of Tuscany; and Ferdinand made him offers of protection so handsome, that they excited his suspicion.  The self-tormenting poet thought they savoured more of hatred to the Este family, than honour to himself.[10] He did not accept them.  He did nothing at Rome but make friends, in order to perplex them; listen to his critics, in order to worry himself; and perform acts of piety in the churches, by way of shewing that the love-scenes in the Jerusalem were innocent.  For the bigots had begun to find something very questionable in mixing up so much love with war.  The bloodshed they had no objection to.  The love bearded their prejudices, and excited their envy.

Tasso returned to Ferrara, and endeavoured to solace himself with eulogising two fair strangers who had arrived at Alfonso’s court,—­Eleonora Sanvitale, who had been newly married to the Count of Scandiano (a Tiene, not a Boiardo, whose line was extinct), and Barbara Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, her mother-in-law.  The mother-in-law, who was a Juno-like beauty, wore her hair in the form of a crown.  The still more beautiful daughter-in-law had an under lip such as Anacreon or Sir John Suckling would have admired,—­pouting and provoking,—­[prokaloymenon phileama].  Tasso wrote verses on them both, but particularly to the lip; and this Countess of Scandiano is the second, out of the three Leonoras, with whom Tasso was said by his friend Manso to have been in love.  The third, it is now ascertained, never existed; and his love-making to the new, or second Leonora, goes to shew how little of real passion there was in the praises of the first (the Princess Leonora), or probably of any lady at court.  He even professed love, as a forlorn hope, to the countess’s waiting-maid.  Yet these gallantries of sonnets are exalted into bewilderments of the heart.

His restlessness returning, the poet now condescended to craft a second time.  Expecting to meet with a refusal, and so to be afforded a pretext for quitting Ferrara, he applied for the vacant office of historiographer.  It was granted him; and he then disgusted the Medici by pleading an unlooked-for engagement, which he could only reconcile to his applications for their favour by renouncing his claim to be believed.  If he could have deceived others, why might he not have deceived them?

All the lurking weakness of the poet’s temperament began to display itself at this juncture.  His perplexity excited him to a degree of irritability bordering on delirium; and circumstances conspired to increase it.  He had lent an acquaintance the key of his rooms at court, for the purpose (he tells us) of accommodating some intrigue; and he suspected this person of opening cabinets containing his papers.  Remonstrating with him one day in the court of the palace, either on that or some other account, the man gave him the lie.  He received in return a blow on the face, and is said by Tasso to have brought a set of his kinsmen to assassinate him, all of whom