from whom Tasso borrows the above description of the reward awaiting ungrateful women, as also the fiction of the tell-tale walls and chairs in Mopso’s account of the court (I. ii).  And this Elpino, whose pipe elsewhere

      correr fa di puro latte i fiumi
    E stillar melle dalle dure scorze, (III. i.)

later becomes the Alete of the Gerusalemme,

    Gran fabbro di calunnie adorne in modi
    Novi che sono accuse e paion lodi. (II. 58.)

His flattery had not shielded the unhappy poet against the ill-will of the minister[174].

Again, the picture drawn by Tirsi of the ideal court (I. ii.) is a glowing compliment to that of the Estensi and to Duke Alfonso himself.  It is contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso.  In this character it has been customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing him in the Gerusalemme, and was the first to apply the ominous word ‘madman’ to the unfortunate poet.  To Speroni’s play Canace Tasso may have been indebted for the free measures with which he diversified his blank verse, as likewise for the line: 

    Pianti, sospiri e dimandar mercede;[175]

though it must not be supposed that there is any resemblance in style between the Aminta and Speroni’s revolting and frigid declamation of butchery and lust.  Nor did the debt pass unnoticed.  In 1585 Guarini, who had long since parted with the sinking ship of the younger poet’s friendship, was ready to flatter Speroni with the declaration ’che tanto di leggiadria e sempre paruto a me, che abbia nell’ Aminta suo conseguito Torquato Tasso, quant’ egli fu imitatore della Canace[176].’

Lastly, in the hopeless suit of Aminta to Silvia, criticism has not failed to see a reference to the supposed relation between Tasso and Leonora d’ Este.  That Tasso, who in his overwrought imagination no doubt harboured a sentimental regard for the princess, was conscious of the parallel is in some degree probable; that he should have identified his creation with himself is, in view of the solution of the dramatic situation, utterly impossible.  Indeed, it would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that his care to identify himself with Aminta’s confidant may have been an unusual but not untimely piece of caution on his part, to prevent poisoned gossip connecting him too closely with his hero.

The question of the influence of the Aminta on later works and on European thought generally opens up large and difficult issues.  It is one of those works which we are not justified in treating from the purely literary point of view.  If we wish to see it in its relation to contemporary society, and to estimate its influence upon subsequent literature, we cannot afford to neglect its ethical bearings.  This inquiry must necessarily lead us beyond the sphere of literary criticism proper, but it is a task which one who has undertaken to give an account of pastoral literature has no right to shirk.