And brain-sick Tasso was, without a shadow of doubt.[51] It is hardly needful to recapitulate his terror of the Inquisition, dread of being poisoned, incapacity for self-control in word and act, and other signs of incipient disease. During the residence in S. Anna this malady made progress. He was tormented by spectral voices and apparitions. He believed himself to be under the influence of magic charms. He was haunted by a sprite, who stole his books and flung his MSS. about the room. A good genius, in the form of a handsome youth, appeared and conversed with him. He lost himself for hours together in abstraction, talking aloud, staring into vacancy, and expressing surprise that other people could not see the phantoms which surrounded him. He complained that his melancholy passed at moments into delirium (which he called frenesia), after which he suffered from loss of memory and prostration. His own mind became a constant cause of self-torture. Suspicious of others, he grew to be suspicious of himself. And when he left S. Anna, these disorders, instead of abating, continued to afflict him, so that his most enthusiastic admirers were forced to admit that 'he was subject to constitutional melancholy with crises of delirium, but not to actual insanity.'[52] At first, his infirmity did not interfere with intellectual production of a high order, though none of his poetry, after the Gerusalemme was completed in 1574, rose to the level of his earlier work. But in course of time the artist's faculty itself was injured, and the creations of his later life are unworthy of his genius.
The seven years and four months of Tasso's imprisonment may be passed over briefly. With regard to his so-called dungeon, it is certain that, after some months spent in a narrow chamber, he obtained an apartment of several rooms. He was allowed to write and receive as many letters as he chose. Friends paid him visits, and he went abroad under surveillance in the city of Ferrara. To extenuate the suffering which a man of his temper endured in this enforced seclusion would be unjust to Tasso. There is no doubt that he was most unhappy. But to exaggerate his discomforts would be unjust to the duke. Even Manso describes 'the excellent and most convenient lodgings' assigned him in S. Anna, alludes to the provision for his cure by medicine, and remarks upon the opposition which he offered to medical treatment. According to this biographer, his own endeavors to escape necessitated a strict watch upon his movements.[53] Unless, therefore, we flatly deny the fact of his derangement, which is supported by a mass of testimony, it may be doubted whether Tasso was more miserable in S. Anna than he would have been at large. The subsequent events of his life prove that his release brought no mitigation of his malady.
It was, however, a dreary time. He spent his days in writing letters to all the princes of Italy, to Naples, to Bergamo, to the Roman Curia, declaiming on his wretchedness and begging for emancipation. Occasional poems flowed from his pen. But during this period he devoted his serious hours mainly to prose composition. The bulk of his Dialogues issued from S. Anna. On August 7, 1580, Celio Malaspina published a portion of the Gerusalemme at Venice, under the title of Il Gottifredo di M. Torquato Tasso. In February of the following year, his friend Angelo Ingegneri gave the whole epic to the world. Within six months from that date the poem was seven times reissued. This happened without the sanction or the supervision of the luckless author; and from the sale of the book he obtained no profit. Leonora d'Este died upon February 10, 1581. A volume of elegies appeared on this occasion; but Tasso's Muse uttered no sound.[54] He wrote to Panigarola that 'a certain tacit repugnance of his genius' forced him to be mute.[55] His rival Guarini undertook a revised edition of his lyrics in 1582. Tasso had to bear this dubious compliment in silence. All Europe was devouring his poems; scribes and versifiers were building up their reputation on his fame. Yet he could do nothing. Embittered by the piracies of publishers, infuriated by the impertinence of editors, he lay like one forgotten in that hospital. His celebrity grew daily; but he languished, penniless and wretched, in confinement which he loathed. The strangest light is cast upon his state of mind by the efforts which he now made to place two of his sister's children in Court-service. He even tried to introduce one of them as a page into the household of Alfonso. Eventually, Alessandro Sersale was consigned to Odoardo Farnese, and Antonio to the Duke of Mantua. In 1585 new sources of annoyance rose. Two members of the Delia Crusca Academy in Florence, Leonardo Salviati and Bastiano de'Rossi, attacked the Gerusalemme. Their malevolence was aroused by the panegyric written on it by Cammillo Pellegrini, a Neapolitan, and they exposed it to pedantically quibbling criticism. Tasso replied in a dignified apology. But he does not seem to have troubled himself overmuch with this literary warfare, which served meanwhile to extend the fame of his immortal poem. At this time new friends gathered round him. Among these the excellent Benedictine, Angelo Grillo, and the faithful Antonio Costantini demand commemoration from all who appreciate disinterested devotion to genius in distress. At length, in July 1586, Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir apparent to the Duchy of Mantua, obtained Tasso's release. He rode off with this new patron to Mantua, leaving his effects at S. Anna, and only regretting that he had not waited on the Duke of Ferrara to kiss his hand as in duty bound.[56] Thus to the end he remained an incorrigible courtier; or rather shall we say that, after all his tribulations, he preserved a doglike feeling of attachment for his master?
