ass muster now before the Congregation of
the Index. Tasso's correspondence between March 1575 and July 1576 shows
what he suffered at the hands of his revisers, and helps to explain the
series of events which rendered the autumn of that latter year
calamitous for him.[18] There are, indeed, already indications in the
letters of those months that his nerves, enfeebled by the quartan fever
under which he labored, and exasperated by carping or envious criticism,
were overstrung.

[Footnote 16: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 114.]

[Footnote 17: _Ib_. vol. i. p. 192.]

[Footnote 18: Vol. i. pp. 55-215.]

Suspicions began to invade his mind. He complained of headache. His
spirits alternated between depression and hysterical gayety. A dread
lest the Inquisition should refuse the imprimatur to his poem haunted
him. He grew restless, and yearned for change of scene.

The events of 1575, 1576, and 1577 require to be minutely studied: for
upon our interpretation of them must depend the theory which we hold of
Tasso's subsequent misfortunes. It appears that early in the year 1575
he was becoming discontented with Ferrara. A party in the Court, led by
Pigna, did their best to make his life there disagreeable. They were
jealous of the poet's fame, which shone with trebled splendor after the
production of _Aminta_. Tasso's own behavior provoked, if it did not
exactly justify their animosity. He treated men at least his equals in
position with haughtiness, which his irritable temper rendered
insupportable. We have it from his own pen that 'he could not bear to
live in a city where the nobles did not yield him the first place, or at
least admit him to absolute equality'; that 'he expected to be adored by
friends, served by serving-men, caressed by domestics, honored by
masters, celebrated by poets, and pointed out by all.'[19]

[Footnote 19: _Lettere_, vol. iii. p. 41, iv. p. 332.]

He admitted that it was his habit 'to build castles in the air of
honors, favors, gifts and graces, showered on him by emperors and kings
and mighty princes'; that 'the slightest coldness from a patron seemed
to him a tacit act of dismissal, or rather an open act of
violence.'[20] His blood, he argued, placed him on a level with the
aristocracy of Italy; but his poetry lifted him far above the vulgar
herd of noblemen. At the same time, while claiming so much, he
constantly declared himself unfit for any work or office but literary
study, and expressed his o