FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161  
162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   >>   >|  
, he had three children, the eldest of whom was a daughter named Cornelia, and the youngest the author of the _Jerusalem Delivered_. the other child died young. The house distinguished by the poet's birth was restored from a dilapidated condition by order of Joseph Bonaparte when King of Naples, and is now an hotel. Torquato Tasso was born March the 11th, 1544, nine years after the death of Ariosto, who was intimate with his father. He was very devoutly brought up; and grew so tall, and became so premature a scholar, that at nine, he tells us, he might have been taken for a boy of twelve. At eleven, in consequence of the misfortunes of his father, who had been exiled with the Prince of Salerno, he was forced to part from his mother, who remained at home to look after a dowry which she never received. Her brothers deprived her of it; and in two years' time she died, Bernardo thought by poison. Twenty-four years afterwards her illustrious son, in the midst of his own misfortunes, remembered with sighs the tears with which the kisses of his poor mother were bathed when she was forced to let him go.[2] The little Torquato following, as he says, like another Ascanius, the footsteps of his wandering father, joined Bernardo in Rome. After two years' study in that city, partly under an old priest who lived with them, the vicissitudes of the father's lot took away the son first to Bergamo, among his relations, and then to Pesaro, in the duchy of Urbino, where his education was associated for nearly two years with that of the young prince, afterwards Duke Francesco Maria the Second (della Rovere), who retained a regard for him through life. In 1559 the boy joined his father in Venice, where the latter had been appointed secretary to the Academy; but next year he was withdrawn from these pleasing varieties of scene by the parental delusion so common in the history of men of letters--the study of the law; which Bernardo intended him to pursue henceforth in the city of Padua. He accordingly arrived in Padua at the age of sixteen and a half, and fulfilled his legal destiny by writing the poem of _Rinaldo_, which was published in the course of less than two years at Venice. The goodnatured and poetic father, convinced by this specimen of jurisprudence how useless it was to thwart the hereditary passion, permitted him to devote himself wholly to literature, which he therefore went to study in the university of Bologna; and there, at
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161  
162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
father
 

Bernardo

 

misfortunes

 

Torquato

 

forced

 
Venice
 
mother
 

joined

 
secretary
 

vicissitudes


partly

 

appointed

 
priest
 

retained

 
education
 

Second

 
Academy
 
Francesco
 

Urbino

 

Rovere


prince

 

regard

 

Bergamo

 

Pesaro

 

relations

 

common

 

specimen

 

jurisprudence

 

useless

 

convinced


poetic

 
published
 

goodnatured

 

thwart

 

hereditary

 
university
 

Bologna

 
literature
 

wholly

 
passion

permitted
 

devote

 
Rinaldo
 
delusion
 

parental

 

history

 
letters
 

varieties

 
withdrawn
 

pleasing