These few lines, which, in the simple and beautiful original, show what a burthen of thought and power of feeling may be compressed within the smallest compass that language will allow, were written by Torquato Tasso, during his second confinement as a lunatic in the hospital of St. Anne, at Ferrara, by the duke of Alfonso, his patron and his oppressor. They were written when all Europe was listening to the voice of his song, but heard not that of his complaint; in the meridian of his glory as a poet, and in the depth of his humiliation as a man. A spectacle more deplorable and repulsive could hardly be presented to the eye of humanity; nor a fame more enviable and attractive be contemplated by young "spirits of finer mould," to tempt them to hazard all perils of such suffering for the acquisition of such renown. This fragment--a specimen of thousands of fancies, no doubt, equally exquisite and affecting, which were continually passing through the darkened chamber of his mind, more dreary than the gloom of his prison-house--has been quoted at the commencement of this memoir, as letting the reader at once into the whole mystery of the poet's life, by a single flash of his genius affording a glance at his afflictions. What these were, a long and melancholy tale must unfold; what their effect was may be painfully conceived, when we recollect that he was scarcely turned upon _forty_, at the time that he sends the message to his forlorn harp in the woods of Pindus, that he is "oppressed with _years_ and ill fortune,"--"dagl' _anni_ e da fortuna oppresso."