Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
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All that appears certain is, that Tasso spoke violent and contemptuous
words against the duke; that he often spoke ill of him in his letters;
that he endeavoured, not with perfect ingenuousness, to exchange his
service for that of another prince; that he asserted his madness to have
been pretended in the first instance purely to gratify the duke's whim
for thinking it so (which was one of the reasons perhaps why Alfonso,
as he complained, would not believe a word be said); and finally, that,
whether the madness was or was not so pretended, it unfortunately became
a confirmed though milder form of mania, during a long confinement.
Alfonso, too proud to forgive the poet's contempt, continued thus to
detain him, partly perhaps because he was not sorry to have a pretext for
revenge, partly because he did not know what to do with him, consistently
either with his own or the poet's safety. He had not been generous enough
to put Tasso above his wants; he had not address enough to secure his
respect; he had not merit enough to overlook his reproaches. If Tasso had
been as great a man as he was a poet, Alfonso would not have been reduced
to these perplexities. The poet would have known how to settle quietly
down on his small court-income, and wait patiently in the midst of his
beautiful visions for what fortune had or had not in store for him. But
in truth, he, as well as the duke, was weak; they made a bad business of
it between them; and Alfonso the Second closed the accounts of the
Este family with the Muses, by keeping his panegyrist seven years in a
mad-house, to the astonishment of posterity, and the destruction of his
own claims to renown.
It does not appear that Tasso was confined in any such dungeon as they
now exhibit in Ferrara. The conduct of the Prior of the Hospital is more
doubtful. His name was Agostino Mosti; and, strangely enough, he was
the person who had raised a monument to Ariosto, of whom he was an
enthusiastic admirer. To this predilection has been attributed his
alleged cruelty to the stranger from Sorrento, who dared to emulate the
fame of his idol;--an extraordinary, though perhaps not incredible, mode
of skewing a critic's regard for poetry. But Tasso, while he laments
his severity, wonders at it in a man so well bred and so imbued with
literature, and thinks it can only have originated in "orders."[27]
Perhaps there were faults of temper on both sides; and Mosti, not liking
his office, forgot the allowance to be made for that of a prisoner and
sick man. His nephew, Giulio Mosti, became strongly attached to the poet,
and was a great comfort to him.
At length the time for liberation arrived. In the summer of 1586, Don
Vincenzo Gonzaga, Prince of Mantua, kinsman of the poet's friend Scipio,
came to Ferrara for the purpose of complimenting Alfonso's heir on his
nuptials. The whole court of Mantua, with hereditary regard for Tasso,
whose father had been one of their ornaments, were desirous of having
him among them; and the prince extorted Alfonso's permission to take him
away, on condition (so hard did he find this late concession to humanity,
and so fearful was he of losing the dignity of jailor) that his deliverer
should not allow him to quit Mantua without obtaining leave. A young and
dear friend, his most frequent visitor, Antonio Constantini, secretary
to the Tuscan ambassador, went to St. Anne's to prepare the captive by
degrees for the good news. He told him that he really might look for his
release in the course of a few days. The sensitive poet, now a premature
old man of forty-two, was thrown into a transport of mingled delight and
anxiety. He had been disappointed so often that he could scarcely believe
his good fortune. In a day or two he writes thus to his visitor
"Your kindness, my dear friend, has so accustomed me to your precious and
frequent visits, that I have been all day long at the window expecting
your coming to comfort me as you are wont. But since you have not yet
arrived, and in order not to remain altogether without consolation, I
visit you with this letter. It encloses a sonnet to the ambassador,
written with a trembling hand, and in such a manner that he will not,
perhaps, have less difficulty in reading it than I had in writing."
Two days afterwards, the prince himself came again, requested of the poet
some verses on a given subject, expressed his esteem for his genius and
virtues, and told him that, on his return to Mantua, he should have the
pleasure of conducting him to that city. Tasso lay awake almost all
night, composing the verses; and next day enclosed them, with a letter,
in another to Constantini, ardently begging him to keep the prince in
mind of his promise. The prince had not forgotten it; and two or three
days afterwards, the order for the release arrived, and Tasso quitted his
prison. He had been confined seven years, two months, and several days.
