nd he was
accustomed to repeat his last words. He was expert in all manly
exercises, but not equally graceful; and the same defect attended his
otherwise striking eloquence in public assemblies. His putting to flight
the assassins in Ferrara gave him such a reputation for courage, that
there went about in his honour a popular couplet

"Colla penna e colla spada
Nessun val quanto Torquato."

For the sword as well as pen
Tasso is the man of men.

He was a little eater, but not averse to wine, particularly such as
combined piquancy with sweetness; and he always dressed in black. Manso's
account is still more particular, and yet it does not tell all; for Tasso
himself informs us that he stammered, and was near-sighted;[33] and a
Neapolitan writer who knew him adds to the near-sightedness some visible
defect in the eyes.[34] I should doubt, from what Tasso says in his
letters, whether he was fond of speaking in public, notwithstanding his
_debut_ in that line with the _Fifty Amorous Conclusions_.Nor does he
appear to have been remarkable for his conversation. Manso has left a
collection of one hundred of his pithy sayings--a suspicious amount, and
unfortunately more than warranting the suspicion; for almost every one of
them is traceable to some other man. They come from the Greek and Latin
philosophers, and the apothegms of Erasmus. The two following have the
greatest appearance of being genuine:

A Greek, complaining that he had spoken ill of his country, and
maintaining that all the virtues in the world had issued out of it, the
poet assented; with the addition, that they had not left one behind them.

A foolish young fellow, garnished with a number of golden chains, coming
into a room where he was, and being overheard by him exclaiming, "Is this
the great man that was mad?" Tasso said, "Yes; but that people had never
put on him more than one chain at a time."

His character may be gathered, but not perhaps entirely, from what has
been written of his life; for some of his earlier letters shew him to
have been not quite so grave and refined in his way of talking as readers
of the _Jerusalem_ might suppose. He was probably at that time of life
not so scrupulous in his morals as he professed to be during the greater
part of it. His mother is thought to have died of chagrin and impatience
at being separated so long from her husband, and not knowing what to do
to save her dowry from her brothers; and I take her