a mystery as the cause of Ovid's
banishment to Tomi, on the Euxine. Muratori, the author of the
_Antiquities of the House of Este_, says that he was confined
principally in order that he might be cured; while the Abbate Serassi,
who wrote a life of the poet, attributes his imprisonment to his
insolence to the duke and his court, and to his desire, repeatedly
expressed and acted upon, to leave his patron's service. But both
these writers considered the interests of the house of Este more
sacred than those of truth. The cause generally accepted is Tasso's
supposed attachment to Leonora, the sister of the duke. For a long
time he is said to have cherished this passion in secret, concealing
it even from the object of it, although evidences of it may be found
in some marked form or playful allusion in nearly all his poetical
writings; the episode of Olinda and Sophronia in the _Gerusalemme_,
which he was urged in vain by his friends to withdraw on the ground of
its irrelevancy, being intended to represent his own ill-fated love.
On one occasion, however, in a confiding mood, he told the secret to
one of the courtiers of Ferrara, whom he believed to be his devoted
friend. But what was thus whispered in the closet was proclaimed upon
the house-top; and a duel was the result, in which Tasso, as expert in
the use of the sword as of the pen, put to flight the cowardly traitor
and his two brothers, whom he had brought with him to attack the poet.
This adventure, and the cause of it, reached the ears of the duke,
whose resentment was kindled by the audacity of a poor poet and
dependant of his court in falling in love with a lady of royal birth.
On the strength of this suspicion his papers were seized, and all the
sonnets, madrigals, and canzones that were supposed to give
countenance to it, confiscated. The manuscript of the _Gerusalemme_
itself was retained, and a deaf ear was turned to the poet's
entreaties for its restoration. Gibbon, in his _Antiquities of the
House of Brunswick_, relates that one day at court, when the duke and
his sister Leonora were present, Tasso was so struck with the beauty
of the princess, that, in a transport of passion, he approached and
kissed her before all the assembly; whereupon the duke, gravely
turning to his courtiers, expressed his regret that so great a man
should have been thus suddenly bereft of reason, and made the
circumstance the pretext for shutting him up in the madhouse of St.
Anne. An