son to have combined
his mother's ultra-sensitive organisation with his father's worldly
imprudence and unequal spirits. The addition of the nervous temperament
of one parent to the aspiring nature of the other gave rise to the poet's
trembling eagerness for distinction; and Torquato's very love for them
both hindered him from seeing what should have been corrected in the
infirmities which he inherited. Falling from the highest hopes of
prosperity into the most painful afflictions, he thus wanted solid
principles of action to support him, and was forced to retreat upon an
excess of self-esteem, which allowed his pride to become a beggar, and
his naturally kind, loving, just, and heroical disposition to condescend
to almost every species of inconsistency. The Duke of Ferrara, he
complains, did not believe a word he said;[35] and the fact is, that,
partly from disease, and partly from a want of courage to look his
defects in the face, he beheld the same things in so many different
lights, and according as it suited him at the moment, that, without
intending falsehood, his statements are really not to be relied on. He
degraded even his verses, sometimes with panegyrics for interest's sake,
sometimes out of weak wishes to oblige, of which he was afterwards
ashamed; and, with the exception of Constantini, we cannot be sure that
any one person praised in them retained his regard in his last days. His
suspicion made him a kind of Rousseau; but he was more amiable than
the Genevese, and far from being in the habit of talking against old
acquaintances, whatever he might have thought of them. It is observable,
not only that he never married, but he told Manso he had led a life of
entire continence ever since he entered the walls of his prison, being
then in his thirty-fifth year.[36] Was this out of fidelity to some
mistress? or the consequence of a previous life the reverse of continent?
or was it from some principle of superstition? He had become a devotee,
apparently out of a dread of disbelief; and he remained extremely
religious for the rest of his days. The two unhappiest of Italian poets,
Tasso and Dante, were the two most superstitious.

As for the once formidable question concerning the comparative merits
of this poet and Ariosto, which anticipated the modern quarrels of the
classical and romantic schools, some idea of the treatment which Tasso
experienced may be conceived by supposing all that used to be sarcastic
and b