country is reduced to the sole government of a prince,’ he writes, ’the man who serves his prince will serve his country, a duty both natural and binding upon all.’[177] Accordingly, soon after his marriage to Taddea of the noble Bendedei family, he entered the service of Alfonso II.  This was in 1567.  Tasso, in his quality of gentleman to Cardinal d’Este, had already shed lustre on Ferrara through the past two years.  Guarini first made Tasso’s friendship at Padua, where both were Eterei and house-guests of Scipione Gonzaga.  The two poets now came together in a rivalry which was not altogether amicable.  The genius of Tasso, in the prime of youth and heyday of Court-favor, roused Guarini’s jealousy.  And yet their positions were so different that Guarini might have been well satisfied to pursue his own course without envy.  A married and elder man, he had no right to compete in gallantry with the brilliant young bachelor.  Destined for diplomacy and affairs of state, he had no cause to grudge the Court poet his laurels.  Writing in 1595, Guarini avers that ’poetry has been my pastime, never my profession’; and yet he made it his business at Ferrara to rival Tasso both as a lyrist and as a servant of dames.  Like Tasso, he suffered from the spite of Alfonso’s secretaries, Pigna and Montecatino, who seem to have incarnated the malevolence of courtiers in its basest form.  So far, there was a close parallel between the careers of the two men at Ferrara.

[Footnote 176:  See Renaissance in Italy, vol. ii. pp. 299, 300.]

[Footnote 177:  Lettere del Guarini, Venezia, 1596, p. 2.]

But Guarini’s wealth and avowed objects in life caused the duke from the first to employ him in a different kind of service.  Alfonso sent him as ambassador to Venice, Rome, and Turin, giving him the rank of Cavaliere in order that he might perform his missions with more dignity.  At Turin, where he resided for some time, Guarini conceived a just opinion of the growing importance of the House of Savoy.  Like all the finest spirits of his age, Tassoni, Sarpi, Chiabrera, Marino, Testi, he became convinced that if Italy were to recover her independence, it could only be by the opposition of the Dukes of Savoy to Spain.  How nearly the hopes of these men were being realized by Carlo Emmanuele, and how those hopes were frustrated by Roman intrigues and the jealousy of Italian despots, is matter of history.  Yet the student may observe with interest that the most penetrating minds of the sixteenth century already discerned the power by means of which, after the lapse of nearly three hundred years, the emancipation of Italy has been achieved.