[1]Rienzi.
[1]Rienzi.
Giovanni Boccacciowas born in 1313 in Paris, the son of a Florentine merchant and a French-woman. His father had property in the hamlet of Certaldo, and the author always signed himself "Boccaccio da Certaldo." He was destined, first for commerce, then for the study of the law, but finding neither avocation congenial, he after his father's death, devoted himself entirely to his favourite pursuits. He was honoured with the favour of King Robert of Naples and with the love of the King's daughter, Maria, whom he celebrates in his poems under the name of Fiammetta. His zeal for the writers of antiquity was not inferior to that of Petrarch. He sent for Leontius Pilatus to teach him Greek. He devoted large sums to the purchase and reproduction of the works of classical writers. He seems to have been anamiable and honourable man, free alike from pride like that of Dante, and from vanity like that of Petrarch. He repented in later years of the somewhat frivolous character of many of his writings, took holy orders, and spent the last days of his life at Certaldo. When Florence endowed a chair for the explanation of theDivine Comedy,Boccaccio was the first to be appointed. He wrote a life of Dante and began a commentary on theInferno,which, however, he did not live to finish, dying at Certaldo on the 21st of December, 1375.
Boccaccio was a most fertile writer, both in Latin and in Italian. His Latin works have but little merit and are vastly inferior to those of Petrarch in strength and originality of thought. His Italian poems are heavy and uninteresting, but he has the credit of inventing the "Ottava Rima," the stanza in which Ariosto and Tasso subsequently wrote their immortal epics. Praise-worthy as these works were for the time in which they were written, he would not occupy a high position in the literature of his country, had he not proved himself in other productions to be the first great writer of Italian prose. His romantic stories,Il Filocopo, La Fiammetta, l'Admeto,are written in a flowing and pleasing style; hisLife of DanteandCommentary on theInfernoare valuable for the information they impart, but the crowning glory of his literary career is the collection of stories published under the title ofIl Decamerone.
The terrible plague that swept over the earth in the middle of the Thirteenth Century, known in history as the "Black Death,"[1]ravaged Florence with peculiar malignity, and Boccaccio feigns that five ladies and their cavaliers took refuge in a villa in the neighbourhood and beguiled their leisure by telling stories to each other. Being a collection of tales told by various characters, theDecameronebears a certain resemblance to another memorable work of the Fourteenth Century, Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales,but happier than his great contemporary, Boccaccio lived to complete his design.
The work opens with a noble description of the Plague of Florence, but this gloomy and terrible introduction gives no forecast of the light, festive and occasionally indecorous character of many of the tales. Others, however, are highly picturesque and even poetical, and some have a special interest for English readers as being the sources whenceShakespeare drewAll's Well that Ends Well,andCymbeline,—Dryden,Theodore and HonoriaandSigismonda and Guiscardo,and KeatsIsabella, or the Pot of Basil.
Boccaccio had every quality of a great novelist. His style is varied, flexible and animated, and his idiom is so purely Tuscan that it was held up as a standard by theAccademia della Crusca,and if any fault can be found with it, it is that the copiousness of his vocabulary sometimes leads him into florid and redundant amplifications. His characters are drawn with considerable skill. His dialogue is invariably natural and appropriate. His incidents, though sometimes overstepping the limits of decorum, are ingenious and entertaining. The work gives a brilliant panorama of the men and manners of Italy in the Fourteenth Century.
No writer has derived more advantage from the admiration of other writers than Boccaccio. Great poets are indebted to him for the plots of some of their most successful works. Great painters have vied with each other in illustrating the brilliant scenes of hisDecamerone.Great philologians and grammarians have expressed their admiration for the purity and elegance of his style. Brilliant as his services were to the literature of his country, they have received a more than ample measure of reward from the gratitude of posterity.
Italy produced in the Fourteenth Century many other prose writers of note, though none so eminent as Boccaccio.
First and foremost we must mention the invaluableChronicleofGiovanni Villani. This historian rose in the service of the Florentine Republic until he became Prior. He was one of the many victims of the Black Death, and his unfinished work was continued by his brotherMatteo, and this continuation was completed by Matteo's son,Filippo. All these are quoted as classics by the Accademia della Crusca. According to competent judges, Giovanni was the most brilliant, Matteo the most noteworthy for the important events he narrates, and Filippo remarkable rather for industry and research than for ability as a writer.
TheTravelsofMarco Polo, a Venetian, were an inestimable contribution to the knowledge of remote countries. For centuries he lay very unjustly under the suspicion of falsehood and exaggeration, and it was only at a comparatively recent date that his veracity, nay, his scrupulous exactness, received a tardy vindication.
Jacopo Passavanti, a Dominican. Friar, wrote a devotional book, entitled,Lo Specchio della Penitenza,written in prose so musical and flowing as to be preferred by some to the prose of Boccaccio, because Passavanti never indulges inthe over-elaboration sometimes to be detected in the pages of theDecamerone.
Giovanni Da Catignanoknown in the Calendar as the Blessed John of the Cells, after a dissolute youth was converted by the ardent exhortations of the Abbot of Vallombrosa, and in deep contrition ended his days as a hermit. Some letters from this interesting penitent are extant, written in a style so exquisitely Tuscan that they are quoted by the Accademia della Crusca as models of propriety and elegance.
Another canonized celebrity,Saint Catherine of Siena, is no less remarkable for the beauty of her style than for the beauty of her character.
A Life of Saint Francis of Assisi, entitledFioretti di San Francesco,has been highly praised for the freshness and simplicity of the language. The piety or the modesty of the author induced him to conceal his identity.
These religious writers, though treating of subjects so different, almost equalled Boccaccio in perfection of style, but the two authors who produced collections of stories somewhat similar to his,Franco SacchettiandSer Giovanni Fiorentino, were very far indeed from approaching his mastery.
On reviewing the literary development of Italy in the Fourteenth Century, we find that the language attained the fullest perfection both in proseand verse, only the lighter kinds of poetry remaining uncultivated. The appearance in one century of two such great poets as Dante and Petrarch was quite phenomenal and threw a lustre over the age which has attracted the whole world. But another fact, less universally known, is equally worthy of attention, namely the extraordinary merit of the prose writers of the period. It may well be doubted whether any compositions in Italian prose of a later date exhibit the rare qualities of those of the Fourteenth Century. Leopardi, indeed, produced marvels of style, but they were the result of art and study, whereas the writers of the Fourteenth Century display an ease and a simplicity, a freshness and a graphic power, combined with the most exquisite lightness and harmony in their phrases, that must ever render them more admirable models than the artificial and laborious productions of later ages.
[1]For details on the subject of this most terrible pestilence, probably the worst that ever afflicted humanity, we may refer the reader to Father Gasquet's valuable and interesting work on the subject.
[1]For details on the subject of this most terrible pestilence, probably the worst that ever afflicted humanity, we may refer the reader to Father Gasquet's valuable and interesting work on the subject.