He awaited the prince's departure for a week or two in his friend's
abode, paying no visits, probably from inability to endure so much
novelty. Neither was he inclined or sent for to pay his respects to the
duke. Two such parties could hardly have been desirous to look on each
other. The duke must especially have disliked the thought of it; though
Tasso afterwards fancied otherwise, and that he was offended at his
non-appearance. But his letters, unfortunately, differ with themselves on
this point, as on most others. About the middle of July 1586, the poet
quitted Ferrara for ever.
At Mantua Tasso was greeted with all the honours and attentions which his
love of distinction could desire. The good old duke, the friend of his
father, ordered handsome apartments to be provided for him in the palace;
the prince made him presents of costly attire, including perfumed silken
hose (kindred elegancies to the Italian gloves of Queen Elizabeth); the
princess and her mother-in-law were declared admirers of his poetry; the
courtiers caressed the favourite of their masters; Tasso found literary
society; he pronounced the very bread and fruit, the fish and the flesh,
excellent; the wines were sharp and brisk ("such as his father was fond
of"); and even the physician was admirable, for he ordered confections.
One might imagine, if circumstances had not proved the cordial nature of
the Gonzaga family, and the real respect and admiration entertained for
the poet's genius by the greatest men of the time, in spite of the rebuke
it had received from Alfonso, that there had been a confederacy to mock
and mystify him, after the fashion of the duke and duchess with Don
Quixote (the only blot, by the way, in the book of Cervantes; if, indeed,
he did not intend it as a satire on the mystifiers).
For a while, in short, the liberated prisoner thought himself happy.
He corrected his prose works, resumed and finished the tragedy of
_Torrismond_, which he had begun some years before, corresponded with
princes, and completed and published a narrative poem left unfinished by
his father. Torquato was as loving a son as Mozart or Montaigne. Whenever
he had a glimpse of felicity, he appears to have associated the idea of
it with that of his father. In the conclusion of his fragment, "O del
grand' Apennino," he affectingly begs pardon of his blessed spirit for
troubling him with his earthly griefs.[28]
But, alas, what had been an indulgence of self-esteem had now become the
habit of a disease; and in the course of a few months the restless poet
began to make his old discovery, that he was not sufficiently cared for.
The prince had no leisure to attend to him; the nobility did not "yield
him the first place," or at least (he adds) they did not allow him to be
treated "externally as their equal;" and he candidly confessed that he
could not live in a place where such was the custom.[29] He felt also,
naturally enough, however well it might have been intended, that it was
not pleasant to be confined to the range of the city of Mantua, attended
by a servant, even though he confessed that he was now subject to
"frenzy." He contrived to stay another half-year by help of a brilliant
carnival and of the select society of the prince's court, who were
evidently most kind to him; but at the end of the twelvemonth he was in
Bergamo among his relations. The prince gave him leave to go; and the
Cavaliere Tasso, his kinsman, sent his chariot on purpose to fetch him.
Here again he found himself at a beautiful country-seat, which the family
of Tasso still possesses near that city; and here again, in the house of
his father, he proposed to be happy, "having never desired," he says,
"any journey more earnestly than this." He left it in the course of a
month, to return to Mantua.
And it was only to wander still. Mantua he quitted in less than two
months to go to Rome, in spite of the advice of his best friends.
He vindicated the proceeding by a hope of obtaining some permanent
settlement from the Pope. He took Loretto by the way, to refresh himself
with devotion; arrived in a transport at Rome; got nothing from the Pope
(the hard-minded Sixtus the Fifth); and in the spring of the next year,
in the triple hope of again embracing his sister, and recovering the
dowry of his mother and the confiscated property of his father, he
proceeded to Naples.
