[Footnote 7: Dated February 13, 1556.]
[Footnote 8: See _Opere_, vol. iv. p. 100, for Ta.s.so"s description of the farewell to his mother, which he remembered deeply, even in later life.]
[Footnote 9: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 6.]
In the midst of these afflictions, which already tuned the future poet"s utterance to a note of plaintive pathos and ingenuous appeal for aid, Torquato"s studies were continued on a sounder plan and in a healthier spirit than at Naples. The perennial consolation of his troubled life, that delight in literature which made him able to antic.i.p.ate the lines of Goethe--
That naught belongs to me I know, Save thoughts that never cease to flow From founts that cannot perish, And every fleeting shape of bliss Which kindly fortune lets me kiss, Or in my bosom cherish--
now became the source of an inner brightness which not even the "malignity of fortune," the "impiety of men," the tragedy of his mother"s death, the imprisonment of his sister, and the ever-present sorrow of his father, "the poor gentleman fallen into misery and misfortune through no fault of his own," could wholly overcloud. The boy had been accustomed in Naples to the applause of his teachers and friends. In Rome he began to cherish a presentiment of his own genius. A "vision splendid" dawned upon his mind; and every step he made in knowledge and in mastery of language enforced the delightful conviction that "I too am a poet." Nothing in Ta.s.so"s character was more tenacious than the consciousness of his vocation and the kind of self-support he gained from it. Like the melancholy humor which degenerated into madness, this sense of his own intellectual dignity a.s.sumed extravagant proportions, pa.s.sed over into vanity, and encouraged him to indulge fantastic dreams of greatness. Yet it must be reckoned as a mitigation of his suffering; and what was solid in it at the period of which I now am writing, was the certainty of his rare gifts for art.
The Roman residence was broken by Bernardo"s journey to Urbino in quest of the appointment he expected from Duke Guidubaldo. He sent Torquato with his cousin Cristoforo meanwhile to Bergamo, where the boy enjoyed a few months of sympathy and freedom. This appears to have been the only period of his life in which Ta.s.so experienced the wholesome influences of domesticity. In 1557 his father sent for him to Pesaro, and Ta.s.so made his first entrance into a Court at the age of thirteen. This event decided the future of his existence. Urbino was not what it had been in the time of Duke Federigo, or when Castiglione composed his Mirror of the Courtier on its model. Yet it retained the old traditions of gentle living, splendor tempered by polite culture, aristocratic urbanity refined by arts and letters. The evil days of Spanish manners and Spanish bigotry, of exhausted revenues and insane taxation, were but dawning; and the young prince, Francesco Maria, who was destined to survive his heir and transfer a ruined duchy to the mortmain of the Church, was now a boy of eight years old. In fact, though the Court of Urbino labored already under that manifold disease of waste which drained the marrow of Italian princ.i.p.alities, its atrophy was not apparent to the eye. It could still boast of magnificent pageants, trains of n.o.ble youths and ladies moving through its stately palaces and shady villa-gardens, academies of learned men discussing the merits of Homer and Ariosto and discoursing on the principles of poetry and drama.
Bernardo Ta.s.so read his _Amadigi_ in the evenings to the d.u.c.h.ess. The days were spent in hunting and athletic exercises; the nights in masquerades or dances. Love and ambition wore an external garb of ceremonious beauty; the former draped itself in sonnets, the latter in rhetorical orations. Torquato, who was a.s.signed as the companion in sport and study to the heir-apparent, shared in all these pleasures of the Court. After the melancholy of Rome, his visionary nature expanded under influences which he idealized with fatal facility. Too young to penetrate below that glittering surface, flattered by the attention paid to his personal charm or premature genius, stimulated by the conversation of politely educated pedants, encouraged in studies for which he felt a natural apt.i.tude, gratified by the comradeship of the young prince whose temperament corresponded to his own in gravity, he conceived that radiant and romantic conception of Courts, as the only fit places of abode for men of n.o.ble birth and eminent abilities, which no disillusionment in after life was able to obscure. We cannot blame him for this error, though error it indubitably was. It was one which he shared with all men of his station at that period, which the poverty of his estate, the habits of his father, and his own ignorance of home-life almost forced upon his poet"s temperament.
