as well as composed, and had to read all that was written at the time, pro and con, in the discussions about his Jerusalem, which, in the latest edition of his works, amount to three out of six volumes octavo!  Many of the occasions, however, of his poems, as well as letters, are most painful to think of, their object having been to exchange praise for money.  And it is distressing, in the letters, to see his other little wants, and the fluctuations and moods of his mind.  Now he is angry about some book not restored, or some gift promised and delayed.  Now he is in want of some books to be lent him; now of some praise to comfort him; now of a little fresh linen.  He is very thankful for visits, for respectful letters, for “sweetmeats;” and greatly puzzled to know what to do with the bad sonnets and panegyrics that are sent him.  They were sometimes too much even for the allowed ultra courtesies of Italian acknowledgment.  His compliments to most people are varied with astonishing grace and ingenuity; his accounts of his condition often sufficient to bring the tears into the manliest eyes; and his ceaseless and vain efforts to procure his liberation mortifying when we think of himself, and exasperating when we think of the petty despot who detained him in so long, so degrading, and so worse than useless a confinement.

Tasso could not always conceal his contempt of his imprisoner from the ducal servants.  Alfonso excelled the grandiloquent poet himself in his love of pomp and worship; and as he had no particular merits to warrant it, his victim bantered his love of titles.  He says, in a letter to the duke’s steward, “If it is the pleasure of the Most Serene Signor Duke, Most Clement and Most Invincible, to keep me in prison, may I beg that he will have the goodness to return certain little things of mine, which his Most Invincible, Most Clement, and Most Serene Highness has so often promised me.[14]

But these were rare ebullitions of gaiety, perhaps rather of bitter despair.  A playful address to a cat to lend him her eyes to write by, during some hour in which he happened to be without a light (for it does not appear to have been denied him), may be taken as more probable evidence of a mind relieved at the moment, though the necessity for the relief may have been very sad.  But the style in which he generally alludes to his situation is far different.  He continually begs his correspondents to pity him, to pray for him, to attribute his errors to infirmity.  He complains of impaired memory, and acknowledges that he has become subject to the deliriums formerly attributed to him by the enemies that had helped to produce them.  Petitioning the native city of his ancestors (Bergamo) to intercede for him with the duke, he speaks of the writer as “this unhappy person;” and subscribes himself,—­

“Most illustrious Signors, your affectionate servant, Torquato Tasso, a prisoner, and infirm, in the hospital of St. Anne in Ferrara.”