalemme.

The first and the most salient of these is a pronounced effort to heighten style by imitation of Latin poets. The presiding genius of the work is Virgil. Pulci's racy Florentine idiom; Boiardo's frank and natural Lombard manner; Ariosto's transparent and unfettered modern phrase, have been supplanted by a pompous intricacy of construction.

[Footnote 65: Canto vi. 64-9.]

The effort to impose Latin rules of syntax on Italian is obvious in such lines as the following:[66]

Torre ei l'immagin volle, che sospesa Era presso l'altar gemmato e sacro, Ove in chiaro cristal lampade accesa Fea lume di Ciprigna al simulacro:

or in these:

Umida i gigli e le vermiglie rose Del volto, e gli occhi bei conversa al piano, Gli occhi, onde in perle accolto il pianto uscia, La giovinetta il cavalier seguia.

Virgil is directly imitated, where he is least worthy of imitation, in the details of his battle-pieces. Thus:[67]

Si riversa Isolier tremando al piano, Privo di senso e di vigore ignudo, Ed a lui gli occhi oscura notte involve, Ed ogni membro ancor se gli dissolve.

* * * * *

Quel col braccio sospeso in aria stando, Ne lo movendo a questa o a quella parte, Che dalla spada cio gli era conteso, Voto sembrava in sacro tempio appeso.

* * * * *

Mentre ignaro di cio che 'l ciel destine, Cosi diceva ancor, la lancia ultrice Rinaldo per la bocca entro gli mise, E la lingua e 'l parlar per mezzo incise.

This Virgilian imitation yields some glowing flowers of poetry in longer passages of description. Among these may be cited the conquest of Baiardo in the second canto, the shipwreck in the tenth, the chariot of Pluto in the fourth, and the supper with queen Floriana in the ninth.

[Footnote 66: Canto iii. 40, 45.]

[Footnote 67: Canto ii. 22, iv. 28, 33.]

The episode of Floriana, while closely studied upon the Aeneid, is also a first sketch for that of Armida. Indeed, it should be said in passing that Tasso anticipates the Gerusalemme throughout the Rinaldo. The murder of Anselmo by Rinaldo (Canto XI.) forecasts the murder of Gernando by his namesake, and leads to the same result of the hero's banishment. The shipwreck, the garden of courtesy, the enchanted boat, and the charmed forest, are motives which reappear improved and elaborated in Tasso's masterpiece.[68]

While Tasso thus sought to heighten diction by Latinisms, he revealed another specific quality of his manner in Rinaldo. This is the inability to sustain heroic style at its ambitious level. He frequently drops at the close of the octave stanza into a prosaic couplet, which has all the effect of bathos. Instances are not far to seek:[69]

Gia tal insegna acquisto l'avo, e poi La portar molti de'nipoti suoi. * * * * * E a questi segni ed al crin raro e bianco Monstrava esser dagli anni oppresses e stanco. * * * * * Fu qui vicin dal saggio Alchiso il Mago, Di far qualch'opra memorabil vago. * * * * * Io son Rinaldo, Solo di servir voi bramoso e caldo.

[Footnote 68: Rinaldo, cantos x. vii.]

[Footnote 69: Canto i. 25, 31, 41, 64.]

The reduplication of epithets, and the occasional use of long sonorous Latin words, which characterize Tasso's later manner, are also noticeable in these couplets. Side by side with such weak endings should be placed some specimens, no less characteristic, of vigorous and noble lines:[70]

Nel cor consiston l'armi, Onde il forte non e chi mai disarmi. * * * * * Si sta placido e cheto, Ma serba dell'altiero nel mansueto.

If the Rinaldo prefigures Tasso's maturer qualities of style, it is no less conspicuous for the light it throws upon his eminent poetic faculty. Nothing distinguished him more decidedly from the earlier romantic poets than power over pathetic sentiment conveyed in melodious cadences of oratory. This emerges in Clarice's monologue on love and honor, that combat of the soul which forms a main feature of the lyrics in Aminta and of Erminia's episode in the Gerusalemme.[71] This steeps the whole story of Clizia in a delicious melancholy, foreshadowing the death-scene of Clorinda.[72] This rises in the father's lamentation over his slain Ugone, into the music of a threnody that now recalls Euripides and now reminds us of mediaeval litanies.[73] Censure might be passed upon rhetorical conceits and frigid affectations in these characteristic outpourings of pathetic feeling. Yet no one can ignore their liquid melody, their transference of emotion through sound into modulated verse.