Naples was in its most beautiful vernal condition, and the Neapolitans
welcomed the poet with all honour and glory; but his sister, alas, was
dead; he got none of his father's property, nor (till too late) any of
his mother's; and before the year was out, he was again in Rome. He
acquired in Naples, however, another friend, as attached to him and
as constant in his attentions as his beloved Constantini, to wit,
Giambattista Manso, Marquis of Villa, who became his biographer, and who
was visited and praised for his good offices by Milton. In the society of
this gentleman he seemed for a short while to have become a new man. He
entered into field-sports, listened to songs and music, nay, danced, says
Manso, with "the girls." (One fancies a poetical Dr. Johnson with the two
country damsels on his knees.) In short, good air and freedom, and no
medicine, had conspired with the lessons of disappointment to give him,
before he died, a glimpse of the power to be pleased. He had not got rid
of all his spiritual illusions, even those of a melancholy nature; but he
took the latter more quietly, and had grown so comfortable with the race
in general, that he encouraged them. He was so entirely freed from his
fears of the Inquisition and of charges of magic, that whereas he had
formerly been anxious to shew that he meant nothing but a poetical fancy
by the spirit which he introduced as communing with him in his dialogue
entitled the _Messenger_, he now maintained its reality against the
arguments of his friend Manso; and these arguments gave rise to the most
poetical scene in his history. He told Manso that he should have ocular
testimony of the spirit's existence; and accordingly one day while they
were sitting together at the marquis's fireside, "he turned his eyes,"
says Manso, "towards a window, and held them a long time so intensely on
it, that, when I called him, he did not answer. At last, 'Behold,' said
he, 'the friendly spirit which has courteously come to talk with me. Lift
up your eyes, and see the truth.' I turned my eyes thither immediately
(continues the marquis); but though I endeavoured to look as keenly as I
could, I beheld nothing but the rays of the sun, which streamed through
the panes of the window into the chamber. Whilst I still looked around,
without beholding any object, Torquato began to hold, with this unknown
something, a most lofty converse. I heard, indeed, and saw nothing but
himself; nevertheless his words, at one time questioning, at another
replying, were such as take place between those who reason strictly on
some important subject. And from what was said by the one, the reply of
the other might be easily comprehended by the intellect, although it was
not heard by the ear. The discourses were so lofty and marvellous,
both by the sublimity of their topics and a certain unwonted manner of
talking, that, exalted above myself in a kind of ecstasy, I did not dare
to interrupt them, nor ask Tasso about the spirit, which he had announced
to me, but which I did not see. In this way, while I listened between
stupefaction and rapture, a considerable time had elapsed; till at last
the spirit departed, as I learned from the words of Torquato; who,
turning to me, said, 'From this day forward all your doubts will have
vanished from your mind.' 'Nay,' said I, 'they are rather increased;
since, though I have heard many things worthy of marvel, I have seen
nothing of what you promised to shew me to dispel them.' He smiled, and
said, 'You have seen and heard more of him than perhaps --,' and here
he paused. Fearful of importuning him with new questions, the discourse
ended; and the only conclusion I can draw is, what I before said, that
it is more likely his visions or frenzies will disorder my own mind than
that I shall extirpate his true or imaginary opinion."[30]
Did the "smile" of Tasso at the close of this extraordinary scene, and
the words which he omitted to add, signify that his friend had seen and
heard more, perhaps, than the poet _would have liked_ to explain? Did he
mean that he himself alone had been seen and heard, and was author of the
whole dialogue? Perhaps he did; for credulity itself can impose;--can
take pleasure in seeing others as credulous as itself. On the other
hand, enough has become known in our days of the phenomena of morbid
perception, to render Tasso's actual belief in such visions not at
all surprising. It is not uncommon for the sanest people of delicate
organisation to see faces before them while going to sleep, sometimes
in fantastical succession. A stronger exercise of this disposition in
temperaments more delicate will enlarge the face to figure; and there can
be no question that an imagination so heated as Tasso's, so full of the
speculations of the later Platonists, and accompanied by a state of body
so "nervous," and a will so bent on its fancies, might embody whatever
he chose to behold. The dialogue he could as easily read in the vision's
looks, whether he heard it or not with ears. If Nicholay, the Prussian
bookseller, who saw crowds of spiritual people go through his rooms, had
been a poet, and possessed of as wilful an imagination as Tasso, he might
have gifted them all with _speaking countenances_ as easily as with coats
and waistcoats. Swedenborg founded a religion on this morbid faculty; and
the Catholics worship a hundred stories of the like sort in the Lives of
the Saints, many of which are equally true and false; false in reality,
though true in supposition. Luther himself wrote and studied till he
saw the Devil; only the great reformer retained enough of his naturally
sturdy health and judgment to throw an inkstand at Satan's head,--a thing
that philosophy has been doing ever since.
