ABSTRACT
Composed after S/s visit on 7 November 1818 to the cell exhibited as Torquato Tasso's prison from 1579 to 1586 in the Hospital of St Anne, Ferrara. He was, however, confined under harsh conditions for less than two years. John Cam Hobhouse's Illustrations of the 4th Canto of Childe Harold, which followed the appearance of Byron's Canto IV on 28 April 1818 and which mentioned the grated window of Tasso's cell, was not read by S. until late September. Tasso's reputed cell is illustrated variously in Byron's Works, Poetry Vol. vii, ed. E. H. Coleridge, 348, and in The Italian Journal of Samuel Rogers. Leonora d'Este died in 1581, five years before Tasso's release from confinement. Serassi quotes a visitor to St Anne's in 1583 who, having asked Tasso what subject he was meditating, received the reply: Tenso e ripenso, e nel pensare impazzo', that is each thought; but the ambiguous syntax involves also 'the present' and 'the past'.
