les? Sinking
into the consciousness of a child so sensitive by nature and so early
toned to sadness, this terrible suspicion of a secret death by poison
incorporated itself with the very essence of his melancholy humor, and
lurked within him to flash forth in madness at a future period of life.
That he was well acquainted with the doleful situation of his family is
proved by his first extant letter. Addressed to the noble lady Vittoria
Colonna on behalf of Bernardo and his sister, this is a remarkable
composition for a boy of twelve.[9] His poor father, he says, is on the
point of dying of despair, oppressed by the malignity of fortune and the
rapacity of impious men. His uncle is bent on marrying Cornelia to some
needy gentleman, in order to secure her mother's estate for himself.
'The grief, illustrious lady, of the loss of property is great, but that
of blood is crushing. This poor old man has naught but my sister and
myself; and now that fortune has deprived him of wealth and of the wife
he loved like his own soul, he cannot bear that that man's avarice
should rob him of his beloved daughter, with whom he hoped to end in
rest these last years of his failing age. In Naples we have no friends;
for my father's disaster makes every one shy of us: our relatives are
our enemies. Cornelia is kept in the house of my uncle's kinsman
Giangiacopo Coscia, where no one is allowed to speak to her or give her
letters.'

[Footnote 7: Dated February 13, 1556.]

[Footnote 8: See _Opere_, vol. iv. p. 100, for Tasso's description of
the farewell to his mother, which he remembered deeply, even in later
life.]

[Footnote 9: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 6.]

In the midst of these afflictions, which already tuned the future poet's
utterance to a note of plaintive pathos and ingenuous appeal for aid,
Torquato's studies were continued on a sounder plan and in a healthier
spirit than at Naples. The perennial consolation of his troubled life,
that delight in literature which made him able to anticipate the lines
of Goethe--

That naught belongs to me I know,
Save thoughts that never cease to flow
From founts that cannot perish,
And every fleeting shape of bliss
Which kindly fortune lets me kiss,
Or in my bosom cherish--

now became the source of an inner brightness which not even the
'malignity of fortune,' the 'impiety of men,' the tragedy of his
mother's death, the imprisonment of his sister, and the ever-prese