At Urbino Ta.s.so read mathematics under a real master, Federigo Comandino, and carried on his literary studies with enthusiasm. It was probably at this time that he acquired the familiar knowledge of Virgil which so powerfully influenced his style, and that he began to form his theory of epic as distinguished from romantic poetry. After a residence of two years he removed to Venice, where his father was engaged in polishing the _Amadigi_ for publication. Here a new scene of interest opened out for him; and here he first enjoyed the sweets of literary fame. Bernardo had been chosen secretary by an Academy, in which men like Veniero, Molino, Gradenigo, Mocenigo, and Manuzio, the most learned and the n.o.blest Venetians, met together for discussion. The slim lad of fifteen was admitted to their sessions, and surprised these elders by his eloquence and erudition. It is noticeable that at this time he carefully studied and annotated Dante"s _Divine Comedy_, a poem almost neglected by Italians in the Cinque Cento. It seemed good to his father now that he should prosecute his studies in earnest, with the view of choosing a more lucrative profession than that of letters or Court-service. Bernardo, while finishing the _Amadigi_, which he dedicated to Philip II., sent his son in 1560 to Padua. He was to become a lawyer under the guidance of Guido Panciroli. But Ta.s.so, like Ovid, like Petrarch, like a hundred other poets, felt no inclination for juristic learning. He freely and frankly abandoned himself to the metaphysical conclusions which were being then tried between Piccolomini and Pendasio, the one an Aristotelian dualist, the other a materialist for whom the soul was not immortal. Without force of mind enough to penetrate the deepest problems of philosophy, Ta.s.so was quick to apprehend their bearings. The Paduan school of scepticism, the logomachy in vogue there, unsettled his religious opinions. He began by criticising the doubts of others in his light of Jesuit-instilled belief; next he found a satisfaction for self-esteem in doubting too; finally he called the mysteries of the Creed in question, and debated the articles of creation, incarnation, and immortality. Yet he had not the mental vigor either to cut this Gordian knot, or to untie it by sound thinking. His erudition confused him; and he mistook the lumber of miscellaneous reading for philosophy. Then a reaction set in. He remembered those childish ecstasies before the Eucharist: he recalled the pictures of a burning h.e.l.l his Jesuit teachers had painted; he heard the trumpets of the Day of Judgment, and the sentence "Go ye wicked!" On the brink of heresy he trembled and recoiled. The spirit of the coming age, the spirit of Bruno, was not in him. To all appearances he had not heard of the Copernican discovery. He wished to remain a true son of the Church, and was in fact of such stuff as the Catholic Revival wanted. Yet the memory of these early doubts clung to him, princ.i.p.ally, we may believe, because he had not force to purge them either by severe science or by vivid faith. Later, when his mind was yielding to disorder, they returned in the form of torturing scruples and vain terrors, which his fervent but superficial pietism, his imaginative but sensuous religion, were unable to efface. Meanwhile, with one part of his mind devoted to these problems, the larger and the livelier was occupied with poetry. To law, the _Brod-Studium_ indicated by his position in the world, he only paid perfunctory attention. The consequence was that before he had completed two years of residence in Padua, his first long poem, the _Rinaldo_, saw the light. In another chapter I mean to discuss the development of Ta.s.so"s literary theories and achievements. It is enough here to say that the applause which greeted the _Rinaldo_, conquered his father"s opposition. Proud of its success, Bernardo had it printed, and Torquato in the beginning of his nineteenth year counted among the notable romantic poets of his country.
At the end of 1563, Ta.s.so received an invitation to transfer himself from Padua to Bologna. This proposal came from Monsignor Cesi, who had recently been appointed by Pope Pius IV. to superintend public studies in that city. The university was being placed on a new footing, and to secure the presence of a young man already famous seemed desirable. An exhibition was therefore offered as an inducement; and this Ta.s.so readily accepted. He spent about two years at Bologna, studying philosophy and literature, planning his Dialogues on the Art of Poetry, and making projects for an epic on the history of G.o.dfred. Yet in spite of public admiration and official favor, things did not go smoothly with Ta.s.so at Bologna. One main defect of his character, which was a want of tact, began to manifest itself. He showed Monsignor Cesi that he had a poor opinion of his literary judgment, came into collision with the pedants who despised Italian, and finally uttered satiric epigrams in writing on various members of the university. Other students indulged their humor in like pasquinades. But those of Ta.s.so were biting, and he had not contrived to render himself generally popular. His rooms were ransacked, his papers searched; and finding himself threatened with a prosecution for libel, he took flight to Modena. No importance can be attached to this insignificant affair, except in so far as it ill.u.s.trates the unlucky apt.i.tude for making enemies by want of _savoir vivre_ which pursued Ta.s.so through life. His real superiority aroused jealousy; his frankness wounded the self-love of rivals whom he treated with a shadow of contempt. As these were unable to compete with him in eloquence, or to beat him in debate, they soothed their injured feelings by conspiracy and calumny against him.
In an age of artifice and circ.u.mspection, while paying theoretical homage to its pedantries, and following the fashion of its compliments, Ta.s.so was nothing if not spontaneous and heedless. This appears in the style of his letters and prose compositions, which have the air of being uttered from the heart. The excellences and defects of his poetry, soaring to the height of song and sinking into frigidity or baldness when the lyric impulse flags, reveal a similar quality. In conduct this spontaneity a.s.sumed a form of inconsiderate rashness, which brought him into collision with persons of importance, and rendered universities and Courts, the sphere of his adoption, perilous to the peace of so naturally out-spoken and self-engrossed a man. His irritable sensibilities caused him to suffer intensely from the petty vengeance of the people he annoyed; while a kind of amiable egotism blinded his eyes to his own faults, and made him blame fortune for sufferings of which his indiscretion was the cause.
