and most generous reception, to Rome;
then left Rome for Mantua, on invitation from his ever-kind deliverer
from prison, now the reigning duke; tired again, even of him; returned to
Rome; then once more to Naples, where the Prince of Conca, Grand Admiral
of the kingdom, lodged and treated him like an equal; but he grew
suspicious of the admiral, and went to live with his friend Manso;
quitted Manso for Rome again; was treated with reverence on the way, like
Ariosto, by a famous leader of banditti; was received at Rome into the
Vatican itself, in the apartments of his friend Cintio Aldobrandino,
nephew of the new pope Clement the Eighth, where his hopes now seemed to
be raised at once to their highest and most reasonable pitch; but fell
ill, and was obliged to go back to Naples for the benefit of the air.
A life so strangely erratic to the last (for mortal illness was
approaching) is perhaps unique in the history of men of letters, and
might be therefore worth recording even in that of a less man than Tasso;
but when we recollect that this poet, in spite of all his weaknesses, and
notwithstanding the enemies they provoked and the friends they cooled,
was really almost adored for his genius in his own time, and instead
of refusing jewels one day and soliciting a ducat the next, might have
settled down almost any where in quiet and glory, if he had but possessed
the patience to do so, it becomes an association of weakness with power,
and of adversity with the means of prosperity, the absurdity of which
admiration itself can only drown in pity.

He now took up his abode in another monastery, that of San Severino,
where he was comforted by the visits of his friend Manso, to whom he had
lately inscribed a dialogue on _Friendship_; for he continued writing
to the last. He had also the consolation, such as it was, of having the
law-suit for his mother's dowry settled in his favour, though under
circumstances that rendered it of little importance, and only three
months before his death. So strangely did Fortune seem to take delight in
sporting with a man of genius, who had thought both too much of her and
too little; too much for pomp's sake, and too little in prudence. Among
his new acquaintances were the young Marino, afterwards the corrupter of
Italian poetry, and the Prince of Venosa, an amateur composer of music.
The dying poet wrote madrigals for him so much to his satisfaction, that,
being about to marry into the house of