Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
And Tasso's character wag in the estimate; he hated washing; it balefully depraved his temper; and not only, creature of habit that he was, would he decline to lie down anywhere save in their bedroom, he would lament, plead, insist unremittingly, if excluded; terrifying every poor invalid of the house.
That is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a "discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself and to others. The scholar shames us by his bifold life.
Luther himself wrote and studied till he saw the Devil; only the great reformer retained enough of his naturally sturdy health and judgment to throw an inkstand at Satan's head, a thing that philosophy has been doing ever since. Tasso's principal residence while at Naples had been in the beautiful monastery of Mount Olivet, on which the good monks begged he would write them a poem; which he did.
It is perhaps hardly surprising to find Tasso's 'S' ei piace, ei lice' quoted by English writers as summing up the cynical philosophy of those whom they not unaptly styled 'politicians. In Marston's tragedy on the story of Sophonisba, for instance, the villain Syphax concludes a 'Machiavellian' speech with the words: For we hold firm, that 's lawful which doth please.
The verse was by Giovanni Rucellai, the distinguished author of "Rosamunda" and the "Api," and the music by Pietro Strozzi. One of the singers was a certain young Giulio Caccini, who lived to be famous. Torquato Tasso's pastoral play "Aminta" had choruses though we cannot say who composed the music.
This was certainly against the wishes of Tribolo, although he did not show it, and even acted as the close friend of Tasso; and a proof that this is true is that Tribolo perceived many errors in Tasso's model, but, so it is believed, would by no means tell him of them.
Translator and antiquary, a county gentleman of Cornwall, ed. at Oxf., made a translation of the first five cantos of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered , more correct than that of Fairfax. Other works were A Survey of Cornwall , and an Epistle concerning the Excellencies of the English Tongue .
But hark! while I am writing this peevish reflection in my room, I hear some voices under my window answering each other upon the Grand Canal. It is, it is the gondolieri sure enough; they are at this moment singing to an odd sort of tune, but in no unmusical manner, the flight of Erminia from Tasso's Jerusalem. Oh, how pretty! how pleasing!
The pope himself overwhelmed him with praises, and one day said, "Torquato, I give you the laurel, that it may receive as much honor from you as it has conferred upon them who have worn it before you." To give to this solemnity greater splendor, it was delayed till April 25, 1595; but during the winter Tasso's health became worse.
He afterwards published the whole series of the "Amorous Conclusions," and dedicated them to Genevra Malatesta, who now, as an old married woman, was greatly touched by receiving such a compliment from the son of her former lover. Tasso's father was now dying at Ostiglia, a small place on the Po, of which the Duke of Mantua had made him governor.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking