The first open manifestations of insanity occurred in 1577 (probably as the result of a fever), about the time he had finished the first draft of the Jerusalem Delivered. Very foolishly for a man as sensitive as he was, he turned over the manuscript of his poem to a number of friends for suggestions. The heartless criticisms he thus received filled him with bitterness and fostered the rising irritability of his nascent disease. He was especially hurt by the brutal and stupid criticism of the Inquisitor Antoniano, who advised him to cut out all the romantic episodes, which form the real beauty of the poem. This put into his mind the thought that the Inquisition might refuse him permission to print his poem, and made him fear that he might be a heretic. The lessons of his early teachers, the Jesuits, now began to bear fruit. In 1577, tormented by religious doubts, he went to the inquisitor of Bologna and laid his case before him. Although the latter absolved him from his self-charge of heresy, Tasso was not satisfied. Henceforth religious fear was added to the fear of assassination—a double torment to his soul.
Under these circumstances he became more and more moody and irritable; he was suspicious of all about him and subject to frequent outbursts of violence. On the evening of June 17, 1577, he was discoursing of his troubles to the Princess Lucretia, when he suspected a passing servant of spying him, and flung a knife at him. In order to prevent further acts of violence he was shut up, at first in his room, and later in the monastery of St. Francis, under the care of a physician. On July 27 he broke the door and escaped. Horsemen were sent after him, but being disguised as a peasant, he escaped, and after many adventures, often begging his way as a common beggar, he reached Sorrento, where, in the quiet seclusion of his sister's house, surrounded by all the tokens of her love and sympathy, he enjoyed a short period of rest and peace.
He soon became restless, however, and yearned for the brilliant life of the court, which presented itself to his fancy, enhanced by the charms of distance and of those things we have had and lost. He was like a butterfly, always attracted toward the light that was to destroy him. He returned to Ferrara, and again ran away, wandering from city to city, yet finding nowhere a warm welcome. "The world's rejected guest," Shelley called him, who knew himself only too well the meaning of these words.
In February, 1579, Tasso once more returned to Ferrara, this time without previous warning, and asked to be received by the duke. It was a singularly unpropitious moment; the duke was then in the midst of preparations for his marriage with Margaret Gonzaga, his third wife, and naturally enough the obscure, half-insane poet was neglected. This neglect completely turned his mind, and losing all self-control he broke out into violent invectives in the presence of the court. He was immediately taken out, shut up in the insane asylum of S. Anna, and in accordance with the barbarous customs of the age in the treatment of the insane, put in chains. Here he remained in utter misery, a prey to the double nightmare of his sick brain, fear of death by the assassin's knife, and of everlasting damnation as a heretic. The letters which he wrote by scores during this period are of heartbreaking pathos.
He remained in S. Anna nearly eight years, being released in 1586 at the solicitation of Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga, brother-in-law of the duke of Ferrara. From now on to the end, the story of Tasso's life becomes a mere repetition of melancholy incidents. Once more he went from city to city, visiting in turn Milan, Florence, Naples, and Rome, and moving restlessly hither and thither
"Like spirits of the wandering wind,
Who seek for rest, yet rest can never find."
Finally fortune seemed about to smile upon him; a faint ray of sunshine broke through the thick clouds that for so long had hung over his life. In November, 1594, he was invited to Rome, there to be crowned poet, as Petrarch had been. The pope assigned him a pension, and it seemed as if at last some measure of happiness might again be his. It was only a brief gleam of sunshine, however; the clouds soon closed again, and the sun of Tasso's life hastened to its setting shrouded in gloom. The coronation was put off on account of the ill health of Cardinal Cinzio and the inclemency of the season. In March, 1595, he himself fell sick, and in April was taken to the monastery of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum hill. To the monks who came to meet him he uttered the pathetic words: "My fathers, I have come to die among you." The pope sent his own physician to attend him, but in vain. The world-weary poet passed away April 25, 1595. His body lies buried in the adjacent church. The visitor to-day can still see his room, furnished as in his lifetime, and on the wall a copy of his last letter, in which he announces his speedy death.
Tasso's works are comparatively voluminous, and consist of lyrical poems, the pastoral poem, Aminta, a tragedy, Torrismondo, dialogues, letters, and the Jerusalem Delivered. In this brief sketch we can only discuss the latter, by which alone he is known the world over.
Already when only sixteen years old, he had felt the ambition to write a poem which should combine the merits of the regular epic (such as the Iliad and Æneid), and the romantic interest of the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto. His Rinaldo, written when he was only nineteen years old, was remarkable both on account of the youth of its author and as a promise of what was to follow. For a number of years after this, however, he devoted himself almost exclusively to the task of preparing himself, by reading, study, and thought, to write the great poem which he had in mind.
His choice of a subject was a happy one. The fear of the Turk at that time was widespread; the wars between Christian and Saracen, which filled the old romances, were now occurring again on the eastern borders of Europe. The Turks had conquered Hungary, and their piratic ships had ravaged the coast of Italy, often destroying entire populations; a short time before Sorrento, Tasso's birthplace, had been attacked, and his sister escaped only by a miracle. Tasso himself must have heard many a story of the crusades, when a child at Sorrento, where Pope Urban, who had published the first crusade, was buried. His choice of the deliverance of Jerusalem from the unbeliever then was a natural one.