Torquato Tasso

About this time an attack was made by the Academy della Crusca in Florence on his “Jerusalem.” To violent abuse of himself, of his poem, and of his father and his father's poems, Tasso replied more for his father's sake than for his own, for his heart was filled with one desire, and his chief energies were constantly employed in appealing to everyone of influence or power, to obtain his release from confinement. He wrote to Bergamo a touching appeal, which it is said moved the Council to tears, and they despatched an embassy to Alfonso, petitioning for their compatriot's release and sending Alfonso a present of an inscription relating to the antiquity of the d'Este family, which he was very desirous of possessing. The Duke promised before long to comply with their request, and declared that he only kept Tasso in confinement to try to cure him of his disorder. Perhaps he was influenced too, in some degree, by a fear of Tasso's renewal of language against him at other Courts in the event of his release. At all events Serassi confesses “He would have granted the urgent prayers of so many noble patrons, and set him at liberty with pleasure, but reflecting that poets are naturally ‘genus irritabile,’ and fearing that Tasso once free would revenge himself for his long confinement and his ill-treatment in the Ferrarese Court with that formidable weapon, his pen, he could not bring himself to the resolution of suffering him to escape from his States, without being first assured that he would make no attempt on the honour and reverence due to so great a Prince.” Two years more thus passed—Tasso in constant hopes of being free, able at times to write sonnets gracefully and with his old power; at times mixing more in the world, then apparently withdrawn again from it; weak and suffering in body, and his terrible apparitions and images increasing upon him, his cell appearing full of them. Flames wreathed and twined themselves in it; rats and other animals seemed to him to crawl across the vault of the room. His ears were filled with noises—ringings of bells, clocks striking; in his sleep and even when waking he thought himself engaged in strife with the spectres around him, and asserted that when no person had been in his prison his closets were broken open, his clothes taken from him, his books pulled down and flung about his room, his gloves or letters drawn out from locked boxes at night and scattered over the floor in the morning. In the midst of this distress both of body and mind he believed that “there appeared in the air the form of the glorious Virgin with her Son in her arms, in the centre of bright and glittering clouds.”