In striking contrast to the Fourteenth Century, the Fifteenth is conspicuous for a great dearth of eminent authors. The same may be noticed in the literary development of England. After the brilliant apparition of Chaucer, more than a hundred years elapsed before an eminent writer arose. This may be partly accounted for by the Civil Wars which devastated the island and brought misery and anarchy in their train. Widely different was the plight of Italy. There were wars and disturbances, it is true, but the wealth of the country became more enormous than ever, and great princes extended munificent patronage to science and learning. But all intellectual energies were directed, not to the cultivation of the Italian language, but to the study of the writers of antiquity. Greek and Latin were alone held in estimation, the vulgar tongue was contemptuously neglected.
The only eminent prose writer wasFeo Belcari,a Florentine magistrate, who wrote the Lives of the Blessed Giovanni Colombini and other Friars, and who reproduced the beauty and elegance of the best authors of the Fourteenth Century. He died at an advanced age in 1484.
Leon Battista Albertiwas a universal genius. He distinguished himself as painter, sculptor and architect, but his Italian writings would hardly be of sufficient importance to mention, had not the dearth of names in this barren century made historians of literature thankful for any means of filling up the blank.
Leonardo Da Vinciwrote aTreatise on Painting,and he impressed upon all artists the necessity of being original, and of not copying their predecessors. It would have been well if the writers of the age had laid this injunction to heart as well as the painters, for as years advanced, the servile imitation of conventional forms became more and more the bane of Italian literature.
Pulciis celebrated for his mock-heroic poem, theMorgante Maggiore.The giant Morgante is the hero, but we also make the acquaintance of Orlando, Rinaldo, Charlemagne, and many other characters that appear in the more famous poems of Bojardo and Ariosto. It was unfortunate for Pulci that he had such great successors. He had abundance of wit and originality, but he hadneither the poetical imagination of Bojardo nor the magic style of Ariosto, so that it is no cause for astonishment that he fell into neglect.
Matteo Bojardo, Count of Scandiano, was born in 1430 and died in 1494. He was favoured by nature and fortune; a soldier and a statesman, he had every opportunity of enriching his mind with varied experiences, nor can we say that those opportunities were neglected. HisOrlando Innamorato,which he did not live to finish, long as it is, displays great wealth of imagination and considerable creative power; but unfortunately, his style is heavy and rough, and was completely eclipsed by the extraordinary merits of Ariosto'sOrlando Furioso,which professes to be only a continuation of the earlier poem. Fifty years later, Berni entirely re-wrote Bojardo's work and certainly succeeded in giving it greater elegance, but he did not make it more interesting to modern readers. In truth, the knights of the epic cycle beginning with theMorgante Maggioreand ending in the Eighteenth Century with theRicciardetto,appear terribly uninteresting in the present day, and it requires the picturesque and melodious style of a really great poet like Ariosto to entice the reader through the account of their numerous adventures.
The celebrated scholar,Angelo Poliziano,shows a poetical mind in his poems, and hisOrfeomay claim the credit of being the first dramatic work of any literary value in the Italian language. It has many lyric beauties and the choruses are spirited.[1]
His poem in Ottava Rima on a tournament given by Giniano de Medici, was interrupted by the tragic death of his patron in the conspiracy organised by the Pazzi family, nor was the loss of the remainder of the poem the least deplorable consequence of that great crime. Politian died in the prime of life in 1494. It is reasonable to suppose that if his years had been prolonged, he might have enriched the literature of his country with works of even greater beauty.
A poet of true tenderness and fire, but more remarkable for the extraordinary perfection of his Latin poems than for any other productions of his muse, wasJacopo Sannazzaro, a Neapolitan. He survived until the year 1530, but his Italian poems are the productions of his youth. HisArcadia,a pastoral romance in prose with poems interspersed, acquired a great celebrity and undoubtedly servedas model to Sir Philip Sydney's work of the same name. It is tender and graceful, but the extreme unreality of the Nymphs and Shepherds makes it rather cloying to a modern taste. His Italian poems have not nearly so much melody and fire as those he wrote in Latin, which are, indeed, so perfect that they cannot be distinguished, as far as rhythm is concerned, from those of Virgil himself.
These names practically exhaust the band of Italian writers of the Fifteenth Century, truly a meagre list, and in striking contrast to the countless painters who were an ornament to their country during the same period.
[1]The Chorus from theOrfeo—"Noi seguiamo, Bacco, te;Bacco, Bacco, evoè, evoè!"is quoted by George Eliot inRomola.
[1]The Chorus from theOrfeo—
"Noi seguiamo, Bacco, te;Bacco, Bacco, evoè, evoè!"
is quoted by George Eliot inRomola.
The Sixteenth Century had not seen many years before the world was presented with one of the most celebrated works in the Italian Language, a poem destined to acquire a reputation hardly inferior to that of Dante's great work, theOrlando FuriosoofAriosto.
Ludovico Ariostowas born at Reggio in Lombardy on the eighth of September, 1474. His father was attached to the Court of Ferrara, and he himself entered the services of Cardinal Ippolito d'Esté, brother to the Duke, but in what capacity is not accurately known. To the Cardinal he dedicated his great work, but received no thanks for the homage. He fell into complete disgrace by refusing to accompany his patron to Hungary. He then tried his luck with the reigning Duke, who was more generous than his kinsman, and who appointed the poet Governor of Garfagnana,a remote province of the Duchy, infested by brigands. He retained this post for three years, and brought the province into such excellent order that he acquired the love and esteem of the whole district.
When he returned to Ferrara, he enjoyed the highest consideration and favour of the Duke, who took great pleasure in the representation of his comedies. He was clandestinely married to a Florentine lady, by whom, however, he had no children. It is supposed that secrecy was kept in order to preserve some ecclesiastical revenues assigned to his share by the Cardinal. From previous connections he had two sons, on whom the Duke conferred patents of legitimacy. His descendants acquired considerable opulence, and became one of the first families of Ferrara. His son Orazio made himself remarkable by declaring, when the question of Torquato Tasso's superior genius roused the attention of Italy, that both poets had their particular beauties, for which opinion he was fiercely attacked by the zealots in his father's cause. In the Eighteenth Century, a Marquis Ariosto was intimate with Voltaire at Brussels. The last descendant of the poet, the Countess Ariosto, died at Ferrara in 1878, at the age of ninety years.
Ariosto gives us in his Satires with rare candoura picture of his mind and of the vicissitudes of his life. He was of a buoyant and open disposition, fond of pleasure and susceptible to the attractions of love, but faithful and sincere to his friends, and very generous to his numerous brothers and sisters. Titian was among his friends, and the great painter has preserved for us the features of the great poet. Curious anecdotes are told of his absence of mind when plunged in thought. Once he went through the streets of Ferrara in his dressing-gown, and was not aware of his apparel until an acquaintance accosted him and told him of the fact. He built himself a little house, and placed a Latin inscription over the entrance, and when someone remarked that it was very small for one who had described such splendid edifices in his verses, he made answer that fabrics of the imagination are erected with little, and those of stone and mortar, with great, cost. His death, the result of indigestion, owing to the rapidity with which he took his meals in order to return to his studies, took place in 1533.
