f
Alfonso did not know the epithet before, he learnt it then. The reader
may conceive his feelings. Tasso, too, at the same time, was plaguing
him with letters to similar purpose; and it is observable, that while
in those which he sent to Rome he speaks of Cosmo de' Medici as "Grand
Duke," he takes care in the others to call him simply the "Duke of
Florence." Alfonso had been exasperated to the last degree at Cosmo's
having had the epithet "Grand" added by the Pope to his ducal title;
and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by
a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a
detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred
of bitter "physic," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age
for giving it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in a manner which it is
humiliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The
duke at length forbade his writing to him any more; and Tasso, whose
fears of every kind of ill usage had been wound up to a pitch unbearable,
watched an opportunity when he was carelessly guarded, and fled at once
from the convent and Ferrara.

The unhappy poet selected the loneliest ways he could find, and directed
his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sister lived. He was
afraid of pursuit; he probably had little money; and considering his ill
health and his dread of the Inquisition, it is pitiable to think what he
may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of
the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of
Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd; and as
he feared even his sister at first, from doubting whether she still
loved him, his interview with her was in all its circumstances painfully
dramatic. Cornelia Tasso, now a widow, with two sons, was still residing
at Sorrento, where the poet, casting his eyes around him as he
proceeded towards the house, must have beheld with singular feelings of
wretchedness the lovely spots in which he had been a happy little boy. He
did not announce himself at once. He brought letters, he said, from the
lady's brother; and it is affecting to think, that whether his sister
might or might not have retained otherwise any personal recollection
of him since that time (for he had not seen her in the interval), his
disguise was completed by the alterations which sorrow had made in his
appearance. For, at all events