[173] {141}[A MS. of the Gerusalemme is preserved and exhibited at Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.]

[174] [The original MS. of this poem is dated, "The Apennines, April 20, 1817."]

[175] {143}[The MS. of the Lament of Tasso corresponds, save in three lines where alternate readings are superscribed, verbatim et literatim with the text. A letter dated August 21, 1817, from G. Polidori to John Murray, with reference to the translation of the Lament into Italian, and a dedicatory letter (in Polidori's handwriting) to the Earl of Guilford, dated August 3, 1817, form part of the same volume.]

[176] [In a letter written to his friend Scipio Gonzaga ("Di prizione in Sant' Anna, questo mese di mezzio l'anno 1579"), Tasso exclaims, "Ah, wretched me! I had designed to write, besides two epic poems of most noble argument, four tragedies, of which I had formed the plan. I had schemed, too, many works in prose, on subjects the most lofty, and most useful to human life; I had designed to unite philosophy with eloquence, in such a manner that there might remain of me an eternal memory in the world. Alas! I had expected to close my life with glory and renown; but now, oppressed by the burden of so many calamities, I have lost every prospect of reputation and of honour. The fear of perpetual imprisonment increases my melancholy; the indignities which I suffer augment it; and the squalor of my beard, my hair, and habit, the sordidness and filth, exceedingly annoy me. Sure am I, that, if she who so little has corresponded to my attachment—if she saw me in such a state, and in such affliction—she would have some compassion on me."—Lettere di Torouato Tasso, 1853, ii. 60.]

[177] {144}[Compare—

"The second of a tenderer sadder mood,

Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem."

Prophecy of Dante, Canto IV. lines 136, 137.]

[178] [Tasso's imprisonment in the Hospital of Sant' Anna lasted from March, 1579, to July, 1586. The Gerusalemme had been finished many years before. He sent the first four cantos to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, February 17, and the last three on October 4, 1575 (Lettere di Torquato Tasso, 1852, i. 55-117). A mutilated first edition was published in 1580 by "Orazio alias Celio de' Malespini, avventuriere intrigante" (Solerti's Vita, etc., 1895, i. 329).]

[179] [So, too, Gibbon was overtaken by a "sober melancholy" when he had finished the last line of the last page of the Decline and Fall on the night of June 27, 1787.]

[180] {145}[Not long after his imprisonment, Tasso appealed to the mercy of Alfonso, in a canzone of great beauty, ... and ... in another ode to the princesses, whose pity he invoked in the name of their own mother, who had herself known, if not the like horrors, the like solitude of imprisonment, and bitterness of soul, made a similar appeal. (See Life of Tasso, by John Black, 1810, ii. 64, 408.) Black prints the canzone in full; Solerti (Vita, etc., i. 316-318) gives selections.]

[181] {146}["For nearly the first year of his confinement Tasso endured all the horrors of a solitary sordid cell, and was under the care of a gaoler whose chief virtue, although he was a poet and a man of letters, was a cruel obedience to the commands of his prince.... His name was Agostino Mosti.... Tasso says of him, in a letter to his sister, 'ed usa meco ogni sorte di rigore ed inumanità.'"—Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, etc., 1818, pp. 20, 21, note 1.

Tasso, in a letter to Angelo Grillo, dated June 16, 1584 (Letter 288, Le Lettere, etc., ii. 276), complains that Mosti did not interfere to prevent him being molested by the other inmates, disturbed in his studies, and treated disrespectfully by the governor's subordinates. In the letter to his sister Cornelia, from which Hobhouse quotes, the allusion is not to Mosti, but, according to Solerti, to the Cardinal Luigi d'Este. Elsewhere (Letter 133, Lettere, ii. 88, 89) Tasso describes Agostino Mosti as a rigorous and zealous Churchman, but far too cultivated and courteous a gentleman to have exercised any severity towards him proprio motu, or otherwise than in obedience to orders.]