Fully to appreciate the genius of Ariosto we must understand the spirit of his age, for in him were developed, more fully than in any other writer of the period, the qualities, moral and intellectual, that gave their stamp to the memorable epoch of the Renaissance. The taste, the love of beauty, the classical simplicity, the vivid imagination, theethereal lightness of touch characterising the productions of the great contemporary painters, are united in as high perfection in the verse of Ariosto as on their canvas and frescoes. He had, with the merits of his age, also its shortcomings: the want of moral elevation, the frivolity, and the absence of religious enthusiasm.
He was, therefore, unfitted to be an heroic poet in the stiff old conventional style, and it was not until he had tried and abandoned many subjects chat he discovered himself to be something infinitely more striking and original. At last he discovered in the subject that inspired Pulci and Bojardo, an inexhaustible mine of poetry, and he took up the thread of narrative where Bojardo's unfinished poem had left it, and produced one of the greatest masterpieces in the whole range of literature.
He is matchless in the ease and clearness of his style, which never flags for one moment in the forty-six cantos of the work. He is said to have written with the greatest care, and to have corrected much and erased not a little. The stanza in the first canto:
"La verginella è simile alla rosa,"
he wrote nine times before he was satisfied. Galileo confessed that he owed the lucidity of hisstyle to the assiduous study of Ariosto, but accused him of introducing verses for the sake of the rhyme; but we may pardon an occasional blemish in a work of such immense length.
He tells us himself that he saturated his mind with the spirit of the Latin poets, especially with Catullus, and in his works we find the urbanity of the Augustan age united to a strength and vivacity of imagination unknown to the Romans. With great judgement he improved on the hints they gave him, and the graceful manner in which he occasionally introduces mythological allusions seems to have been Milton's model when he did the same. Although he rates Virgil's flattery of Augustus at its proper value when he says:
"Non era cosi saggio e grande AugustoCome la tromba di Virgilio suona,E per avere in poesia buon gustoLe proscrizioni inique gli perdona,"
he cannot himself be acquitted of the charge of gross flattery to the House of Este, without having even the excuse of Virgil, for it is well known with how little applause his patrons received his masterpiece. Some critics have asserted that he chose his subject merely because he could introduce the character of Ruggiero, ancestor to his patrons, but, fortunately for the glory of one of the greatest of human minds, there is no reason to believe this libel. Thesubject recommended itself by its own merits to the poet, as any candid reader, after perusing the work, will confess. It is impossible to enter the maze of incidents in theOrlando Furiosowithout being bewildered, astonished, dazzled, and lost in all the wonders conjured up by the poet's fancy. His genius was essentially narrative (as is proved by his comedies being so vastly inferior to his Epic), and his subject allowed him to heap story on story, and to develop adventure out of adventure.
No finer compliment was ever paid by one poet to another, than by Byron to Scott, when he called him the Northern Ariosto, and the Italian poet the Southern Scott,
"Who, like the Ariosto of the North, worth."Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly
It was not a mere compliment, but a very just parallel, and it would be difficult to decide which of the two poets was the greater. Scott had certainly more power of delineating character; but Ariosto had, if not the richer, the more vivid imagination. If we take only Scott's poetical works into consideration, Ariosto would have the advantage; but if the prose romances of Scott are thrown into the balance, they incline the scales in his favour. Both poets were, as Byron calledthem, bards of chivalry, but Scott's chivalry was that of the soul, and Ariosto's too often only that of the sword. Perhaps we may come to a satisfactory conclusion by saying that Ariosto was the greater, and Scott the nobler, poet.
Ariosto's rapidity of style is such that I know of no poem more concise than this Epic, containing over forty thousand lines. One of his tricks to arrest the attention, or to tantalize the curiosity of the reader, is to break off a story in the middle, passing on to other incidents, and concluding the interrupted episode in a later canto. The graceful badinage with which he amuses us when the interest threatens to flag, is most judiciously introduced, for such a subject treated with solemn glumness and heavy pomp would become irksome in the extreme.
Every canto has an introduction, as ingenious in thought as it is beautiful in expression. The most interesting Introduction is probably that of the last canto, where he represents his contemporaries congratulating him on the completion of so arduous a work; but others deserve scarcely less praise; for instance, that on jealousy, and that in which he enumerates the great painters of the age, amongst others, Michael Angelo:
"Quel che a par sculpe e colora,Michel, più che mortal, Angel divino."
The rapidity of his transitions is truly amazing. He whirls the reader in two lines from one end of the world to the other. When we are harassed and wearied by the breathless speed of his Pegasus, he pauses, lavishing all the riches of his mind on a description or an incident. Here he reveals himself the wonderful poet he is. The maiden chained to a rock and about to be devoured by the sea-monster; Zerbino and Isabella, Ginevra and Ariodante; above all, Alcina and her magic garden; and, not inferior to any passage in the greatest poets, the frenzy of Orlando: these are only a few of the wonderful passages that place his Epic among the noblest productions of the human mind.
His style is, perhaps, if not the most lofty, yet the most perfect of any Italian poet; it is so sweetly varied, so gracefully and judiciously adorned with metaphors and tropes, so picturesque in description, so vivid in narrative, so exquisitely graduated to impart the suitable colouring to the poet's thoughts. Perhaps the only quality it lacks, is the expression of deep emotion, which his joyous and animated verse seldom attains. Nor can it be said that he ever displays great depth of thought, so that we seek in vain in his works for those marvellous flashes that irradiate the mystery of things. With this want is connectedthe absence of striking individuality in many of his characters; they are Knights and Saracens such as tradition supplied. When he chooses, however, he can individualize his figures, like Angelica, or Orlando and Alcina, with great success, and many observations interspersed throughout the work, show keen insight into human nature. Voltaire, an ardent admirer of this poet, said he had more knowledge of the human heart than is to be found in all epics and novels from Homer'sIliaddown to Richardson'sPamela.He regretted Madame du Deffand had not learnt Italian in order to read so admirable a poet. He says in one of his last poems:
"Je relis l'Arioste ou même la Pucelle."
ThePucelle,indeed, was written in emulation of theOrlando Furiosowhich it resembles no more than a statue of Silenus resembles the Jupiter of Otricoli.
No one represented more truthfully the effect produced by Ariosto on the mind than Leopardi in the following lines:
"Nascevi ai dolci sogni intanto, e il primoSole splendeati in vista,Cantor vago dell' arme e degl' amori,Che in età della nostra assai men tristaEmpièr la vita di felici errori,Nova speme d'Italia. O torri, O celle,O donne, O cavalieri,O giardini, O palagi! a voi pensando,In mille vane amenità si perdeLa mente mia."
