Two sisters of the reigning prince lived in the palace, and by their beauty and accomplishments imparted to the court an air of great refinement.  The younger, the famous Leonora of Este, was about thirty years of age at this time, and therefore considerably older than Tasso.  A severe and protracted illness had shut her out from the festivities connected with her brother’s marriage, and communicated to her mind a touch of sadness, and to her features a spiritual delicacy which greatly increased her attractiveness.  The numerous writers by whom she is mentioned talk with rapture, not only of her beauty and genius, but also of her saintly goodness, which was so great that a single prayer of hers on one occasion was said to have rescued Ferrara from the wrath of Heaven evinced in the inundation of the Po.  In the society of these ladies Tasso spent a great deal of his time; and perhaps his intercourse with them, unconstrained by court conventionalities, was not altogether free from those tender feelings which the charms of a lovely and accomplished woman, whatever her rank, might readily excite in a poetic temperament.  The author of the Sorrows of Werther did not, therefore, perhaps draw exclusively upon his imagination in picturing the rise and struggle of an unhappy passion for Leonora d’Este in the bosom of the young poet.  Whatever may be said regarding this passion, however, there can be no doubt that his heart was at this time enslaved by younger and humbler beauties.  He had much of the temperament of his father, who, although exemplary in his single and married life, was distinguished for his Platonic gallantry, and cherished a poetic attachment, according to the fashion of the day, for various ladies throughout his career, such as Genevra Malatesta, the beautiful Tullia of Arragon, and Marguerite de Valois, sister of Henry III.  These follies were but the froth of his genius, however; and in this respect his son followed his example.  Lucrezia Bendidio, a young lady at court gifted with singular beauty and musical talent, reigned for a while supreme over his affections.  But she had other suitors, including the author of the Pastor Fido, and the poet Pigna, who was the secretary and favourite of the reigning duke.  The Princess Leonora tried to cure Tasso of this passion by persuading him to illustrate the verses of his rival Pigna.  Nothing came of this first love, therefore, and the object of it soon after married into the house of Machiavelli.

In the congenial atmosphere of the court of Ferrara, surrounded by the flower of beauty and chivalry, stimulated by the associations of his master Ariosto, which every object around recalled, and encouraged by the praises of the sweetest lips in the palace, Tasso set himself diligently to the composition of the great work of his life, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the plan of which he had formed before he left the University of Padua.  Among the treasures of the Vatican Library