On that plain which matures a tropical luxuriance of vegetation, and where nature lavishes the brightest of her varying tints, his inspiration was developed, and the more brilliant genius of his son imbibed its earliest impressions. The casino in which Torquato first saw the light[176] commanded a view of unparalleled beauty;—the bright bay and its far-off islands of picturesque outline,—Naples, with its endless line of white suburbs glittering along the shore,—Vesuvius, the marvellous workshop of volcanic wonders,—golden sunsets of unclouded glow, and mellowed combinations of mountain and marine scenery awaiting the pencil of Salvator Rosa. Nor were these the only charms which the poet found in this spot. He has celebrated in his correspondence its balmy and healthful climate, and the courteous hospitality of its inhabitants. These qualities still attract strangers to the Piano di Sorrento, and the villa which sheltered Torquato on his escape from Ferrara is now a comfortable hotel, inviting them to gaze from its beetling cliff on the scenes of his youthful inspiration.

The Amadigi was commenced in that genial spot, and the Prince of Salerno complacently anticipated the extended reputation which it promised to his protégé. But the storm, meanwhile, gathered, which was to sweep patron and poet from their palmy state. The Prince, by entanglements which we need not trace, found himself compromised with the Viceroy, Don Pedro Toledo, and, from mingled alarm and pique, sacrificed his vast hereditary stake, by passing over to the French service. This happened in 1552,[*177] and Tasso followed his fortunes without being involved in his treason. After accompanying him to France, he came, in 1554, to Rome, where he took up his abode, in the hope of soon being joined by his wife and family, and of establishing himself there. But she was detained at Naples, for the purpose of recovering part of her husband's property, or at all events her own fortune, which had been escheated on his flight. Her difficulties were increased by the selfish conduct of her own relations, and at length, in the spring of 1556, she died suddenly, not without suspicion of poison. "I have lost," writes her husband, "a woman whose virtues and estimable qualities rendered her beloved and endeared to me as life itself, who was worthy of general admiration, and in whose bosom I had hoped peacefully to pass the closing years of my old age!" But other cares were falling thickly around him. Though joined by his son Torquato, he could never rescue his only other child Cornelia from her maternal relations, and suffered intense anxiety for her welfare. Still nominally in the Prince of Salerno's service, and actually employed as his confidential agent, he found himself estranged from his regard, his correspondence interrupted, and his salary irregularly paid. Bitterly experiencing the not unfrequent guerdon of fidelity to fallen dignitaries, he thus addressed his patron in February, 1556:—

"Your Excellency has now to learn the influence of unstable and malignant fortune upon this your unhappy servant. You know how often you have quoted me as an instance of happiness, saying that I had a beautiful and virtuous wife, by whom I was beloved, and on whom I doated; that I had the finest children, ample means, an excellent house well decorated, as well as comfortably furnished; and that I enjoyed the respect and good opinion of the world, as well as that most important advantage of all, your favour. Now you may see in how brief an interval I have fallen from that height of happiness into the depths of misery. I have lost my means, earned, as all know, most honourably, and with no small fatigue and peril. I have lost my independence; and, in a word, my every comfort. I have been deprived of my dearest wife, and with her have occasioned to my unhappy children the sacrifice of their mother's dowry, and of all my remaining prospect of maintaining them, and conducting them to that position which every respectable and affectionate parent would desire. But, worst of all, I perceive from obvious symptoms, that I have forfeited your favour without having given you the slightest cause. The reason of my sinking into these misfortunes, being obvious to the whole world, should not be concealed from you. I am so situated, that any one refusing to compassionate me must be devoid of pity and all good feeling; and if you still retain the smallest share of that magnanimity, generosity, or gratitude which you were wont so honourably to manifest to your servants, you will yet have pity on me, and will endeavour to raise me from that abyss of wretchedness into which I have fallen in your service."