Ariosto began his great poem in 1505, at the age of thirty-one, and finished it in 1516; but the year before his death he published an edition with countless alterations and improvements, and with six additional cantos, and it is in the latter form that it has descended to posterity. At his death he left five cantos of an unfinished epic, entitledRinaldo Ardito,in which many characters of theOrlandoreappear; but the fragment is in a very imperfect state and by no means approaches the beauty of the completed work.
The age of Ariosto is remarkable for the first appearance of blank verse in the Italian language. TheItalia LiberataofTrissino, on the subject of the victories of Belisarius over the Goths, is the first work in that metre. Trissino thought himself a second Homer, and his epic is full of injudicious imitations of theIliad.The scene between Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida is transferred to Justinian and Theodora, in the Palace of Constantinople, with very voluptuous amplifications More than with this ponderous epic, Trissino did his country service by writing the first Italian tragedy,Sofonisba,a work containing passages almost worthy of Euripides. With a style less languid and prosaic, Trissino might have achieved considerable success in the drama.
The poet who came nearest to Ariosto in eleganceof style, though far indeed from possessing equal fire and genius, wasFrancesco Berni, mentioned in a previous chapter, as having recast theOrlando Innamoratoof Bojardo. He cannot have had a very original mind, or he would not have submitted to the drudgery of re-writing, line for line, the work of another man, when he might have been employed on poems of his own; but he had plenty of vivacity and raciness, as his Satires and Sonnets attest. So popular did they become, that light and comic poetry came to be called after him,Poesia Bernesca.His end was more tragic than his works. Unfortunately for himself, he lived in Florence in the intimacy of the Medici family. A bitter feud arose between the Duke Alexander and Cardinal Ippolito. The Duke endeavoured to bribe Berni to poison the Cardinal, and on his refusing to be a party to so terrible a crime, Alexander had him poisoned in his turn, lest he should reveal the secret of his guilt.
Luigi Alamanniwas an indefatigable writer of poetry. He wrote two enormous epics,Giron il Corteseand theAvarchide;but it would require the musical diction of Ariosto to make such productions live; and, unfortunately, Alamanni, though a scholarly and painstaking writer, had nothing like Ariosto's powers of versification. The work by which he is most honourably remembered is adidactic poem,La Coltivazione,on the same subject as theGeorgics.
Giovanni Rucellai, a nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was also indebted to the Georgics for his poem,Le Api(on Bees), in blank verse, of which there is an excellent defence in the introductory lines, quite the most original and pleasing passage in the poem.
MonsignorGiovanni Della Casaacquired an immense reputation in his own age for his works in prose and verse, in Latin and Italian; but as his merit consists exclusively in the finished style—his thoughts not rising above conventionality—he has been neglected for writers combining equal, if not greater, beauty of language with more originality of thought.
Annibal Carorendered signal service to his country by giving it a spirited translation of theÆneid,and his works in prose and verse are all characterised by vigour of style. He rose from a humble origin to considerable wealth and prominence, and he became notorious by reason of a bitter feud with a contemporary critic of the name ofCastelvetro. He had written a poem in praise of the House of Valois, "Venite all'ombra de' gran gigli d'oro," and Castelvetro wrote a sharp and acrimonious criticism upon it, to which he retorted in hisApologiawith almost insanerancour. Castelvetro was not tardy in replying, and Caro is suspected of having used all his influence to ruin the career of his adversary. But it is painful to dwell upon these ebullitions of spite, unfortunately too frequent in the annals of literature.
Cardinal Bembowas a writer fastidiously elegant. He is reported to have possessed forty portfolios, in the first of which he put the first draft of his works; in the second, the second; and so on until the fortieth revision reached the fortieth receptacle, after which alone would he suffer the work to see the light. His productions are such as might be expected from a man so minutely laborious. He is more intent upon words than upon realities. His poetry is modelled on Petrarch, his prose on Boccaccio. He wrote aHistory of Venicein twelve books, originally in Latin, translating it himself into Italian. A dialogue, entitledGli Asolani,is interesting to English readers from its similarity of title to Browning'sAsolando.The name is taken from Asolo, a spot on the mainland not far from Venice, whither he loved to retire, as Browning did three hundred years later. His letters are esteemed his best production, being less over-elaborated in style than his other works. His Latin works are entirely modelled on those of Cicero.
Francesco Grazzini, surnamedIl Lasca, was a sort of inferior Berni in his poems, but he is remarkable as one of the founders of the Florentine Accademia della Crusca.
Bernardino Rota, a Neapolitan, produced some really pathetic poems on the death of his wife.
The Sixteenth Century was remarkable for three poetesses of considerable merit:Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, andVeronica Gambara. Vittoria Colonnawas the widow of the Marquis of Pescara, and dedicates many of her verses to his memory.Gaspara Stampa, a native of Padua, was deeply in love with Collatino Collalto, and gave utterance to her passion in numerous Sonnets, some of which rise to considerable beauty and dignity.Veronica Gambara, of Brescia, produced some noble verses, especially the fine Sonnet in which she implores, in the name of Christ, Charles V and Francis I, to put an end to their hostilities.
Although he lived until nearly the end of the century, we may for convenience mentionAngelo Di Costanzoin this chapter. He was born in Naples, in 1507, of a wealthy and noble family, but in spite of his wealth he had many sorrows. Don Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy of Naples, banished him from the city of his birth. His first wife died in youth; his second wife caused him much unhappiness by her misconduct; and to complete hismisfortunes, he lived to deplore the loss of his two sons. He appealed in vain to be allowed to return to his home. His petitions were rejected, and he died in grief and exile in 1591. Some of his poems are eminently beautiful; his Sonnet on Virgil, "Quella cetra gentil," is justly celebrated. In prose he wrote a history of Naples, frequently reprinted.
On reviewing the poetry of this period, with the brilliant exception of Ariosto, the result is, perhaps, a feeling of disappointment. Certainly, the achievements are not commensurate with the undoubted culture and intellect of the writers. There is nothing (always excepting Ariosto) that has taken hold of the world's attention. How different in this respect are the poets from the painters of the same period! How obscure by the side of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Giorgione, Sebastian del Piombo, Tintoretto, and the whole galaxy sparkling for ever in the heaven of Art! Some powerful minds, such as Vida and Fracastoro, were diverted into the path of Latin poetry; but I think the chief explanation of the inferiority of the poets is their lack of really fine subjects; for how can a poet write nobly if he has no adequate theme for his verse? Their amorous poetry ran too much in the Petrarchan groove; their heroic poetry was too aptto assume the form of ponderous epics, utterly unreadable without the graces of Ariosto. Religious enthusiasm seems to have been remote from their minds. Another generation had to arise before that fire was again kindled on the shrine of Poetry.
