What shall we say of Tasso? For those who do not know Verga’s monograph (_Lipemania del Tasso_), it will be enough to quote the following letter: “So great is my grief, that I am considered by others and by myself as mad, when, powerless to keep my sorrowful thoughts hidden, I give myself up to long conversations with myself. My troubles are at once human and diabolical; the human are cries of men, and especially of women, and also the laughter of beasts; the diabolical are songs, &c. When I take into my hands a book to give myself up to study, I hear voices sounding in my ear, and distinguish the name of Paul Fulvius.” In his _Messaggiero_, which became with him, later on, a real hallucination, he had already made the often-repeated confession of his madness, which he attributed to wine and to women. I am thus inclined to believe that he described himself in the character of Thyrsis, in that admirable stanza of the _Aminta_, which another monomaniac, Rousseau, loved so much:-- “_Vivrò fra i miei tormenti e fra le cure,_ _Mie giuste furie, forsennato, errante;_ _Paventerò l’ombre solinghe e scure_ _Che il primo error mi recheranno avante;_ _E del sol che scoprì le mie sventure_ _A schivo ed in orror avrò it sembiante:_ _Temerò me medesmo, e da me stesso_ _Sempre fuggendo, avrò me sempre appresso._”[171] One day, certainly under the influence of some hallucination, or in a maniacal attack, he drew a knife, and was about to attack a serving-man who entered the ducal chamber; he was imprisoned, says the Tuscan Ambassador, more to cure him than to punish him. The unfortunate poet went from one country to another, but sorrowful visions everywhere threatened him; and with them came ceaseless remorse, suspicions of poison, and the terrors of hell for the heresies of which he accused himself in three letters to the “too-indulgent” inquisitor. “I am always troubled by sad and wearisome thoughts,” he confesses to the physician Cavallaro, “by figures and phantoms; also by a great weakness of memory, therefore I beg of your lordship to think to strengthen my memory in the pills that you order for me.” “I am frenzied,” he wrote to Gonzaga, “and I am surprised that they have not written to you of all the things that I say in talking to myself: honours, the good graces of emperors and kings which I dream of, forming and re-forming them according to my fancy.” This curious letter shows us how sombre and sorrowful images alternated in him with others that were joyous, like subjective colours in the retina.