Tasso.

Torquato Tasso was born at Sorrento on the eleventh of March, 1544, and died in Rome on the twenty-fifth of April, 1595, aged fifty-one. He belonged to an old family of Bergamo, and was a poet's son. His father, Bernardo Tasso, full fifty years old at the time of his son's birth, had then been for thirteen years in the service of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, and had married in 1536 the beautiful and spiritual Porzia de' Rossi, of the house of the Marquises of Calenzano. Their son Torquato was first educated at schools of the Jesuits in Naples, Rome, and Bergamo. They were the best schools of the time. At eight years old the boy read Greek and Latin, and had begun to write Italian verse.

Bernardo Tasso, involved in the troubles of his patron, who was exiled from Salerno, went to France, leaving his wife and children to the care of relatives. After two years in France he joined his prince in Rome, and sent for his son Torquato, his wife and daughter then entering a convent at Naples. Torquato Tasso wrote a little sonnet to his mother on their parting. Political feuds parted Bernardo Tasso from his wife's relations. He could never see his wife again--she died broken-hearted in 1556-and his daughter was denied to him: she was married at fifteen. Rome became an unsafe place for the father when Emperor and Pope fell out, but shelter was offered to him at Pesaro by a liberal patron of literature, the Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo II., and it was thus that Torquato Tasso was taught with the Duke of Urbino's son, Francesco Maria della Rovere.

Bernardo Tasso's poem, "L'Amadigi di Francia," founded on the first and best of the Spanish romances of chivalry, "Amadis of Gaul," was begun with encouragement from his patron Sanseverino, and was planned in stanzas of octave rhyme on a scale as large as that of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," of which the first forty cantos had been published

in 1515. Bernardo Tasso's "Amadigi" was first published. at Bergamo in 1555, when his son Torquato was a boy of eleven. The "Amadigi" had been two years before the public when Torquato, poet born, went from a rhymer's home to study law at Padua. This was a year after his mother's death. At Padua he studied little law, much Dante, and wrote verse. His father's long romance in verse told of the loves of Amadis and Oriana, with interwoven love-stories of Floridante and Floridora, and of Alidoro and Mirinda. It was followed by nineteen cantos of a separate poem of "Floridante," worked out of the episode in the "Amadigi," and including a repetition of eight of its cantos with little change. "Floridante" was left unfinished, and published by the son after the father's death.

It was of little use for such a father to dissuade his son from writing verse. Young Tasso, while a student at Padua, but eighteen years old, printed at Venice in 1562 "Rinaldo." an epic poem in twelve books on one of Ariosto's heroes, "Rinaldo." The poem was written in ten months, was praised throughout Italy, and found more readers than Bernardo's "Amadigi." In the "Amadigi " musical verse and grace of expression, with abundant supply of battles, combats, and love-passages, could not atone for want of skill in twisting the threads of the fable. The success of his son's "Rinaldo" satisfied Bernardo Tasso as a crowning argument against continuance of the law. studies. Free way was made for literature and philosophy, and already, while student at Padua, Torquato Tasso resolved upon the poem which became his masterpiece.

Torquato Tasso left Padua to continue studies of philosophy and literature at Bologna. There he began to write the poem on the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders which had been resolved upon at Padua. At Bologna he was suspected of the authorship of satirical verses that attacked himself as well

"Goffredo."

as others. They amused him, and his goodwill to them caused his papers to be seized and searched. Nothing was found against him, but his annoyance caused him to leave Bologna for Modena, whence he was recalled to Padua by his kinsman and friend, Scipione Gonzaga, who was there founding an academy. Tasso was then zealous in study of Plato's philosophy, and he afterwards himself wrote Dialogues in Plato's manner. By the time that he was two-and-twenty Torquato Tasso was formally attached to the service of the great Italian house of Este, whose history he glorified in his "Jerusalem Delivered" (canto xvii. st. 66-94), as shown in the shield given to Rinaldo, Rinaldo being represented as himself of the Este family.