Niccolò Machiavelli, the profoundest thinker and the keenest politician of his century, was born in Florence on the third of May, 1469. In 1498 he was made Secretary of State of the Florentine Republic. But this dignity was the cause of his subsequent adversity. When the Medici family was restored to power in Florence, he was imprisoned, fined, and even put to the torture. He profited by an amnesty issued by Leo X on his accession, but he was relegated to poverty and obscurity. Impatient of both, he curried favour with the reigning dynasty, but such was the ill-luck that steadily pursued him through life, that no sooner had he acquired a certain degree of favour than the Medici were again expelled from Florence, and he, as one of their adherents, was regarded by the triumphant party with suspicion and hostility.He did not long survive the wreck of all his hopes, dying on the twenty-second of June, 1527.
In his generation, Italy had fallen on evil days. The invasion of Charles VIII of France opened the flood-gates of a deluge of disasters; and the devastations of the King were succeeded by the crushing despotism of the Emperor. The immense wealth, accumulated during centuries of prosperity, was rapidly melting away. The Republic of Venice lost much of her trade owing to the rivalry of Holland and Portugal, and the stream of commerce was directed from the Adriatic by the discovery of the new passage to India round the Cape of Good Hope. The reckless extravagance of Leo X exhausted the Papal Treasury; a great religious schism cut off abundant supplies from distant countries; and the terrible sack of Rome, with the ruinous ransom demanded from Clement VII, completed, in the year of Machiavelli's death, a long series of disasters. Freedom was crushed by native tyrants and foreign oppressors. The present was ghastly with innumerable wounds, the future looked blacker than the grave. What wonder was it, therefore, that men sought refuge from such horrors in every finesse that diplomacy could suggest? This is the true explanation and the one excuse of Machiavelli's tortuous policy. He is utterly unscrupulous, but it is the unscrupulousnessof a patriot at bay who has exhausted all other means of self-defence.
Still, it cannot be denied that Machiavelli is anything but a sympathetic figure. We admire the keenness of his intellect as we admire the keenness of a sharp-edged sword; but where is the love of humanity, the enthusiasm for great ideals, the indignation of a noble mind at the iniquities of an evil age? Wonderful is the penetration of his remarks; unrivalled his insight; above praise the clearness and precision of his thoughts. No historian has ever surpassed him in unrolling a panorama of past events. No politician has ever laid down more sagacious rules for attaining an object in view. No statesman has ever discerned with a keener eye the symptoms of the times.
But if we ask what profit has been derived from the exertions of this most acute and logical of minds, what is the answer? His name has become a byeword as the symbol of a heartless intriguer, and his works glare like a meteor of evil in the dark and troubled sky of his century.
Great praise is due to hisHistory of Florence.In the first book, with a concise lucidity which later historians have emulated without surpassing, he surveys the events of ten centuries, and that noble introduction is followed by a work whichdisplays to the fullest advantage the great powers of its author.
TheDiscourses on the First Decade of LivyandThe Art of Warboth treat of the same subject; the necessity of a freedom-loving nation to attain and preserve a high standard of military efficiency. The system of hiring venal condottieri had profoundly demoralised the forces of Italy, indeed, it had paved the way for the invasion of France and the dominion of Spain, and its effects were felt even to the middle of the present century, for no other explanation suffices to account for the submission of a nation with such a history as Italy to the oppression of foreign garrisons. So clear-sighted a patriot as Machiavelli could not fail to see the evil and to point out the remedy. His despatches and correspondence are also invaluable for the history of his times.
But the work pre-eminently associated with his name is the treatise, entitledIl Principe,a manual for a ruler who desires to keep an unsteady throne and to outwit unscrupulous enemies. He advocates, it is true, a policy regardless of all mercy and morality in the pursuit of its object; but injustice to Machiavelli, we must bear in mind what his object was. He had seen his country desolated for years by cruel and rapacious invaders, and he thought, most justly, that the only chance ofItaly against her enemies was the establishment of the dominion of one powerful and politic prince over the whole Peninsula, and it was to establish a standard of conduct for such a prince that he wrote his book.
His story,Belphegor,and his plays, among which theMandragorastands pre-eminent, are witty and lively, but they frequently overstep the limits of decorum. All his works are interspersed with innumerable proofs of the keenness of his observation, and the style is clear and forcible, but somewhat wanting in colour. He wrote a few poems, but they are of no great value or interest.
Machiavelli is as undoubtedly the first prose writer of the age as Ariosto is the first poet, Second to him as an historian, though at a wide interval, we may place his friend and fellow-townsman,Francesco Guicciardini, born in 1480, died in 1540. He studied law to such good purpose at Florence, Ferrara and Padua, that at the early age of twenty-two he was chosen to lecture on the Institutes of Justinian, and at the age of thirty-one he was sent as Ambassador to Ferdinand of Aragon, which post he occupied for two years. With the help of that King, Julius the Second forced the Florentines to submit again to the rule of the Medici family. Guicciardini was suspected by the friends of liberty of having a hand in thenegotiations between the Pope and the King, and of being a tool of that ambitious dynasty. Such, in truth, he proved himself; and harshness, rancour, and vindictiveness characterised his conduct towards his political opponents. When Leo X visited Florence in 1515, Guicciardini was sent by the Republic to receive him at Cortona. No circumstance could have proved more favourable to the historian's career. Leo X looked upon him with the utmost favour, and nominated him to high and important offices, which his successor, Adrian VI, continued, and to which Clement VII subsequently added others. When the "Holy League," headed by the Duke of Urbino, was formed against the Emperor Charles V, Guicciardini was one of its leading spirits. But the Imperial arms prevailed; Clement VII had to take refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo, and had the agony of seeing Rome stormed and plundered under his very eyes. Atrocious were the cruelties committed. St. Peter's itself was stained with the blood of the slaughtered. Huge contributions were levied on the citizens, and an enormous ransom exacted from the Pope. Seeing Clement, himself a Medici, deprived of liberty and even in danger of his life, the Florentines took to arms and expelled the obnoxious dynasty. But the unexpected happened. The injured Pope and the tyrannical Emperor becamereconciled; and probably to atone for the atrocities committed by his forces, Charles V lent effective aid to Alexander de Medici in his endeavour to regain his lost dominion over Florence. Guicciardini became the instrument of Alexander, a cruel and relentless tyrant, who was subsequently assassinated by his kinsman Lorenzino. Guicciardini was an active agent in the election of Cosimo I, and when he was reproached for imposing another tyrant on his country, he answered that the more princes were assassinated, the more would arise. But Cosimo was ungrateful when Guicciardini demanded the reward of his services; bitter disappointment was in store for him; he withdrew from public affairs, and lived in retirement at Arcetri, where he died.
It was in the leisure hours of this retirement that he wrote the history on which his literary reputation is founded. It embraces the period from the invasion of Charles VIII to the year 1532. It is a valuable and important work; but, as may be gathered from the details of his life, the author shows no elevation or purity of mind. His view of human nature is low; his estimate of his fellow-creatures harsh and cynical. But if the colours are unpleasing, the picture is valuable, and it would have been a great loss had it not been preserved for posterity.
