Guarini’s accusation has been supposed to refer to the duke’s sister Leonora, whose name has become so romantically mixed up with the poet’s biography; but the latest inquiries render it probable that the allusion was to Laura Peperara.[3] The young poet, however, who had not escaped the influence of the free manners of Italy, and whose senses and vanity may hitherto have been more interested than his heart, rhymed and flattered on all sides of him, not of course omitting the charms of princesses.  In order to win the admiration of the ladies in a body, he sustained for three days, in public, after the fashion of the times, Fifty Amorous Conclusions; that is to say, affirmations on the subject of love; doubtless to the equal delight of his fair auditors and himself, and the creation of a good deal of jealousy and ill-will on the part of such persons of his own sex as had not wit or spirits enough for the display of so much logic and love-making.

In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness; but the continuation of his Jerusalem, an Oration spoken at the opening of the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora’s sister Lucrezia with the Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections; and a journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into scenes that were not only totally new, but otherwise highly interesting to the singer of Godfrey of Boulogne.  The occasion of it was a visit of the cardinal, his master, to the court of his relative Charles the Ninth.  It is supposed that his Eminence went to confer with the king on matters relative to the disputes which not long afterwards occasioned the detestable massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Before his departure, Tasso put into the hands of one of his friends a document, which, as it is very curious, and serves to illustrate perhaps more than one cause of his misfortunes, is here given entire.

Memorial left by Tasso on his departure to France.

“Since life is frail, and it may please Almighty God to dispose of me otherwise in this my journey to France, it is requested of Signor Ercole Rondinelli that he will, in that case, undertake the management of the following concerns: 

“In the first place, with regard to my compositions, it is my wish that all my love-sonnets and madrigals should be collected and published; but with regard to those, whether amatory or otherwise, which I have written for any friend, my request is, that they should be buried with myself, save only the one commencing “Or che l’aura mia dolce altrove spira.”  I wish the publication of the Oration spoken in Ferrara at the opening of the academy, of the four books on Heroic Poetry,