After leaving Bologna, Ta.s.so became for some months house-guest of his father"s earliest patrons, the Modenese Rangoni. With them he seems to have composed his Dialogues upon the Art of Poetry. For many years the learned men of Italy had been contesting the true nature of the Epic.
One party affirmed that the ancients ought to be followed; and that the rules of Aristotle regarding unity of plot, dignity of style, and subordination of episodes, should be observed. The other party upheld the romantic manner of Ariosto, pleading for liberty of fancy, richness of execution, variety of incident, intricacy of design. Torquato from his earliest boyhood had heard these points discussed, and had watched his father"s epic, the _Amadigi_, which was in effect a romantic poem petrified by cla.s.sical convention, in process of production. Meanwhile he carefully studied the text of Homer and the Latin epics, examined Horace and Aristotle, and perused the numerous romances of the Italian school. Two conclusions were drawn from this preliminary course of reading: first, that Italy as yet possessed no proper epic; Trissino"s _Italia Liberata_ was too tiresome, the _Orlando Furioso_ too capricious; secondly, that the _spolia opima_ in this field of art would be achieved by him who should combine the cla.s.sic and romantic manners in a single work, enriching the unity of the antique epic with the graces of modern romance, choosing a n.o.ble and serious subject, sustaining style at a sublime alt.i.tude, but gratifying the prevalent desire for beauty in variety by the introduction of attractive episodes and the ornaments of picturesque description. Ta.s.so, in fact, declared himself an eclectic; and the deep affinity he felt for Virgil, indicated the lines upon which the Latin language in its romantic or Italian stage of evolution might be made to yield a second Aeneid adapted to the requirements of modern taste. He had, indeed, already set before himself the high ambition of supplying this desideratum. The note of prelude had been struck in _Rinaldo_; the subject of the _Gerusalemme_ had been chosen. But the age in which he lived was nothing if not critical and argumentative. The time had long gone by when Dante"s ma.s.sive cathedral, Boccaccio"s pleasure domes, Boiardo"s and Ariosto"s palaces of enchantment, arose as though unbidden and unreasoned from the maker"s brain. It was now impossible to take a step in poetry or art without a theory; and, what was worse, that theory had to be exposed for dissertation and discussion. Therefore Ta.s.so, though by genius the most spontaneous of men, commenced the great work of his life with criticism.
Already acclimatized to courts, coteries, academies, formed in the school of disputants and pedants, he propounded his _Ars Poetica_ before establishing it by an example. This was undoubtedly beginning at the wrong end; he committed himself to principles which he was bound to ill.u.s.trate by practice. In the state of thought at that time prevalent in Italy, burdened as he was with an irresolute and diffident self-consciousness, Ta.s.so could not deviate from the theory he had promulgated. How this hampered him, will appear in the sequel, when we come to notice the discrepancy between his critical and creative faculties. For the moment, however, the Dialogues on Epic Poetry only augmented his fame.
Scipione Gonzaga, one of Ta.s.so"s firmest and most ill.u.s.trious friends, had recently established an Academy at Padua under the name of Gli Eterei. At his invitation the young poet joined this club in the autumn of 1564, a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Il Pent.i.to in allusion to his desertion of legal studies, and soon became the soul of its society. His dialogues excited deep and wide-spread interest. After so much wrangling between cla.s.sical and romantic champions, he had transferred the contest to new ground and introduced a fresh principle into the discussion. This principle was, in effect, that of common sense, good taste and instinct.
Ta.s.so meant to say: there is no vital discord between cla.s.sical and romantic art; both have excellences, and it is possible to find defects in both; pedantic adherence to antique precedent must end in frigid failure under the present conditions of intellectual culture; yet it cannot be denied that the cycle of Renaissance poetry was closed by Ariosto; let us therefore attempt creation in a liberal spirit, trained by both these influences. He could not, however, when he put this theory forward in elaborate prose, abstain from propositions, distinctions, deductions, and conclusions, all of which were discutable, and each of which his critics and his honor held him bound to follow. In short, while planning and producing the _Gerusalemme_, he was involved in controversies on the very essence of his art. These controversies had been started by himself and he could not do otherwise than maintain the position he had chosen. His poet"s inspiration, his singer"s spontaneity, came thus constantly into collision with his own deliberate utterances. A perplexed self-scrutiny was the inevitable result, which pedagogues who were not inspired and could not sing, but who delighted in minute discussion, took good care to stimulate. The worst, however, was that he had erected in his own mind a critical standard with which his genius was not in harmony. The scholar and the poet disagreed in Ta.s.so; and it must be reckoned one of the drawbacks of his age and education that the former preceded the latter in development. Something of the same discord can be traced in contemporary painting, as will be shown when I come to consider the founders of the Bolognese Academy.
