write, with all its thrilling associations. During his imprisonment he composed many admirable works in prose and verse, all bearing the stamp of much learning, great genius, and the soundest reasoning powers. In the latter part of his confinement, however, he was tormented with various bodily infirmities, and harassed by imaginary sights and sounds, which he describes in some of his letters, and attributes to witchcraft and evil spirits. Notwithstanding these afflictions, we find him consoling himself with the reflection, that the devil has no power over his will; that he could think and compose as usual, and this he justly considers the true test of a sound intellect. In the second year of his seclusion the Princess Leonora died. During the first he addressed to her, to her sister, and the duke, several poetic appeals for liberty, among the most pathetic in the world. They were fruitless. From 1579 to 1586, the poet who, in modern times, has no rival but Dante, lingered out his life in prison. His own exertions, and those of a few faithful friends-the intercession of the city of Bergamo, and of the prince, and through him the duke of Mantua, at length put an end to his tedious confinement. It is a mistake, however, to suppose he was even then unconditionally released. He was given in ward to the Duke of Mantua, who apparently became surety for his conduct in several particulars, and, among others, that he should write nothing against his ancient patron and recent jailor.* Broken in health and spirits, the rest of his life was a variety of wretchedness. Long endeavoring to recover some portion of his mother's property, usurped by her relations-appealing ineffectually to royal clemency for a reversal of his father's sentence, and the restitution of his patrimony-condemned to seek a patron in vain, and to see himself defrauded by the surreptitious publication of his poems-quickly pirated on all sides-poor Tasso, in a fit of sickness, was once reduced to the extremity of voluntarily seeking an abode in one of those asylums of poverty and misery to which he had formerly been involuntarily committed.

At the close of his life fortune smiled on him deceitfully for a moment. The lawsuit for his mother's estate was compromised so as to allow him a subsistence. He obtained the

*V. Serassi, p. 381, 382; 391, 392, n. 4, and Manso, 185, 186, 187. The last condition is not expressly mentioned by his biographers, but Tasso's letters leave no doubt of it, and none that he was still a sort of prisoner on parole.

favor and protection of Cardinal Aldobrandini. Preparations were made for crowning him with laurel in the capitol. Before the appointed day, however, he retreated to the monastery of Sant. Onofrio, which overlooks the imperial city, and there death laid him gently in the dust. He died on the twenty-fifth of April, 1595, having little more than completed his fifty-first year, and the monastery where he breathed his last still preserves his ashes. The humble cell where he died-the simple tablet consecrated to his memory-the elevated site, and unpretending architecture of the building-the cypress trees around-the sky above, and Rome beneath it-give to the religion of the spot a solemnity and grandeur which the heart acknowledges in silence, and whose description the pen shrinks from in despair.

To return to our authors, and their controversy. The war between Rosini and Cavedoni was still raging, when the existence of certain inedited MSS. of Tasso was announced, which promised to throw much light on this portion of his history. Their possessor, Count Mariano Alberti, pretended to have purchased them from Prince Falconieri of Rome, and offered them for sale to the grand duke of Tuscany. A liberal price was agreed on, if they proved genuine, and many of the literati expressed opinions more or less favorable to their authenticity, but when they came to be examined by experts, the judgment of the latter was not sufficiently favorable, and the purchase was abandoned. Alberti then subjected some portions of these papers to the inspection of keepers of the public libraries where the poet's hand-writing is preserved, and to other competent and impartial judges, and having thus authenticated, as far as possible, the pieces so submitted, announced an intended publication. This, it was presumed, would comprehend all the MSS., and was looked for with the most ardent curiosity. It was given out that he had been refused permission to publish his work in Rome, Florence, Naples, and Milan, and public impatience was more and more inflamed by the delay.

In the meantime, he freely read to natives and foreigners of his acquaintance, some parts of his collection, giving, at the same time, the history of their acquisition. It was our fortune to be present more than once at these readings, and the impression made upon us is not yet effaced. The prejudice since created by the count's manner of proceeding, injudicious in the highest degree, to say the least of it, is now

so strong among Italian critics, that we dare not venture to express the conviction then entertained. Still, as to many of those which we heard, we must be allowed to say, after years of reflection and investigation, that if indeed they are forgeries, they are more extraordinary ones than those of Chatterton and Ireland. Several of them have a beauty, truth, and energy, that fiction rarely or never displays. Among others is a sonnet addressed to the duke, equal or superior to the best of Tasso's known productions, and Tasso, as a lyric, is excelled among his countrymen by Petrarch only. There are, or were, also, some verses alluding to the hopes the poet had conceived from a promise of marriage, and their dissipation by the anger of Ĵove the thunderer. A billet from Leonora acknowledges the receipt of these lines, the beauty of which she praises, but reproves her lover for hinting at such a subject, and admonishes him, when Jove thunders to beware the lightning. There was another of her notes, written, it may be presumed, after some of his private papers had been stolen. The particular one alluded to does not appear, but it must have been such as to compromit him seriously.* She reproaches him with a mixture of tenderness and severity for keeping in his possession matter so deep and dangerous. She tells him his imprudence is more like that of a boy than a man, and wonders how he could preserve on paper what should have remained for ever buried in the silence of their own bosoms. She points out to him the peril he might incur from the holy office, and hints that the charge of heresy would be a convenient cloak to cover his punishment for other offences. With the promptness for which her sex has been famed, of finding remedy, or at least counsel, in every emergency, she urges him to hasten to Bologna, and there avert at least a part of the evil, by a voluntary confession and recantation of religious doubts, "O vera o finta." That he did so is matter of history. These papers, indeed, as far as we heard them read, and could examine them, tally so exactly with the known events of the poet's life, they connect

