chief of the Inquisition at Ferrara, who, after making show of strict examination, satisfied the sick mind with a certificate of orthodoxy. But the need of direct ministration to a mind diseased had become so clear, that Tasso was placed for medical treatment in the Franciscan convent at Ferrara. Suspecting the monks of a design to poison him, he escaped from them next day, leaving all his papers behind, and having very little money with him. In shepherd's disguise he went to his sister Cornelia, then become a widow. She had not seen him since their childhood. He feigned to her that he was a messenger from her brother, whose life was in danger from the enemies by whom he was beset. She fainted, and her emotion gave him faith in her. He stayed for some months under her care, then pleaded for leave to go back into the duke's service at Ferrara. He was received again in 1578, but was not satisfied. In calmer hours, with pen in hand, he still had the full use of his genius; but the sick fancies that had prompted once the drawing of a dagger, and the apparent impossibility of getting his assent to friendly care over his health, had so far altered his relations with his friends at Ferrara, that Tasso's next delusion was to look upon the duke as an enemy who did him wrong. He broke away again, went to Mantua, wandered from place to place in North Italy, and found rest for a short time in Turin with Carlo Ingegneri, who was afterwards the first publisher of his yet unpublished poem. The archbishop and Duke Carlo Emanuel also received Tasso hospitably at Turin. Next year he went suddenly back to Ferrara. The duke was occupied with preparations for his marriage to Margherita Gonzaga, his third wife. Tasso came to him full of the irritations of his sick mind, resented the neglect of his complaints, and his delusions turned them, as often happens in such cases, with all their force against his friend. Especially this happens where, as in Tasso's case, the insane delusions spring up in a mind still capable of work along the lines within which the disease has not yet crept. Again and again the cruel malady is found in such cases to pervert some old love towards wife or friend. Who that has lived long has not known such cases? Tasso now poured out his wrath against the duke as his chief enemy, detailed imagined injuries, and as he was reputed in Italy to be as valiant with the sword as with the pen-Colla penna a colla spada nessun val quanto Torquato had been said of him-his insanity seemed dangerous to the duke, who at last used his authority to place him in a lunatic asylum-St. Anne's Hospital for lunatics-where he would be under absolute restraint. To all Italy it was a grief that her chief poet should be in a lunatic asylum. He was not denied the use of his pen, and was still able to make good use of it when following lines of thought that were not crossed by his delusions. Still he believed himself to be in the hands of poisoners; sometimes he thought himself to be under magic spells. He wrote appeals for his deliverance from bondage to Pope Gregory XIII., to Cardinal Albani, to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to the Duchess of Urbino, to the Countess of Mantua, to the Emperor, and to the Inquisition. Intercession was made by his native town of Bergamo, that sent a deputation of its citizens. But the Duke of Ferrara remained firm in the belief that Tasso's insanity had made him dangerous. When, after seven years in the asylum, the poet was at last set free on the intercession of Vicenzo Gonzaga, Prince of Mantua, he was given into the care of Vicenzo Gonzaga upon his promise to keep such good watch that the Duke Alfonso should be in no danger from Tasso's insane passion against him. There has been a sentimental fancy, much discussed, that has taken, no doubt, a firmer hold upon belief since the greatest of the German poets founded upon it his play of "Torquato Tasso." It is that Tasso was shut up in the lunatic asylum because he had aspired to the hand of the duke's sister Leonora. There is no solid evidence whatever upon which this fancy rests. It was in March, 1579, that Tasso was placed in the asylum. Leonora died, after a long illness, in 1581, at the age of forty-three; but Tasso was not released from Santa Anna until 1586. It was a real vexation to Tasso to learn in his confinement that his "Goffredo," as the poem was first called, had been badly misprinted at Venice. The revised edition of it, with its name changed to “Gerusalemme Liberata," was published at Parma in 1581, and there were not fewer than six editions of it in "Gerusa lemme Liberata." that year. Tasso's influence on Spenser was that of one great writer on another. But in