Tasso's principal residence while at Naples had been in the beautiful
monastery of Mount Olivet, on which the good monks begged he would write
them a poem; which he did. A cold reception at Rome, and perhaps the
difference of the air, brought back his old lamentations; but here again
a monastery gave him refuge, and he set himself down to correct his
former works and compose new ones. He missed, however, the comforts of
society and amusement which he had experienced at Naples. Nevertheless,
he did not return thither. He persuaded himself that it was necessary to
be in Rome in order to expedite the receipt of some books and manuscripts
from Bergamo and other places; but his restlessness desired novelty. He
thus slipped back from the neighbourhood of Rome to the city itself, and
from the city back to the monastery, his friends in both places being
probably tired of his instability. He thought of returning to Mantua; but
a present from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, accompanied by an invitation to
his court, drew him, in one of his short-lived transports, to Florence.
He returned, in spite of the best and most generous reception, to Rome;
then left Rome for Mantua, on invitation from his ever-kind deliverer
from prison, now the reigning duke; tired again, even of him; returned to
Rome; then once more to Naples, where the Prince of Conca, Grand Admiral
of the kingdom, lodged and treated him like an equal; but he grew
suspicious of the admiral, and went to live with his friend Manso;
quitted Manso for Rome again; was treated with reverence on the way, like
Ariosto, by a famous leader of banditti; was received at Rome into the
Vatican itself, in the apartments of his friend Cintio Aldobrandino,
nephew of the new pope Clement the Eighth, where his hopes now seemed to
be raised at once to their highest and most reasonable pitch; but fell
ill, and was obliged to go back to Naples for the benefit of the air.
A life so strangely erratic to the last (for mortal illness was
approaching) is perhaps unique in the history of men of letters, and
might be therefore worth recording even in that of a less man than Tasso;
but when we recollect that this poet, in spite of all his weaknesses, and
notwithstanding the enemies they provoked and the friends they cooled,
was really almost adored for his genius in his own time, and instead
of refusing jewels one day and soliciting a ducat the next, might have
settled down almost any where in quiet and glory, if he had but possessed
the patience to do so, it becomes an association of weakness with power,
and of adversity with the means of prosperity, the absurdity of which
admiration itself can only drown in pity.
He now took up his abode in another monastery, that of San Severino,
where he was comforted by the visits of his friend Manso, to whom he had
lately inscribed a dialogue on _Friendship_; for he continued writing
to the last. He had also the consolation, such as it was, of having the
law-suit for his mother's dowry settled in his favour, though under
circumstances that rendered it of little importance, and only three
months before his death. So strangely did Fortune seem to take delight in
sporting with a man of genius, who had thought both too much of her and
too little; too much for pomp's sake, and too little in prudence. Among
his new acquaintances were the young Marino, afterwards the corrupter of
Italian poetry, and the Prince of Venosa, an amateur composer of music.
The dying poet wrote madrigals for him so much to his satisfaction, that,
being about to marry into the house of Este, he wished to reconcile him
with the Duke of Ferrara; and Tasso, who to the last moment of his life
seems never to have been able to resist the chance of resuming old
quarters, apparently from the double temptation of renouncing them, wrote
his old master a letter full of respects and regrets. But the duke, who
himself died in the course of the year, was not to be moved from his
silence. The poet had given him the last possible offence by recasting
his _Jerusalem_, omitting the glories of the house of Este, and
dedicating it to another patron. Alfonso, who had been extravagantly
magnificent, though not to poets, had so weakened his government, that
the Pope wrested Ferrara from the hands of his successor, and reduced
the Este family to the possession of Modena, which it still holds and
dishonours. The duke and the poet were thus fading away at the same time;
they never met again in this world; and a new Dante would have divided
them far enough in the next.[31]
The last glimpse of honour and glory was now opening in a very grand
manner on the poet--the last and the greatest, as if on purpose to give
the climax to his disappointments. Cardinal Cintio requested the Pope to
give him the honour of a coronation. It had been desired by the poet, it
seems, three years before. He was disappointed of it at that time; and
now that it was granted, he was disappointed of the ceremony. Manso says
he no longer cared for it; and, as he felt himself dying, this is not
improbable. Nevertheless he went to Rome for the purpose; and though the
severity of the winter there delayed the intention till spring, wealth
and honours seemed determined to come in floods upon the poor expiring
great man, in order to take away the breath which they had refused to
support. The Pope assigned him a yearly pension of a hundred scudi; and
the withholders of his mother's dowry came to an accommodation by which
he was to have an annuity of a hundred ducats, and a considerable sum
in hand. His hand was losing strength enough to close upon the money.
