lord.  In short, it is a sad misfortune that the present age should be deprived of the greatest genius which has appeared for centuries.  What wise man ever spoke in prose or verse better than this madman?[57] In the following August, Scipione Gonzaga’s servants, unable to endure Tasso’s eccentricities, turned him from their master’s house, and he took refuge in a monastery of the Olivetan monks.  Soon afterwards he was carried to the hospital of the Bergamasques.  His misery now was great, and his health so bad that friends expected a speedy end.[58] Yet the Cardinal Gonzaga again opened his doors to him in the spring of 1590.  Then the morbid poet turned suspicious, and began to indulge fresh hopes of fortune in another place.  He would again offer himself to the Medici.  In April he set off for Tuscany, and alighted at the convent of Monte Oliveto, near Florence.  Nobody wanted him; he wandered about the Pitti like a spectre, and the Florentines wrote:  actum est de eo.[59] Some parting compliments and presents from the Grand Duke sweetened his dismissal.  He returned to Rome; but each new journey told upon his broken health, and another illness made him desire a change of scene.  This time Antonio Costantini offered to attend upon him.  They visited Siena, Bologna and Mantua.  At Mantua, Tasso made some halt, and took a new long poem, the Gerusalemme Conquistata, seriously in hand.  But the demon of unrest pursued him, and in November 1591 he was off again with the Duke of Mantua to Rome.  From Rome he went to Naples at the beginning of the following year, worked at the Conquistata, and began his poem of the Sette Giornate.[60] He was always occupied with the vain hope of recovering a portion of his mother’s estate.  April saw him once more upon his way to Rome.  Clement VIII. had been elected, and Tasso expected patronage from the Papal nephews.[61]

[Footnote 57:  Lettere, vol. iv. p. 147.]

[Footnote 58:  Ibid. p. 229.]

[Footnote 59:  Lettere, vol. iv. p. 315.]

[Footnote 60:  Yet he now felt that his genius had expired.  ’Non posso piu fare un verso:  la vena e secca, e l’ingegno e stanco’ (Lettere, vol. v. p. 90).]

[Footnote 61:  During the whole period of his Roman residence, Tasso, like his father in similar circumstances, hankered after ecclesiastical honors.  His letters refer frequently to this ambition.  He felt the parallel between himself and Bernardo Tasso:  ’La mia depressa condizione, e la mia infelicita, quasi ereditaria’ (vol. iv. p. 288).]

He was not disappointed.  They received him into their houses, and for a while he sojourned in the Vatican.  The year 1593 seems, through their means, to have been one of comparative peace and prosperity.  Early in the summer of 1594 his health obliged him to seek change of air.  He went for the last time to Naples.  The Cardinal of S. Giorgio, one of the Pope’s nephews, recalled him in November to be crowned poet in Rome.  His entrance into the Eternal City was honorable, and Clement granted him a special audience; but the ceremony of coronation had to be deferred because of the Cardinal’s ill health.