Meanwhile his prospects seemed likely to improve.  Clement conferred on him a pension of one hundred ducats, and the Prince of Avellino, who had detained his mother’s estate, compounded with him for a life-income of two hundred ducats.  This good fortune came in the spring of 1595.  But it came too late; for his death-illness was upon him.  On the first of April he had himself transported to the convent of S. Onofrio, which overlooks Rome from the Janiculan hill.  ’Torrents of rain were falling with a furious wind, when the carriage of Cardinal Cinzio was seen climbing the steep ascent.  The badness of the weather made the fathers think there must be some grave cause for this arrival.  So the prior and others hurried to the gate, where Tasso descended with considerable difficulty, greeting the monks with these words:  ’I am come to die among you.’’[62] The last of Tasso’s letters, written to Antonio Costantini from S. Onofrio, has the quiet dignity of one who struggles for the last time with the frailty of his mortal nature.[63]

’What will my good lord Antonio say when he shall hear of his Tasso’s death?  The news, as I incline to think, will not be long in coming; for I feel that I have reached the end of life, being unable to discover any remedy for this tedious indisposition which has supervened on the many others I am used to—­like a rapid torrent resistlessly sweeping me away.  The time is past when I should speak of my stubborn fate, to mention not the world’s ingratitude, which, however, has willed to gain the victory of bearing me to the grave a pauper; the while I kept on thinking that the glory which, despite of those that like it not, this age will inherit from my writings, would not have left me wholly without guerdon.  I have had myself carried to this monastery of S. Onofrio; not only because the air is commended by physicians above that of any other part of Rome, but also as it were upon this elevated spot and by the conversation of these devout fathers to commence my conversation in heaven.  Pray God for me; and rest assured that as I have loved and honored you always in the present life, so will I perform for you in that other and more real life what appertains not to feigned but to veritable charity.  And to the Divine grace I recommend you and myself.’

[Footnote 62:  Manso op. cit. p. 215.]

[Footnote 63:  This letter proves conclusively that, whatever was the nature of Tasso’s malady, and however it had enfeebled his faculties as poet, he was in no vulgar sense a lunatic.]

On April 25, Tasso expired at midnight, with the words In manus tuas, Domine, upon his lips.  Had Costantini, his sincerest friend, been there, he might have said like Kent: 

             O, let him pass! he hates him much
    That would upon the rack of this tough world
    Stretch him out longer.

But Costantini was in Mantua; and this sonnet, which he had written for his master, remains Tasso’s truest epitaph, the pithiest summary of a life pathetically tragic in its adverse fate—­