[Footnote 70: Rinaldo, Canto ii. 28, 44.]

[Footnote 71: Canto ii. 3-11.]

[Footnote 72: Canto vii. 16-51.]

[Footnote 73: Canto vii. 3-11.]

That lyrical outcry, finding rhythmic utterance for tender sentiment, which may be recognized as Tasso's chief addition to romantic poetry, pierces like a song through many passages of mere narration. Rinaldo, while carrying Clarice away upon Baiardo, with no chaste intention in his heart, bids her thus dry her tears:[74]

Egli dice: Signora, onde vi viene Si spietato martir, si grave affanno? Perche le luci angeliche e serene Ricopre della doglia oscuro panno? Forse fia l'util vostro e 'l vostro bene Quel ch'or vi sembra insupportabil danno, Deh! per Dio, rasciugate il caldo pianto. E l'atroce dolor temprate alquanto.

It is not that we do not find similar lyrical interbreathings in the narrative of Ariosto. But Tasso developed the lyrism of the octave stanza into something special, lulling the soul upon gentle waves of rising and falling rhythm, foreshadowing the coming age of music in cadences that are untranslateable except by vocal melody. In like manner, the idyl, which had played a prominent part in Boiardo's and in Ariosto's romance, detaches itself with a peculiar sweetness from the course of Tasso's narrative. This appears in the story of Florindo, which contains within itself the germ of the Aminta, the Pastor Fido and the Adone.[75] Together with the bad taste of the artificial pastoral, its preposterous costume (stanza 13), its luxury of tears (stanza 23), we find the tyranny of kisses (stanzas 28, 52), the yearning after the Golden Age (stanza 29), and all the other apparatus of that operatic species. Tasso was the first poet to bathe Arcady in a golden afternoon light of sensuously sentimental pathos. In his idyllic as in his lyrical interbreathings, melody seems absolutely demanded to interpret and complete the plangent rhythm of his dulcet numbers. Emotion so far predominates over intelligence, so yearns to exhale itself in sound and shun the laws of language, that we find already in Rinaldo Tasso's familiar Non so che continually used to adumbrate sentiments for which plain words are not indefinite enough.

[Footnote 74: Canto iv. 47.]

[Footnote 75: Canto v. 12-57.]

The Rinaldo was a very remarkable production for a young man of eighteen. It showed the poet in possession of his style and displayed the specific faculties of his imagination. Nothing remained for Tasso now but to perfect and develop the type of art which he had there created. Soon after his first settlement in Ferrara, he began to meditate a more ambitious undertaking. His object was to produce the heroic poem for which Italy had long been waiting, and in this way to rival or surpass the fame of Ariosto. Trissino had chosen a national subject for his epic; but the Italia Liberata was an acknowledged failure, and neither the past nor the present conditions of the Italian people offered good material for a serious poem. The heroic enthusiasms of the age were religious. Revived Catholicism had assumed an attitude of defiance. The Company of Jesus was declaring its crusade against heresy and infidelity throughout the world. Not a quarter of a century had elapsed since Charles V. attacked the Mussulman in Tunis; and before a few more years had passed, the victory of Lepanto was to be won by Italian and Spanish navies. Tasso, therefore, obeyed a wise instinct when he made choice of the first crusade for his theme, and of Godfrey of Boulogne for his hero. Having to deal with historical facts, he studied the best authorities in chronicles, ransacked such books of geography and travel as were then accessible, paid attention to topography, and sought to acquire what we now call local coloring for the details of his poem. Without the sacrifice of truth in any important point, he contrived to give unity to the conduct of his narrative, while interweaving a number of fictitious characters and marvelous circumstances with the historical personages and actual events of the crusade. The vital interest of the Gerusalemme Liberata flows from this interpolated material, from the loves of Rinaldo and Tancredi, from the adventures of the Pagan damsels Erminia, Armida and Clorinda. The Gerusalemme is in truth a Virgilian epic, upon which a romantic poem has been engrafted. Goffredo, idealized into statuesque frigidity, repeats the virtues of Aeneas; but the episode of Dido, which enlivens Virgil's hero, is transferred to Rinaldo's part in Tasso's story. The battles of Crusaders and Saracens are tedious copies of the battle in the tenth Aeneid; but the duels of Tancredi with Clorinda and Argante breathe the spirit and the fire of chivalry. The celestial and infernal councils, adopted as machinery, recall the rival factions in Olympus; but the force by which the plot moves is love. Pluto and the angel Gabriel are inactive by comparison with Armida, Erminia and Clorinda. Tasso in truth thought that he was writing a religious and heroic poem. What he did write, was a poem of sentiment and passion—a romance. Like Anacreon he might have cried:

thelo legein Atreidas thelo de Kadmon adein, ha barbitos de chordais Erota mounon echei.

