lord. In short, it is a sad misfortune that the
present age should be deprived of the greatest genius
which has appeared for centuries. What wise man
ever spoke in prose or verse better than this madman?[57]
In the following August, Scipione Gonzaga’s
servants, unable to endure Tasso’s eccentricities,
turned him from their master’s house, and he
took refuge in a monastery of the Olivetan monks.
Soon afterwards he was carried to the hospital of
the Bergamasques. His misery now was great, and
his health so bad that friends expected a speedy end.[58]
Yet the Cardinal Gonzaga again opened his doors to
him in the spring of 1590. Then the morbid poet
turned suspicious, and began to indulge fresh hopes
of fortune in another place. He would again offer
himself to the Medici. In April he set off for
Tuscany, and alighted at the convent of Monte Oliveto,
near Florence. Nobody wanted him; he wandered
about the Pitti like a spectre, and the Florentines
wrote:
actum est de eo.[59] Some parting
compliments and presents from the Grand Duke sweetened
his dismissal. He returned to Rome; but each
new journey told upon his broken health, and another
illness made him desire a change of scene. This
time Antonio Costantini offered to attend upon him.
They visited Siena, Bologna and Mantua. At Mantua,
Tasso made some halt, and took a new long poem, the
Gerusalemme Conquistata, seriously in hand.
But the demon of unrest pursued him, and in November
1591 he was off again with the Duke of Mantua to Rome.
From Rome he went to Naples at the beginning of the
following year, worked at the
Conquistata, and
began his poem of the
Sette Giornate.[60] He
was always occupied with the vain hope of recovering
a portion of his mother’s estate. April
saw him once more upon his way to Rome. Clement
VIII. had been elected, and Tasso expected patronage
from the Papal nephews.[61]
[Footnote 57: Lettere, vol. iv. p. 147.]
[Footnote 58: Ibid. p. 229.]
[Footnote 59: Lettere, vol. iv. p. 315.]
[Footnote 60: Yet he now felt that his genius
had expired. ’Non posso piu fare un verso:
la vena e secca, e l’ingegno e stanco’
(Lettere, vol. v. p. 90).]
[Footnote 61: During the whole period of his
Roman residence, Tasso, like his father in similar
circumstances, hankered after ecclesiastical honors.
His letters refer frequently to this ambition.
He felt the parallel between himself and Bernardo
Tasso: ’La mia depressa condizione, e la
mia infelicita, quasi ereditaria’ (vol. iv. p.
288).]
He was not disappointed. They received him into
their houses, and for a while he sojourned in the
Vatican. The year 1593 seems, through their means,
to have been one of comparative peace and prosperity.
Early in the summer of 1594 his health obliged him
to seek change of air. He went for the last time
to Naples. The Cardinal of S. Giorgio, one of
the Pope’s nephews, recalled him in November
to be crowned poet in Rome. His entrance into
the Eternal City was honorable, and Clement granted
him a special audience; but the ceremony of coronation
had to be deferred because of the Cardinal’s
ill health.