At the end of 1565 Ta.s.so was withdrawn from literary studies and society in Padua. The Cardinal Luigi d"Este offered him a place in his household; and since this opened the way to Ferrara and Court-service, it was readily accepted. It would have been well for Ta.s.so, at this crisis of his fate, if the line of his beloved Aeneid--
Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum--
that line which warned young Savonarola away from Ferrara, had sounded in his ears, or met his eyes in some Virgilian _Sortes_. It would have been well if his father, disillusioned by the _Amadigi"s_ ill-success, and groaning under the galling yoke of servitude to Princes, had forbidden instead of encouraging this fatal step. He might himself have listened to the words of old Speroni, painting the Court as he had learned to know it, a Siren fair to behold and ravishing of song, but hiding in her secret caves the bones of men devoured, and "mighty poets in their misery dead." He might even have turned the pages of Aretino"s _Dialogo delle Corti_, and have observed how the ruffian who best could profit by the vices of a Court, refused to bow his neck to servitude in their corruption. But no man avoids his destiny, because few draw wisdom from the past and none foresee the future. To Ferrara Ta.s.so went with a blithe heart. Inclination, the custom of his country, the necessities of that poet"s vocation for which he had abandoned a profession, poverty and ambition, vanity and the delights of life, combined to lure him to his ruin.
He found Ferrara far more magnificent than Urbino. Pageants, hunting parties, theatrical entertainments, a.s.sumed fantastic forms of splendor in this capital, which no other city of Italy, except Florence and Venice upon rare occasions, rivaled. For a long while past Ferrara had been the center of a semi-feudal, semi-humanistic culture, out of which the Masque and Drama, music and painting, scholarship and poetry, emerged with brilliant originality, blending mediaeval and antique elements in a specific type of modern romance. This culminated in the permanent and monumental work began by Boiardo in the morning, and completed by Ariosto in the meridian of the Renaissance. Within the circuit of the Court the whole life of the Duchy seemed to concentrate itself. From the frontier of Venice to the Apennines a tract of fertile country, yielding all necessaries of life, corn, wine, cattle, game, fish, in abundance, poured its produce into the palaces and castles of the Duke. He, like other Princes of his epoch, sucked each province dry in order to maintain a dazzling show of artificial wealth. The people were ground down by taxes, monopolies of corn and salt, and sanguinary game-laws. Brutalized by being forced to serve the pleasures of their masters, they lived the lives of swine. But why repaint the picture of Italian decadence, or dwell again upon the fever of that phthisical consumption? Men like Ta.s.so saw nothing to attract attention in the rotten state of Ferrara. They were only fascinated by the hectic bloom and rouged refinement of its Court. And even the least sympathetic student must confess that the Court at any rate was seductive. A more cunningly combined medley of polite culture, political astuteness, urbane learning, sumptuous display, diplomatic love-intrigue and genial artistic productiveness, never before or since has been exhibited upon a scale so grandiose within limits so precisely circ.u.mscribed, or been raised to eminence so high from such inadequate foundations of substantial wealth. Compare Ferrara in the sixteenth with Weimar in the eighteenth century, and reflect how wonderfully the Italians even at their last gasp understood the art of exquisite existence!
Alfonso II., who was always vainly trying to bless Ferrara with an heir, had arranged his second sterile nuptials when Ta.s.so joined the Court in 1565. It was therefore at a moment of more than usual parade of splendor that the poet entered on the scene of his renown and his misfortune. He was twenty-one years of age; and twenty-one years had to elapse before he should quit Ferrara, ruined in physical and mental health,--_quantum mutatus ab illo_ Torquato! The diffident and handsome stripling, famous as the author of _Rinaldo_, was welcomed in person with special honors by the Cardinal, his patron. Of such favors as Court-lacqueys prize, Ta.s.so from the first had plenty. He did not sit at the common table of the serving gentlemen, but ate his food apart; and after a short residence, the Princesses, sisters of the Duke, invited him to share their meals. The next five years formed the happiest and most tranquil period of his existence. He continued working at the poem which had then no name, but which we know as the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. Envies and jealousies had not arisen to mar the serenity in which he basked. Women contended for his smiles and sonnets. He repaid their kindness with somewhat indiscriminate homage and with the verses of occasion which flowed so easily from his pen. It is difficult to trace the history of Ta.s.so"s loves through the labyrinth of madrigals, odes and sonnets which belong to this epoch of his life. These compositions bear, indeed, the mark of a distinguished genius; no one but Ta.s.so could have written them at that period of Italian literature. Yet they lack individuality of emotion, specific pa.s.sion, insight into the profundities of human feeling. Such shades of difference as we perceive in them, indicate the rhetorician seeking to set forth his motive, rather than the lover pouring out his soul. Contrary to the commonly received legend, I am bound to record my opinion that love played a secondary part in Ta.s.so"s destinies. It is true that we can discern the silhouettes of some Court-ladies whom he fancied more than others. The first of these was Laura Peperara, for whom he is supposed to have produced some sixty compositions. The second was the Princess Leonora d"Este. Ta.s.so"s attachment to her has been so shrouded in mystery, conjecture and hair-splitting criticism, that none but a very rash man will p.r.o.nounce confident judgment as to its real nature. Nearly the same may be said about his relations to her sister, Lucrezia. He has posed in literary history as the Rizzio of the one lady and the Chastelard of the other.
