The expectations which dictated this touching letter were amply realised. After a reception of singular kindness, the good Duke recommended medical advice for Tasso's now obvious malady; and an issue prescribed for his arm was dressed by the Princess Lavinia della Rovere, whose sedulous care was rewarded in a madrigal. By such solace his restlessness, however, prevented him from long profiting. After reaching Ferrara some months later, his mania broke out in more threatening symptoms, and, on the 21st February, 1579, he was consigned to the hospital of Sant'Anna. From the sadder scenes and secrets of his life it were useless to raise the veil. Even the year after he entered it, Montaigne, a shrewd and unbiased witness, whose testimony may countervail much hearsay and conjecture, found him in "most pitiable state, surviving himself, neglectful of his person and works." Seven years had worn away in pitiable isolation, when a violent fever nearly closed his darkened existence, after which, whether from an abatement of his phrenetic symptoms, or in the hope of contributing to his physical restoration, Alfonso sanctioned his liberation, at the request of Prince Vincenzo of Mantua, the supposed assassin of our Admirable Crichton, who undertook the watchful care which his case required. Princess Leonora died in 1581, and, on various subsequent occasions, Duchess Lucrezia interfered with little success in his behalf, but, from the time of his leaving the hospital, his intercourse with her family was at an end. He had written from thence several letters to the Duke of Urbino, and, after his convalescence, addressed to him a rambling discourse on his real and imaginary grievances, which shows a mind still shaken, if not unhinged. But, though the kind feelings of his early playmate underwent no change, Tasso returned not to Urbino during many after wanderings, fearing perhaps to revisit, in circumstances so altered, the scenes of his brighter days.[195] The nine remaining years of his life were, on the whole, less afflicted; for, though ever restless in body, and often haunted by imaginary evils and visions, he enjoyed intervals of comparative serenity, especially in his beloved Bay of Naples, and at the house of his kind friend and biographer Manso, of which, half a century later, John Milton was the honoured guest. [Footnote 195: With that constitutional coldness we have seen in his life, the Duke spares but one line of his Diary to notice Torquato's death.]