Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
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The author of this epic of the Crusades was of a family so noble and
so widely diffused, that, under the patronage of the emperors and the
Italian princes, it flourished in a very remarkable manner, not only in
its own country, but in Flanders, Germany, and Spain. There was a
Tasso once in England, ambassador of Philip the Second; another, like
Cervantes, distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto; and a third
gave rise to the sovereign German house of Tour and Taxis. _Taxus_ is the
Latin of Tasso. The Latin word, like the Italian, means both a badger
and a yew-tree; and the family in general appear to have taken it in the
former sense. The animal is in their coat of arms. But the poet, or his
immediate relatives, preferred being more romantically shadowed forth by
the yew-tree. The parent stock of the race was at Bergamo in Lombardy;
and here was born the father of Tasso, himself a poet of celebrity,
though his fame has been eclipsed by that of his son.
Bernardo Tasso, author of many elegant lyrics, of some volumes of
letters, not uninteresting but too florid, and of the _Amadigi_, an epic
romance now little read, was a man of small property, very honest and
good-hearted, but restless, ambitious, and with a turn for expense beyond
his means. He attached himself to various princes, with little ultimate
advantage, particularly to the unfortunate Sanseverino, Prince of
Salerno, whom he faithfully served for many years. The prince had a high
sense of his worth, and would probably have settled him in the wealth and
honours he was qualified to adorn, but for those Spanish oppressions in
the history of Naples which ended in the ruin of both master and servant.
Bernardo, however, had one happy interval of prosperity; and during this,
at the age of forty-six, he married Porzia di Rossi, a young lady of a
rich and noble family, with a claim to a handsome dowry. He spent some
delightful years with her at Sorrento, a spot so charming as to have been
considered the habitation of the Sirens; and here, in the midst of his
orange-trees, his verses, and the breezes of an aromatic coast, he had
three children, the eldest of whom was a daughter named Cornelia, and the
youngest the author of the _Jerusalem Delivered_. the other child died
young. The house distinguished by the poet's birth was restored from a
dilapidated condition by order of Joseph Bonaparte when King of Naples,
and is now an hotel.
Torquato Tasso was born March the 11th, 1544, nine years after the death
of Ariosto, who was intimate with his father. He was very devoutly
brought up; and grew so tall, and became so premature a scholar, that
at nine, he tells us, he might have been taken for a boy of twelve. At
eleven, in consequence of the misfortunes of his father, who had been
exiled with the Prince of Salerno, he was forced to part from his mother,
who remained at home to look after a dowry which she never received. Her
brothers deprived her of it; and in two years' time she died, Bernardo
thought by poison. Twenty-four years afterwards her illustrious son, in
the midst of his own misfortunes, remembered with sighs the tears with
which the kisses of his poor mother were bathed when she was forced to
let him go.[2]
The little Torquato following, as he says, like another Ascanius, the
footsteps of his wandering father, joined Bernardo in Rome. After two
years' study in that city, partly under an old priest who lived with
them, the vicissitudes of the father's lot took away the son first to
Bergamo, among his relations, and then to Pesaro, in the duchy of Urbino,
where his education was associated for nearly two years with that of the
young prince, afterwards Duke Francesco Maria the Second (della Rovere),
who retained a regard for him through life. In 1559 the boy joined his
father in Venice, where the latter had been appointed secretary to the
Academy; but next year he was withdrawn from these pleasing varieties
of scene by the parental delusion so common in the history of men of
letters--the study of the law; which Bernardo intended him to pursue
henceforth in the city of Padua. He accordingly arrived in Padua at the
age of sixteen and a half, and fulfilled his legal destiny by writing the
poem of _Rinaldo_, which was published in the course of less than two
years at Venice. The goodnatured and poetic father, convinced by this
specimen of jurisprudence how useless it was to thwart the hereditary
passion, permitted him to devote himself wholly to literature, which he
therefore went to study in the university of Bologna; and there, at the
early age of nineteen, he began his _Jerusalem Delivered_; that is to
say, he planned it, and wrote three cantos, several of the stanzas of
which he retained when the poem was matured. He quitted Bologna, however,
in a fit of indignation at being accused of the authorship of a satire;
and after visiting some friends at Castelvetro and Correggio, returned
to Padua on the invitation of his friend Scipio Gonzaga, afterwards
cardinal, who wished him to become a member of an academy he had
instituted, called the _Eterei_(Ethereals). Here he studied his favourite
philosopher, Plato, and composed three Discourses on Heroic Poetry,
dedicated to his friend. He now paid a visit to his father in Mantua,
where the unsettled man had become secretary to the duke; and here, it is
said, he fell in love with a young lady of a distinguished family, whose
name was Laura Peperara; but this did not hinder him from returning to
his Paduan studies, in which he spent nearly the whole of the following
year. He was then informed that the Cardinal of Este, to whom he had
dedicated his _Rinaldo_, and with whom interest had been made for the
purpose, had appointed him one of his attendants, and that he was
expected at Ferrara by the 1st of December. Returning to Mantua, in order
to prepare for this appointment with his father, he was seized with a
dangerous illness, which detained him there nearly a twelvemonth longer.
