name was Laura Peperara; but this did not hinder him from returning to his Paduan studies, in which he spent nearly the whole of the following year.  He was then informed that the Cardinal of Este, to whom he had dedicated his Rinaldo, and with whom interest had been made for the purpose, had appointed him one of his attendants, and that he was expected at Ferrara by the 1st of December.  Returning to Mantua, in order to prepare for this appointment with his father, he was seized with a dangerous illness, which detained him there nearly a twelvemonth longer.  On his recovery he hastened to Ferrara, and arrived in that city on the last day of October, 1565, the first of many years of glory and misery.

The cardinal of Este was the brother of the reigning Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the Second, grandson of the Alfonso of Ariosto.  It is curious to see the two most celebrated romantic poets of Italy thrown into unfortunate connexion with two princes of the same house and the same respective ranks.  Tasso’s cardinal, however, though the poet lost his favour, and though very little is known about him, left no such bad reputation behind him as Ippolito.  It was in the service of the duke that the poet experienced his sufferings.

This prince, who was haughty, ostentatious, and quarrelsome, was, at the time of the stranger’s arrival, rehearsing the shows and tournaments intended to welcome his bride, the sister of the Emperor Maximilian the Second.  She was his second wife.  The first was a daughter of the rival house of Tuscany, which he detested; and the marriage had not been happy.  The new consort arrived in the course of a few weeks, entering the city in great pomp; and for a time all went happily with the young poet.  He was in a state of ecstasy with the beauty and grandeur he beheld around him—­obtained the favourable notice of the duke’s two sisters and the duke himself—­went on with his Jerusalem Delivered, which, in spite of the presence of Ariosto’s memory, he was resolved to load with praises of the house of Este; and in this tumult of pride and expectation, he beheld the duke, like one of the heroes of his poem, set out to assist the emperor against the Turks at the head of three hundred gentlemen, armed at all points, and mantled in various-coloured velvets embroidered with gold.

To complete the young poet’s happiness, or commence his disappointments, he fell in love, notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have loved in return; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli.  Among his rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and who accused him on this occasion of courting two ladies at once.