landscapes, in fresco and in oil. He led a scandalous life, and died at Rome in 1644.—R. N. W.
TASSO, Bernardo, poet, and father of Torquato Tasso; born at Bergamo, 11th November, 1493; died in Ostiglia, of which place he was governor, 4th September, 1569; or according to another account, in the Roman convent of St. Onofrio, 1575. Left fatherless at an early age, he found a protector in his uncle the bishop of Recanati; but orphaned of this second father, and become dependent on his own resources, he commenced that career of varying fortunes which carried him from court to court, now favoured, now neglected; and which stamped him not only as the courtier and councillor in prosperity, but as the servant faithful in adversity. His longest poem, "L'Amadigi," is a romance in verse, based on the prose romance of Amadis de Gaul. He has also left a second poem of the same class, "Il Floridante," extracted and augmented from L'Amadigi, a variety of Rime; and a series of admired Letters; and he has been reckoned the originator in Italian verse of the styles named pescatoria and marinaresca (treating of fishermen, mariners, and their belongings).—C. G. R.
TASSO, Torquato, was the son of Bernardo Tasso by Portia de Rossi, a lady of noble Neapolitan family, and was born at Sorrento on the 11th March, 1544. He received his first education in the college of the jesuits at Naples; and from the age of eight years his talent for verse was conspicuous. Soon after, the proscription of the prince of Sanseverino, in which his father was involved, drove him from the kingdom of Naples. After residing for a time at Rome he was sent to Bergamo, where he perfected his knowledge of the ancient languages. During 1561 he studied law at Padua, but for such a pursuit he had little inclination, and his genius irresistibly attracted him to poetry. When only eighteen he composed his "Rinaldo," a poem in twelve cantos, founded on the then popular romances of Charlemagne and his Paladins. It was published in 1562, and dedicated to the Cardinal Luigi D'Este, brother of Alphonso II., duke of Ferrara. In 1565 the latter called Torquato to his court, and it was there that he began his great poem, the "Gerusalemme Liberata," which fully justified all the high expectations excited by the earlier work. Ferrara continued to be his principal abode until 1571, when he accompanied the Cardinal D'Este to Paris. Returning home the next year he again took up his residence at the court of Duke Alphonso, where in 1573 he wrote his pastoral drama "Aminta," and where the "Gerusalemme" was completed in 1575. During that year Tasso visited Pavia, Padua, Bologna, and Rome, and returned in 1576 to Ferrara. Meanwhile a cloud of evils was gradually darkening around him. We refer partly to the animosity shown by envious foes, whom his fame and genius had called into existence, and partly to his romantic affection for the duke's sister, Eleonora, the source of the crowning sorrows of his life. Over the latter circumstance a veil of mystery is still suspended, which it is vain to expect will ever be fully raised. Whether Tasso's love for Eleonora D'Este was requited by her or no may be matter for conjecture; but it seems probable that the key to Alphonso's strange and harsh treatment of the unhappy poet is to be found in the supposition that, incensed at his passion for his sister, he thought that the only reparation he could make to her injured honour, lay in inducing the belief that Tasso was insane. The peculiarly irritable temperament of the poet, besides, was ever breaking out in actions that gave reasonable colour to such a charge. Embroiling himself in June, 1577, with one of the ducal domestics, he was arrested by order of Alphonso, and about the middle of the following month he was shut up in the convent of St. Francis—the duke's secretary having written to the monks that he was mad, and must be treated as a madman. Making his escape, however, he fled, destitute of every thing, from Ferrara, and hastened to his sister Cornelia, then living at Sorrento. For a time he was soothed by her care and tenderness; but his morbid spirit deprived him of any abiding rest. He wandered from place to place until 1579, when he once more returned to Alphonso, who treated him with indifference and neglect. Unable to restrain his temper, Tasso burst into violent invectives against the duke and his court; and the result was that Alphonso issued orders to arrest and confine him in the hospital of St. Anne as a confirmed lunatic. Seven long years he spent in this dreary imprisonment, while all Italy was ringing with his name; for a legion of paltry and peddling critics kept snarling at his glorious poem, which had been published complete at Parma in 1581; and although some nobler