[Footnote 18: In his _Letter to Zeno,—Opere del
Tasso_, xvi. p. 118.]
[Footnote 19: Storia della Poesia Italiana (Mathias's edition), vol. iii. part i. p 236.]
[Footnote 20: Serassi is very peremptory, and even abusive. He charges every body who has said any thing to the contrary with imposture. "Egli non v' ha dubbio, che le troppe imprudenti e temerarie parole, che il Tasso si lasciò uscir di bocca in questo incontro, furone la sola cagione della sua prigionia, e ch' è mera favola ed impostura tutto ciò, che diversamente è stato affermato e scritto da altri in tale proposito." Vol. ii. p. 33. But we have seen that the good Abbè could practise a little imposition himself.]
[Footnote 21: Black, ii. 88.]
[Footnote 22: Hist. Litt. d'Italie, v. 243, &c.]
[Footnote 23: Vol. ii. p. 89.]
[Footnote 24: Such at least is my impression; but I cannot call the evidence to mind.]
[Footnote 25: Literature of the South of Europe (Roscoe's translation), vol. ii. p. 165. To shew the loose way in which the conclusions of a man's own mind are presented as facts admitted by others, Sismondi says, that Tasso's "passion" was the cause of his return to Ferrara. There is not a tittle of evidence to shew for it.]
[Footnote 26: Saggio sugli Amori, &c. ut sup p. 84, and passim. As specimens of the learned professor's reasoning, it may be observed that whenever the words humble, daring, high, noble, and royal, occur in the poet's love-verses, he thinks they must allude to the Princess Leonora; and he argues, that Alfonso never could have been so angry with any "versi lascivi," if they had not had the same direction.]