Yet he was probably in no position at any moment of his Ferrarese existence to be more than the familiar friend and most devoted slave of either. When he joined the Court, Lucrezia was ten and Leonora nine years his senior. Each of the sisters was highly accomplished, graceful and of royal carriage. Neither could boast of eminent beauty. Of the two, Lucrezia possessed the more commanding character. It was she who left her husband, Francesco Maria della Rovere, because his society wearied her, and who helped Clement VIII. to ruin her family, when the Papacy resolved upon the conquest of Ferrara. Leonora"s health was sickly. For this reason she refused marriage, living retired in studies, acts of charity, religion, and the company of intellectual men.
Something in her won respect and touched the heart at the same moment; so that the verses in her honor, from whatever pen they flowed, ring with more than merely ceremonial compliment. The people revered her like a saint; and in times of difficulty she displayed high courage and the gifts of one born to govern. From the first entrance of Ta.s.so into Ferrara, the sisters took him under their protection. He lived with them on terms of more than courtly intimacy; and for Leonora there is no doubt that he cherished something like a romantic attachment. This is proved by the episode of Sofronia and Olindo in the _Gerusalemme_, which points in carefully constructed innuendoes to his affection. It can even be conceded that Ta.s.so, who was wont to indulge fantastic visions of unattainable greatness, may have raised his hopes so high as sometimes to entertain the possibility of winning her hand. But if he did dally with such dreams, the realities of his position must in sober moments have convinced him of their folly. Had not a d.u.c.h.ess of Amalfi been murdered for contracting a marriage with a gentleman of her household? And Leonora was a grand-daughter of France; and the cordon of royalty was being drawn tighter and tighter yearly in the Italy of his day. That a sympathy of no commonplace kind subsisted between this delicate and polished princess and her sensitively gifted poet, is apparent. But it may be doubted whether Ta.s.so had in him the stuff of a grand pa.s.sion. Mobile and impressible, he wandered from object to object without seeking or attaining permanence. He was neither a Dante nor a Petrarch; and nothing in his _Rime_ reveals solidity of emotion. It may finally be said that had Leonora returned real love, or had Ta.s.so felt for her real love, his earnest wish to quit Ferrara when the Court grew irksome, would be inexplicable. Had their _liaison_ been scandalous, as some have fancied, his life would not have been worth two hours"
Purchase either in the palace or the prison of Alfonso.
Whatever may be thought of Ta.s.so"s love-relations to these sisters--and the problem is open to all conjectures in the absence of clear testimony--it is certain that he owed a great deal to their kindness.
The marked favor they extended to him, was worth much at Court: and their maturer age and wider experience enabled them to give him many useful hints of conduct. Thus, when he blundered into seeming rivalry with Pigna (the Duke"s secretary, the Cecil of that little state), by praising Pigna"s mistress, Lucrezia Bendidio, in terms of imprudent warmth, it was Leonora who warned him to appease the great man"s anger.
This he did by writing a commentary upon three of Pigna"s leaden Canzoni, which he had the impudence to rank beside the famous three sisters of Petrarch"s Canzoniere. The flattery was swallowed, and the peril was averted. Yet in this first affair with Pigna we already hear the grumbling of that tempest which eventually ruined Ta.s.so. So eminent a poet and so handsome a young man was insupportable among a crowd of literary mediocrities and middle-aged gallants. Furthermore the brilliant being, who aroused the jealousies of rhymesters and of lovers, had one fatal failing--want of tact. In 1568, for example, he set himself up as a target to all malice by sustaining fifty conclusions in the Science of Love before the Academy of Ferrara. As he afterwards confessed, he ran the greatest risks in this adventure; but who, he said, could take up arms against a lover? Doubtless there were many lovers present; but none of Ta.s.so"s eloquence and skill in argument.
In 1569, Ta.s.so was called to his father"s sickbed at Ostiglia on the Po.
He found the old man dest.i.tute and dying. There was not money to bury him decently; and when the funeral rites had been performed by the help of money-lenders, nothing remained to pay for a monument above his graven What the Romans called _pietas_ was a strong feature in Torquato"s character. At crises of his life he invariably appealed to the memory of his parents for counsel and support. When the Delia Cruscans attacked his own poetry, he answered them with a defense of the _Amadigi_; and he spent much time and pains in editing the _Floridante_, which naught but filial feeling could possibly have made him value at the worth of publication.
In the spring of the next year, Lucrezia d"Este made her inauspicious match with the Duke of Urbino, Ta.s.so"s former playmate. She was a woman of thirty-four, he a young man of twenty-one. They did not love each other, had no children, and soon parted with a sense of mutual relief.
