Our passing notice of Italian song would be incomplete without the name of Italy's favourite bard, even had TASSO[*178] found no hospitality at Urbino, no sympathy from its Duchess Lucrezia. Yet what shall we say of one whose loves and woes have filled many volumes,--whose life, character, and motives, after baffling biographers, and puzzling moralists, are still matter rather of controversy than of history, of speculation than of fact. That he was imbued with true genius, with its failings as well as its powers, is fixed by the unanimous verdict of posterity. That his misfortunes have tended greatly to enhance the sympathising veneration which hangs around his name, may be quoted in proof of the eternal justice of Providence. The rolls of Parnassus may exhibit names more gifted, the annals of human suffering are inscribed with greater calamities and deeper griefs, but in no other case, perhaps, have talents and trials been more mingled together on an equally prominent stage. His supposed persecutor was elevated enough to command the world's gaze, and upon him there accordingly has been heaped the blame of a wretchedness in a great measure self-imposed, and inseparable from a morbid and diseased temperament. The complaints of the poet have been embodied in notes alternately of wailing and of fire, by a poet of a nation whom he would have deemed barbarous.[179] The charge which history has recorded against Tasso is to this purpose. That, whilst a retainer of Alfonso II. of Ferrara, his heart was enslaved by that Duke's sister, Princess Leonora d'Este, and that his passion was ill-concealed in the verses it inspired. That Alfonso having suspected the audacious fault, harshly visited it with a series of persecutions, and finally shut him up for seven years in bedlam as a lunatic. [Footnote *178: For the life of Torquato Tasso, see SOLERTI, in three volumes (Torino, 1895). The first contains the _Vita_; the second, _Lettere inedite e disperse di T.T. e di diversi_; the third, _Documenti e appendici_. See D'ANCONA'S review in _Rass. Bibl. Lett. Ital._, vol. IV., p. 7 _et seq._ The most complete modern edition of his works is Rosini's, in 33 vols., 8vo. (Pisa), and of the _Rime_, that of SOLERTI, in 3 vols. (Bologna, 1898-99).] [Footnote 179: BYRON'S _Lament of Tasso_.] [Illustration: TORQUATO TASSO _From a picture once in the possession of James Dennistoun_]