spirits did full justice to the genius it displayed, many others strove their utmost to depreciate its surpassing merits. At last, on the 5th July, 1586, Alphonso released him from his cruel captivity; yielding to the urgent request of Don Vincenzo Gonzaga, son of the duke of Mantua, at whose court Tasso sojourned for some time afterwards. The remainder of his unfortunate life was spent in wandering to and fro. Sometimes he resided at Florence, sometimes at Rome, sometimes at Naples—always restless, often wretched. His own wayward temper no doubt occasioned much of his suffering; yet we should remember that, to use the words of Landor, "the miseries of Tasso were not only from the imagination and the heart. In the metropolis of the christian world, with many admirers and patrons, bishops, cardinals, princes, he was left destitute and almost famished." His last letters are filled with details of his pecuniary embarrassments. In fine, the Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini invited him from Naples to Rome, having obtained for him from the pope the promised honour of a solemn coronation in the capitol. He accepted the invitation, and was lodged in the papal palace; but death anticipated the illustrious ceremony. Having been seized with a serious illness, he was conveyed at his own request to the monastery of St. Onofrio, where he expired on the day fixed for his coronation, April 25, 1595. The works of Tasso, both prose and poetical, are numerous; but it is the well-known "Jerusalem Delivered" which has mainly conferred upon him immortality.—J. J.
TASSONI, Alessandro, poet and critic, born in Modena, 28th September, 1565; died in the same city, 25th April, 1635. In 1600 he visited Spain with Cardinal Ascanio Colonna; and after the death of this patron had set him free to choose another service, he found precarious favour with Charles Emmanuel I., duke of Savoy; and with his son the cardinal, whom he quitted in 1623 for a quiet suburban home, the culture of a garden, and literary pursuits. In 1626 he took office under Cardinal Lodovisio; and ended his days as councillor to Francesco I., duke of Modena. Tassoni is remembered as the author of "La Secchia Rapita," a serio-comic poem in twelve cantos, highly esteemed amongst compositions of that sort. It has been translated into English and French, and it reached a thirty-first edition in 1788. The triumphant Rape of a Bucket, by Modena from Bologna, supplies the theme; a congenial one to the mind of its author, who revelled in satire. The patience of his countrymen was sorely tried to hear him, in his "Pensieri Diversi," find fault with Homer and contradict Aristotle; and a furious controversy ensued when the "Considerazioni sopra le Rime del Petrarca" developed his depreciatory estimate of that lyrist. He has left besides an "Abridgment" of the Annals of Baronius; "Annotations" emendatory of the Cruscan Dictionary; various rejoinders in the Petrarch controversy; his "Will," conceived in a spirit of ghastly mockery; to which may be added, sundry writings against Spain, though of these he repudiated the authorship.—C. G. R.
TATE, Nahum, writer of English psalmody, was born in Dublin in 1652, and educated at Trinity college. He does not appear to have followed any distinct profession. He came to London, and was chosen to succeed Shadwell as poet-laureate, an office which Tate continued to hold up to the period of his death, 12th August, 1715. He is described as an improvident and intemperate man, who used his patron, the earl of Dorset, chiefly to screen himself from the persecutions of his creditors, from whom at last he was compelled to seek protection in the Mint, then a refuge for debtors. Tate is chiefly known for his version of the Psalms, written in conjunction with Nicholas Brady, which speedily supplanted Sternhold and Hopkins' rendering, and still holds its place as the authorized metrical version of the Psalms at the end of the Book of Common Prayer. It originally consisted of only the first twenty psalms when it first appeared in 1695, but in 1698 Hay published a complete translation, to which in 1700 was added a supplement of church hymns. Tate was also the author of "Memorials for the Learned," 1686; "Characters of Virtue and Vice," described, &c., in verse, 1691; "Miscellanea Sacra," 1698; "Panacea, a poem on Tea;" birthday odes; and operatic, comic, and tragic dramas, including a new version of Shakspeare's King Lear.—F.
TATIAN, a christian writer belonging to the second century, was an Assyrian by birth, as he himself states. In early life he was educated in the philosophy of the Greeks, and followed for some time the profession of a sophist, or teacher of rhetoric. Having travelled over different countries, he settled at last in
