77/147 The _Gerusalemme_ might possibly pass muster now before the Congregation of the Index. Tasso's correspondence between March 1575 and July 1576 shows what he suffered at the hands of his revisers, and helps to explain the series of events which rendered the autumn of that latter year calamitous for him.[18] There are, indeed, already indications in the letters of those months that his nerves, enfeebled by the quartan fever under which he labored, and exasperated by carping or envious criticism, were overstrung. |