His death partook of the melancholy shade that had overhung his career. Declining a new invitation from Duke Francesco Maria, in 1594, he brought to Rome all that mental and bodily sufferings had left him of broken health and blighted genius, to receive the honours of a laurel crown; and, in the monastery of S. Onofrio, he awaited the issue of arrangements which the warning voice of exhausted nature told him were made in vain. From thence he addressed to his friend Constantini[*196] the following touching farewell:--"What shall my Antonio say, when he hears the death of his Tasso? Nor, in my opinion, will the news be long delayed; for I feel my end to be at hand, having found no remedy for this troublesome malady, which, added to my many habitual ailments, is evidently sweeping me away like an impetuous and irresistible torrent. To say nothing of the world's ingratitude, which would prove its triumph by consigning me in penury to the tomb, the time is now past for speaking of my inveterate fortune; yet, when I think of the glory which this age will derive from my writings, in despite of all opposition, I cannot be left entirely unrequited. I have had myself brought to this convent of S. Onofrio, not only because the air is commended by the faculty more than that of any other part of Rome, but also, to begin as it were from this elevated spot, and in the conversation of these holy fathers, my celestial intercourse. Pray to God in my behalf, and rest assured that, as I have ever loved and respected you in this life, I shall do the like towards you in a better, as is the part of true and unfeigned affection; and to the Divine grace I commend you and myself. From Rome, at S. Onofrio." [Footnote *196: Cf. D'ANCONA, _T.T. ed Ant. Costantini_ in _Varietà Storiche e Letter._ (Milano, 1883), vol. I., p. 75 _et seq._] Tasso's mind was habitually under devotional influences, which grew upon him as he experienced the delusive results of his early ambition, the emptiness of success, and the bitterness of failure. Religion was in him a deeply rooted sentiment; it soothed long hours of suffering, cheered the decline of life, and brightened those hopes for which the laurel crown had lost its charm. Gazing from the convent garden over a scene of all others the most inspiring to the poet, the most solemn to the moralist, he caught the seeds of malaria fever. His springs of life were already dried up by twenty long years of suffering, and, after a few days of peaceful and resigned preparation for a change that to him had no terrors, his spirit was released from its shattered tenement. He died on the 25th April, 1595, wept by many warmly attached and pitying friends, and lamented by the citizens, who lost in his death the spectacle of his coronation, to which they had long looked forward with an anxiety unusual even among the fête-loving populace of Rome.