Editing Torquato Tasso (section)

===Late years===
[[File:Sorrent.Torquato Tasso.jpg|thumb |left| Torquato Tasso monument in [[Sorrento]]]]

In 1586 Tasso left St. Anna at the solicitation of [[Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua|Vincenzo Gonzaga]], Prince of Mantua. He followed his young deliverer to the city by the [[Mincio]], basked awhile in liberty and courtly pleasures, enjoyed a splendid reception from his paternal town of Bergamo, and reworked his 1573 tragedy ''Galealto Re di Norvegia'' into a classical drama entitled ''Torrismondo''. But only a few months passed before he grew discontented. Vincenzo Gonzaga, succeeding to his father's dukedom of Mantua, had scanty leisure to bestow upon the poet. Tasso felt neglected. In the autumn of 1587, he journeyed through Bologna and Loreto to Rome where he took up quarters with an old friend, [[Scipione Gonzaga]], now [[Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem|Patriarch of Jerusalem]]. The following year he wandered off to Naples, where he wrote several religious poems including [[Monte Oliveto Maggiore|Monte Oliveto]]. In 1589 he returned to Rome and took quarters again with the patriarch of Jerusalem. But the servants found Tasso insufferable and turned him out of doors. He fell ill and went to a hospital. The patriarch in 1590 again received him, but Tasso's restless spirit drove him forth to Florence. The Florentines said, "Actum est de eo." Rome once more, then Mantua, then Florence, then Rome, then Naples, then Rome, then Naples—such is the weary record of the years 1590–94. He endured a veritable [[Odyssey]] of malady, indigence and misfortune. To Tasso, everything was amiss. Though the palaces of princes, cardinals, patriarchs, nay popes, were always open to him, he could rest in none.{{sfn|Symonds|1911|p=445}}

His health grew ever feebler and his genius dimmer. In 1592 he published a revised version of the ''Gerusalemme'', ''Gerusalemme Conquistata''. All that made the poem of his early manhood charming he rigidly erased. The versification became more pedantic; the romantic and magical episodes were excised; the heavier elements of the plot underwent dull rhetorical development. During the same year a blank-verse retelling of ''Genesis'', called ''Le Sette Giornate'', saw the light.{{sfn|Symonds|1911|p=445}}

Though mental disorder, physical weakness, and a decline in inspiration seemed to doom Tasso to oblivion, hope cheered his last years. Pope [[Clement VIII]] ascended the papal chair in 1592. He and his nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini of [[San Giorgio al Velabro|San Giorgio]], were determined to befriend the poet. In 1594 they invited him to Rome. There Tasso was to receive the crown of laurels, as Petrarch had been crowned, on the Capitol.{{sfn|Symonds|1911|pp=445–446}}

Worn out with illness, Tasso reached Rome in November. The ceremony of his coronation was deferred because Cardinal Aldobrandini had fallen ill. But the pope assigned Tasso a pension. Also, under pontifical pressure, Prince Avellino (who held Tasso's maternal estate) agreed to discharge a portion of his claims against Tasso by payment of a yearly stipend.{{sfn|Symonds|1911|p=446}}

At no time since Tasso left St. Anna had the heavens so smiled upon him. Capitolian honours and money were now at his disposal. Yet fortune arrived too late. Before he donned the crown of [[poet laureate]] and received his pensions, Tasso went to the hilltop convent of Sant'Onofrio on a stormy 1 April 1595. After his coach toiled up the steep Trasteverine Hill and the monks came to the door to greet it, Tasso stepped out and announced to the prior that he had come there to die.{{sfn|Symonds|1911|p=446}}

Tasso died in Sant'Onofrio in April 1595 aged 51. The last twenty years of his existence had been practically and artistically unsatisfying.{{sfn|Symonds|1911|p=446}}