by Tasso’s Aminta, was not finally perfected until 1602.[180] Yet we may pause to remark upon the circumstances under which he wrote it.  A disappointed courtier, past the prime of manhood, feeling his true vocation to be for severe studies and practical affairs, he yet devoted years of leisure to the slow elaboration of a dramatic masterpiece which is worthy to rank with the classics of Italian literature.  During this period his domestic lot was not a happy one.  He lost his wife, quarreled with his elder sons, and involved himself in a series of lawsuits.[181] Litigation seems to have been an inveterate vice of his maturity, and he bequeathed to his descendants a coil of legal troubles.  Having married one of his daughters, Anna, to Count Ercole Trotti, he had the misery of hearing in 1596 that she had fallen an innocent victim to her husband’s jealousy, and that his third son, Girolamo connived at her assassination.  In the midst of these annoyances and sorrows, he maintained a grave and robust attitude, uttering none of those querulous lamentations which flowed so readily from Tasso’s pen.

[Footnote 179:  Lettere, p. 195.]

[Footnote 180:  In this year it was published with the author’s revision by Ciotto at Venice.  It had been represented at Turin in 1585, and first printed at Venice in 1590.]

Tasso had used the Pastoral Drama to idealize Courts.  Guarini vented all the bitterness of his soul against them in his Pastor Fido.  He also wrote from his retirement:  ’I am at ease in the enjoyment of liberty, studies, the management of my household.’[182] Yet in 1585, while on a visit to Turin, he again accepted proposals from Alfonso.  He had gone there in order to superintend the first representation of his Pastoral, which was dedicated to the Duke of Savoy.  Extremely averse to his old servants taking office under other princes, the Duke of Ferrara seems to have feared lest Guarini should pass into the Court of Carlo Emmanuele.  He therefore appointed him Secretary of State; and Guarini entered upon the post in the same year that Tasso issued from his prison.  This reconciliation did not last long.  Alfonso took the side of Alessandro Guarini in a lawsuit with his father; and the irritable poet retired in indignation to Florence.  The Duke of Ferrara, however, was determined that he should not serve another master.  At Florence, Turin, Mantua and Rome, his attempts to obtain firm foothold in offices of trust were invariably frustrated; and Coccapani, the Duke’s envoy, hinted that if Guarini were not circumspect, ‘he might suffer the same fate as Tasso.’  To shut Guarini up in a madhouse would have been difficult.  Still he might easily have been dispatched by the poniard; and these words throw not insignificant light upon Tasso’s terror of assassination.

[Footnote 181:  Guarini may be compared with Trissino in these points of his private life.  See Renaissance in Italy, vol. v. 303-305.]