Guicciardini is often heavy and prolix, and many ludicrous stories have been told of the sufferings of those readers who conscientiously plodded through the entire work. Thus it is related of the jocular Governor of a Province, that he promised a free pardon to a convict if he would read Guicciardini's History from the first page to the last. The prisoner gladly embraced this opportunity of regaining his liberty. He little knew the task that was imposed upon him. As he turned over page after page of the ponderous tomes, a deadly weariness overpowered him, until at last the endless details of the Siege of Pisa exhausted his patience. "Take me back to the galleys," he exclaimed. "Rather that than the misery of toiling through this awful book."
Agnolo Firenzuolawas a good prose writer, out a very inferior poet; indeed, so great is the contrast between the two classes of his works, that it is difficult to believe that they can emanate from the same pen. The most striking of his works is aDialogue on the Beauty of Women.
Pier Francesco Giambullariwrote aHistory of Europefrom the accession of Charlemagne to the year 913. The history is unfinished, the author dying in 1555. He was one of the founders of the Florentine Accademia della Crusca. He has been highly praised for the dignity and finish of his style.
VasariandCelliniare names renowned in the annals of Art, the former for his invaluable biographies of painters, and the latter as a sculptor and a worker in gold and bronze. His biography is a striking memorial of the man and the age.
Benedetto Varchihad many qualities of an able historian, but as he was in the pay of the Grand Duke Cosimo I, his independence may be more than suspected.
In contrast to him,Jacopo Nardiwas a bitter opponent of the Medici family, and in hisHistory of Florencefrom 1494 to 1531 he paints them in the blackest colours. So determined an adversary of the ruling dynasty could not be suffered to remain in Florence. He was driven into banishment, and took refuge in Venice, where he died after the middle of the Century. As a biographer he distinguished himself by his life of Antonio Giacomini.
The Sixteenth Century was fertile in historians, for we have to chronicle the name of another inBernardo Segni. He wrote theHistory of Italyfrom 1527 to 1555, or three years before his death. Dealing with contemporary events, he could not treat his subject with the requisite independence, and living a quiet and studious life, it is difficult to see how he could gather reliable information, or have access to important documents.
Vincenzo Borghiniwas a laborious antiquarian, who wrote a book on theOrigin of the City of Florence.
Giambattista Adrianiprofessed to continue Guicciardini's work in hisHistory of his Own Times,but it is complete in itself, and has many merits, both of style and subject. Adriani was celebrated in his day as a public speaker, and hisLatin Orationswere so much admired that they were translated into Italian as soon as they were held. He died in 1579.
Camillo Porziowho survived until 1603, wrote several historical monographs concerning the Kingdom of Naples.
Skilful as they were in all the arts of composition, the writers of the Sixteenth Century too frequently indulged in redundant prolixity. Conscious of this defect,Bernardo Davanzatidetermined to cultivate the opposite quality of laconic conciseness. He was brilliantly successful. He translated Tacitus, that great model of brevity, and boasted that his rendering contained fewer words than the original without sacrificing a particle of the sense. He wrote a book on the Reformation in England, a Funeral Oration on Cosimo I, and several treatises on finance and agriculture.
In reviewing the writers of this Epoch, we are struck with the number and merit of the historians.The other Prose Writers appeal but faintly to modern readers. With the exception ofBaldassare Castiglione, who, in hisCortegianogives us a pleasing picture of the more refined circles of Italian society, and of Vasari and Benvenuto Cellini, they do not disclose much of the manners and customs of their age. No Boccaccio arose to portray for future times the men and women of his day.
The stories ofBandelloand ofLuigi Da Portohave but little to recommend them except the fact that they supplied Shakespeare with some of his plots. Bandello, however, is by no means destitute of vivacity.Straparola, the author ofTredici Piacevoli Notti,andFiorentini, the author ofIl Pecorone,also had the honour of furnishing hints to the great dramatist. Too often it happens that the extreme prolixity of the writers of the Sixteenth Century drowns their thoughts in an ocean of words. It is strange that the great convulsion of the Reformation did not produce any theological work written in the Italian language. The controversies were all carried on in Latin, but even in Latin nothing was produced in the Peninsula that is now remembered. Indeed, the great Catholic reaction had the effect of making writers fearful of giving offence. It restricted them more and more within academic grooves,thus unhappily fostering that tendency to conventionality and unreality which immersed Italian literature deeper and deeper into a morass of mediocrity.
It is but seldom that poets are as romantic as their poems, or as interesting as the offspring of their imagination. When, therefore, a poet arises gifted with an interesting personality, the attention he excites becomes universal. Such was the fate ofTorquato Tasso. It would not be altogether unjust to say that had he not suffered so many misfortunes, his name would not be a household word, for the merit of his poems hardly sustains the dignity of his renown.
His father,Bernardo, a native of Bergamo, was born in 1493, and died in 1569. He was a writer in prose and verse, his chief work being theAmadigi,an epic of immense length, well and carefully written, but without any spark of genius. He was attached to the Court of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, and when his masterwas driven out of his dominions by the Emperor Charles V, he followed his fortunes, leaving his wife, Properzia de' Rossi, and three children, the youngest of whom was Torquato, born in 1544, to the care of her relatives. His devotion to the fallen fortunes of the Prince of Salerno was the cause of many of the sorrows of his illustrious son. His patrimony was sequestrated, and when he died, he had nothing to leave to his children. Nor was this the greatest of his trials. He never saw his wife again, and when he wished to have her with him in Rome, she was in a dying condition. All she could do, was to send him the little Torquato, whose training was henceforth confided to the father's care.
The youth displayed as much love and more aptitude for poetical composition. When he was eighteen, he published his epic,Rinaldo,a wonderfully mature work for so young a writer. Torquato Tasso was one of those poets who produce their finest works in the earlier portion of their career. The works by which alone he is remembered, were all produced before his thirty-second year. His mind attained full mastery over its powers at a very early period, and when, like the voice of a singer, it lost its freshness, it also lost its charm. Corneille and Tennyson resemble him in this peculiarity of producing their masterpiecesin comparative youth, but in their case, the division between the two periods is not quite so marked as in his. Corneille produced no really great drama afterLa Mort de Pompée,but some of his later tragedies have occasional flashes of his early fire. Tennyson gave no memorable creation to the world afterMaud,but hisIdylls of the Kingoffer some poetical details, and a few lyrics are not devoid of that perfection which characterised his previous poems. But Tasso produced absolutely nothing that could, by any stretch of indulgence, be said to add to his renown after the publication of theGerusalemme Liberata.On the contrary, he rather injured his reputation by yielding to the cavils of his detractors, and re-writing his great work under the title ofGerusalemme Conquistata,and producing an epic so feeble and lifeless that it immediately sank into utter neglect.
