that, if Tasso were allowed to go, the Medici would get the coveted dedication of that already famous epic. Therefore, he bore with the poet's humors, and so contrived that the latter should have no excuse for quitting Ferrara. Meanwhile, through the years 1575, 1576 and 1577, Tasso's health grew worse. Jealousy inspired the courtiers to malign and insult him. His irritable and suspicious temper, vain and sensitive to slights, rendered him only too easy a prey to their malevolence. In the course of the 1570s Tasso developed a persecution mania which led to legends about the restless, half-mad, and misunderstood author. He became consumed by thoughts that his servants betrayed his confidence, fancied he had been denounced to the Inquisition, and expected daily to be poisoned. Literary and political events surrounding him contributed to upsets and the mental state, with troubles, stress and social troubles escalating. In the autumn of 1576 Tasso quarrelled with a Ferrarese gentleman, Maddalo, who had talked too freely about some same-sex love affair; the same year he wrote a letter to his homosexual friend Luca Scalabrino dealing with his own love for a 21-year-old young man Orazio Ariosto; in the summer of 1577 he drew his knife upon a servant in the presence of Lucrezia d'Este, duchess of Urbino. For this excess he was arrested; but the duke released him, and took him for a change of air to his country seat of Villa Belriguardo. What happened there is not known. Some biographers have surmised that a compromising liaison with Leonora d'Este came to light, and that Tasso agreed to feign madness in order to cover her honor, but of this there is no proof. It is only certain that from Belriguardo he returned to a Franciscan convent at Ferrara, for the express purpose of attending to his health. There the dread of being murdered by the duke took firm hold on his mind. He escaped at the end of July, disguised himself as a peasant, and went on foot to his sister at Sorrento. The conclusions were that Tasso, after the beginning of 1575, developed a mental malady, which, without amounting to actual insanity, rendered him fantastical and insupportable, a cause of anxiety to his patrons. There is no evidence whatsoever for the later romantic myth that this state of things was due to an overwhelming passion for Leonora. The duke, contrary to