France, the poet followed him thither at the sacrifice of his small estate, and an income which had just raised him above want. Before this ebbing in the tide of his affairs, which," taken at the flood" (had that not been arrested in its advance), he might reasonably have expected would have led on to fortune, he had married a lady of Naples, named Portia Rossi, an heiress in expectance, and of great personal and mental accomplishments. This was the golden age of Bernardo's life. After the revelry of fancy and romance which had carried him away during his former passion, wherein his heart had little share, the love of affection endeared him to his home, and he felt the transition like one who exclaims, "How sweet is daylight and fresh air!" after the midnight splendour of the ball-room, with the dream-like fascinations of music, dancing, and spectacle, which vanish as effectually as fairy palaces conjured up in the wilderness, and leave the heart desolate.

While Bernardo was at Naples, he commenced a poem of the romantic class on the adventures of Amadis de Gaul, or "Amadigi," as the work is entitled. This he projected upon the regular plan of a fable, having a beginning, middle, and end; but he was not of sufficient authority to establish, by his example, a classical form of epic, though his more successful and more gifted son seems to have borrowed the idea of doing that from him. When he read the first cantos of this performance, as originally constructed, he observed, that though the presence chamber of the court of Salerno was well filled at first with eager and expecting auditors, before he had done nearly all of them had disappeared. From this he concluded (not suspecting any deficiency of power in himself), that the unity of action prescribed by the severer critics was, in its very nature, not agreeble to nature in art, knowing that he had punctiliously observed all the rules of the latter. This failure, enforced by the persuasions of his friends, and the commands of the prince, induced him to remodel what he had written, and elaborate the remainder after the

The work

precedents of Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto. was extended to a hundred cantos, and, when published, was so well received, that the author had cause to congratulate himself on having met the public taste and gratified it; but it was the public taste of the day only, for his poem passed away with the fashion of it, and is now remembered among "things that were," while the three productions of his afore-named predecessors still keep their graduated rank of ascent, and find readers in every age, notwithstanding all the defects and excesses that may be charged upon them. Bernardo's failed; less, perhaps, because of its inferiority, than because it did not display the proportionate superiority which the others had each in turn manifested over all its respective forerunners.

It was while Bernardo resided at Sorrento, a city in the vicinity of Naples, where he occupied a palace overlooking the sea, happy in his home, and prosperous, or rather promising himself prosperity in his fortune, the prince of Salerno having released him from all burdensome duties in his service, that his son Torquato, the second of that name (the first having died young), was born, on the 11th of March, 1544. Sorrento is here put down as the birth-place of the poet, among other cities contending for that honour, like those seven

"that strove for Homer dead,

Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread.”

Ath. I. 384.

For of Tasso, in the sequel, a sarcasm as bitter might be recorded. A daughter, elder than either of the boys, was at this time growing up under the eyes of their parents. A letter of the father's (previous to our Torquato's birth) to his sister Afra, who had retired into a convent, gives a lively glimpse of Bernardo's affectionate and domestic character.* "My young daughter is very beautiful, and affords me great hopes

The translation is from Dr. Black's valuable Life of Tasso, from which other occasional quotations may be hereafter made, with this brief but grateful acknowledgment.

that she will lead a virtuous and honourable life. My infant son"-Torquato the first" is before God our Creator, and prays for your salvation. My Portia is seven months gone with child; whether a son or a daughter, it shall be supremely dear to me; only may God, who gives it me, grant that it may be born with his fear; pray together with the holy nuns that the Almighty may preserve the mother, who in this world is my highest joy." It is ludicrous, yet affecting, to observe what little circumstances are eagerly laid hold upon after death, respecting the personal history of men who, during their lives, were neglected in their hardest trials, or oppressed in their helplessness by those who were bound to protect and foster them. The very hour of Tasso's birth, as well as the place, has been contested against his own authority: he says that it was four o'clock in the morning; Serassi, that it was mid-day. "He ought to have been born at Naples," says Manso, "though he happened first to appear at Sorrento." It may be settled that he was a native of Italy rather than of any place where he may first have seen the light, in a country throughout which he was a stranger and a pilgrim all his days. Indeed, he ought to have been born on the sea; so little claim, on the ground of paternal kindness shown to him, had any city in the peninsula to the glory of his birth.

