gallantries of sonnets are exalted
into bewilderments of the heart.

His restlessness returning, the poet now condescended to craft a second
time. Expecting to meet with a refusal, and so to be afforded a
pretext for quitting Ferrara, he applied for the vacant office of
historiographer. It was granted him; and he then disgusted the Medici by
pleading an unlooked-for engagement, which he could only reconcile to his
applications for their favour by renouncing his claim to be believed. If
he could have deceived others, why might he not have deceived them?

All the lurking weakness of the poet's temperament began to display
itself at this juncture. His perplexity excited him to a degree of
irritability bordering on delirium; and circumstances conspired to
increase it. He had lent an acquaintance the key of his rooms at court,
for the purpose (he tells us) of accommodating some intrigue; and
he suspected this person of opening cabinets containing his papers.
Remonstrating with him one day in the court of the palace, either on that
or some other account, the man gave him the lie. He received in return
a blow on the face, and is said by Tasso to have brought a set of his
kinsmen to assassinate him, all of whom the heroical poet immediately put
to flight. At one time he suspected the duke of jealousy respecting
the dedication of his poem, and at another, of a wish to burn it. He
suspected his servants. He became suspicious of the truth of his friend
Gonzaga. He doubted, even, whether some praises addressed to him by
Orazio Ariosto, the nephew of the great poet, which, one would have
thought, would have been to him a consummation of bliss, were not
intended to mystify and hurt him. At length he fancied that his
persecutors had accused him of heresy to the Inquisition; and, as he had
gone through the metaphysical doubts, common with most men of reflection
respecting points of faith and the mysteries of creation, he feared that
some indiscreet words had escaped him, giving colour to the charge. He
thus beheld enemies all around him. He dreaded stabbing and poison; and
one day, in some paroxysm of rage or horror, how occasioned it is not
known, ran with a knife or dagger at one of the servants of the Duchess
of Urbino in her own chamber.

Alfonso, upon this, apparently in the mildest and most reasonable manner,
directed that he should be confined to his apartments, and put into the
hands of the physician. These unfortunate events