of enamoured ladies, and the distraction of lovers at all times, derides the notion of passion on either side; because, he argues, Tasso was subject to frenzies, and Leonora forty-two years of age, and not in good health.[23] What would Madame d’Houdetot have said to him? or Mademoiselle L’Espinasse? or Mrs. Inchbald, who used to walk up and down Sackville Street in order that she might see Dr. Warren’s light in his window?  Foscolo was a believer in the love;[24] Sismondi admits it;[25] and Rosini, the editor of the latest edition of the poet’s works, is passionate for it.  He wonders how any body can fail to discern it in a number of passages, which, in truth, may mean a variety of other loves; and he insists much upon certain loose verses (lascivi) which the poet, among his various accounts of the origin of his imprisonment, assigns as the cause, or one of the causes, of it. [26]

I confess, after a reasonable amount of inquiry into this subject, that I can find no proofs whatsoever of Tasso’s having made love to Leonora; though I think it highly probable.  I believe the main cause of the duke’s proceedings was the poet’s own violence of behaviour and incontinence of speech.  I think it very likely that, in the course of the poetical love-making to various ladies, which was almost identical in that age with addressing them in verse, Torquato, whether he was in love or not, took more liberties with the princesses than Alfonso approved; and it is equally probable, that one of those liberties consisted in his indulging his imagination too far.  It is not even impossible, that more gallantry may have been going on at court than Alfonso could endure to see alluded to, especially by an ambitious pen.  But there is no evidence that such was the case.  Tasso, as a gentleman, could not have hinted at such a thing on the part of a princess of staid reputation; and, on the other hand, the “love” he speaks of as entertained by her for him, and warranting the application to her for money in case of his death, was too plainly worded to mean any thing but love in the sense of friendly regard.  “Per amor mio” is an idiomatical expression, meaning “for my sake;” a strong one, no doubt, and such as a proud man like Alfonso might think a liberty, but not at all of necessity an amatory boast.  If it was, its very effrontery and vanity were presumptions of its falsehood.  The lady whom Tasso alludes to in the passage quoted on his first confinement is complained of for her coldness towards him; and, unless this was itself a gentlemanly blind, it might apply to fifty other ladies besides the princess.  The man who assaulted him in the streets, and who is supposed to have been the violator of his papers, need not have found any secrets of love in them.  The servant at whom he aimed the knife or the dagger might be as little connected with such matters; and the sonnets which the poet said he wrote for a friend, and which he desired to be buried with him, might be alike innocent of all reference to Leonora, whether he wrote them for a friend or not.  Leonora’s death took place during the poet’s confinement; and, lamented as she was by the verse-writers according to custom, Tasso wrote nothing on the event.  This silence has been attributed to the depth of his passion; but how is the fact proved? and why may it not have been occasioned by there having been no passion at all?