now, because of the lawsuit, doubly embittered against him.  In his distress he sought refuge in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto, which is now occupied by the offices of the Municipality of Naples, and the monastery garden converted into a market-place.  Here, in one of the finest situations in Naples, commanding one of the loveliest views in the world, and in the congenial society of the monks, his shattered health was recruited, and his mind tranquillised by the beauties of Nature and the exercises of religion.  He repaid the kindness of his hosts by writing a poem on the origin of their Order, and by addressing to them one of his best sonnets.  Among the visitors who sought him out in this retreat was John Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, who afterwards became his biographer.  This accomplished nobleman, “whose name the friendship and Latin hexameters of Milton have rendered at once familiar and musical to English ears,” was by far the kindest and most consistent patron that Tasso ever met with.  He loaded him with presents, and showed him the most delicate and thoughtful attentions during Tasso’s visit at his beautiful villa on the seashore near Naples.  He took him with him to his tower of Bisaccio, where he remained all October and November, spending his days, with great advantage to his health, in hunting, and his nights in music and dancing, taking special delight in the marvellous performances of the improvisatori.  Milton’s acquaintance with Manso may be regarded as one of the most fortunate incidents of his foreign travels, inasmuch as his conversations about Tasso are supposed to have suggested to him the design of writing an epic work like the Gerusalemme; and indeed Milton is supposed to have borrowed some of his ideas for Paradise Lost from the Sette Giornate, or Seven Days of Creation, a fragmentary poem in blank verse, which Tasso began under the roof of his friend at Naples.  This work is now very little known, but it is worthy of being read, if only for the lofty dignity of its style, and the beauty of some of its descriptive parts, particularly the creation of light on the first day, and of the firmament on the second, and the episode of the Phoenix on the fifth.  Its association with Milton’s far grander work, as literary twins laid for a while in the same cradle, will always invest it with deep interest to the student.

Tasso occupied himself at the same time with an altered version of his great poem, which he called the Gerusalemme Conquistata.  He was induced to undertake this work in order to triumph over his truculent critics, the Della Cruscans, who had condemned the former version.  In the Imperial Library at Vienna is preserved the manuscript of this version, with its numerous alterations and erasures, showing how laborious the task of remodelling must have been.  He suppressed the touching incident of Olinda and Sophronia.  He changed the name of Rinaldo to Riccardo; and ruthlessly swept his pen through