This sad appeal meeting with no response, he retired from the Prince's service with a nominal pension of 300 scudi, which seems never to have been paid him. Writing to a friend, he says, "I have thrown out into this sea of troubles many anchors of reason, to save my tempest-tost mind from shipwreck. But I fear that, in the long run, if not conducted into port by a favouring breeze from some benignant prince, I may be swamped, from the cable of my constancy parting; for it is hard from prosperity and happiness to fall into misery, and struggle with famine." Scared away from Rome by the din of coming war, in the renewed strife between France and Spain for the domination of the Peninsula, and

"Eating the bitter bread of banishment,"

he had reached Ravenna, when an invitation arrived from Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino, a cousin of his late patron, whose court offered to genius just such a haven as he had hoped for. In October, 1556, he reached Pesaro, where the Duke assigned as a residence for the poet his casino called the Barchetto, a house which still stands within the walls of Pesaro, surrounded by a smiling garden. Its very limited accommodation, now used by the gardener, cannot have afforded a commodious dwelling, but such as it was, it appears to have satisfied Bernardo, who after a few weeks was encouraged by the Duke's courtesy to send for his son, with a view to establishing himself in that capital. His residence there somewhat exceeded two years, during which we gather from his correspondence few incidents beyond his literary occupations. Though avowing himself in the service of Guidobaldo, he does not seem to have had from him either employment or a fixed maintenance, but was probably supported by his hospitality. He now put the finishing touches to his Amadigi, begun fourteen years before, and repaid the favours bestowed upon him with the usual homage of a courtly poet. Anxiously clinging to the hope of making his peace with Spain, in order to recover his own and his wife's property which had been confiscated at Naples, he obtained the mediation of several courts in his favour, and even had recourse to the good offices of Cardinal Pole with Philip II., then husband of the English Queen Mary. In this object Guidobaldo particularly interested himself, and it was at his suggestion that Bernardo dedicated his poem to that monarch, whose praises, with those of his consort, had been already sung in its eleventh canto. But his pearls were lavished unavailingly on one incapable of appreciating either the gift or the donor, and a long apologetic letter from Girolamo Ruscelli, which accompanied the peace-offering, remained unacknowledged.

In these times literary advertisements were unknown, but the reputation of a forthcoming work was heralded by a scarcely less effectual expedient. Passages of it were handed about in manuscript among literary circles, and criticisms were requested from the author's more intimate friends. Thus was it with the Amadigi; and Bernardo has not shrunk from giving to the world the letters by which he sought for or replied to such suggestions. Dionigi Atanagi was summoned from Cagli by the Duke, for the purpose of making those verbal corrections which were rendered irksome to the poet by weak sight. Sperone Speroni writes to the author that, in two revisions, he had removed the vulgarisms, roughnesses, and redundancies, cancelling above two hundred stanzas, and that, in a third reading, he would probably delete as many more. The first conception was that of a regular epic; but the cold reception which it met with from his friends induced Bernardo to adopt a manner more conformable to the romantic and less fettered taste of the age. In the summer of 1557 he read a canto each night, at Urbino, to the Duchess Vittoria and a select audience. Having thus raised public anticipation, the poet was anxious to reap the fruits of his labours in honour and emolument; but he found a double difficulty in obtaining the 500 scudi required for the expense of an edition, and in procuring the papal licence without having the work submitted regularly to the censure. At length, in 1560, it issued, by the aid of Guidobaldo, from the press of Giolito, at Venice, in which town Tasso had chiefly resided for eighteen months, and where he, for a short time, acted as secretary to a literary academy, established in 1558, before which he read his Essay on Poetry. His remaining years produced few incidents. After an ineffectual overture to take service at the court of Savoy, he became chief secretary to the Duke of Mantua, who made him governor of Ostiglia. There he died on the 4th of September, 1569; and the epitaph penned by his son, but never placed over his ashes, runs thus:—

Erected by his son Torquato to
Bernardo Tasso,
Distinguished for the fertility and eminence
of his genius, in the relaxation of poetry
and in the affairs of princes, in both of which
he has left memorials of his industry, as
well as for the fickleness and inconstancy of
his fortunes.
He lived LXXVI. years, and died IV Sept. MDLXIX.