Precocious as he was in the manifestation of brilliant genius, his father was anxious that such powers should be cultivated to the utmost, and Torquato was sent to study law at Padua. But the law was little to his taste. HisRinaldoprocured him immense renown, and he found it more agreeable to bask in the sunshine of the brilliant society that courted him in the dawn of his celebrity, than to spend laborious hours in thepursuit of a dry and distasteful science. No poet at so early an age ever had so brilliant a prospect of renown and fortune before him. But the very extent of the admiration he excited laid the foundations of the terrible disasters that were to overtake him ere many years had elapsed.
Cardinal Luigi of Este, attracted by his brilliant reputation, offered him a post in his household and an introduction to the Court of Ferrara. The dazzling offer was accepted by the poet; but the kindness of the Cardinal had results more fatal than could have attended the machinations of his bitterest enemies.
At first all went well. Tasso produced a favourable impression upon the Duke Alfonso and upon his two sisters, Lucrezia and Eleonora. He accompanied the Cardinal on a mission to the Court of Charles IX of France, and after a year's sojourn in Paris, where he was fêted by the leading authors, including Ronsard, then at the height of his fame, he returned to Ferrara to receive new proofs of the favour of the Duke. But the more he rose in the estimation of his master, the more he excited the jealousy of those who were equally ambitious but less successful. There is, indeed, no truth in the popular legend of his love for the Princess Eleanora. The object of his affections appears to have been a lady of the Court, LeonoraScandiano. The poet Guarini was also in love with this lady, and bitter hostility resulted from the rivalry of the two poets. The malignant envy of his opponents was excited by the brilliant success of his pastoral play,Aminta,produced in 1573. So much was that poem talked of, that the Princess Lucrezia, who had meanwhile married the Duke of Urbino, sent for Tasso to read it to her at Pesaro. So pleased was she both with the work and the writer, that she invited him to pass the summer at her palace of Castel Durante. The exquisite beauty of the gardens and the grounds is said to have been in his mind when he described the gardens of Armida in theGerusalemme.
This was the happiest time of Tasso's life. He was honoured with the favour of the highest in the land, and with the admiration of the whole of Italy. He was congenially employed on the completion of the great epic which was to make his name immortal. Never was a poet placed in a more brilliant position, nor more apparently certain of a splendid and triumphant career.
But the seeds of evil were already sown, and the mischief soon became apparent. He completed theGerusalemmein 1575, and from that moment his peace of mind was gone. Whether he overworked himself in that great task, or whether he had secret causes of annoyance andhumiliation, of which his biographers know nothing, it is difficult to conjecture, but from that period his temper seems to have become morbidly suspicious and irritable. He was painfully sensitive to criticism, and he harassed himself and others by perpetually altering and correcting passages to which objection had been taken. When at last the poem was published, which was not until some time after its completion, it was attacked by the Accademia della Crusca with considerable harshness and unfairness. The great fault found by the Academy was that the idiom was not always purely Tuscan. The very first line of the first Canto was singled out for censure:
"Canto l'arme pietose e il Capitano."
The poet uses the word "pietose" in the sense of 'pious," whereas the Academy contended that it could never mean anything but "compassionate."
Tasso was not only worried by these minute quibbles, but he was also haunted by the dreadful apprehension that his religious orthodoxy might be impugned, and he himself applied to the Fathers of the Holy Inquisition for an examination and a vindication. In vain the Fathers assured him with unanimous cordiality that such a process was utterly superfluous, and that the purity of his faith had never for a moment been held in doubt; he still professed himself dissatisfied, and he longcontinued to torment himself with religious scruples.
The Duke of Ferrara, doubtless highly gratified at the success of the masterpiece of his Court Poet, appointed Tasso his private secretary when that post became vacant through the death of Giambattista Pigna in 1577. Probably the arduous duties and the heavy responsibilities of this appointment weighed him down with a fresh load of anxiety, and he may have felt that he had become more than ever the object of malice and envy; whatever the cause, excitability verging on frenzy, and suspicion verging on madness betrayed themselves more and more in his speech and actions. He fancied, perhaps not without reason, that some of his letters had been intercepted; he firmly believed, though with less foundation, that there was a plot to poison him. He had also the annoyance, peculiarly galling to an author, of knowing that spurious copies of his great epic were being circulated throughout Italy, full of mistakes and interpolated passages.
All these causes of uneasiness culminated in frightful violence in the month of June of that fatal year. One evening in the apartments of the Princess Lucrezia, and even in her presence, he drew a dagger and stabbed a manservant whom he suspected of being concerned in the robbery ofsome missing documents. He was arrested, and the Duke ordered him to be kept a close prisoner. When released from captivity, he was so excited with grief and indignation, that all observers pronounced him mad. He took refuge in a Franciscan Monastery; but when the Duke refused to receive his letters, he dreaded the effects of his master's anger, and fled from Ferrara in a pitiable condition, without his manuscripts, without sufficient clothes, and without a particle of money. He seems actually to have begged his way from Ferrara to Sorrento, near Naples, where his sister was married to Marzio Sersale. It would be difficult to find a more picturesque episode in the life of any poet than that of Tasso presenting himself to his sister in the garb of a mendicant. She received the unhappy wanderer with hospitality and affection, welcomed him in her house, and when he was sufficiently recovered from the fatigues of mind and body to discuss his affairs, gave him the sensible advice never to return to the Court of Ferrara.
Unhappily, this advice was rejected; but to be perfectly just in our estimate of Tasso's conduct, we must bear in mind the position of men of letters of the Sixteenth Century in Italy. The complete absence of copyright law made it impossible for even the most popular writer to derive emolumentfrom his books, for as soon as they acquired any popularity, they were shamelessly pirated all over the Peninsula. Enormously popular as they were, even during their lifetime, it does not appear that either Ariosto or Tasso ever profited to the extent of even one scudo by the sale of their poems. Thus a writer, unless he possessed ample means, or held some lucrative office, was entirely dependent for his bread on the fickle favour of the great. Tasso, in consequence of the reverses experienced by his father and the sequestration of his property, was absolutely devoid of anything he could call his own, and owed even the barest necessaries of life to the bounty of the Prince whom his violent conduct had, it must be admitted, justly offended. Great as his reputation was, he might well doubt whether any other sovereign in Italy would extend to him even a quarter of similar favour after the reckless and violent conduct of which he had been guilty.
Whatever may have been his motives, he wrote again and again to Alfonso and the Princesses for pardon for his errors and for permission to return. Eleonora alone answered him, and her reply was not encouraging. The mortification of being repulsed was doubtless intolerable to his proud spirit. He deserted Sorrento and the sister whose affection he should have valued above all thefavours of princes. He went straight to Ferrara, but the doors of the Palace were barred against him, and to add to his afflictions, the Duke refused to allow his manuscripts to be given up to him. He was lonely and destitute, and the bitterness of his fall was intensified by the jeers of those who, on the very spot of his disgrace, had envied him the brilliancy of his triumph. Without a morsel of bread to eat, or a roof under which to take shelter, he sold some valuable trinkets which had been given to him in happier days by the Princess Lucrezia, and with the proceeds he made his way through Mantua and Padua to Venice.