On his recovery he hastened to Ferrara, and arrived in that city on the
last day of October, 1565, the first of many years of glory and misery.
The cardinal of Este was the brother of the reigning Duke of Ferrara,
Alfonso the Second, grandson of the Alfonso of Ariosto. It is curious
to see the two most celebrated romantic poets of Italy thrown into
unfortunate connexion with two princes of the same house and the same
respective ranks. Tasso's cardinal, however, though the poet lost his
favour, and though very little is known about him, left no such bad
reputation behind him as Ippolito. It was in the service of the duke that
the poet experienced his sufferings.
This prince, who was haughty, ostentatious, and quarrelsome, was, at the
time of the stranger's arrival, rehearsing the shows and tournaments
intended to welcome his bride, the sister of the Emperor Maximilian the
Second. She was his second wife. The first was a daughter of the rival
house of Tuscany, which he detested; and the marriage had not been happy.
The new consort arrived in the course of a few weeks, entering the city
in great pomp; and for a time all went happily with the young poet. He
was in a state of ecstasy with the beauty and grandeur he beheld around
him--obtained the favourable notice of the duke's two sisters and the
duke himself--went on with his _Jerusalem Delivered_, which, in spite of
the presence of Ariosto's memory, he was resolved to load with praises of
the house of Este; and in this tumult of pride and expectation, he beheld
the duke, like one of the heroes of his poem, set out to assist the
emperor against the Turks at the head of three hundred gentlemen, armed
at all points, and mantled in various-coloured velvets embroidered with
gold.
To complete the young poet's happiness, or commence his disappointments,
he fell in love, notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with
the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have
loved in return; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli. Among his
rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and
who accused him on this occasion of courting two ladies at once.
Guarini's accusation has been supposed to refer to the duke's sister
Leonora, whose name has become so romantically mixed up with the poet's
biography; but the latest inquiries render it probable that the allusion
was to Laura Peperara.[3] The young poet, however, who had not escaped
the influence of the free manners of Italy, and whose senses and vanity
may hitherto have been more interested than his heart, rhymed and
flattered on all sides of him, not of course omitting the charms of
princesses. In order to win the admiration of the ladies in a body, he
sustained for three days, in public, after the fashion of the times,
_Fifty Amorous Conclusions_; that is to say, affirmations on the subject
of love; doubtless to the equal delight of his fair auditors and himself,
and the creation of a good deal of jealousy and ill-will on the part of
such persons of his own sex as had not wit or spirits enough for the
display of so much logic and love-making.
In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia
by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness; but the
continuation of his _Jerusalem_, an _Oration_ spoken at the opening of
the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora's sister Lucrezia with the
Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired
life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men
of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections; and a
journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into
scenes that were not only totally new, but otherwise highly interesting
to the singer of Godfrey of Boulogne. The occasion of it was a visit of
the cardinal, his master, to the court of his relative Charles the Ninth.
It is supposed that his Eminence went to confer with the king on matters
relative to the disputes which not long afterwards occasioned the
detestable massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Before his departure, Tasso put into the hands of one of his friends a
document, which, as it is very curious, and serves to illustrate perhaps
more than one cause of his misfortunes, is here given entire.
