threatened with a prosecution for libel, he took flight to Modena.  No importance can be attached to this insignificant affair, except in so far as it illustrates the unlucky aptitude for making enemies by want of savoir vivre which pursued Tasso through life.  His real superiority aroused jealousy; his frankness wounded the self-love of rivals whom he treated with a shadow of contempt.  As these were unable to compete with him in eloquence, or to beat him in debate, they soothed their injured feelings by conspiracy and calumny against him.

In an age of artifice and circumspection, while paying theoretical homage to its pedantries, and following the fashion of its compliments, Tasso was nothing if not spontaneous and heedless.  This appears in the style of his letters and prose compositions, which have the air of being uttered from the heart.  The excellences and defects of his poetry, soaring to the height of song and sinking into frigidity or baldness when the lyric impulse flags, reveal a similar quality.  In conduct this spontaneity assumed a form of inconsiderate rashness, which brought him into collision with persons of importance, and rendered universities and Courts, the sphere of his adoption, perilous to the peace of so naturally out-spoken and self-engrossed a man.  His irritable sensibilities caused him to suffer intensely from the petty vengeance of the people he annoyed; while a kind of amiable egotism blinded his eyes to his own faults, and made him blame fortune for sufferings of which his indiscretion was the cause.

After leaving Bologna, Tasso became for some months house-guest of his father’s earliest patrons, the Modenese Rangoni.  With them he seems to have composed his Dialogues upon the Art of Poetry.  For many years the learned men of Italy had been contesting the true nature of the Epic.  One party affirmed that the ancients ought to be followed; and that the rules of Aristotle regarding unity of plot, dignity of style, and subordination of episodes, should be observed.  The other party upheld the romantic manner of Ariosto, pleading for liberty of fancy, richness of execution, variety of incident, intricacy of design.  Torquato from his earliest boyhood had heard these points discussed, and had watched his father’s epic, the Amadigi, which was in effect a romantic poem petrified by classical convention, in process of production.  Meanwhile he carefully studied the text of Homer and the Latin epics, examined Horace and Aristotle, and perused the numerous romances of the Italian school.  Two conclusions were drawn from this preliminary course of reading:  first, that Italy as yet possessed no proper epic; Trissino’s Italia Liberata was too tiresome, the Orlando Furioso too capricious; secondly, that the spolia opima in this field of art would be achieved by him who should combine the classic and romantic manners in a single work, enriching the unity of the antique epic with the graces of modern romance, choosing a