sale, which once
belonged to Donna Cornelia, and supplied her household with wine and oil.
It is a lovely sequestered spot lying on the breezy hill-side not far down
the Massa road, facing towards Capri and the sunset. Hallowed by its
historic connection with the poet and his devoted sister, the Vigna
Sersale can claim perhaps to be one of the most interesting and beautiful
places of literary pilgrimage upon earth. Ascending by the steep pathway
that leads upward from the broad high road, it is not long before we reach
the old _podere_, amidst whose olive groves and vineyards the poet was
wont to sit dreamily gazing at the glorious view before him. Here are the
same ancient spreading stone-pines, the same gnarled olive trees that
sheltered the gentle love-lorn poet, whilst Cornelia and her sons sate
beside him in the shade, endeavouring--alas! only too vainly--by their
caresses to detain the roving Torquato in their midst. Could not, we ask
ourselves, the erratic poet have been content to remain in this spot, "in
questa terra alma e felice" as he himself styles it, instead of plunging
once more into the dangers and dissipation of that Vanity Fair of distant
Ferrara? Why could he not have brooded over his ill-starred infatuation
for the high-born Leonora in this soothing corner of the earth, allowing
its quiet and beauty to sink into his soul, until the recollection of his
Innamorata declined gradually into a fragrant memory that could be
embalmed in never-dying verse? But like his own favourite hero, the
Christian King of Jerusalem, the poet must in his inmost heart have
preferred a changing storm-tossed life to the ideal existence of rustic
ease; and had he not returned to the treacherous splendours of Alfonso's
court, how much less entrancing would his own life-story have appeared to
after ages! Unconsciously he seems to have composed his own epitaph in
describing Godfrey's death; for the crusading king lived and died like a
true Christian knight, for whom the world has afforded many adventures,
and but few intervals of peace until the final call to endless rest.

"Vivesti qual guerrier cristiano e santo,
E come bel sei morto: ei godi, e pasci
In Dio gli occhi bramosi, o felice alma,
Ed hai del ben oprar corona e palma."

CHAPTER XI

CAPRI AND TIBERIUS THE TYRANT

Lying between the classic capes of Misenum and Minerva, the island of
Capri ap