In the auturmn Ta.s.so accompanied the Cardinal Luigi d"Este into France, leaving his MSS. in the charge of Ercole Rondinelli. The doc.u.ment drawn up for this friend"s instructions in case of his death abroad is interesting. It proves that the _Gerusalemme_, here called _Gottifredo_, was nearly finished; for Ta.s.so wished the last six cantos and portions of the first two to be published. He also gave directions for collection and publication of his lovesonnets and madrigals, but requested Rondinelli to bury "the others, whether of love or other matters which were written in the service of some friend," in his grave. This last commission demands comment. That Ta.s.so should have written verses to oblige a friend, was not only natural but consistent with custom. Light wares like sonnets could be easily produced by a practiced man of letters, and the friend might find them valuable in bringing a fair foe to terms. But why should any one desire to have such verses buried in his grave? The hypothesis which has been strongly urged by those who believe in the gravity of Ta.s.so"s _liaison_ with Leonora, is that he used this phrase to indicate love-poems which might compromise his mistress. We cannot, however, do more than speculate upon the point.
There is nothing to confirm or to refute conjecture in the evidence before us.
Ta.s.so met with his usual fortunes at the Court of Charles IX. That is to say, he was petted and caressed, wrote verses, and paid compliments. It was just two years before the Ma.s.sacre of S. Bartholomew, and France presented to the eyes of earnest Catholics the spectacle of truly horrifying anarchy. Catherine de"Medici inclined to compromise matters with the Huguenots. The social atmosphere reeked with heresy and cynicism. In that Italianated Court, public affairs and religious questions were treated from a purely diplomatic point of view. Not principle, but practical convenience ruled conduct and opinion. The large scale on which Machiavellism manifested itself in the discordant realm of France, the apparent breakdown of Catholicism as a national inst.i.tution, struck Ta.s.so with horror. He openly proclaimed his views, and roundly taxed the government with dereliction of their duty to the Church. An incurable idealist by temperament, he could not comprehend the stubborn actualities of politics. A pupil of the Jesuits, he would not admit that men like Coligny deserved a hearing. An Italian of the decadence, he found it hard to tolerate the humors of a puissant nation in a state of civil warfare. But his master, Luigi d"Este, well understood the practical difficulties which forced the Valois into compromise, and felt no personal aversion for lucrative transaction with the heretic. Though a prince of the Church, he had not taken priest"s orders. He kept two objects in view. One was succession to the Duchy of Ferrara, in case Alfonso should die without heirs.[10]
[Footnote 10: Cardinal Ferdinando de"Medici succeeded in a like position to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. But Luigi d"Este did not survive his brother.]
The other was election to the Papacy. In the latter event France, the natural ally of the Estensi, would be of service to him, and the Valois monarchs, his cousins, must therefore be supported in their policy.
Ta.s.so had been brought to Paris to look graceful and to write madrigals.
It was inconvenient, it was unseemly, that a man of letters in the Cardinal"s train should utter censures on the Crown, and should profess more Catholic opinions than his patron. Without the scandal of a public dismissal, it was therefore contrived that Ta.s.so should return to Italy; and after this rupture, the suspicious poet regarded Luigi d"Este as his enemy. During his confinement in S. Anna he even threw the chief blame of his detention upon the Cardinal.[11]
After spending a short time at Rome in the company of the Cardinals Ippolito d"Este and Albano, Ta.s.so returned to Ferrara in 1572. Alfonso offered him a place in his own household with an annual stipend worth about 88 _l_. of our money. No duties were attached to this post, except the delivery of a weekly lecture in the university. For the rest, Ta.s.so was to prosecute his studies, polish his great poem, and augment the l.u.s.ter of the court by his accomplishments.[12] It was of course understood that the _Gerusalemme_, when completed, should be dedicated to the Duke and shed its splendor on the House of Este. Who was happier than Torquato now? Having recently experienced the discomforts of uncongenial service, he took his place again upon a firmer footing in the city of his dreams. The courtiers welcomed him with smiles. He was once more close to Leonora, basking like Rinaldo in Armida"s garden, with golden prospects of the fame his epic would achieve to lift him higher in the coming years.
[Footnote 11: See _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 80: to Giacomo Buoncompagno.]
[Footnote 12: "Egli mi disse, allor che suo mi fece: Tu canta, or che se" "n ozio."]
No wonder that the felicity of this moment expanded in a flower of lyric beauty which surpa.s.sed all that Ta.s.so had yet published. He produced _Aminta_ in the winter of 1572-3. It was acted with unparalleled applause; for this pastoral drama offered something ravishingly new, something which interpreted and gave a vocal utterance to tastes and sentiments that ruled the age. While professing to exalt the virtues of rusticity, the _Aminta_ was in truth a panegyric of Court life, and Silvia reflected Leonora in the magic mirror of languidly luxurious verse. Poetry melted into music. Emotion exhaled itself in sensuous harmony. The art of the next two centuries, the supreme art of song, of words subservient to musical expression, had been indicated.