France there was in these days a poet of less mark, now left almost unread, to whom accident gave for a time in England greater influence than · Tasso. Du Bartas. In 1579 there appeared in France a poem called “La Sepmaine, ou Création du Monde,” by Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas, a French Huguenot noble, who was born in the same year as Tasso, and was educated as a soldier. In 1574 he had devoted his pen to the heavenly Muse in a poem on 66 'Urania," published in that year, and another poem on " Judith." His religious poem on the "Divine Week of the Creation" abounded in those overstrained conceits which the example of Italy had introduced into the polite language of surrounding countries. Partly for this reason, but more for its religious spirit, "La Sepmaine " (Semaine) became so famous that it went through thirty editions in six years, and was translated into Latin, Italian, German, and English-generally more than once into each language. The name of "Saluste of France" became coupled with that of "Tuscan Arioste,” and remained great until the passing away of the form of taste it satisfied. But we shall find in the days of his currency an English minor poet seeking immortality as the translator of Du Bartas. When Ronsard died, in December, 1585, the most successful of French poets was Philippe des Portes, then about forty years old, who wrote love verses and pleased the idle minds at Court with ease and grace. He put aside the overweight of Greek and Latin that, through the influence of Ronsard, had burdened poetry in France. He felt, as poet, the influence of Italy, and profited much by the satisfaction he gave to the King of France and to his courtiers, who called him their Tibullus. Henri III. gave him thirty thousand livres for publishing his first works. The king's brother gave him eight hundred gold dollars for his "Rodomont," and the king's brother-in-law, Admiral de Joyeuse, gave him an abbey for a sonnet. Thus he obtained an income of ten thousand dollars a year in benefices, though he refused several bishoprics, and even the Archbishopric of Bordeaux. For he had some part of a conscience, and in later years was a translator of the Psalms. Du Bartas and D'Aubigné, both of them Huguenots, represented the religious mind of France in protest against all subjection of the poet's genius to the follies and the vices of the rich. Du Bartas sang, therefore, to the glory of God, and as he avoided controversial theology in drawing his themes from the Bible story, his verse was read by the religious of both parties. Du Bartas, being in earnest, rises sometimes from his cloud of erudition that joined outlines of astronomy and mathematics to the story of Creation, and has moments of a real poetic fervour. He died in 1590, at the age of forty-six. Henry of Navarre employed him upon work in aid of the Huguenot struggle, and sent him on embassies to Denmark, and to England, and to Scotland. Almost his last poem was on the victory at Ivry, in the year before his death. The "Divine Week" of Du Bartas was followed by a "Second Week" ("Seconde Sepmaine") in 1584. This divided into seven periods, poetically called days, the religious history of man, expressed in the successive histories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, Zedekiah, the Messiah, and, for seventh "day," the Eternal Sabbath. Du Bartas only lived to complete four of the seven sections of this work, but he wrote also many other moral and religious poems. He also repaid the royal compliment of a translation of "L'Uranie" by translating into French, as "La Lepanthe," the poem on the battle of Lepanto which King James of Scotland wrote soon after publishing his "Essayes of an Apprentise." This appeared with a preface of the translator to the author, wherein James was honoured with the name of a Scotch Phoenix, and the divine Du Bartas himself declared that he could not soar with him-could only stand on earth to see him in the clouds. Du Bartas wished he had only so much of James as to be but the shadow of his shape, the echo of his voice— Du Bartas and James VI. of Scotland. The Young "Hé! fusse ie vrayment, O Phoenix Escossois, Meanwhile, Buchanan and others had been doing their best for the education of young James VI. He was a clumsy boy, with ungainliness produced by physical deKing James. fect, a tongue too large for his mouth, and a mind in which all depths that there could ever be must be sunk artificially. Good workmen dug, and shaped; the boy was good-tempered, picked up some shrewdness, lived a creditable life, had respect for knowledge, and good appetite for it, though bad digestion. He had a pleasant type of it before him in cheery, impressible George |