_Memorial left by Tasso on his departure to France._
"Since life is frail, and it may please Almighty God to dispose of me
otherwise in this my journey to France, it is requested of Signor Ercole
Rondinelli that he will, in that case, undertake the management of the
following concerns:
"In the first place, with regard to my compositions, it is my wish that
all my love-sonnets and madrigals should be collected and published; but
with regard to those, whether amatory or otherwise, _which I have written
for any friend_, my request is, that _they should be buried with myself_,
save only the one commencing "_Or che l'aura mia dolce altrove spira_." I
wish the publication of the _Oration_ spoken in Ferrara at the opening of
the academy, of the four books on _Heroic Poetry_, of the six last cantos
of the _Godfrey_ (the _Jerusalem_), and of those stanzas of the two first
which shall seem least imperfect. All these compositions, however, are to
be submitted to the review and consideration of Signor Scipio Gonzaga, of
Signor Domenico Veniero, and of Signor Battista Guarini, who, I persuade
myself, will not refuse this trouble, when they consider the zealous
friendship I have entertained for themselves.
"Let them be informed, too, that it was my intention that they should
cut and hew without mercy whatever should appear to them defective or
superfluous. With regard to additions or changes, I should wish them
to proceed more cautiously, since, after all, the poem would remain
imperfect. As to my other compositions, should there be any which, to
the aforesaid Signor Rondinelli and the other gentlemen, might seem not
unworthy of publication, let them be disposed of according to their
pleasure.
"In respect to my property, I wish that such part of it as I have
_pledged to Abram --_ for twenty-five lire, and seven pieces of arras,
which are _likewise in pledge to Signor Ascanio for thirteen scudi_,
together with whatever I have in this house, should be sold, and that the
overplus of the proceeds should go to defray the expense of the following
epitaph to be inscribed on a monument to my father, whose body is in St.
Polo. And should any impediment take place in these matters, I entreat
Signor Ercole _to have recourse to the favour of the most excellent
Madame Leonora, whose liberality I confide in, for my sake._
"I, Torquato Tasso, have written this, Ferrara, 1570."
I shall have occasion to recur to this document by and by. I will merely
observe, for the present, that the marks in it, both of imprudence in
money-matters and confidence in the goodwill of a princess, are very
striking. "Abram" and "Signor Ascanio" were both Jews. The pieces of
arras belonged to his father; and probably this was an additional reason
why the affectionate son wished the proceeds to defray the expense of the
epitaph. The epitaph recorded his father's poetry, state-services, and
vicissitudes of fortune.
Tasso was introduced to the French king as the poet of a French hero and
of a Catholic victory; and his reception was so favourable (particularly
as the wretched Charles, the victim of his mother's bigotry, had himself
no mean poetic feeling), that, with a rash mixture of simplicity and
self-reliance (respect makes me unwilling to call it self-importance),
the poet expressed an impolitic amount of astonishment at the favour
shewn at court to the Hugonots--little suspecting the horrible design it
covered. He shortly afterwards broke with his master the cardinal; and
it is supposed that this unseasonable escape of zeal was the cause. He
himself appears to have thought so.[4] Perhaps the cardinal only wanted
to get the imprudent poet back to Italy; for, on Tasso's return to
Ferrara, he was not only received into the service of the duke with
a salary of some fifteen golden scudi a-month, but told that he was
exempted from any particular duty, and might attend in peace to his
studies. Balzac affirms, that while Tasso was at the court of France, he
was so poor as to beg a crown from a friend; and that, when he left it,
he had the same coat on his back that he came in.[5] The assertions of a
professed wit and hyperbolist are not to be taken for granted; yet it is
difficult to say to what shifts improvidence may not be reduced.
The singer of the house of Este would now, it might have been supposed,
be happy. He had leisure; he had money; he had the worldly honours that
he was fond of; he occupied himself in perfecting the _Jerusalem_; and he
wrote his beautiful pastoral, the _Aminta_, which was performed before
the duke and his court to the delight of the brilliant assembly. The
duke's sister Lucrezia, princess of Urbino, who was a special friend of
the poet, sent for him to read it to her at Pesaro; and in the course of
the ensuing carnival it was performed with similar applause at the
court of her father-in-law. The poet had been as much enchanted by the
spectacle which the audience at Ferrara presented to his eyes, as the
audience with the loves and graces with which he enriched their stage.
The shepherd Thyrsis; by whom he meant himself, reflected it back upon
them in a passage of the performance. It is worth while dwelling on this
passage a little, because it exhibits a brief interval of happiness in
the author's life, and also chews us what he had already begun to
think of courts at the moment he was praising them. But he ingeniously
contrives to put the praise in his own mouth, and the blame in another's.
The shepherd's friend, Mopsus (by whom Tasso is thought to have meant
Speroni), had warned him against going to court
"Pero, figlio,
Va su l'avviso," &c.
