A Manual of Italian Literature

by Francis Henry Cliffe

At Bergamo, he learned that his liberator, Vincenzo Gonzaga, had succeeded to the Duchy of Mantua. Something of his old hope of courtly success revived in the wounded heart of Torquato. He left his provincial abode and hurried to the palace of his benefactor to lay the dedication of Torrismondo at his feet. He doubtless indulged in dreams of rich appointments and gratifying distinctions. But, alas! Vincenzo, kind and humane to the captive, seems to have turned a deaf ear to the courtier. Tasso had an unfortunate knack of making his presence irksome to his patrons. His ever keen sense of injury was stung to the quick by the Duke's neglect, and he lost no time in leaving Mantua to repair to Rome. But here new mortifications awaited him. Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga lodged him in his Palace, but was neither cordial nor gracious. Probably the dread that his insanity might burst out again, made people desirous of keeping him at a distance. Sixtus the Fifth, who then occupied the Papal Chair, took no interest in literature, and did not show him any attention, and the example of the Pope was followed by the Society of the capital.

He left Rome with even greater disappointment than he had felt in leaving Mantua. He hurried to Naples, where he had no cause to complain of the reception that awaited him, for he was overwhelmed with demonstrations of admiration and affection. But sorrow, captivity, and anguish of mind had done their evil work; he was but the wreck of himself, and he could no more endure the sweetness of praise than the bitterness of neglect. He fled from the kindness of the Neapolitans and flitted from place to place in a weary pilgrimage, without happiness and without repose. The wonder is, in his destitute condition, where the money came from to enable him to travel. His mind and his health were in a wretched condition. Distrustful and melancholy, he repelled even those who most admired his genius and pitied his misfortunes, and his ever-ready sense of injury magnified the slightest offence into bitter unkindness. But in spite of agonising thoughts and disturbing peregrinations, his pen never rested. He completed the Gerusalemme Conquistata, that unfortunate "improvement" on his masterpiece, which is never mentioned but to be regretted; he wrote a long poem in blank verse on the Creation, and dialogues and essays in abundance and letters innumerable. Indeed, he was throughout his life an indefatigable correspondent, and he seemed never to doubt that the outpourings of his mind about his wrongs and grievances would be as interesting to the recipients as to himself. Some of these letters are noble and affecting, but too many betray a mind sore and festering from constant brooding over his calamities. But in the presence of such misfortune, we can only pity, we cannot condemn.

Great though his errors were, and wayward as was his temper, he was a man of whom his country had reason to be proud, and it is pleasing to be able to narrate that he was destined to receive a tardy recognition for all the works with which he had enriched the literature of Italy. Cardinal Aldobrandini had been raised to the Papal Chair and had assumed the name of Clement VIII, and he and his nephews were anxious to signalise his Pontificate by reviving the Coronation of Petrarch in the Capitol in favour of a poet not less illustrious and more unfortunate. Accordingly, Tasso was summoned to Rome, and he was met outside the gates by an immense concourse of people and a brilliant galaxy of Cardinals, Prelates, and Nobles. But his frame was worn out, and the excitement of this great reception hardly infused sufficient animation to conceal from the bystanders the rapid approach of death. He was lodged in a noble suite of apartments in the Vatican; the poet who for so many years had been doomed to a madman's cell, found himself an honoured guest in the Palace of the Popes.

But the state and ceremony with which he was surrounded were more than his ebbing strength could bear. Religious feelings had always held powerful sway over his sensitive mind, and now, when he felt his end drawing near, he retired to the Monastery of Sant' Onofrio, situated on an eminence outside the town. Here, in prayer and meditation, he devoutly awaited release from all his sorrows. The monks tended him with care and assiduity; but it is recorded of him that his old suspicions revived by fits and starts, and on one occasion he made his attendant swallow the medicine he was directed to take in order to have ocular proof that it was not poisoned.

Worn out by his many sufferings, he passed away peacefully on the twenty-fifth of April, 1595, the day before he was to receive the laurel in the Capitol. But he probably did not regret that death prevented him from enjoying this symbol of greatness. As Leopardi, himself no less familiar with sorrow, beautifully says:

"Morte domanda
Chi nostro mal conobbe, e non ghirlanda."

There is a peculiar fitness in the circumstance that a poet, so singled out for misfortune, was not destined to wear the wreath of a conqueror. Peaceful after so much agitation, calm after such bitter resentment, he sank to rest in that secluded monastery, and for thirteen years he lay in the Church adjoining the quiet cloisters without a stone to mark his resting-place, until Cardinal Bonifazio Bevilacqua raised a noble monument to his memory, which may still be seen by the visitor who wends his way to Sant' Onofrio to pay the tribute of a sigh to so much glory linked to so much misfortune.

Tasso was tall and active; his countenance was handsome, though in later years much clouded by melancholy. In his younger days he was an expert swordsman, and skilled in all bodily exercises.

The vicissitudes of his life afford such picturesque material for narration and description that we cannot wonder that it became a favourite theme with poets and biographers. The noble play of Goethe is familiar to all lovers of poetry. Of his biographers the earliest was Manso, a Neapolitan nobleman, who had the singular fortune of being, in the course of his long life, the friend of three renowned epic poets, of Tasso himself, of Marino, and of the greatest of all, Milton, whose acquaintance he made during the travels of the English poet in Italy. Tasso mentions him in the Gerusalemme Conquistata: