Towards the conclusion of his toils on his main work (as he fondly hoped), but the beginning of a series of miseries consequent upon it, from which he found no end but in the grave, Tasso was seized with a violent fever. This left him in such a state of bodily exhaustion, that it was not till the following spring (1575), that from the last lines of his poem he could look back upon all the intervening ones to the first, as the links of a chain, more subtle than air, yet stronger than adamant, which should deliver his thoughts as he had bound them in his words, from generation to generation, to delight millions of minds, so long as his country's language should be understood. He had already enjoyed such exhilarating foretastes of fame by the circulation in manuscript of portions of the poem, as they came completed from his hands, that he was the less prepared to encounter the enmity and opposition, which rancorous and intriguing rivals, or fanatic and supercilious ecclesiastical censors of the press, immediately commenced, and inveterately continued to manifest towards him to the close of life. There was in Tasso--conscious as he must have been of his powers, and confident as he must have felt in the exercise of his own judgment--a readiness to submit to learned and candid criticism, and a willingness to concede to dissentient opinions on minor points of taste, so far as was consistent with manly independence,--which can rarely be found among men of first-rate talents, but yet might be expected from a court poet, accustomed in other matters to defer to superiors, be compliant towards equals, and condescending to inferiors. This disposition, however, which ought to have conciliated envy herself, only provoked her the more to assume every shape of candour or malignity, as best suited her humour, to torment and distract him, that she might revel over his wretchedness, if she could not accomplish his fall. Years intervened while the "Gerusalemme Liberata," in its finished form, was undergoing as many ordeals almost as he had friends, and its author suffering almost as many martyrdoms as he had enemies. Into the particulars of these persecutions it is not necessary to enter here. The poet was certainly induced by the force of arguments used by some, and the terror of inquisitorial powers exercised by others of his critics, to alter, expunge, and amend many parts of the poem, which, after all, suffered little from the processes to which it was thus exposed before its publication. That publication, however, was long delayed by such vexatious hinderances, and at last was effected surreptitiously, to the great offence and injury of the author, then in confinement as a lunatic.