Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/398

356 And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame,

And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell;

The miserable Despot could not quell

The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend that he must submit to be treated as a person of disordered intellect, and that if he continued to throw out hints of designs upon his life and of persecution in high places, he would be banished from the ducal court and dominions. But return he would, and at an inauspicious moment, when the duke was preoccupied with the ceremonies and festivities of a third marriage. No one attended to him or took heed of his arrival; and, to quote his own words, "in a tit of madness" he broke out into execrations of the ducal court and family, and of the people of Ferrara. For the offence he was shut up in the Hospital of Sant' Anna, and for many months treated as an ordinary lunatic. Of the particulars of his treatment during these first eight months of his confinement, apart from Tasso's own letters, there is no evidence. The accounts of the hospital are lost, and the Libri di spesa (R. Arch. di Stato in Modena; Camer. Ducale: Casa; Amministrazione, Solerti, iii. Docu. 47) do not commence till November 20, 1579. Two years later, the Libri di spenderia (Solerti, iii. Docu. 51), from January, 1582, onward, show that he was put on a more generous diet; and it is known that a certain measure of liberty and other indulgences were gradually accorded. There can, however, be little doubt that for many months his food was neglected and medical attendance withheld. His statement, that he was denied the rites of the Church, cannot be gainsaid. He was regarded as a lunatic, and, as such, he would not be permitted either to make his confession or to communicate. Worse than all, there was the terrible solitude. "E sovra tutto," he writes (May, 1580), "m'affligge la solitudine, mia crudele e natural nimica." No wonder the attacks of delirium, the "unwonted lights," the conference with a familiar spirit, followed in due course. Byron and Shelley were ignorant of the facts; and we know that their scorn and indignation were exaggerated and misplaced. But the "pity of it" remains, that the grace and glory of his age was sacrificed to ignorance and fear, if not to animosity and revenge. (See Tasso, by E. J. Hasell; History of the Italian Renaissance, by J. A. Symonds; Quart. Rev., October, 1895, No. 364, art. x.; Vita di Torquato Tasso, 1895, i. 312-314, 410-412, etc.)]