Italian Journeys | Page 3

On a low doorway to the right was inscribed the
legend "PRIGIONE DI TASSO," and passing through this doorway
into a kind of reception-cell, we entered the poet's dungeon. It is an
oblong room, with a low wagon-roof ceiling, under which it is barely
possible to stand upright. A single narrow window admits the light, and
the stone casing of this window has a hollow in a certain place, which
might well have been worn there by the friction of the hand that for
seven years passed the prisoner his food through the small opening.
The young custodian pointed to this memento of suffering, without
effusion, and he drew my attention to other remarkable things in the
cell, without troubling himself to palliate their improbability in the least.
They were his stock in trade; you paid your money, and took your
choice of believing in them or not. On the other hand, my portier, an
ex-valet de place, pumped a softly murmuring stream of enthusiasm;
and expressed the freshest delight in the inspection of each object of
interest.
One still faintly discerns among the vast number of names with which
the walls of the ante-cell are bewritten, that of Lamartine. The name of
Byron, which was once deeply graven in the stucco, had been scooped
away by the Grand Duke of Tuscany (so the custodian said), and there

is only part of a capital B now visible. But the cell itself is still fragrant
of associations with the noble bard, who, according to the story related
to Valery, caused himself to be locked up in it, and there, with his head
fallen upon his breast, and frequently smiting his brow, spent two hours
in pacing the floor with great strides. It is a touching picture; but its
pathos becomes somewhat embarrassing when you enter the cell, and
see the impossibility of taking more than three generous paces without
turning. When Byron issued forth, after this exercise, he said (still
according to Valery) to the custodian: "I thank thee, good man! The
thoughts of Tasso are now all in my mind and heart." "A short time
after his departure from Ferrara," adds the Frenchman, maliciously, "he
composed his 'Lament of Tasso,' a mediocre result from such
inspiration." No doubt all this is colored, for the same author adds
another tint to heighten the absurdity of the spectacle: he declares that
Byron spent part of his time in the cell in writing upon the ceiling
Lamartine's verses on Tasso, which he misspelled. The present visitor
has no means of judging of the truth concerning this, for the lines of the
poet have been so smoked by the candles of successive pilgrims in their
efforts to get light on them, that they are now utterly illegible. But if it
is uncertain what were Byron's emotions on visiting the prison of Tasso,
there is no doubt about Lady Morgan's: she "experienced a suffocating
emotion; her heart failed her on entering that cell; and she satisfied a
melancholy curiosity at the cost of a most painful sensation."
I find this amusing fact stated in a translation of her ladyship's own
language, in a clever guide-book called Il Servitore di Piazza, which I
bought at Ferrara, and from which, I confess, I have learnt all I know to
confirm me in my doubt of Tasso's prison. The Count Avventi, who
writes this book, prefaces it by saying that he is a valet de place who
knows how to read and write, and he employs these unusual gifts with
singular candor and clearness. No one, he says, before the nineteenth
century, ever dreamed of calling the cellar in question Tasso's prison,
and it was never before that time made the shrine of sentimental
pilgrimage, though it has since been visited by every traveller who has
passed through Ferrara. It was used during the poet's time to hold
charcoal and lime; and not long ago died an old servant of the hospital,
who remembered its use for that purpose. It is damp, close, and dark,

and Count Avventi thinks it hardly possible that a delicate courtier
could have lived seven years in a place unwholesome enough to kill a
stout laborer in two months; while it seems to him not probable that
Tasso should have received there the visits of princes and other
distinguished persons whom Duke Alfonso allowed to see him, or that
a prisoner who was often permitted to ride about the city in a carriage
should have been thrust back into such a cavern on his return to the
hospital. "After this," says our _valet de place_ who knows how to read
and write, "visit the prison of Tasso, certain that in the hospital of St.
Anna that great man was confined for many years;" and, with