Friends, this is Tasso, not the sire but son;
For he of human offspring had no heed,
Begetting for himself immortal seed
Of art, style, genius and instruction.
In exile long he lived and utmost need;
In palace, temple, school, he dwelt alone;
He fled, and wandered through wild woods unknown;
On earth, on sea, suffered in thought and deed.
He knocked at death's door; yet he vanquished him
With lofty prose and with undying rhyme;
But fortune not, who laid him where he lies.
Guerdon for singing loves and arms sublime,
And showing truth whose light makes vices dim,
Is one green wreath; yet this the world denies.
The wreath of laurel which the world grudged was placed upon his bier; and a simple stone, en graved with the words Hic jacet Torquatus Tassus, marked the spot where he was buried.
The foregoing sketch of Tasso's life and character differs in some points from the prevalent conceptions of the poet. There is a legendary Tasso, the victim of malevolent persecution by pedants, the mysterious lover condemned to misery in prison by a tyrannous duke. There is also a Tasso formed by men of learning upon ingeniously constructed systems; Rosini's Tasso, condemned to feign madness in punishment for courting Leonora d'Este with lascivious verses; Capponi's Tasso, punished for seeking to exchange the service of the House of Este for that of the House of Medici; a Tasso who was wholly mad; a Tasso who remained through life the victim of Jesuitical influences. In short, there are as many Tassos as there are Hamlets. Yet these Tassos of the legend and of erudition do not reproduce his self-revealed lineaments. Tasso's letters furnish documents of sufficient extent to make the real man visible, though something yet remains perhaps not wholly explicable in his tragedy.