This explains the sudden and extraordinary success of the _Aminta_. It was nothing less than the discovery of a new realm, the revelation of a specific faculty which made its author master of the heart of Italy. The very lack of concentrated pa.s.sion lent it power. Its suffusion of emotion in a shimmering atmosphere toned with voluptuous melancholy, seemed to invite the lutes and viols, the mellow tenors, and the trained soprano voices of the dawning age of melody. We may here remember that Palestrina, seven years earlier in Rome, had already given his Ma.s.s of Pope Marcello to the world.
Lucrezia d"Este, now d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino, who was anxious to share the raptures of _Aminta_, invited Ta.s.so to Pesaro in the summer of 1573, and took him with her to the mountain villa of Casteldurante. She was an unhappy wife, just on the point of breaking her irksome bonds of matrimony. Ta.s.so, if we may credit the deductions which have been drawn from pa.s.sages in his letters, had the privilege of consoling the disappointed woman and of distracting her tedious hours. They roamed together through the villa gardens, and spent days of quiet in the recesses of her apartments. He read aloud pa.s.sages from his unpublished poem, and composed sonnets in her honor, praising the full-blown beauty of the rose as lovelier than its budding charm. The duke her husband, far from resenting this intimacy, heaped favors and substantial gifts upon his former comrade. He had not, indeed, enough affection for his wife to be jealous of her. Yet it is indubitable that if he had suspected her of infidelity the Italian code of honor would have compelled him to make short work with Ta.s.so.[13]
[Footnote 13: This is how he wrote in his Diary about Lucrezia. "Finally the Duke decided upon his marriage with Donna Lucrezia d"Este, which took place, though little to his taste, for she was old enough to have been his mother." "The d.u.c.h.ess wished to return to Ferrara, where she subsequently chose to remain, a resolution which gave no annoyance to her husband; for, as she was unlikely to bring him a family, her absence mattered little." "February 15, 1598. Heard that Madame Lucrezia d"Este, d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino, my wife, died at Ferrara during the night of the 11th." (Dennistoun"s _Dukes of Urbino_, vol. iii. pp. 127, 146, 156.) Francesco Maria had been attached in Spain to a lady of unsuitable condition, and his marriage with Lucrezia was arranged to keep him out of a _mesalliance_.]
Meanwhile it seemed as though Leonora had been forgotten by her servant.
We possess one letter written to her from Casteldurante on September 3, 1573, in which he encloses a sonnet, disparaging it by comparison with those which he believes she has been receiving from another poet (Guarino probably), and saying that, though the verses were written, not for himself, but "at the requisition of a poor lover, who, having been for some while angry with his lady, now is forced to yield and crave for pardon," yet he hopes that they "will effect the purpose he desires."[14] Few of Ta.s.so"s letters to Leonora have survived. This, therefore, is a doc.u.ment of much importance; and it is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was indirectly begging Leonora to forgive him for some piece of petulance or irritation. At any rate, his position between the two princesses at this moment was one of delicacy, in which a less vain and more cautious man than Ta.s.so might have found it hard to keep his head cool.
[Footnote 14: _Lettere_, vol. i, p. 47. The sonnet begins, "Sdegno, debil guerrier."]
Up to the present time his life had been, in spite of poverty and domestic misfortunes, one almost uninterrupted career of triumph. But his fiber had been relaxed in the irresponsible luxurious atmosphere of Courts, and his self-esteem had been inflated by the honors paid to him as the first poet of his age in Europe. Moreover, he had been continuously over-worked and over-wrought from childhood onwards. Now, when he returned to Ferrara with the d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino at the age of twenty-nine, it remained to be seen whether he could support himself with stability upon the slippery foundation of princely favor, whether his health would hold out, and whether he would be able to bring the publication of his long expected poem to a successful issue.
