return to Ferrara, he was not only received into the service of the duke with a salary of some fifteen golden scudi a-month, but told that he was exempted from any particular duty, and might attend in peace to his studies.  Balzac affirms, that while Tasso was at the court of France, he was so poor as to beg a crown from a friend; and that, when he left it, he had the same coat on his back that he came in.[5] The assertions of a professed wit and hyperbolist are not to be taken for granted; yet it is difficult to say to what shifts improvidence may not be reduced.

The singer of the house of Este would now, it might have been supposed, be happy.  He had leisure; he had money; he had the worldly honours that he was fond of; he occupied himself in perfecting the Jerusalem; and he wrote his beautiful pastoral, the Aminta, which was performed before the duke and his court to the delight of the brilliant assembly.  The duke’s sister Lucrezia, princess of Urbino, who was a special friend of the poet, sent for him to read it to her at Pesaro; and in the course of the ensuing carnival it was performed with similar applause at the court of her father-in-law.  The poet had been as much enchanted by the spectacle which the audience at Ferrara presented to his eyes, as the audience with the loves and graces with which he enriched their stage.  The shepherd Thyrsis; by whom he meant himself, reflected it back upon them in a passage of the performance.  It is worth while dwelling on this passage a little, because it exhibits a brief interval of happiness in the author’s life, and also chews us what he had already begun to think of courts at the moment he was praising them.  But he ingeniously contrives to put the praise in his own mouth, and the blame in another’s.  The shepherd’s friend, Mopsus (by whom Tasso is thought to have meant Speroni), had warned him against going to court

  “Pero, figlio,
  Va su l’avviso,” &c.

  “Therefore, my son, take my advice.  Avoid
  The places where thou seest much drapery,
  Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries,
  And such new-fanglements.  But, above all,
  Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering
  Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble.” 
  “What place is that?” said I; and he resumed;—­
  “Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see
  Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. 
  That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold
  Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver,
  Heavy with wealth, are baskets full of bladders.[6]

* * * * *

The very walls there are so strangely made,
They answer those who talk; and not in syllables,
Or bits of words, like echo in our woods,
But go the whole talk over, word for word,
With something else besides, that no one said[7]. 
The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers,
Chairs, and whatever furniture there is