Yet in his solitude, when the first rigours of his imprisonment had been relaxed, and an apartment of less discomfort was allotted to him, he pursued, with unabated ardour and intensity, his studies, so far as he had the means, and poured out, as he was ever wont, his sorrows and his hopes, his remembrances and his imaginations, in every form of verse. Indeed, many of his most beautiful compositions are dated within the term of his captivity. In course of time, as he grew calmer, his friends, and illustrious strangers attracted by his fame, were permitted to visit him. Occasionally, too, a day of light and liberty was granted, and he was brought out of his prison-house to those splendid mansions which he loved to inhabit, and which he was so well qualified to adorn. Marfisa of Este, cousin to the duke, especially befriended him in this manner, and entertained him at her delightful villa, where, in company with her distinguished household and visiters, he looked abroad again in sunshine, with all a poet's transport and all an invalid's delight, when mere existence, void of suffering, is enjoyment.
"See the wretch, who long has tost
On the thorny bed of pain,
At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe and walk again:
The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common air, the earth, the skies,
To him are opening paradise."
So sang Gray, and so felt Tasso for a few hours of freedom,—but soon remanded back to his lonely abode, he relapsed into despondency; and though one such day, while it lasted, might seem to compensate for all the past, yet when it was gone, its pleasures appeared too dearly purchased by the misery of another day rendered more bitter by the transient change.
Having collected a volume of his fugitive verses, principally composed in prison, he published it with a dedication to the princesses, the duchess of Urbino and Leonora; but the latter lived not to receive this mournful proof of the fidelity of his gratitude, if not of his love. She died, after a long illness, in 1581, aged 43 years. Tasso enquired earnestly after her during her sickness, and offered to do any thing in the power of his muse to beguile that part of her suffering which song might soothe, while patiently bearing the rest, for which there was no relief but from Heaven. After her death he became mute on that theme, which most of his biographers would fain prove to have been the real though covert one of many an amorous effusion among his sonnets and lyrics. "Great griefs are silent."
Among his wild imaginations, Tasso thought himself haunted in his prison by a sprite—something akin to our old English Robin-good-fellow—who (probably in the very person of his knavish attendant) played all manner of petty mischievous pranks to plague him. One extract from a letter on this subject will show how little command of his reason he had at this time. He says, "The little thief has stolen from me many crowns, I know not what number—for I do not, like misers, keep an account of them—but perhaps they may amount to twenty. He turns all my hooks topsy-turvy, opens my chests, and steals my keys, so that I can keep nothing. I am unhappy at all times, especially during the night, nor do I know if my disease be frenzy, or what is its nature." Far more frightful visitations he complains of during this dreadful interval, all which seem to prove a lamentable derangement of intellect, of which he was himself sometimes so conscious, that he rouses all his powers of reasoning to convince himself that he has not really lost his wits. To a friend he writes—"I cannot defend any thing from my enemies, nor from the devil, except my will, with which I will never consent to learn any thing from him or his followers, or have any familiarity with him or with his magicians. * * * * Amidst so many terrors and pains, there appeared to me in the air the image of the glorious Virgin, with her Son in her arms, encircled with clouds of many colours, so that I ought by no means to despair of her grace. And though this might be an illusion, because I am frenetic,—troubled with various phantasms, and full of infinite melancholy,—yet, by the grace of God, I can sometimes cohibere assensum (withhold my assent), which, as Cicero says, being the act of a sound mind, I am inclined to believe it was a miracle of the Virgin."—This vision he celebrates in one of his most brilliant sonnets, and also in an elegant madrigal, ascribing to her grace the marvellous cure of his mental affliction.
In whatever way that cure may have been temporarily effected, Tasso, after more than seven years' confinement, was liberated in 1586, at the special intercession of the prince of Mantua. Alfonso refused to allow him an audience, and he left Ferrara like a transport released from prison, to go into perpetual banishment; for the duke remained inexorable, and, indeed, implacable, to the end of his victim's life. For a while Tasso enjoyed the sudden transition, again being lodged in the palace of Mantua, faring sumptuously, and being admitted to the high, amiable, and intellectual society of nobles, ladies, and scholars. This pleasant season was not, however, without relapses of his fearful disease: the evil spirit came upon him at times, and all the enchantment of his harp could not drive it away.
