Attempt > Volume 3

THE ATTEMPT. 49
#n Italtmt fiterates;
TORQUATO TASSO. LA GERUSALEMME LIBERATA.
" Que Ton soit homme ou Dieu, tout genie est martyre,"
So says Lamartine, speaking of the poet who is the subject of this essay; and truly
the annals of Italian literature would seem to prove his words, misanthropical and
ill-founded though they be. "We have already glanced at the sorrows and misfortunes
of Dante ; those of Tasso were equally numerous and bitter, indeed more so ; while
his tender and chivalrous soul was utterly incapable of the insatiable thirst for revenge,
of the bitter and implacable hatred which supported Dante amidst his adversity.
Dante owes much of his greatness to his misfortunes; Tasso was crushed, mind and
body, by his.
He was born at Sorrento, in 1544, and at a very early age, showed signs of
wonderful genius. In 1565, his talents obtained for him the notice and patronage
of Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and of another nobleman, the Duke of TJrbino,
who proved a true and valuable friend to the poet to the last day of his life. Would
that as much could be said for the Duke of Eerrara! But his conduct towards
Tasso, once marked by flattering courtesy and extreme liberality, became at last such
as to cover his name with merited ignominy. Coldness and estrangement began to
manifest themselves ia his manner towards his former favourite; and, in 1578, when
Tasso returned to Fen-ara, after two years' absence, he was, by order of the Duke,
shut u]) in a madhouse ! Surely, death in its most awful form would have been more
merciful than such a fate ! Imagine the delicate, sensitive, high-souled Torquato
Tasso condemned to pass his life among raving maniacs—and this, too, in days when
cruelty was regarded as the only means of controlling these unfortunate creatures !
Tasso has left us an accoimt of the miseries endured by him in this horrible prison;
but it is enough to say here, that blows, starvation, and mental misery at last brought
on a brain fever, which threatened to reduce him to the condition of the unhappy
men by whom he was surrounded. His fevered brain peopled his cell with terrible
phantoms, with ghastly dreams; and soon, very soon, would it have been too late to
save him, when, tln-ough the instmmentality of the Duke of TJrbino and others of his
friends, he was released, after seven years' captivity in the madhouse of Ferrara.
It has been said that the principal reason for this barbarity on the part of