tormenting demon, of flames and frightful noises, with an
apparition of the Virgin and Child sent to comfort him. That he should
have been able to preserve the general balance of his mind at all in
circumstances sufficient to unseat the reason of most men, is a
convincing proof of the stability of his intellect, and his unshaken
trust in the God of the sorrowful. While we think of this protracted
cruelty of the author of his imprisonment, it is some consolation to
know that he met with what we may well call a merited retribution.
Alfonso, as Sir John Hobhouse tells us, in spite of his haughty
splendour, led an unhappy life, and was deserted in the hour of death
by his courtiers, who suffered his body to be interred without even
the ceremonies that were paid to the meanest of his subjects. His last
wishes were neglected; his will was cancelled. He was succeeded by the
descendant of a natural son of Alfonso I., the husband of Lucrezia
Borgia; and he, falling under the displeasure of the Vatican, was
excommunicated; and Ferrara, having been claimed by Pope Clement VIII.
as a vacant fief, passed away for ever from the house of Este.

"The link
Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think
Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn,
Alfonso! How thy ducal pageants shrink
From thee! if in another station born,
Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn."

At no period of his life was the mind of Tasso more active than during
his imprisonment. In the absence of all nourishment from the bright
world of Nature which he loved so passionately, his fancy could grow
and keep itself leafy, like the cress-seed, which germinates and
produces its anti-scorbutic foliage on a bit of flannel moistened with
water, without any contact with soil or sunlight, in the long Arctic
night of the ice-bound ship. With the ravings of madmen ringing in his
ears, he composed some of the most beautiful of his writings, both in
prose and verse. Among the manuscripts of the British Museum are
preserved some of these writings, whose withered vellum pages we turn
over with profound pity, as we think of the sad circumstances in which
they were composed. The most valuable of these is the manuscript of
the _Torrismondo_, in Tasso's own handwriting, and in the original
parchment binding. This work was begun before his imprisonment, and it
was not finished until the year after his liberation; but the gr