"Therefore, my son, take my advice. Avoid
The places where thou seest much drapery,
Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries,
And such new-fanglements. But, above all,
Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering
Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble."
"What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;--
"Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see
Things as they are not, ay and hear them too.
That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold
Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver,
Heavy with wealth, are baskets full of bladders.[6]
* * * * *
The very walls there are so strangely made,
They answer those who talk; and not in syllables,
Or bits of words, like echo in our woods,
But go the whole talk over, word for word,
With something else besides, that no one said[7].
The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers,
Chairs, and whatever furniture there is
In room or bedroom, all have tongues and speech,
And are for ever tattling. Idle Babble
Is always going about, playing the child;
And should a dumb man enter in that place,
The dumb would babble in his own despite.
And yet this evil is the least of all
That might assail thee. Thou might'st be arrested
In fearful transformation to a willow,
A beast, fire, water,--fire for ever sighing,
Water for ever weeping."--Here he ceased:
And I, with all this fine foreknowledge, went
To the great city; and, by Heaven's kind will,
Came where they live so happily. The first sound
I heard was a delightful harmony,
Which issued forth, of voices loud and sweet;--Sirens,
and swans, and nymphs, a heavenly noise
Of heavenly things;--which gave me such delight,
That, all admiring, and amazed, and joyed,
I stopped awhile quite motionless. There stood
Within the entrance, as if keeping guard
Of those fine things, one of a high-souled aspect,
Stalwart withal, of whom I was in doubt
Whether to think him better knight or leader.[8]
He, with a look at once benign and grave,
In royal guise, invited me within;
He, great and in esteem; me, lorn and lowly.
Oh, the sensations and the sights which then
Shower'd on me! Goddesses I saw, and nymphs
Graceful and beautiful, and harpers fine
As Linus or as Orpheus; and more deities,
All without veil or cloud, bright as the virgin
Aurora, when she glads immortal eyes,
And sows her beams and dew-drops, silver and gold.
In the summer of 1574, the Duke of Ferrara went to Venice to pay his
respects to the successor of Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, then on
his way to France from his kingdom of Poland. Tasso went with the duke,
and is understood to have taken the opportunity of looking for a printer
of his _Jerusalem_, which was now almost finished. Writers were anxious
to publish in that crafty city, because its government would give no
security of profit to books printed elsewhere. Alfonso, who was in
mourning for Henry's brother, and to whom mourning itself only suggested
a new occasion of pomp and vanity, took with him to this interview five
hundred Ferrarese gentlemen, all dressed in long black cloaks; who
walking about Venice (says a reporter) "by twos and threes," wonderfully
impressed the inhabitants with their "gravity and magnificence."[9] The
mourners feasted, however; and Tasso had a quartan fever, which delayed
the completion of the _Jerusalem_ till next year. This was at length
effected; and now once more, it might have been thought, that the writer
would have reposed on his laurels.
But Tasso had already begun to experience the uneasiness attending
superiority; and, unfortunately, the strength of his mind was not equal
to that of his genius. He was of an ultra-sensitive temperament, and
subject to depressing fits of sickness. He could not calmly bear envy.
Sarcasm exasperated, and hostile criticism afflicted him. The seeds of a
suspicious temper were nourished by prosperity itself. The author of the
_Armida_ and the _Jerusalem_ began to think the attentions he received
unequal to his merits; while with a sort of hysterical mixture of demand
for applause, and provocation of censure, he not only condescended to
read his poems in manuscript wherever he went, but, in order to secure
the goodwill of the papal licenser, he transmitted it for revisal to
Rome, where it was mercilessly criticised for the space of two years by
the bigots and hypocrites of a court, which Luther had rendered a very
different one from that in the time of Ariosto.
This new source of chagrin exasperated the complexional restlessness,
which now made our author think that he should be more easy any where
than in Ferrara; perhaps more able to communicate with and convince
his critics; and, unfortunately, he permitted himself to descend to a
weakness the most fatal of all others to a mind naturally exalted
and ingenuous. Perhaps it was one of the main causes of all which he
suffered. Indeed, he himself attributed his misfortunes to irresolution.
What I mean in the present instance was, that he did not disdain to adopt
underhand measures. He skewed a face of satisfaction with Alfonso, at the
moment that he was taking steps to exchange his court for another. He
wrote for that purpose to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, now a prelate at the
court of Rome, earnestly begging him, at the same time, not to commit him
in their correspondence; and Scipio, who was one of his kindest and most
indulgent friends, and who doubtless saw that the Duke of Ferrara and his
poet were not of dispositions to accord, did all he could to procure him
an appointment with one of the family of the Medici.
