After the Picture by Titian in the Louvre
Although we have passed rapidly over those circumstances that impart to Tasso's life its romantic and mysterious interest, we must detail somewhat more fully the various links connecting the thread of his chequered existence with the ducal house of Urbino. The arrival of his father, Bernardo, at the court of Pesaro, in 1556, has been already mentioned[185]; and six months later he was joined by Torquato, then completing his thirteenth year, who was permitted to share the education of the hereditary Prince, and to mingle occasionally with the accomplished circle at the Imperiale, until Bernardo carried him to Venice, in 1559. On a mind of such premature powers these opportunities were not wasted, and the remembrance of them cheered many an after hour of despondency. The homeless position and unsettled habits of his father, whose wanderings he generally accompanied, interfered somewhat with his education, which was then directed to the law, as his future profession. But whilst supposed to be engrossed by canonists and civilians, the youth was secretly devoting his hours of study to the muses. Fearing to avow these derelictions to his father, he imparted his boyish efforts to Duke Guidobaldo, who showed them to Bernardo in 1562, when the latter came to offer him a printed copy of his Amadigi. It was not, however, for two years more that the paternal sanction was obtained for publishing the Rinaldo, a dedication of which is said to have been declined by the Duke, perhaps from a fastidiousness which ere long he had to regret. Encouraged by the unlooked-for success of this poem, written by him in ten months at the university of Padua, Torquato began his great epic, of which he had already selected the theme. Whilst pursuing his studies at Bologna, in 1563, he is believed to have transcribed the first sketch of it, under the title of "Il Gierusalem," which is now No. 413 of the Urbino Library at the Vatican. It is preceded by a short notice of the subject, and consists of a hundred and sixteen stanzas, eventually incorporated into the three opening cantos of the poem; but its variations from the printed version are so extensive, that it has been given entire in the collected works, published at Venice, in twelve vols. 4to, 1735. The dedication was this time accepted by Guidobaldo.
At twenty-one, he first saw the court of Ferrara,[*186] which, in honour of his marriage with the Archduchess Barbara, the magnificent Alfonso was then rendering
"The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy."
It was in these festive scenes that the bard made acquaintance with the Princess Lucrezia. Among the portraits in the Palace of Courtesy, whither Rinaldo was conducted, and which, by an ingenious turn of flattery, are made to represent those personages whom Tasso was most disposed to conciliate, were those of Duke Guidobaldo and his son, with their respective consorts. The passage may be thus literally rendered:—
|
"He of expression stern and brow severe, His mien ennobled by a royal state, The great Francesco Maria's son, is here, In peace superior, in the field his mate; Beneath whose prudent sway, no peril ere Urbino's favoured duchy shall await, While o'er her happy vales, and golden plains, A joyous and enduring summer reigns. "Such is the sire to whom our planet owes Yon youthful gallant, with expression bright, Second to none, a terror to his foes, A wary leader though a dauntless knight: On him the weight of thousand wars repose, A thousand armies guiding to the fight. Whoe'er is doomed to immortality Shrined in men's hearts and mouths, HE may not die. "Turn your admiring gaze to yonder side On all that heaven of loveliness can yield, Elsewhere unmatched within Sol's circuit wide, From whose bright beams no beauty lies concealed; The ducal crown and robe can scarcely hide The regal bearing on that brow revealed: Vittoria she, from great Farnese traced, Courteous and gentle, generous and chaste. "Lucrezia d'Este is yon other fair, Whose dazzling tresses seem a treasure given For guileless love therewith to weave a snare And toils, purveyed by Him who rules in heaven. Say, do Minerva and the Muses share Praise and disparagement in portions even,— Praise, since she them to imitate is fain; Blame, that their rivalry with her is vain? "These dames, in charms and chastity compeers, And proudly rich in every virtue rare"— |
Such compliments from a poet of promising fame could not be indifferent to one taught to prize genius as almost the equal of rank; nor were they the less acceptable to a lady of thirty-one, that their author had barely attained manhood. She received him with her sweetest smile, and presented him to her father the Duke, and to her sister Leonora, in terms which secured him a most flattering reception. Love and chivalry were fashions of the day, cultivated in common by all who strove to shine in the brilliant atmosphere of Ferrara, and the genius of Torquato lent itself gracefully to both. In many phases of Italian literature, it has been difficult for posterity to decide whether the fervour of amorous poetry was kindled by successful passion, or fanned by affected sentiment. The like mystery overhangs the love-notes which Tasso warbled in these palace-bowers. That his aspirations were not free from pedantry is proved by their, on one occasion, selecting the form of a public disputation, after the most approved scholastic models, wherein, during three days, he maintained against all comers, a series of abstract propositions regarding love and its developments. And though such singular exhibitions may sometimes have been suggested by deeper feelings, or accepted as the incense of the heart, they were doubtless in other cases but tournaments of gallantry, in which the name of some fair lady was adopted, to inspire the combatants to a victory extending not beyond the lists. Equally platonic might have been such love-tissued lyrics as our minstrel ever and anon dedicated to the sister Princesses, without any scandal, and probably without compromise of their purity. One of these, in supposed allusion to the favoured sister, having been specially excepted from the sentence of posthumous destruction pronounced upon many of his fugitive pieces by the poet when about to take a journey, must have ranked high in his estimation, and is thus translated by Glassford:—