An admission of Tasso's mental alienation was made by his intimate friend Manso, and has been repeated by various writers; yet other biographers, anxious to relieve their hero from the reproach of madness, have essayed to screen him by charges of cruelty against the Duke of Ferrara. Whilst Verga's theory appears to place the poet's malady upon its proper footing, and, by implication, to absolve his patron, that author goes a step further, and maintains that the oldest and best informed authorities bear out a belief in the uniform and considerate kindness of Alfonso towards his wayward laureate, and prove that the allegations of Torquato's insanity having been but the pretext of a stern tyrant, bent on punishing the presumption of an unworthy aspirant to his sister's love, were piquant additions of after writers. We shall presently have a few words to add in regard to this entanglement; meanwhile, let us see the conclusion drawn by Dr. Verga, from his able argument. "We may, therefore, infer that the Duke shut up Tasso in Sant'Anna, neither as a punishment for ambitious love, or unguarded and offensive expressions, nor as an obstacle to his conferring the illustration of his genius on rival courts, but simply because he saw that the poet's melancholy rendered him beside himself, dependent upon skilful treatment, and perhaps dangerous to others. I repeat, in the name of common sense, that his madness was the sole cause of his seclusion, not the effect of it, as some would persuade us." [Illustration: _Neurdein Frères_ LAURA DE' DIANTI AND ALFONSO OF FERRARA _After the Picture by Titian in the Louvre_] * * * * *