years later at Mantua, when the well-known artist and architect Buontalenti painted the scenery.  This fact, however, shows how primitive was the state of the theatre at this time; and how the spectators, little accustomed to histrionic representations, were content to witness dramas that had no plot or action, and to follow the progress of a beautiful poem rather than a dramatic development.  The Aminta long retained its popularity as an acted poem in Italy.  It was often represented in open-air theatres, like the ancient Greek plays, in gardens or in woods, where Nature supplied the scenery, and the scalinata or stage was only some rising piece of ground.  Traces of one of these sylvan theatres may still be seen in the grounds of the Villa Madama, on the eastern slopes of Monte Mario near Rome; and one cannot help thinking that a poem so redolent of the open air, so full of Nature and still natural life, which Tasso himself called Favola Boschereccia, or a Sylvan Fable, was better adapted for such a stage than for the heated air and artificial surroundings of the Italian theatres.  Such a pastoral was in entire keeping with the manners of the Italian peasants; and the scenes of Arcadia which it represented might be seen almost everywhere in the beautiful valleys and chestnut-covered hills of their native land.  The exquisite loveliness of the climate, and the simplicity and indolence of the people, lent themselves naturally to such ideal dreams.  And Tasso in his Aminta only gave expression to the same happy thoughts which the same scenery and the same people had ages before inspired in the mind of Virgil when he wrote his Eclogues.

After a few months’ quiet sojourn with Lucrezia d’Este, now Duchess of Urbino, at that court, he was appointed secretary to the Duke of Ferrara, in room of his rival Pigna, who for this reason became his mortal enemy, and stirred up against him the persecution which embittered his whole subsequent life.  But standing high, as he did, in the favour of the duke, he enjoyed for a while a season of calm repose, during which he finished the great epic poem, which was eagerly looked for throughout Italy.  Anxious to make this cherished work of his genius as perfect as possible, he unfortunately was imprudent enough to submit portions of his work to all his learned friends for their opinion.  Besides in this way getting the most contradictory advices, sacrificing his own independent judgment, and imposing an unworthy yoke upon his genius, the result was that the fragments of the poem passed from hand to hand, and so got into the possession of the printers, who, eager to profit by the public curiosity, pieced them together, and clandestinely printed them.  Even in this fragmentary form, the cantos that appeared in various cities of Italy were received with unbounded applause.  The author, as may be imagined, was intensely annoyed at this wrong that had been done to him, and wrote to the Pope, to the Republic of