In these towns he seems to have been received with the consideration due to his poetical renown; but still the painful question as to where he should find a permanent home occurred to him in moments of anxiety and gloom. Strange to say, help came to him from an unexpected quarter. The Duke of Urbino's marriage with the Princess Lucrezia had turned out most unhappily, and the couple were now separated. It probably occurred to the Duke that the best way of annoying the House of Este would be to show favour to the poet who had been expelled from Ferrara in such deep disgrace, and Tasso owed to rancour and resentment that temporary respite from misfortune which he mighthave implored in vain from esteem and humanity.
The Duke in time wearied of the capricious and irritable poet, and Tasso found it expedient to remove to Turin. He received no countenance from the House of Savoy, and again his evil star led him to the Court of Ferrara.
In the month of February, 1579, he returned to Ferrara when it was at its gayest, on the occasion of the Duke's marriage to Margherita Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua. But Tasso was looked upon with aversion as an intruder. He wearied those who did not want to see him with long stories of his grievances, and with bitter invectives at princely ingratitude. These invectives waxed fiercer, until, after a culmination of insane violence, the Duke's patience was exhausted, and he had the unhappy poet arrested and thrown into a cell in the madhouse of Ferrara.
Here Tasso languished for more than seven years, until July, 1586. The most zealous admirers of the poet cannot deny that he brought this terrible catastrophe upon himself. The Duke cannot be blamed for having ordered his incarceration; indeed, in the frenzied condition of his mind at the time of arrest, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. If not placed under restraint, he might have done himself an injury, or he might even have attackedothers. If he had been held in captivity for some weeks, or even months, until the paroxysm of his frenzy had spent itself, the Duke would not have incurred the odium which subsequently blackened his memory. But the peculiar hardship of Tasso's imprisonment was its long duration. A short period of restraint might actually have been beneficial, but seven years of gloomy captivity aggravated the malady which they were intended to cure, and it is no wonder that the patient subsided from wild excitability into sullen despair.
It is due to his gaolers to say that he was not treated with the inhumanity popularly supposed. Visitors were admitted into his presence, he was allowed occasionally to take walks in the town of Ferrara and the neighbourhood; his manuscripts were restored to him; he was at liberty to receive the letters of his friends, and to beguile with composition the weary hours of captivity. But still the galling fact remained that he was a prisoner, and a mind naturally prone to melancholy was still more darkened by contrasting the stern reality with the brilliant hopes fostered by the triumphs of his youth. He wrote to many of the nobles and princes of Italy, imploring them to use their influence to obtain his release. These letters do not seem to have been either intercepted or delayed.Strong representations were undoubtedly made to the Court of Ferrara to obtain the liberation of one so gifted and so unfortunate. Unhappily for his credit and honour, Alfonso proved inflexible, and what was originally salutary discipline became at last detestable tyranny.
Many different opinions were expressed as to whether Tasso was really insane. Montaigne, who was travelling in Italy at the time of his incarceration, visited him in his cell and left a pitiable description of the apathetic misery in which he found him, as if his powers of endurance were exhausted by suffering, and nothing but the stupor of despair remained. Others pointed to the poems, the essays, the letters he wrote in captivity, and asked in indignant tones whether the author of compositions so pregnant with thought and so perfect in diction could possibly be insane? Peculiar, he undoubtedly was; but he had expiated his errors by severe suffering, and was it not reasonable to suppose that he had learnt a salutary lesson, and would not, if restored to freedom, repeat the regrettable follies of the past?
This consideration, doubtless, after the lapse of so many years, inclined Alfonso to clemency, and when his brother-in-law, Vincenzo Gonzaga, interceded for the luckless poet, he did not meet with the harsh refusal given to others, but was able toboast that he alone of so many petitioners had obtained Tasso's release.
The door of the cell where the author of theGerusalemmehad languished for so many years was opened, and he was free to go wherever he liked. As may be imagined, he was cured of his wish to figure at the Court of Ferrara, and he left the inhospitable dominions, never to return.
Vincenzo Gonzaga took him to Mantua, where he passed the time immediately following his release. But the re-action, after so long a period of wretchedness, was too trying for his enfeebled frame. He forsook the brilliant circles of Mantua for a quieter retreat at Bergamo with some of his relatives. Here he finished his tragedy ofTorrismondo,begun many years previously, but thrown aside, at first because he was engaged on the arduous task of his great epic, and then because his own life drifted into a tragedy far transcending the mimic sorrows of the stage.
At Bergamo, he learned that his liberator, Vincenzo Gonzaga, had succeeded to the Duchy of Mantua. Something of his old hope of courtly success revived in the wounded heart of Torquato. He left his provincial abode and hurried to the palace of his benefactor to lay the dedication ofTorrismondoat his feet. He doubtless indulged in dreams of rich appointments and gratifyingdistinctions. But, alas! Vincenzo, kind and humane to the captive, seems to have turned a deaf ear to the courtier. Tasso had an unfortunate knack of making his presence irksome to his patrons. His ever keen sense of injury was stung to the quick by the Duke's neglect, and he lost no time in leaving Mantua to repair to Rome. But here new mortifications awaited him. Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga lodged him in his Palace, but was neither cordial nor gracious. Probably the dread that his insanity might burst out again, made people desirous of keeping him at a distance. Sixtus the Fifth, who then occupied the Papal Chair, took no interest in literature, and did not show him any attention, and the example of the Pope was followed by the Society of the capital.
He left Rome with even greater disappointment than he had felt in leaving Mantua. He hurried to Naples, where he had no cause to complain of the reception that awaited him, for he was overwhelmed with demonstrations of admiration and affection. But sorrow, captivity, and anguish of mind had done their evil work; he was but the wreck of himself, and he could no more endure the sweetness of praise than the bitterness of neglect. He fled from the kindness of the Neapolitans and flitted from place to place in a weary pilgrimage, without happiness and without repose. Thewonder is, in his destitute condition, where the money came from to enable him to travel. His mind and his health were in a wretched condition. Distrustful and melancholy, he repelled even those who most admired his genius and pitied his misfortunes, and his ever-ready sense of injury magnified the slightest offence into bitter unkindness. But in spite of agonising thoughts and disturbing peregrinations, his pen never rested. He completed theGerusalemme Conquistata,that unfortunate "improvement" on his masterpiece, which is never mentioned but to be regretted; he wrote a long poem in blank verse on the Creation, and dialogues and essays in abundance and letters innumerable. Indeed, he was throughout his life an indefatigable correspondent, and he seemed never to doubt that the outpourings of his mind about his wrongs and grievances would be as interesting to the recipients as to himself. Some of these letters are noble and affecting, but too many betray a mind sore and festering from constant brooding over his calamities. But in the presence of such misfortune, we can only pity, we cannot condemn.