[182] {147}[It is highly improbable that Tasso openly indulged, or secretly nourished, a consuming passion for Leonora d'Este, and it is certain that the "Sister of his Sovereign" had nothing to do with his being shut up in the Hospital of Sant' Anna. That poet and princess had known each other for over thirteen years, that the princess was seven years older than the poet, and, in March, 1579, close upon forty-two years of age, are points to be considered; but the fact that she died in February, 1581, and that Tasso remained in confinement for five years longer, is a stronger argument against the truth of the legend. She was a beautiful woman, his patroness and benefactress, and the theme of sonnets and canzoni; but it was not for her "sweet sake" that Tasso lost either his wits or his liberty.]

[183] Compare—

"I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name."

"Stanzas for Music," line 1, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 413.

[184] {148}[Compare the following lines from the canzone entitled, "La Prima di Tre Sorelle Scritte a Madaroa Leonora d'Este ... 1567:"—

"E certo il primo dì che'l bel sereno

Delia tua fronte agli occhi miei s'offerse

E vidi armato spaziarvi Amore,

Se non che riverenza allor converse,

E Meraviglia in fredda selce il seno,

Ivi pería con doppia morte il core;

Ma parte degli strali, e dell' ardore

Sentii pur anco entro 'l gelato marmo."]

[185] {149}[Ariosto (Sat. 7, Terz. 53) complains that his father chased him "not with spurs only, but with darts and lances, to turn over old texts," etc.; but Tasso was a studious and dutiful boy, and, though he finally deserted the law for poetry, and "crossed" his father's wishes and intentions, he took his own course reluctantly, and without any breach of decorum. But, perhaps, the following translations from the Rinaldo, which Black supplies in his footnotes (i. 41. 97), suggested this picture of a "poetic child" at variance with the authorities:—

"Now hasting thence a verdant mead he found,

Where flowers of fragrant smell adorned the ground;

Sweet was the scene, and here from human eyes

Apart he sits, and thus he speaks mid sighs."

Canto I. stanza xviii.

"Thus have I sung in youth's aspiring days

Rinaldo's pleasing plains and martial praise:

While other studies slowly I pursued

Ere twice revolved nine annual suns I viewed;

Ungrateful studies, whence oppressed I groaned,

A burden to myself and to the world unknown.

But this first-fruit of new awakened powers!

Dear offspring of a few short studious hours!

Thou infant volume child of fancy born

Where Brenta's waves the sunny meads adorn."

Canto XII. stanza xc.]

[bh] {150} My mind like theirs adapted to its grave.—[MS.]

[186] ["Nor do I lament," wrote Tasso, shortly after his confinement, "that my heart is deluged with almost constant misery, that my head is always heavy and often painful, that my sight and hearing are much impaired, and that all my frame is become spare and meagre; but, passing all this with a short sigh, what I would bewail is the infirmity of my mind.... My mind sleeps, not thinks; my fancy is chill, and forms no pictures; my negligent senses will no longer furnish the images of things; my hand is sluggish in writing, and my pen seems as if it shrunk from the office. I feel as if I were chained in all my operations, and as if I were overcome by an unwonted numbness and oppressive stupor."—Opere, Venice, 1738, viii. 258, 263.]

[187] [In a letter to Maurizio Cataneo, dated December 25, 1585, Tasso gives an account of his sprite (folletto): "The little thief has stolen from me many crowns.... He puts all my books topsy-turvy (mi mette tutti i libri sottosopra), opens my chest and steals my keys, so that I can keep nothing." Again, December 30, with regard to his hallucinations he says, "Know then that in addition to the wonders of the Folletto ... I have many nocturnal alarms. For even when awake I have seemed to behold small flames in the air, and sometimes my eyes sparkle in such a manner, that I dread the loss of sight, and I have ... seen sparks issue from them."—Letters 454, 456, Le Lettere, 1853, ii. 475, 479.]

[bi] {151}

Which { nations yet after days } shall visit for my sake.—[MS.]

[188] {152}["Tasso, notwithstanding the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the Capitol, but for his death," Reply to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Ravenna, March 15, 1820), Letters, 1900, iv. Appendix IX. p. 487.]

[bj]

As none in life could { wrench wring } thee from my heart.—[MS.]

[189] [Compare—

"From Life's commencement to its slow decline

We are entwined."

Epistle to Augusta, stanza xvi. lines 6, 7, vide ante, p. 62.]

[190] [The Apennines, April 20, 1817.]