cousin from Bergamo, who, coming to Rome, had availed himself of the opportunity to visit her. But, as might be expected, his self-tormenting mind became unquiet amidst scenes of repose, which, from day to day, delighted him at first, but, from day to day, presenting little change of aspect or incident, he sighed again for Ferrara, choosing rather the agony of life to that rest which was no longer supportable. Thither, then, he returned, on the assurance of pardon from the duke, and the restoration of his papers. It was soon after his arrival, that an act of indiscretion attributed to him by some, and denied by others of his biographers, is said to have caused him to be put in ward as a person of deranged intellect. Being in company with Alfonso and his sisters, in the presence of the court, in reply to a question from Leonora, Tasso gave her an involuntary salute, their faces being so near together that he felt attraction to be irresistible. The duke, astonished and indignant, turned to his attendants and exclaimed, "See to what a lamentable condition this great man has been brought by the loss of his reason!" But the date of this circumstance happens to be as disputable as the fact; for it is certain that the poet had not long resided at Ferrara, when, still unsatisfied with the duke's conduct towards him, he again withdrew from the city, and successively sought temporary refuge at Mantua, Urbino, Florence, Padua, Turin, and Venice. Being ill at ease every where, by a fatality of instinct, as it might be deemed, he returned to Ferrara, and thence departed no more till after a confinement of seven years. For, imagining himself coldly received at court, and unworthily repulsed when he sought an audience, he vented his anguish of disappointment in bitter invectives against the duke, who, amidst the festivities of his new nuptials with a young bride, his third wife, a daughter of the duke of Mantua, was little inclined to hearken to the complaints and supplications of one whom he had long looked upon as insane. On this ground he was committed to St. Anne's hospital, as a lunatic, which in those days of medical ignorance of the proper treatment of such patients was to be punished as a criminal for his misfortune. The following extract must stand in place of multifarious details of the poet's feelings under this long restraint. His imprisonment commenced in March, 1579. Soon afterwards he thus expressed himself in a letter to his friend Scipio Gonzaga:--