Most unhappily for this speculation (and perhaps even the good-natured
Gonzaga took a little more pleasure in it on that account), Alfonso
inherited all the detestation of his house for that lucky race; and it is
remarkable, that the same jealousies which hindered Ariosto's advancement
with the Medici were still more fatal to the hopes of Tasso; for they
served to plunge him into the deepest adversity. In vain he had warnings
given him, both friendly and hostile. The princess, now Duchess of
Urbino, who was his particular friend, strongly cautioned him against the
temptation of going away. She said he was watched. He himself thought his
letters were opened; and probably they were. They certainly were at a
subsequent period. Tasso, however, persisted, and went to Rome. Scipio
Gonzaga introduced him to Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici, afterwards Grand
Duke of Tuscany; and Ferdinand made him offers of protection so handsome,
that they excited his suspicion. The self-tormenting poet thought they
savoured more of hatred to the Este family, than honour to himself.[10]
He did not accept them. He did nothing at Rome but make friends, in order
to perplex them; listen to his critics, in order to worry himself;
and perform acts of piety in the churches, by way of shewing that the
love-scenes in the _Jerusalem_ were innocent. For the bigots had begun to
find something very questionable in mixing up so much love with war. The
bloodshed they had no objection to. The love bearded their prejudices,
and excited their envy.
Tasso returned to Ferrara, and endeavoured to solace himself
with eulogising two fair strangers who had arrived at Alfonso's
court,--Eleonora Sanvitale, who had been newly married to the Count of
Scandiano (a Tiene, not a Boiardo, whose line was extinct), and Barbara
Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, who
was a Juno-like beauty, wore her hair in the form of a crown. The still
more beautiful daughter-in-law had an under lip such as Anacreon or Sir
John Suckling would have admired,--pouting and provoking,--[prokaloymenon
phileama]. Tasso wrote verses on them both, but particularly to the lip;
and this Countess of Scandiano is the second, out of the three Leonoras,
with whom Tasso was said by his friend Manso to have been in love. The
third, it is now ascertained, never existed; and his love-making to the
new, or second Leonora, goes to shew how little of real passion there was
in the praises of the first (the Princess Leonora), or probably of
any lady at court. He even professed love, as a forlorn hope, to the
countess's waiting-maid. Yet these gallantries of sonnets are exalted
into bewilderments of the heart.
His restlessness returning, the poet now condescended to craft a second
time. Expecting to meet with a refusal, and so to be afforded a
pretext for quitting Ferrara, he applied for the vacant office of
historiographer. It was granted him; and he then disgusted the Medici by
pleading an unlooked-for engagement, which he could only reconcile to his
applications for their favour by renouncing his claim to be believed. If
he could have deceived others, why might he not have deceived them?
All the lurking weakness of the poet's temperament began to display
itself at this juncture. His perplexity excited him to a degree of
irritability bordering on delirium; and circumstances conspired to
increase it. He had lent an acquaintance the key of his rooms at court,
for the purpose (he tells us) of accommodating some intrigue; and
he suspected this person of opening cabinets containing his papers.
Remonstrating with him one day in the court of the palace, either on that
or some other account, the man gave him the lie. He received in return
a blow on the face, and is said by Tasso to have brought a set of his
kinsmen to assassinate him, all of whom the heroical poet immediately put
to flight. At one time he suspected the duke of jealousy respecting
the dedication of his poem, and at another, of a wish to burn it. He
suspected his servants. He became suspicious of the truth of his friend
Gonzaga. He doubted, even, whether some praises addressed to him by
Orazio Ariosto, the nephew of the great poet, which, one would have
thought, would have been to him a consummation of bliss, were not
intended to mystify and hurt him. At length he fancied that his
persecutors had accused him of heresy to the Inquisition; and, as he had
gone through the metaphysical doubts, common with most men of reflection
respecting points of faith and the mysteries of creation, he feared that
some indiscreet words had escaped him, giving colour to the charge. He
thus beheld enemies all around him. He dreaded stabbing and poison; and
one day, in some paroxysm of rage or horror, how occasioned it is not
known, ran with a knife or dagger at one of the servants of the Duchess
of Urbino in her own chamber.