He displayed, indeed, marvelous ingenuity and art in so connecting the two strains of his subject, the stately Virgilian history and the glowing modern romance, that they should contribute to the working of a single plot. Yet he could not succeed in vitalizing the former, whereas the latter will live as long as human interest in poetry endures. No one who has studied the Gerusalemme returns with pleasure to Goffredo, or feels that the piety of the Christian heroes is inspired. He skips canto after canto dealing with the crusade, to dwell upon those lyrical outpourings of love, grief, anguish, vain remorse and injured affection which the supreme poet of sentiment has invented for his heroines; he recognizes the genuine inspiration of Erminia's pastoral idyl, of Armida's sensuous charms, of Clorinda's dying words, of the Siren's song and the music of the magic bird: of all, in fact, which is not pious in the poem.

Tancredi, between Erminia and Clorinda, the one woman adoring him, the other beloved by him—the melancholy graceful modern Tancredi, Tasso's own soul's image—is the veritable hero of the Gerusalemme; and by a curious unintended propriety he disappears from the action before the close, without a word. The force of the poem is spiritualized and concentrated in Clorinda's death, which may be cited as an instance of sublimity in pathos. It is idyllized in the episode of Erminia among the shepherds, and sensualized in the supreme beauty of Armida's garden. Rinaldo is second in importance to Tancredi; and Goffredo, on whom Tasso bestows the blare of his Virgilian trumpet from the first line to the last, is poetically of no importance whatsoever. Argante, Solimano, Tisaferno, excite our interest, and win the sympathy we cannot spare the saintly hero; and in the death of Solimano Tasso's style, for once, verges upon tragic sublimity.

What Tasso aimed at in the Gerusalemme was nobility. This quality had not been prominent in Ariosto's art. If he could attain it, his ambition to rival the Orlando Furioso would be satisfied. One main condition of success Tasso brought to the achievement. His mind itself was eminently noble, incapable of baseness, fixed on fair and worthy objects of contemplation. Yet the personal nobility which distinguished him as a thinker and a man, was not of the heroic type. He had nothing Homeric in his inspiration, nothing of the warrior or the patriot in his nature. His genius, when it pursued its bias, found instinctive utterance in elegy and idyl, in meditative rhetoric and pastoral melody. In order to assume the heroic strain, Tasso had recourse to scholarship, and gave himself up blindly to the guidance of Latin poets. This was consistent with the tendency of the Classical Revival; but since the subject to be dignified by epic style was Christian and mediaeval, a discord between matter and manner amounting almost to insincerity resulted. Some examples will make the meaning of this criticism more apparent. When Goffredo rejects the embassy of Atlete and Argante, he declares his firm intention of delivering Jerusalem in spite of overwhelming perils. The crusaders can but perish:

Noi morirem, ma non morremo inulti. (i. 86.)

This of course is a reminiscence of Dido's last words, and the difference between the two situations creates a disagreeable incongruity. The nod of Jove upon Olympus is translated to express the fiat of the Almighty (xiii. 74); Gabriel is tricked out in the plumes and colors of Mercury (i. 13-15); the very angels sinning round the throne become 'dive sirene' (xiv. 9); the armory of heaven is described in terms which reduce Michael's spear and the arrows of pestilence to ordinary weapons (vii. 81); Hell is filled with harpies, centaurs, hydras, pythons, the common lumber of classical Tartarus (iv. 5); the angel sent to cure Goffredo's wound culls dittany on Ida (xi. 72); the heralds, interposing between Tancredi and Argante, hold pacific scepters and have naught of chivalry (vi. 51). It may be said that both Dante before Tasso, and Milton after him, employed similar classical language in dealing with Christian and mediaeval motives. But this will hardly serve as an excuse; for Dante and Milton communicate so intense a conviction of religious earnestness that their Latinisms, even though incongruous, are recognized as the mere clothing of profoundly felt ideas. The sublimity, the seriousness, the spiritual dignity is in their thought, not in its expression; whereas Tasso too frequently leaves us with the certainty that he has sought by ceremonious language to realize more than he could grasp with the imagination. In his council of the powers of hell, for instance, he creates monsters of huge dimensions and statuesque distinctness; but these are neither grotesquely horrible like Dante's, nor are they spirits with incalculable capacity for evil like Milton's.

