——"that strove for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread."
Ath. I. 384.
For of Tasso, in the sequel, a sarcasm as bitter might be recorded. A daughter, elder than either of the boys, was at this time growing up under the eyes of their parents. A letter of the father's (previous to our Torquato's birth) to his sister Afra, who had retired into a convent, gives a lively glimpse of Bernardo's affectionate and domestic character.[37] "My young daughter is very beautiful, and affords me great hopes that she will lead a virtuous and honourable life. My infant son"—Torquato the first—"is before God our Creator, and prays for your salvation. My Portia is seven months gone with child; whether a son or a daughter, it shall be supremely dear to me; only may God, who gives it me, grant that it may be born with his fear; pray together with the holy nuns that the Almighty may preserve the mother, who in this world is my highest joy." It is ludicrous, yet affecting, to observe what little circumstances are eagerly laid hold upon after death, respecting the personal history of men who, during their lives, were neglected in their hardest trials, or oppressed in their helplessness by those who were bound to protect and foster them. The very hour of Tasso's birth, as well as the place, has been contested against his own authority: he says that it was four o'clock in the morning; Serassi, that it was mid-day. "He ought to have been born at Naples," says Manso, "though he happened first to appear at Sorrento." It may be settled that he was a native of Italy rather than of any place where he may first have seen the light, in a country throughout which he was a stranger and a pilgrim all his days. Indeed, he ought to have been born on the sea; so little claim, on the ground of paternal kindness shown to him, had any city in the peninsula to the glory of his birth.
Scarcely had he been welcomed into the world under auspices so cheering as those recently mentioned, than the fortunes of his family took an adverse turn. Bernardo was summoned away from the delightful retirement of Sorrento, to join his patron in the war which had just broken out between the emperor Charles V. and Francis I., and in which the prince brilliantly distinguished himself. Meanwhile, if we are to believe his nursery traditions, the little Torquato was giving, even from his cradle, proofs of the spirit that was in him, scarcely less extraordinary than if, like Hercules, he had strangled serpents, or like another poet of old, attracted bees to his lips, whether to gather or to deposit sweetness there we need not stay to enquire. Manso, his latest and most munificent patron, his first and most encomiastic biographer, (whose memoir, like Boccaccio's of Dante, reads more like romance than reality in many passages, and no where more than in this instance,) says, that the child, even during his first year, gave evidence of the divinity of his genius. For scarcely had he attained his sixth month, when, contrary to the usage of children, he began not only to let loose his tongue (or to prattle a snodar la lingua), but even to speak outright, and that in such a manner that he was never known to lisp (or clip) his syllables, as all other infants do, but formed his words complete, and gave them perfect utterance. If this be true, his marvellous faculty of speech, like the produce of a premature spring, must have suffered an early blight: for he himself records that, in speaking, he was little favoured by nature, having an unconquerable impediment of tongue; whence he preferred to communicate his thoughts rather in writing than by the audible voice, when he meant to win attention or produce impression. His own testimony is so far at variance with the assertion of his friend Manso respecting his early fluency, that he appeals for confirmation of the fact that he is a stammerer (probably to no very inconvenient degree) to some of his correspondents. But we are told, on the same authority, that the infant was equally precocious in the faculties of the mind; that he could reason, explain his thoughts, and answer questions with surprising intelligence. Moreover, to crown the climax, it is said that he seldom cried, and never laughed; the only exception, it may be presumed, of a healthy child since the world began; but that he was grave, dignified, and sage, and announced by his behaviour that he was destined for some great design.
On the return of Bernardo from the army, he enjoyed a brief prolongation of his domestic quiet at Sorrento, during which all that a romantic father and a passionately tender mother could do to awaken, cherish, and confirm the early intimations of transcendent intellect in their darling son, was employed; and such discipline, by its natural effect, no doubt, coloured and characterised their son's mind, in the sequel, to the end of life. In one of Bernardo's letters to Portia, during his late absence, he says, that, while he leaves to her the delicate task to adorn their daughter Cornelia with every virtue and accomplishment which becomes a maiden, he intends himself to train up their young Torquato for his more arduous station in society, when he should be of proper age. This purpose was never realised.
In 1552, the prince of Salerno and his adherents being declared rebels, Bernardo, as one of the most attached of his friends, was included in the proscription: his estate was confiscated, and an income of 900 scudi lost; leaving him utterly destitute of resources, with the exception of a few valuable trinkets, and the hope of some time recovering his wife's dowry—a hope which outlived himself, and which he bequeathed as a perpetual plague of expectation and disappointment to his son, who, as will be seen, obtained a decree to have it, against his mother's brothers, nearly at his own last hour. Bernardo being thus driven into exile, his wife remained with the children at Naples, in very narrow circumstances, though amongst wealthy relatives, who seem always to have treated her and her offspring with unnatural hard-heartedness. Torquato, meanwhile, under her superintendence, was making progress in the general rudiments of knowledge; but especially in the acquisition of languages, in rhetoric, and in poetry, proportioned to the promise of his earlier years. His principal tutor was one Angeluzzo, at a college of the Jesuits, recently established in that city. So eager and intent was he in quest of knowledge (such as lay within his reach), that his mother, so far from having to urge or bribe him onward, was obliged, for his health's sake, to restrain him. Early and late he was at his books; and on the winter's mornings he was sent from his home to the school with a lantern and servant to conduct him. At seven years of age he was already a considerable proficient in the Greek and Latin tongues, and had begun to exercise himself in oral eloquence and written composition; but no genuine specimens of either of these have been preserved.
The following beautiful and touching lines, in which he alludes to the worst period of his life,—his separation from his mother, when called away from Naples to join his father at Rome,—have been absurdly attributed to him as actually penned at this date. Hoole, and even Hunt, two of his modern translators, have fallen into this error; whereas a moment's consideration would convince any man, who understood the difference between adult poetry and puerile attempts at rhyming, that such verses, at such an age, (nine years!) would have been sufficiently remarkable to justify belief in the fables of his babyhood, when he sat talking pretty unbroken Italian on his mother's knee, before he was twelve months old.
The passage occurs in a figurative canzonet on the river Metauso, but addressed to the duke of Urbino, imploring refuge and protection in his adversity. Though left unfinished, the fragment is acknowledged to be one of the most exquisitely wrought of all the author's lyrics:—
"Me dal sen della madre empia Fortuna
Pargoletto divelse: ah! di que' baci,
Ch' ella bagnò di lagrime dolenti,
Con sospir mi rimembra, e degli ardenti
Preghi, che sen portar l' aure fugaci,
Ch' io giunger non dovea più volto à volto
Fra quelle braccia accolto
Con nodi così stretti, e sì tenaci.
Lasso! e seguii con mal sicure piante,
Qual Ascanio, o Cammilla, il padre errante."
"Me, from a tender mother's breast,
Stern Fortune, while an infant, tore;
Ah! I remember how she press'd.
Press'd me, and kiss'd me, o'er and o'er,
Bathed with her tears, with doleful sighs,
Breathed for me many a fervent prayer,
Which, ere it reach'd the skies,
Was scatter'd by the passing air.