The rest of Tasso's life was an Odyssey of nine years. He seemed at first contented with Mantua, wrote dialogues, completed the tragedy of Torrismondo and edited his father's Floridante. But when Vincenzo Gonzaga succeeded to the dukedom, the restless poet felt himself neglected. His young friend had not leisure to pay him due attention. He therefore started on a journey to Loreto, which had long been the object of his pious aspiration. Loreto led to Rome, where Scipione Gonzaga resided as Patriarch of Jerusalem and Cardinal. Rome suggested Southern Italy, and Tasso hankered after the recovery of his mother's fortune. Accordingly he set off in March 1588 for Naples, where he stayed, partly with the monks of Monte Oliveto, and partly with the Marchese Manso. Rome saw him again in November; and not long afterwards an agent of the Duke of Urbino wrote this pitiful report of his condition. 'Every one is ready to welcome him to hearth and heart; but his humors render him mistrustful of mankind at large. In the palace of the Cardinal Gonzaga there are rooms and beds always ready for his use, and men reserved for his especial service. Yet he runs away and mistrusts even that friendly lord. In short, it is a sad misfortune that the present age should be deprived of the greatest genius which has appeared for centuries. What wise man ever spoke in prose or verse better than this madman?[57] In the following August, Scipione Gonzaga's servants, unable to endure Tasso's eccentricities, turned him from their master's house, and he took refuge in a monastery of the Olivetan monks. Soon afterwards he was carried to the hospital of the Bergamasques. His misery now was great, and his health so bad that friends expected a speedy end.[58] Yet the Cardinal Gonzaga again opened his doors to him in the spring of 1590. Then the morbid poet turned suspicious, and began to indulge fresh hopes of fortune in another place. He would again offer himself to the Medici. In April he set off for Tuscany, and alighted at the convent of Monte Oliveto, near Florence. Nobody wanted him; he wandered about the Pitti like a spectre, and the Florentines wrote: actum est de eo.[59] Some parting compliments and presents from the Grand Duke sweetened his dismissal. He returned to Rome; but each new journey told upon his broken health, and another illness made him desire a change of scene. This time Antonio Costantini offered to attend upon him. They visited Siena, Bologna and Mantua. At Mantua, Tasso made some halt, and took a new long poem, the Gerusalemme Conquistata, seriously in hand. But the demon of unrest pursued him, and in November 1591 he was off again with the Duke of Mantua to Rome. From Rome he went to Naples at the beginning of the following year, worked at the Conquistata, and began his poem of the Sette Giornate.[60] He was always occupied with the vain hope of recovering a portion of his mother's estate. April saw him once more upon his way to Rome. Clement VIII. had been elected, and Tasso expected patronage from the Papal nephews.[61]
He was not disappointed. They received him into their houses, and for a while he sojourned in the Vatican. The year 1593 seems, through their means, to have been one of comparative peace and prosperity. Early in the summer of 1594 his health obliged him to seek change of air. He went for the last time to Naples. The Cardinal of S. Giorgio, one of the Pope's nephews, recalled him in November to be crowned poet in Rome. His entrance into the Eternal City was honorable, and Clement granted him a special audience; but the ceremony of coronation had to be deferred because of the Cardinal's ill health.
Meanwhile his prospects seemed likely to improve. Clement conferred on him a pension of one hundred ducats, and the Prince of Avellino, who had detained his mother's estate, compounded with him for a life-income of two hundred ducats. This good fortune came in the spring of 1595. But it came too late; for his death-illness was upon him. On the first of April he had himself transported to the convent of S. Onofrio, which overlooks Rome from the Janiculan hill. 'Torrents of rain were falling with a furious wind, when the carriage of Cardinal Cinzio was seen climbing the steep ascent. The badness of the weather made the fathers think there must be some grave cause for this arrival. So the prior and others hurried to the gate, where Tasso descended with considerable difficulty, greeting the monks with these words: 'I am come to die among you.''[62] The last of Tasso's letters, written to Antonio Costantini from S. Onofrio, has the quiet dignity of one who struggles for the last time with the frailty of his mortal nature.[63]
'What will my good lord Antonio say when he shall hear of his Tasso's death? The news, as I incline to think, will not be long in coming; for I feel that I have reached the end of life, being unable to discover any remedy for this tedious indisposition which has supervened on the many others I am used to—like a rapid torrent resistlessly sweeping me away. The time is past when I should speak of my stubborn fate, to mention not the world's ingratitude, which, however, has willed to gain the victory of bearing me to the grave a pauper; the while I kept on thinking that the glory which, despite of those that like it not, this age will inherit from my writings, would not have left me wholly without guerdon. I have had myself carried to this monastery of S. Onofrio; not only because the air is commended by physicians above that of any other part of Rome, but also as it were upon this elevated spot and by the conversation of these devout fathers to commence my conversation in heaven. Pray God for me; and rest assured that as I have loved and honored you always in the present life, so will I perform for you in that other and more real life what appertains not to feigned but to veritable charity. And to the Divine grace I recommend you and myself.'
On April 25, Tasso expired at midnight, with the words In manus tuas, Domine, upon his lips. Had Costantini, his sincerest friend, been there, he might have said like Kent:
O, let him pass! he hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.
But Costantini was in Mantua; and this sonnet, which he had written for his master, remains Tasso's truest epitaph, the pithiest summary of a life pathetically tragic in its adverse fate—