Stampano alcuni il suol di ferine orme, E in fronte umana ban chiome d'angui attorte; E lor s'aggira dietro immensa coda, Che quasi sferza si ripiega e snoda.

Against this we have to place the dreadful scene of Satan with his angels transformed to snakes (Par. Lost, x. 508-584), and the Dantesque horror of the 'vermo reo che 'l mondo fora' (Inf. xxxiv. 108). Again when Dante cries—

O Sommo Giove, Che fosti in terra per noi crocifisso!

we feel that the Latin phrase is accidental. The spirit of the poet remains profoundly Christian. Tasso's Jehovah-Jupiter is always 'il Re del Ciel'; and the court of blessed spirits which surrounds his 'gran seggio,' though described with solemn pomp of phrase, cannot be compared with the Mystic Rose of Paradise (ix. 55-60). What Tasso lacks is authenticity of vision; and his heightened style only renders this imaginative poverty, this want of spiritual conviction, more apparent.

His frequent borrowings from Virgil are less unsuccessful when the matter to be illustrated is not of this exalted order. Many similes (vii. 55, vii. 76, viii. 74) have been transplanted with nice propriety. Many descriptions, like that of the approach of night (ii-96), of the nightingale mourning for her young (xii. 90), of the flying dream (xiv. 6), have been translated with exquisite taste. Dido's impassioned apostrophe to Aeneas reappears appropriately upon Armida's lips (xvi. 56). We welcome such culled phrases as the following:

l'orticel dispensa Cibi non compri alia mia parca mensa (vii. 10).

Premer gli alteri, e sollevar gl'imbelli (x. 76).

E Tisaferno, il folgore di Marte (xvii. 31).

Va, vedi, e vinci (xvii. 38).

Ma mentre dolce parla e dolce ride (iv. 92).

Che vinta la materia e dal lavoro (xvi. 2).

Non temo io te, ne tuoi gran vanti, o fero: Ma il Cielo e il mio nemico amor pavento (xix. 73).

It may, however, be observed that in the last of these passages Tasso does not show a just discriminative faculty. Turnus said:

Non me tua fervida terrent Dicta, ferox: Di me terrent et Jupiter hostis.

From Jupiter to Amor is a descent from sublimity to pathos. In like manner when Hector's ghost reappears in the ghost of Armida's mother,

Quanto diversa, oime, da quel che pria Visto altrove (iv. 49),

the reminiscence suggests ideas that are unfavorable to the modern version.

In his description of battles, the mustering of armies, and military operations, Tasso neither draws from mediaeval sources nor from experience, but imitates the battle-pieces of Virgil and Lucan, sometimes with fine rhetorical effect and sometimes with wearisome frigidity. The death of Latino and his five sons is both touching in itself, and a good example of this Virgilian mannerism (ix. 35). The death of Dudone is justly celebrated as a sample of successful imitation (iii. 45):

Cade; e gli occhi, ch'appena aprir si ponno, Dura quiete preme e ferreo sonno.

The wound of Gerniero, on the contrary, illustrates the peril of seeking after conceits in the inferior manner of the master (ix. 69):

La destra di Gerniero, onde ferita Ella fu pria, manda recisa al piano; Tratto anco il ferro, e con tremanti dita Semiviva nel suol guizza la mano.

The same may be said about the wound of Algazel (ix. 78) and the death of Ardonio (xx. 39). In the description of the felling of the forest (iii. 75, 76) and of the mustering of the Egyptian army (xvii. 1-36) Tasso's Virgilian style attains real grandeur and poetic beauty.

