to rely on my imagination no longer."

Alfonso made no answer.

The causes of Tasso's imprisonment, and its long duration, are among
the puzzles of biography. The prevailing opinion, notwithstanding the
opposition made to it by Serassi and Black, is, that the poet made love
to the Princess Leonora--perhaps was beloved by her; and that her brother
the duke punished him for his arrogance. This was the belief of his
earliest biographer, Manso, who was intimately acquainted with the poet
in his latter days; and from Manso (though he did not profess to receive
the information from Tasso, but only to gather it from his poems) it
spread over all Europe. Milton took it on trust from him;[15] and so have
our English translators Hoole and Wiffen. The Abbe de Charnes, however,
declined to do so;[16] and Montaigne, who saw the poet in St. Anne's
hospital, says nothing of the love at all. He attributes his condition
to poetical excitement, hard study, and the meeting of the extremes of
wisdom and folly. The philosopher, however, speaks of the poet's having
survived his reason, and become unconscious both of himself and his
works, which the reader knows to be untrue. He does not appear to have
conversed with Tasso. The poet was only shewn him; probably at a sick
moment, or by a new and ignorant official.[17] Muratori, who was in the
service of the Este family at Modena, tells us, on the authority of
an old acquaintance who knew contemporaries of Tasso, that the "good
Torquato" finding himself one day in company with the duke and his
sister, and going close to the princess in order to answer some question
which she had put to him, was so transported by an impulse "more than
poetical," as to give her a kiss; upon which the duke, who had observed
it, turned about to his gentlemen, and said, "What a pity to see so great
a man distracted!" and so ordered him to be locked up.[18] But this
writer adds, that he does not know what to think of the anecdote: he
neither denies nor admits it. Tiraboschi, who was also in the service of
the Este family, doubts the truth of the anecdote, and believes that
the duke shut the poet up solely for fear lest his violence should do
harm.[19] Serassi, the second biographer of Tasso, who dedicated his
book to an Este princess inimical to the poet's memory, attributes the
confinement, on his own shewing, to the violent words he had uttered
against his master.[20] Walker, the author of the _Memoir on Italian