In 1574 he accompanied Duke Alfonso to Venice, and witnessed the magnificent reception of Henri III, on his return from Poland. A fever, contracted during those weeks of pleasure, prevented him from working at the epic for many months. This is the first sign of any serious failure in Ta.s.so"s health. At the end of August 1574, however, the _Gerusalemme_ was finished, and in the following February he began sending the MS. to Scipione Gonzaga at Rome. So much depended on its success, that doubts immediately rose within its author"s mind. Will it fulfill the expectation raised in every Court and literary coterie of Italy? Will it bear investigation in the light of the Dialogues on Epic Poetry? Will the Church be satisfied with its morality; the Holy Office with its doctrine? None of these diffidences a.s.sailed Ta.s.so when he flung _Aminta_ negligently forth and found he had produced a masterpiece. It would have been well for him if he had turned a deaf ear to the doubting voice on this occasion also. But he was not of an independent character to start with; and his life had made him sensitively deferent to literary opinion. Therefore, in an evil hour, yielding to Gonzaga"s advice, he resolved to submit the _Gerusalemme_ in MS. to four censors--Il Borga, Flaminio de"n.o.bili, vulpine Speroni with his poisoned fang of pedantry, precise Antoniano with his inquisitorial prudery. They were to pa.s.s their several criticisms on the plot, characters, diction, and ethics of the _Gerusalemme_; Ta.s.so was to entertain and weigh their arguments, reserving the right of following or rejecting their advice, but promising to defend his own views. To the number of this committee he shortly after added three more scholars, Francesco Piccolomini, Domenico Veniero, and Celio Magno.[15] Not to have been half maddened by these critics would have proved Ta.s.so more or less than human. They picked holes in the structure of the epic, in its episodes, in its theology, in its incidents, in its language, in its t.i.tle. One censor required one alteration, and another demanded the contrary. This man seemed animated by an acrid spite; that veiled his malice in the flatteries of candid friendship. Antoniano was for cutting out the love pa.s.sages: Armida, Sofronia, Erminia, Clorinda, were to vanish or to be adapted to conventual proprieties. It seemed to him more than doubtful whether the enchanted forest did not come within the prohibitions of the Tridentine decrees. As the revision advanced, matters grew more serious. Antoniano threw out some decided hints of ecclesiastical displeasure; Ta.s.so, reading between the lines, scented the style of the Collegium Germanic.u.m.
[Footnote 15: Ta.s.so consulted almost every scholar he could press into his service. But the official tribunal of correction was limited to the above named four acting in concert with Scipione Gonzaga.]
Speroni spoke openly of plagiarism--plagiarism from himself forsooth!--and murmured the terrible words between his teeth, "Ta.s.so is mad!" He was in fact driven wild, and told his tormentors that he would delay the publication of the epic, perhaps for a year, perhaps for his whole life, so little hope had he of its success.[16] At last he resolved to compose an allegory to explain and moralize the poem. When he wrote the _Gerusalemme_ he had no thought of hidden meanings; but this seemed the only way of preventing it from being dismembered by hypocrites and pedants.[17] The expedient proved partially successful.
When Antoniano and his friends were bidden to perceive a symbol in the enchanted wood and other marvels, a symbol in the loves of heroines and heroes, a symbol even in Armida, they relaxed their wrath. The _Gerusalemme_ might possibly pa.s.s muster now before the Congregation of the Index. Ta.s.so"s correspondence between March 1575 and July 1576 shows what he suffered at the hands of his revisers, and helps to explain the series of events which rendered the autumn of that latter year calamitous for him.[18] There are, indeed, already indications in the letters of those months that his nerves, enfeebled by the quartan fever under which he labored, and exasperated by carping or envious criticism, were overstrung.
[Footnote 16: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 114.]
[Footnote 17: _Ib_. vol. i. p. 192.]
[Footnote 18: Vol. i. pp. 55-215.]
Suspicions began to invade his mind. He complained of headache. His spirits alternated between depression and hysterical gayety. A dread lest the Inquisition should refuse the imprimatur to his poem haunted him. He grew restless, and yearned for change of scene.
The events of 1575, 1576, and 1577 require to be minutely studied: for upon our interpretation of them must depend the theory which we hold of Ta.s.so"s subsequent misfortunes. It appears that early in the year 1575 he was becoming discontented with Ferrara. A party in the Court, led by Pigna, did their best to make his life there disagreeable. They were jealous of the poet"s fame, which shone with trebled splendor after the production of _Aminta_. Ta.s.so"s own behavior provoked, if it did not exactly justify their animosity. He treated men at least his equals in position with haughtiness, which his irritable temper rendered insupportable. We have it from his own pen that "he could not bear to live in a city where the n.o.bles did not yield him the first place, or at least admit him to absolute equality"; that "he expected to be adored by friends, served by serving-men, caressed by domestics, honored by masters, celebrated by poets, and pointed out by all."[19]
[Footnote 19: _Lettere_, vol. iii. p. 41, iv. p. 332.]
He admitted that it was his habit "to build castles in the air of honors, favors, gifts and graces, showered on him by emperors and kings and mighty princes"; that "the slightest coldness from a patron seemed to him a tacit act of dismissal, or rather an open act of violence."[20] His blood, he argued, placed him on a level with the aristocracy of Italy; but his poetry lifted him far above the vulgar herd of n.o.blemen. At the same time, while claiming so much, he constantly declared himself unfit for any work or office but literary study, and expressed his opinion that princes ought to be his tributaries.[21] Though such pretensions may not have been openly expressed at this period of his life, it cannot be doubted that Ta.s.so"s temper made him an unpleasant comrade in Court-service. His sensitiveness, as well as the actual slenderness of his fortunes, exposed him only too obviously to the malevolent tricks and petty bullyings of rivals. One knows what a boy of that stamp has to suffer at public schools, and a Court is after all not very different from an academy.