Tasso was nothing if not a learned poet. It would be easy to illustrate what he has borrowed from Lucretius, or to point out that the pathos of Clorinda's apparition to Tancredi after death is a debt to Petrarch. It may, however, suffice here to indicate six phrases taken straight from Dante; since the Divine Comedy was little studied in Tasso's age, and his selection of these lines reflects credit on his taste. These are:

Onorate l'altissimo campione! (iii. 73: Inf. iv.)

Goffredo intorno gli occhi gravi e tardi (vii. 58: Inf.. iv.).

a riveder le stelle (iv. 18: Inf. xxxiv.).

Ond' e ch'or tanto ardire in voi s'alletti? (ix. 76: Inf. ix.)

A guisa di leon quando si posa (x. 56: Purg. vi.)

e guardi e passi (xx. 43: Inf. in.)

As in the Rinaldo, so also in the Gerusalemme, Tasso's classical proclivities betrayed him into violation of the clear Italian language. Afraid of what is natural and common, he produced what is artificial and conceited. Hence came involved octaves like the following (vi. 109):

Siccome cerva, ch'assetata il passo Mova a cercar d'acque lucenti e vive, Ove un bel fonte distillar da un sasso O vide un fiume tra frondose rive, Se incontra i cani allor che il corpo lasso Ristorar crede all'onde, all'ombre estive, Volge indietro fuggendo, e la paura La stanchezza obbliar face e l'arsura.

The image is beautiful; but the diction is elaborately intricate, rhetorically indistinct. We find the same stylistic involution in these lines (xii. 6):

Ma s'egli avverra pur che mia ventura Nel mio ritorno mi rinchiuda il passo, D'uom che in amor m'e padre a te la cura E delle fide mie donzelle io lasso.

The limpid well of native utterance is troubled at its source by scholastic artifices in these as in so many other passages of Tasso's masterpiece. Nor was he yet emancipated from the weakness of Rinaldo. Trying to soar upon the borrowed plumes of pseudo-classical sublimity, he often fell back wearied by this uncongenial effort into prose. Lame endings to stanzas, sudden descents from highly-wrought to pedestrian diction, are not uncommon in the Gerusalemme. The poet, diffident of his own inspiration, sought inspiration from books. In the magnificence of single lines again, the Gerusalemme reminds us of Rinaldo. Tasso gained dignity of rhythm by choosing Latin adjectives and adverbs with pompous cadences. No versifier before his date had consciously employed the sonorous music of such lines as the following:—

Foro, tentando inaccessibil via (ii. 29).

Ond' Amor l'arco inevitabil tende (iii. 24).

Questa muraglia impenetrabil fosse (iii. 51).

Furon vedute fiammeggiare insieme (v. 28).

Qual capitan ch'inespugnabil terra (v. 64).

Sotto l'inevitabile tua spada (xvi. 33).

Immense solitudini d'arena (xvii. I).

The last of these lines presents an impressive landscape in three melodious words.

These verbal and stylistic criticisms are not meant to cast reproach on Tasso as a poet. If they have any value, it is the light they throw upon conditions under which the poet was constrained to work. Humanism and the Catholic Revival reduced this greatest genius of his age to the necessity of clothing religious sentiments in scholastic phraseology, with the view of attaining to epic grandeur. But the Catholic Revival was no regeneration of Christianity from living sources; and humanism had run its course in Italy, and was ending in the sands of critical self-consciousness. Thus piety in Tasso appears superficial and conventional rather than profoundly felt or originally vigorous; while the scholarship which supplied his epic style is scrupulous and timid.

The enduring qualities of Tasso as a modern poet have still to be indicated; and to this more grateful portion of my argument I now address myself. Much might be said in the first place about his rhetorical dexterity—the flexibility of language in his hands, and the copiousness of thought, whereby he was able to adorn varied situations and depict diversity of passions with appropriate diction. Whether Alete is subtly pleading a seductive cause, or Goffredo is answering his sophistries with well-weighed arguments; whether Pluto addresses the potentates of hell, or Erminia wavers between love and honor; whether Tancredi pours forth the extremity of his despair, or Armida heaps reproaches on Rinaldo in his flight; the musical and luminously polished stanzas lend themselves without change of style to every gradation of the speaker's mood. In this art of rhetoric, Tasso seems to have taken Livy for his model; and many of his speeches which adorn the graver portions of his poem are noticeable for compact sententious wisdom.

