In 1569, Tasso was called to his father’s sickbed at Ostiglia on the Po.  He found the old man destitute and dying.  There was not money to bury him decently; and when the funeral rites had been performed by the help of money-lenders, nothing remained to pay for a monument above his graven What the Romans called pietas was a strong feature in Torquato’s character.  At crises of his life he invariably appealed to the memory of his parents for counsel and support.  When the Delia Cruscans attacked his own poetry, he answered them with a defense of the Amadigi; and he spent much time and pains in editing the Floridante, which naught but filial feeling could possibly have made him value at the worth of publication.

In the spring of the next year, Lucrezia d’Este made her inauspicious match with the Duke of Urbino, Tasso’s former playmate.  She was a woman of thirty-four, he a young man of twenty-one.  They did not love each other, had no children, and soon parted with a sense of mutual relief.  In the auturmn Tasso accompanied the Cardinal Luigi d’Este into France, leaving his MSS. in the charge of Ercole Rondinelli.  The document drawn up for this friend’s instructions in case of his death abroad is interesting.  It proves that the Gerusalemme, here called Gottifredo, was nearly finished; for Tasso wished the last six cantos and portions of the first two to be published.  He also gave directions for collection and publication of his lovesonnets and madrigals, but requested Rondinelli to bury ’the others, whether of love or other matters which were written in the service of some friend,’ in his grave.  This last commission demands comment.  That Tasso should have written verses to oblige a friend, was not only natural but consistent with custom.  Light wares like sonnets could be easily produced by a practiced man of letters, and the friend might find them valuable in bringing a fair foe to terms.  But why should any one desire to have such verses buried in his grave?  The hypothesis which has been strongly urged by those who believe in the gravity of Tasso’s liaison with Leonora, is that he used this phrase to indicate love-poems which might compromise his mistress.  We cannot, however, do more than speculate upon the point.  There is nothing to confirm or to refute conjecture in the evidence before us.

Tasso met with his usual fortunes at the Court of Charles IX.  That is to say, he was petted and caressed, wrote verses, and paid compliments.  It was just two years before the Massacre of S. Bartholomew, and France presented to the eyes of earnest Catholics the spectacle of truly horrifying anarchy.  Catherine de’Medici inclined to compromise matters with the Huguenots.  The social atmosphere reeked with heresy and cynicism.  In that Italianated Court, public affairs and religious questions were treated from a purely diplomatic point of view.  Not principle, but practical convenience ruled conduct and opinion.