The Cardinal Luigi d'Este, brother of Alfonso II., invited the young poet to Ferrara, where he gave him the rank of noble as a Cavaliere of the Court. That was in 1565. In the next year there was the marriage of the Duke Alfonso II. with Barbara, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand I., who had taken in 1555 the throne resigned by his brother Charles V. While the wedding festivities were afoot the Pope died-Pius IV., who had been a Cardinal de' Medici. The Cardinal Luigi d'Este went to Rome to take part in the election of another Pope, and Tasso, then twenty-two years old, stayed behind, much liked by the duke and his new duchess and by the duke's sisters, Lucrezia-who afterwards became Duchess of Urbino--and Leonora d'Este. Young as he was, Tasso had won for himself the first place among Italian poets, and he was the son of a poet who perhaps ranked first among the minor singers between Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. Young Tasso, with religious earnestness, keen sensibility, and grace of song, won easy welcome at a Court where literature was in high esteem. The Duke of Ferrara encouraged Tasso to go on with his epic. In September, 1569, the elder Tasso died in his son's arms. In his last years he had found

rest as chief secretary to the Duke of Mantua, and he was, at the end of his life, Governor of Ostiglia.

In 1571 Torquato Tasso went to Paris with his patron the Cardinal Luigi d'Este. There he established friendship with the poet Ronsard, twenty years his senior, and was presented to Charles IX. as "the poet of Godfrey and other French heroes who distinguished themselves at the siege of Jerusalem." He had then written eight or nine cantos of his poem, and his age was twenty-seven.

"Aminta."

Upon his return Tasso was separated by religious opinions from the service of the Cardinal d'Este, but was easily received into the patronage of the duke, who gave him a yearly pension of 180 gold crowns, and required of him no personal service. In 1573 he produced at the ducal court in Ferrara his pastoral play of "Aminta," the fame of which spread beyond Italy, and confirmed the reputation won by his Rinaldo." The lyric beauty of "Aminta" allied the literature of the day in Italy to the new development in Tasso's time of the art of music. Meanwhile, Tasso was steadily proceeding towards the close of his "Goffredo," and had completed eighteen cantos in 1574, when he was struck down by fever. There was nothing in Torquato Tasso's life before this fever to indicate that his keen nervous sensibility had passed the bounds of health and grown into disease. With difficulty recovering the threads of his argument, Tasso finished his poem-which he then called "Goffredo at the age of thirty. Our English Spenser, about nine years younger than Tasso, was then a graduate still studying at Cambridge.

While the great poem was being finished, and the poet's health was weak, Alfonso II. increased his favours. He entertained Tasso as a guest in his villa at Belriguardo. The duke's sister, Lucrezia, gave him change of air with friendliest welcome in her Castle of Durante by Urbino.

When

separated from her husband and returned to her brother, she would have had the poet always of her household. And the time was come when he could be much aided by the friendship of women, for the troubled mind was growing restless with vain fears that came and went.

At first he had much anxiety about the orthodoxy of his poem. It must be submitted to the Pope for strict examination. He must go to Rome, against the advice and wish of the duke and the ladies, who sought to detain him. Leave was unwillingly given, and he went to Rome, where his kinsman, Scipione Gonzaga, introduced him to that Cardinal de' Medici who afterwards became Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Cardinal invited Tasso to enter his service, and Tasso went so far towards acceptance of the invitation that he fretted himself with fear lest he might be regarded as a traitor at Ferrara. He went back, and was kindly received. But his distress of mind increased. He had been submitting his poem in manuscript to the criticism of friends, and paid minute attention to all the poor and positive suggestions made by men who were no poets for improvement of a poet's work. This would have worried a sane man, if a sane man could have brought such trouble on himself. Then he suspected, and thereby provoked, hostilities; he thought himself surrounded by enemies who plotted against him; he thought that the Inquisition would pronounce his poem to be heretical. This disease of mind raised active quarrels, by one of which Tasso made an enemy who set upon him in the market-place; but the poet was a good swordsman, and put his attacker to flight. At last, his tendency to such delusions caused Tasso, in the chamber of the Duchess of Urbino, to draw his dagger against a servant whom he suspected of design to poison him. For this he was placed under arrest for a few days in his own chamber, and the excess was forgiven. Then he fancied himself an unpardonable heretic. duke introduced him to the

M-VOL. IX.

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