is son, then
studying under the celebrated Corrado, of Mantua. In 1559, he
accompanied his father to Venice, and there perused the best Italian
authors, especially Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The next year he
went to the University of Padua, where, under Sperone Speroni and
Sigonio, he studied Aristotle and the critics; and by Piccolomini and
Pandasio he was taught the moral and philosophical doctrines of
Socrates and Plato. However, notwithstanding his severer studies,
Torquato never lost sight of his favorite art; and at the age of
seventeen, in ten months, he composed his "Rinaldo," a poem in twelve
cantos, founded on the then popular romances of Charlemagne and his
paladins. This work, which was published in 1562, excited great
admiration, and gave rise to expectations which were justified by the
"Jerusalem Delivered." The plan of that immortal poem was conceived,
according to Serassi's conjecture in 1563, at Bologna, where Tasso
was then prosecuting his studies. The first sketch of it is still
preserved in a manuscript, dated 1563, in the Vatican Library, and
printed at Venice in 1722. Unfortunately, while thus engaged, he was
brought into collision with the civil authorities, in consequence of
some satirical attacks on the University, which were falsely
attributed to him. The charge was refuted, but not until his papers
had been seized and himself imprisoned. This disgusted him with
Bologna, and he returned to Padua in 1564. There he applied all his
faculties to the accomplishment of his epic poem; collected immense
materials from the chronicles of the Crusades; and wrote, to exercise
his critical powers, the "Discorsi" and the "Trattato sulla Poesia."
While thus engaged, the Cardinal Luigi d'Este appointed him a
gentleman of his court. Speroni endeavored to dissuade the young poet
from accepting that office, by relating the many disappointments which
he had himself experienced while engaged in a similar career. These
remonstrances were vain; Tasso joined the cardinal at Ferrara at the
end of October, 1564, and soon attracted the favorable notice of the
Duke Alfonso, brother of the cardinal, and of their sisters; one of
whom, the celebrated Eleanora, is commonly supposed to have exercised
a lasting and unhappy influence over the poet's life. Ferrara
continued to be his chief place of abode till 1571, when he was
summoned to accompany his patron the cardinal to France. The gayeties
of Ferrara, celebrated in tha