the sister of the Duke of Parma, of whom he grew so fond, that, though two years of marriage brought them no children, he could scarce be persuaded to suffer her divorce on account of sterility.  This happened, however, and the prince’s affections were next engaged by the daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.  The lady had a portion of three hundred thousand crowns, which entirely charmed the frugal-minded Duke William, and Vincenzo married her, after certain diplomatic preliminaries demanded by the circumstances, which scarcely bear statement in English, and which the present history would blush to give even in Italian.

Indeed, he was a great beast, this splendid Vincenzo, both by his own fault and that of others; but it ought to be remembered of him, that at his solicitation the most clement lord of Ferrara liberated from durance in the hospital of St. Anna his poet Tasso, whom he had kept shut in that mad-house seven years.  On his delivery, Tasso addressed his “Discorso” to Vincenzo’s kinsman, the learned Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga; and to this prelate he submitted for correction the “Gerusalemme,” as did Guarini his “Pastor Fido.”

When Vincenzo came to power he found a fat treasury, which he enjoyed after the fashion of the time, and which, having a princely passion for every costly pleasure, he soon emptied.  He was crowned in 1587; and on his coronation day rode through the streets throwing gold to the people, after the manner of the Mantuan Dukes.  He kept up an army of six thousand men, among a population of eighty thousand all told; and maintained as his guard “fifty archers on horseback, who also served with the arquebuse, and fifty light-horsemen for the guard of his own person, who were all excellently mounted, the Duke possessing such a noble stud of horses that he always had five hundred at his service, and kept in stable one hundred and fifty of marvelous beauty.”  He lent the Spanish king two hundred thousand pounds out of his father’s sparings; and when the Archduchess of Austria, Margherita, passed through Mantua on her way to wed Philip II. of Spain, he gave her a diamond ring worth twelve thousand crowns.  Next after women, he was madly fond of the theatre, and spent immense sums for actors.  He would not, indeed, cede in splendor to the greatest monarchs, and in his reign of fifteen years he squandered fifty million crowns!  No one will be surprised to learn from a contemporary writer in Mantua, that this excellent prince was adorned with all the Christian virtues; nor to be told by a later historian, that in Vincenzo’s time Mantua was the most corrupt city in Europe.  A satire of the year 1601, which this writer (Maffei) reduces to prose, says of that period:  “Everywhere in Mantua are seen feasts, jousts, masks, banquets, plays, music, balls, delights, dancing.  To these, the young girls,” an enormity in Italy, “as well as the matrons, go in magnificent dresses; and even the churches are scenes of love-making.