abortive attempt was made to prove the attachment, about
fifty years ago, by a certain Count Alberti, who published a
manuscript correspondence purporting to be between Tasso and Leonora,
which he discovered in the library of the Falconieri Palace at Rome.
The alleged discovery excited an immense amount of interest in this
country and on the Continent; but ere the edition was completed the
author was accused of having forged the manuscripts in question, and
was condemned to the galleys.

The story of this hapless love is so romantic in itself, and has been
made the theme of so much pathetic poetry, that it would be almost a
pity to destroy by proof any foundation upon which it may rest. And
yet it is difficult to agree with Professor Rosini, who has ably
treated the whole question in a work entitled _Amore de Tasso_, and
has come to the conclusion, after carefully weighing all the evidence,
that this was the rock upon which Tasso's life made shipwreck. On this
theory several circumstances are altogether inexplicable. We may
dismiss at once the famous kiss as certainly a myth. Besides the
disparity of age, the ill-health, severe piety, and exalted rank of
Leonora were formidable barriers in the way of Tasso's contracting a
passion for her; and it is well known that the poet, who could not
have forgotten so soon a devoted love, did not offer a single tribute
of regret to her memory when she died a few years afterwards. It is
also but too certain that Leonora left her supposed lover to languish
in a dungeon without any reply to his pathetic complaints. The force
of gravitation is a mutual thing; and just as the great sun himself
cannot but bend a little in turn to the smallest orb that wheels
around him, so the august Princess of Este could not but have regarded
with womanly interest a devoted admirer, however humble. The poetical
gallantry of the day will account for all Tasso's lyrical effusions in
praise of Leonora. They were in most instances simply the tributes
that were expected from the laureate of a court, especially a laureate
who was accused, with some show of reason, by the courtiers of
Ferrara, of an enthusiastic devotion to women, and of wasting his life
with the day-dreams of love and chivalry.

Regarding the question of his madness, which was, as I have said, the
ostensible cause of his imprisonment, we are left in almost equal
uncertainty. His morbid sensibility, irritated by the treatment which
he recei