To the number of this committee he shortly after added three more scholars, Francesco Piccolomini, Domenico Veniero, and Celio Magno.[15] Not to have been half maddened by these critics would have proved Tasso more or less than human.

They picked holes in the structure of the epic, in its episodes, in its theology, in its incidents, in its language, in its title.

One censor required one alteration, and another demanded the contrary.

This man seemed animated by an acrid spite; that veiled his malice in the flatteries of candid friendship.

Antoniano was for cutting out the love passages: Armida, Sofronia, Erminia, Clorinda, were to vanish or to be adapted to conventual proprieties.