Scarcely was the day for the coronation about to dawn, when the poet felt
his dissolution approaching. Alfonso's doctors had killed him at last by
superinducing a habit of medicine-taking, which defeated its purpose.
He requested leave to return to the monastery of St. Onofrio--wrote a
farewell letter to Constantini--received the distinguished honour of a
plenary indulgence from the Pope--said (in terms very like what Milton
might have used, had he died a Catholic), that "this was the chariot upon
which he hoped to go crowned, not with laurel as a poet into the capitol,
but with glory as a saint to heaven"--and expired on the 25th of April,
1575, and the fifty-first year of his age, closely embracing the
crucifix, and imperfectly uttering the sentence beginning, "Into thy
hands, O Lord!"[32]
Even after death, success mocked him; for the coronation took place on
the senseless dead body. The head was wreathed with laurel; a magnificent
toga delayed for a while the shroud; and a procession took place through
the city by torchlight, all the inhabitants pouring forth to behold it,
and painters crowding over the bier to gaze on the poet's lineaments,
from which they produced a multitude of portraits. The corpse was then
buried in the church of St. Onofrio; and magnificent monuments talked of,
which never appeared. Manso, however, obtained leave to set up a modest
tablet; and eight years afterwards a Ferrarese cardinal (Bevilacqua) made
what amends he could for his countrymen, by erecting the stately memorial
which is still to be seen.
Poor, illustrious Tasso! weak enough to warrant pity from his
inferiors--great enough to overshadow in death his once-fancied
superiors. He has been a by-word for the misfortunes of genius: but
genius was not his misfortune; it was his only good, and might have
brought him all happiness. It is the want of genius, as far as it
goes, and apart from martyrdoms for conscience' sake, which produces
misfortunes even to genius itself--the want of as much wit and balance
on the common side of things, as genius is supposed to confine to the
uncommon.
Manso has left a minute account of his friend's person and manners. He
was tall even among the tall; had a pale complexion, sunken cheeks,
lightish brown hair, head bald at the top, large blue eyes, square
forehead, big nose inclining towards the mouth, lips pale and thin, white
teeth, delicate white hands, long arms, broad chest and shoulders, legs
rather strong than fleshy, and the body altogether better proportioned
than in good condition; the result, nevertheless, being an aspect of
manly beauty and expression, particularly in the countenance, the dignity
of which marked him for an extraordinary person even to those who did not
know him. His demeanour was grave and deliberate; he laughed seldom;
and though his tongue was prompt, his delivery was slow; and he was
accustomed to repeat his last words. He was expert in all manly
exercises, but not equally graceful; and the same defect attended his
otherwise striking eloquence in public assemblies. His putting to flight
the assassins in Ferrara gave him such a reputation for courage, that
there went about in his honour a popular couplet
"Colla penna e colla spada
Nessun val quanto Torquato."
For the sword as well as pen
Tasso is the man of men.
He was a little eater, but not averse to wine, particularly such as
combined piquancy with sweetness; and he always dressed in black. Manso's
account is still more particular, and yet it does not tell all; for Tasso
himself informs us that he stammered, and was near-sighted;[33] and a
Neapolitan writer who knew him adds to the near-sightedness some visible
defect in the eyes.[34] I should doubt, from what Tasso says in his
letters, whether he was fond of speaking in public, notwithstanding his
_debut_ in that line with the _Fifty Amorous Conclusions_.Nor does he
appear to have been remarkable for his conversation. Manso has left a
collection of one hundred of his pithy sayings--a suspicious amount, and
unfortunately more than warranting the suspicion; for almost every one of
them is traceable to some other man. They come from the Greek and Latin
philosophers, and the apothegms of Erasmus. The two following have the
greatest appearance of being genuine:
A Greek, complaining that he had spoken ill of his country, and
maintaining that all the virtues in the world had issued out of it, the
poet assented; with the addition, that they had not left one behind them.