In one of his addresses to Alfonso, he says most affectingly: 

“I have sometimes attributed much to myself, and considered myself as somebody.  But now, seeing in how many ways imagination has imposed on me, I suspect that it has also deceived me in this opinion of my own consequence.  Indeed, methinks the past has been a dream; and hence I am resolved to rely on my imagination no longer.”

Alfonso made no answer.

The causes of Tasso’s imprisonment, and its long duration, are among the puzzles of biography.  The prevailing opinion, notwithstanding the opposition made to it by Serassi and Black, is, that the poet made love to the Princess Leonora—­perhaps was beloved by her; and that her brother the duke punished him for his arrogance.  This was the belief of his earliest biographer, Manso, who was intimately acquainted with the poet in his latter days; and from Manso (though he did not profess to receive the information from Tasso, but only to gather it from his poems) it spread over all Europe.  Milton took it on trust from him;[15] and so have our English translators Hoole and Wiffen.  The Abbe de Charnes, however, declined to do so;[16] and Montaigne, who saw the poet in St. Anne’s hospital, says nothing of the love at all.  He attributes his condition to poetical excitement, hard study, and the meeting of the extremes of wisdom and folly.  The philosopher, however, speaks of the poet’s having survived his reason, and become unconscious both of himself and his works, which the reader knows to be untrue.  He does not appear to have conversed with Tasso.  The poet was only shewn him; probably at a sick moment, or by a new and ignorant official.[17] Muratori, who was in the service of the Este family at Modena, tells us, on the authority of an old acquaintance who knew contemporaries of Tasso, that the “good Torquato” finding himself one day in company with the duke and his sister, and going close to the princess in order to answer some question which she had put to him, was so transported by an impulse “more than poetical,” as to give her a kiss; upon which the duke, who had observed it, turned about to his gentlemen, and said, “What a pity to see so great a man distracted!” and so ordered him to be locked up.[18] But this writer adds, that he does not know what to think of the anecdote:  he neither denies nor admits it.  Tiraboschi, who was also in the service of the Este family, doubts the truth of the anecdote, and believes that the duke shut the poet up solely for fear lest his violence should do harm.[19] Serassi, the second biographer of Tasso, who dedicated his book to an Este princess inimical to the poet’s memory, attributes the confinement, on his own shewing, to the violent words he had uttered against his master.[20] Walker, the author of the Memoir on Italian Tragedy, says, that the life by Serassi himself induced him to credit the love-story:[21] so does Ginguene.[22] Black, forgetting the age and illnesses of hundreds