During several years afterwards, the poet wandered about, as his father had done, from city to city, and from court to court, experiencing all the vicissitudes of what is called fortune, but which, in his case, appears to have been the lot which he chose and cut out for himself. Princes were ever ready to open their doors to him, and wherever he was known, he was honoured according to the reputation which he had so painfully but unprofitably acquired; his patrons having only afforded him hospitality while he abode with them, and booksellers having been enriched at his expense by the spoils of his genius, in a country where the property of literary men in their own works was little acknowledged and less respected. His controversy with the Della Cruscan academy during his imprisonment, the members of which had invidiously prejudiced the public mind against him, the living, whom their favour might have benefited, by exalting Ariosto, the dead, whom their preference could not serve,—while it grievously galled him, rather tended to spread the knowledge, and, necessarily with that knowledge, the fame of his "Gerusalemme," than permanently to injure his fair fame. But he himself, from scruples of conscience and infirmity of mind, became dissatisfied with it, and employed no small portion of his brief remaining life in remodelling it, under the title of "Gerusalemme Conquistata,"—a scheme in which he utterly miscarried. His last great poetical attempt, and worthy of him in his palmy state, was a work on the creation, entitled the "Sette Giornate" (the Seven Days), which he left unfinished. It was composed in versi scidti, which nearly correspond to English blank verse. There are many passages in this magnificent fragment, which were evidently so familiar to Milton's mind, that he fell into the same trains of thought, and imitated them in the style peculiar to himself, repaying as much as he borrowed, "stealing and giving odours."
Tasso, soon tiring of Mantua, and even languishing for Ferrara, though never permitted to return thither, wore away the residue of his desultory life, principally at Bergamo, Florence, Rome, and Naples. In the latter city (his sister being dead), when it was too late for him to enjoy the possession of it, he recovered his mother's long-disputed dowry, or such a portion of it as, at an earlier period, might have rendered him independent of those eleemosynary supplies from precarious hands, on which he generally subsisted. About the same time the pope also settled a pension upon him, and consented to allow him the honour of a coronation, such as had been granted to Petrarch, two centuries before. But wealth and honour, such as mortal hands could confer or withhold at pleasure, came too late for him. In his latter years, too, he became acquainted with Manso, marquis of Villa, his last patron, and his first biographer; known in this country as, in his old age, befriending our Milton, then a youth, on his travels in Italy, as, in his own youth, he had befriended Tasso sinking to the grave under premature decay.
One of the most remarkable circumstances of the last days of Tasso was the imagination, that he was occasionally visited by a spirit—not the mischievous Robin-good-fellow of his prison, but a being of far higher dignity, with whom, alone or in company, he could hold sublime and preternatural discourse, though of the two interlocutors none present could see or hear more than the poet himself, rapt into ecstasy, and uttering language and sentiments worthy of one who, with his bodily, yet marvellously enlightened eyes and purged ears, could distinguish the presence and the voice of his mysterious visitant. Manso gives a strange account of such an interview, when he himself stood by, yet perceived nothing but the half-part which the poet acted in the scene.
"One day," says the marquis, "as we were sitting alone by the fire, he turned his eyes towards the window, and held them a long time so intensely fixed, that when I called him he did not answer. At last, 'Lo!' said he, the courteous spirit, which has come to talk with me; lift up your eyes and you shall see the truth.' I turned my eyes thither immediately; but though I looked as keenly as I could I beheld nothing but the rays of the sun, which streamed through the window-panes into the chamber. Meanwhile Torquato began to hold, with this unknown being, a most lofty converse. I heard, indeed, and saw nothing but himself; nevertheless his words, at one time questioning, and at another replying, were such as take place between those who reason closely on some important subject. * * * * Their discourse was marvellously conducted, both in the sublimity of the topics, and a certain unwonted manner of talking, that exalted myself into an ecstasy; so that I did not dare to interrupt Torquato about the spirit which he had announced to me, but which I could not see. In this way, while I listened between transport and stupefaction, a considerable time elapsed; at length the spirit departed, as I learned from the words of Torquato, who, turning to me, said, 'From this day forward, all your doubts will be removed.'—'Rather,' I replied, 'they are increased; for though I have heard many wonderful things, I have seen nothing to dispel my doubts.' He smiled, and said, 'You have seen and heard more of him than perhaps—' here he broke off, and I, unwilling to trouble him, forbore to ask further questions; as it was more likely that his visions and frenzies would disorder my own mind, than that I should extirpate his true or imaginary opinion."