The remainder of Tasso’s life was spent in restless wanderings to and fro between courts and cities, like the tossings of a sick man who vainly seeks ease by shifting his position upon his couch. He could not live without a patron, and no patron long contented him. It would be tedious to tell how often he forsook and resought Mantua, Florence, Rome, Naples; he even made overtures of reconciliation to Ferrara. It was not his fault, but sheer mental infirmity, by which, however, his reason, though frequently obscured or misled, was never again overthrown. At Naples his friend Manso heard a profound argument between him and his familiar spirit; both voices were his own, but of this Tasso was unconscious. He had completed and published his tragedy, _Torrismondo_, at Mantua in 1586; at Naples the exhortations of Manso’s mother led him to compose his blank-verse poem on the Week of Creation (_Il Mondo Creato_), chiefly remarkable for its evident influence on the style and versification of Milton. The latter books, written in sickness, evince some languor, but no symptoms of disordered faculties appear, although the servility of the pseudo-religious sentiment painfully evinces how much ecclesiastical influences had enslaved him, and how he had fallen away from the free spirit of the Renaissance. Another work of Tasso’s decline, the reconstruction of the _Jerusalem Delivered_ under the title of the _Conquest of Jerusalem_, although an error of judgment, yet rather indicates undue sensitiveness to criticism than insanity. Imperfect as the first editions had been, the _Jerusalem_ had been received with enthusiasm, but had also excited much pedantic and some bigoted censure. The general result had been to convince Tasso that his poem was too romantic and not sufficiently epical; which, abstractedly considered, was true, but simply arose from the fact that his genius was rather romantic than epic. In endeavouring to bring his poem nearer Homer he led it away from Nature, and the beauties which he introduced bore no proportion to those which he retrenched. The new recension fell entirely flat, and is now almost unknown; although had the _Jerusalem Delivered_ never been published, the _Conquest_ would undoubtedly have gained Tasso a considerable name. It was dedicated to a new patron, Cardinal Cinthio Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII., and all allusions to the house of Este, for whose heritage the Pope, “hushed in grim repose,” was patiently waiting, were carefully expunged. Cinthio proved a kind and considerate patron; and Clement, who was endowed with a regal instinct for doing the right thing at the right time, was on the point of honouring Tasso with a public coronation after the example of Petrarch, when on April 25, 1595, death removed him from earthly honours and indignities in the convent of San Onofrio, where he had for some time found an asylum, and where the crown which should have arrayed his temples was placed upon his bier.