Many such may be found in his sonnets and madrigals, if we suppose they referred to the princess; but the one most exposed to the mixed charge of irreligion and lasciviousness, is the sonnet, " Odi Filli chè tuona." Sonnet 165, page 88. vol. iii. edition of Pisa. The last line, in conjunction with the preceding ones, would do to give cognizance to the inquisition. In justice to Tasso, it should be noted as a solitary instance. Despite of his doubts, his poems are generally orthodox, and though not quite so Platonic as Petrarch's, nearly as free from all taint of grossness or indecency.

facts, explain doubts, and support each other in so extraordinary a manner, that it is as difficult to believe them feigned as real. A third billet of Leonora's we remember to have seen, urging the great unfortunate to fly, written, as it may be presumed, on the eve of his arrest, and betraying haste and agitation in the tremor of the hand. Among the poetry, was the original of that affecting sonnet in which Tasso invokes the spirit of Duke Hercules to intercede for his pardon, and soften the heart of his son. Upon this is found, in what purports to be the Duke Alphonso's own hand, the following short, stern, cold, dreadful answer. "When the shade of Duke Hercules appears, his prayer shall be heard." Upon the admirable, indeed wonderful sonnet first mentioned, in which Tasso retracts his promise to feign madness, and asserts his sanity in language such as scarce any but himself could use, there was also a memorandum purporting to be the duke's. It was to the following effect:" After this production, there being no longer any doubt of the insanity of Ser Torquato Tasso, he is committed to the custody of the guardians of the hospital of Sant' Anna, to be strictly and rigorously watched, and carefully attended, until he shall be cured." In a note of Leonora's there was an allusion, as Count Alberti supposed, to this sonnet. The princess acknowledges the receipt of a letter, through the same channel as that by which she sends her answer, a friar of the monastery, [of San Francesco,] and in reference to this, or some other indiscreet step of his, proceeds to say: "Assuredly your excellence, if you have not lost your senses, must have lost your judgment, in thus not only destroying all possibility of serving you, but drawing down additional evils on yourself and others."

The supposition that Tasso agreed to feign insanity at the instance of the duke, is favored by several passages in his discourse to Gonzaga; and the belief that his madness was not real, certainly prevailed in his life-time. Alessandro Guarini, son of Battista, who must have had the best means of information, plainly hints as much in a dialogue published only fifteen years after Tasso's death, but not hitherto noticed in this controversy. This is Rosini's theory, and evidently

V. Il Farnetico Savio ovvero il Tasso Ferrara, 1610. The interlocutors are Cæsare Caporale, and Tasso himself. The former asks, page 47: "Per qual cagione vi avete finto, e tutta via vi fingete farnetico?" Tasso says, page 48: "Io di farnetico ho prese nome e sembianza," etc. And again, page 49: “ Deliberai di fingermi forsennato."

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the true one, if the Alberti papers are to be credited. Among these curious memorials, curious whether true or false, documents of a more serious official and authoritative character than any heretofore mentioned were not wanting. There was a letter purporting to come from the Duke of Mantua to Alphonso, urging Tasso's release. Duke William, beyond question, did interpose in his behalf, and if this letter is not the one actually written, it is most probably not at all inferior to it. He tells his brother duke that it concerns not only his honor, but the honor of all the princes of the time, that so great a man should not linger out his life in prison without the nature and certainty of his offence being known; and he entreats that the facts may be investigated and made public, that so, if innocent, he may be released, and if guilty, they may be justified by the proof and heinousness of the crime. Alphonso, thereupon, directed, as it would appear from another instrument, that "all the papers sealed up in his private archives, relating to this subject, should be entrusted to Guarini, his secretary, whom he charges to draw up a report of the truth, showing how little ground of complaint there was respecting the treatment of one whom even his clemency could not have allowed to live, except as a madman." There was even, if we remember rightly, the heads, or rough draft of Guarini's statement, in obedience to this order, acquitting Tasso of guilt, and taxing him only with imprudence. In this report, if these papers can be relied on, he must have softened the truth to effect poor Tasso's release, and it concerned him deeply that the originals should not rise in judgment against him. Accordingly, Count Alberti imagines that he abstracted them from the ducal archives, and that this circumstance was connected with his sudden and mysterious flight from Ferrara, and with the extraordinary and relentless persecution he afterwards experienced from Alphonso. În support of this conjecture, there is a letter from Guarini to Tasso, offering him these papers, to be preserved as conclusive proofs to the world, and all posterity, of the falsehood and cruelty of the charge of madness. Tasso's answer to the man whom he had deemed his rival and his enemy, but who would seem to have perilled life to save him, appeared to us one of the most touching specimens of human eloquence. If this, and the sonnet "Giurai Signor," are literary forgeries, they are not unworthy of the pen which produced the "JERUSALEM," and the "DISCOURSES." A