[177] {144}[Compare—
"The second of a tenderer sadder mood,
Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem."
Prophecy of Dante, Canto IV. lines 136, 137.]
[178] [Tasso's imprisonment in the Hospital of Sant' Anna lasted from March, 1579, to July, 1586. The Gerusalemme had been finished many years before. He sent the first four cantos to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, February 17, and the last three on October 4, 1575 (Lettere di Torquato Tasso, 1852, i. 55-117). A mutilated first edition was published in 1580 by "Orazio alias Celio de' Malespini, avventuriere intrigante" (Solerti's Vita, etc., 1895, i. 329).]
[179] [So, too, Gibbon was overtaken by a "sober melancholy" when he had finished the last line of the last page of the Decline and Fall on the night of June 27, 1787.]
[180] {145}[Not long after his imprisonment, Tasso appealed to the mercy of Alfonso, in a canzone of great beauty, ... and ... in another ode to the princesses, whose pity he invoked in the name of their own mother, who had herself known, if not the like horrors, the like solitude of imprisonment, and bitterness of soul, made a similar appeal. (See Life of Tasso, by John Black, 1810, ii. 64, 408.) Black prints the canzone in full; Solerti (Vita, etc., i. 316-318) gives selections.]
[181] {146}["For nearly the first year of his confinement Tasso endured all the horrors of a solitary sordid cell, and was under the care of a gaoler whose chief virtue, although he was a poet and a man of letters, was a cruel obedience to the commands of his prince.... His name was Agostino Mosti.... Tasso says of him, in a letter to his sister, 'ed usa meco ogni sorte di rigore ed inumanità.'"—Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, etc., 1818, pp. 20, 21, note 1.
Tasso, in a letter to Angelo Grillo, dated June 16, 1584 (Letter 288, Le Lettere, etc., ii. 276), complains that Mosti did not interfere to prevent him being molested by the other inmates, disturbed in his studies, and treated disrespectfully by the governor's subordinates. In the letter to his sister Cornelia, from which Hobhouse quotes, the allusion is not to Mosti, but, according to Solerti, to the Cardinal Luigi d'Este. Elsewhere (Letter 133, Lettere, ii. 88, 89) Tasso describes Agostino Mosti as a rigorous and zealous Churchman, but far too cultivated and courteous a gentleman to have exercised any severity towards him proprio motu, or otherwise than in obedience to orders.]
[182] {147}[It is highly improbable that Tasso openly indulged, or secretly nourished, a consuming passion for Leonora d'Este, and it is certain that the "Sister of his Sovereign" had nothing to do with his being shut up in the Hospital of Sant' Anna. That poet and princess had known each other for over thirteen years, that the princess was seven years older than the poet, and, in March, 1579, close upon forty-two years of age, are points to be considered; but the fact that she died in February, 1581, and that Tasso remained in confinement for five years longer, is a stronger argument against the truth of the legend. She was a beautiful woman, his patroness and benefactress, and the theme of sonnets and canzoni; but it was not for her "sweet sake" that Tasso lost either his wits or his liberty.]
[183] Compare—