In fancy Tasso was not so naturally rich and inventive as the author of Orlando Furioso. Yet a gallery of highly-finished pictures might be collected from his similes and metaphors. What pride and swiftness mark this vision of a thunderbolt:

Grande ma breve fulmine il diresti, Che inaspettato sopraggiunga e passi; Ma del suo corso momentaneo resti Vestigio eterno in dirupati sassi (xx. 93).

How delicately touched is this uprising of the morning star from ocean:

Qual mattutina Stella esce dell'onde Rugiadosa e stillante; o come fuore Spunto nascendo gia dalle feconde Spume dell'ocean la Dea d'amore (xv. 60).

Here is an image executed in the style of Ariosto. Clorinda has received a wound on her uncovered head:

Fu levissima piaga, e i biondi crini Rosseggiaron cosi d'alquante stille, Come rosseggia l'or che di rubini Per man d'illustre artefice sfaville (iii. 30).

Flowers furnish the poet with exquisite suggestions of color:

D'un bel pallor ha il bianco volto asperso, Come a gigli sarian miste viole (xii. 69).

Quale a pioggia d'argento e mattutina Si rabbellisce scolorita rosa (xx. 129).

Sometimes the painting is minutely finished like a miniature:

Cosi piuma talor, che di gentile Amorosa colomba il collo cinge, Mai non si scorge a se stessa simile, Ma in diversi colori al sol si tinge: Or d'accesi rubin sembra un monile, Or di verdi smeraldi il lume finge, Or insieme li mesce, e varia e vaga In cento modi i riguardanti appaga (xv. 5).

Sometimes the style is broad, the touch vigorous:

Qual feroce destrier, ch'al faticoso Onor dell'arme vincitor sia tolto, E lascivo marito in vil riposo Fra gli armenti e ne'paschi erri disciolto,

Se il desta o suon di tromba, o luminoso Acciar, cola tosto annitrendo e volto; Gia gia brama l'arringo, el'uom sul dorso Portando, urtato riurtar nel corso (xvi. 28).

I will content myself with referring to the admirably conceived simile of a bulky galleon at sea attacked by a swifter and more agile vessel (xix. 13), which may perhaps have suggested to Fuller his famous comparison of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson in their wit encounters.

But Tasso was really himself, incomparable and unapproachable, when he wrote in what musicians would call the largo e maestoso mood.

Giace l'alta Cartago; appena i segni Dell'alte sue ruine il lido serba. Muoino le citta, muoino i regni; Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba; E l'uomo d'esser mortal par che si sdegni! Oh nostra mente cupida e superba! (xv. 20).

This is perfect in its measured melancholy, the liquid flow of its majestic simplicity. The same musical breadth, the same noble sweetness, pervade a passage on the eternal beauty of the heavens compared with the brief brightness of a woman's eyes:

oh quante belle Luci il tempio celeste in se raguna! Ha il suo gran carro il di; le aurate stelle Spiega la notte e l'argentata luna; Ma non e chi vagheggi o questa o quelle; E miriam noi torbida luce e bruna, Che un girar d'occhi, un balenar di riso Scopre in breve confin di fragil viso (xviii. 15).

This verbal music culminates in the two songs of earthly joy, the chants d'amour, or hymns to pleasure, sung by Armida's ministers (xiv. 60-65, xvi. 12, 13). Boiardo and Ariosto had painted the seductions of enchanted gardens, where valor was enthralled by beauty, and virtue dulled by voluptuous delights. It remained for Tasso to give that magic of the senses vocal utterance. From the myrtle groves of Orontes, from the spell-bound summer amid snows upon the mountains of the Fortunate Isle, these lyrics with their penetrative sweetness, their lingering regret, pass into the silence of the soul. It is eminently characteristic of Tasso's mood and age that the melody of both these honeyed songs should thrill with sadness. Nature is at war with honor; youth passes like a flower away; therefore let us love and yield our hearts to pleasure while we can. Sehnsucht, the soul of modern sentiment, the inner core of modern music, makes its entrance into the sphere of art with these two hymns. The division of the mind, wavering between natural impulse and acquired morality, gives the tone of melancholy to the one chant. In the other, the invitation to self-abandonment is mingled with a forecast of old age and death. Only Catullus, in his song to Lesbia, among the ancients touched this note; only Villon, perhaps, in his Ballade of Dead Ladies, touched it among the moderns before Tasso. But it has gone on sounding ever since through centuries which have enjoyed the luxury of grief in music.