Scarcely had he been welcomed into the world under auspices so cheering as those recently mentioned, than the fortunes of his family took an adverse turn. Bernardo was summoned away from the delightful retirement of Sorrento, to join his patron in the war which had just broken out between the emperor Charles V. and Francis I., and in which the prince brilliantly dis tinguished himself. Meanwhile, if we are to believe his nursery traditions, the little Torquato was giving, even from his cradle, proofs of the spirit that was in him, scarcely less extraordinary than if, like Hercules, he had strangled serpents, or like another poet of old, attracted bees to his lips, whether to gather or to de

posit sweetness there we need not stay to enquire. Manso, his latest and most munificent patron, his first and most encomiastic biographer, (whose memoir, like Boccaccio's of Dante, reads more like romance than reality in many passages, and no where more than in this instance,) says, that the child, even during his first year, gave evidence of the divinity of his genius. For scarcely had he attained his sixth month, when, contrary to the usage of children, he began not only to let loose his tongue (or to prattle a snodar la lingua), but even to speak outright, and that in such a manner that he was never known to lisp (or clip) his syllables, as all other infants do, but formed his words complete, and gave them perfect utterance. If this be true, his marvellous faculty of speech, like the produce of a premature spring, must have suffered an early blight: for he himself records that, in speaking, he was little favoured by nature, having an unconquerable impediment of tongue; whence he preferred to communicate his thoughts rather in writing than by the audible voice, when he meant to win attention or produce impression. His own testimony is so far at variance with the assertion of his friend Manso respecting his early fluency, that he appeals for confirmation of the fact that he is a stammerer (probably to no very inconvenient degree) to some of his correspondents. But we are told, on the same authority, that the infant was equally precocious in the faculties of the mind; that he could reason, explain his thoughts, and answer questions with surprising intelligence. Moreover, to crown the climax, it is said that he seldom cried, and never laughed; the only exception, it may be presumed, of a healthy child since the world began; but that he was grave, dignified, and sage, and announced by his behaviour that he was destined for some great design.

On the return of Bernardo from the army, he enjoyed a brief prolongation of his domestic quiet at Sorrento, during which all that a romantic father and a passionately tender mother could do to awaken, cherish,

and confirm the early intimations of transcendent intellect in their darling son, was employed; and such discipline, by its natural effect, no doubt, coloured and characterised their son's mind, in the sequel, to the end of life. In one of Bernardo's letters to Portia, during his late absence, he says, that, while he leaves to her the delicate task to adorn their daughter Cornelia with every virtue and accomplishment which becomes a maiden, he intends himself to train up their young Torquato for his more arduous station in society, when he should be of proper age. This purpose was never realised.

In 1552, the prince of Salerno and his adherents being declared rebels, Bernardo, as one of the most attached of his friends, was included in the proscription his estate was confiscated, and an income of 900 scudi lost; leaving him utterly destitute of resources, with the exception of a few valuable trinkets, and the hope of some time recovering his wife's dowry — a hope which outlived himself, and which he bequeathed as a perpetual plague of expectation and disappointment to his son, who, as will be seen, obtained a decree to have it, against his mother's brothers, nearly at his own last hour. Bernardo being thus driven into exile, his wife remained with the children at Naples, in very narrow circumstances, though amongst wealthy relatives, who seem always to have treated her and her offspring with unnatural hard-heartedness. Torquato, meanwhile, under her superintendence, was making progress in the general rudiments of knowledge; but especially in the acquisition of languages, in rhetoric, and in poetry, proportioned to the promise of his earlier years. His principal tutor was one Angeluzzo, at a college of the Jesuits, recently established in that city. So eager and intent was he in quest of knowledge (such as lay within his reach), that his mother, so far from having to urge or bribe him onward, was obliged, for his health's sake, to restrain him. Early and late he was at his books; and on the winter's mornings he was sent