And he spared no pains to prove that he was losing self-control.

In the month of January 1577, he was seized with scruples of faith, and conceived the notion that he ought to open his mind to the Holy Office.

Accordingly, he appeared before the Inquisitor of Bologna, who after hearing his confession, bade him be of good cheer, for his self-accusations were the outcome of a melancholy humor.

Tasso was, in fact, a Catholic molded by Jesuit instruction in his earliest childhood; and though, like most young students, he had speculated on the groundwork of theology and metaphysic, there was no taint of heresy or disobedience to the Church in his nature.

The terror of the Inquisition was a morbid nightmare, first implanted in his mind by the experience of his father's collision with the Holy Office, enforced by Antoniano's strictures on his poem, and justified to some extent by the sinister activity of the institution which had burned a Carnesecchi and a Paleario.