hey were
inadequate to the expenses of long journeys and the maintenance of a
becoming state. He therefore returned to Ferrara, considerably burdened
with debts; and this was just the time at which Tasso's mental
derangement began to manifest itself. Between 1575 and 1579, the date of
Tasso's imprisonment at Sant' Anna, the two men lived together at the
Court. Guarini's rivalry induced him at this period to cultivate poetry
with such success that, when the author of the _Gerusalemme_ failed,
Alfonso commanded him to take the vacant place of Court poet. There is
an interesting letter extant from Guarini to his friend Cornelio
Bentivoglio, describing the efforts he made to comply with the Duke's
pleasure. 'I strove to transform myself into another man, and, like a
playactor, to reassume the character, manners and emotions of a past
period. Mature in age, I forced myself to appear young; exchanged my
melancholy for gayety: affected loves I did not feel; turned my wisdom
into folly, and, in a word, passed from philosopher to poet.'[179] How
ill-adapted he was to this masquerade existence may be gathered from
another sentence in the same letter. 'I am already in my forty-fourth
year, burdened with debts, the father of eight children, two of my sons
old enough to be my judges, and with my daughters to marry.'

[Footnote 178: Alberi, _Relazioni_, series 2, vol. ii. pp. 423-425.]

At last, abandoning this uncongenial strain upon his faculties, Guarini
retired in 1582 to the villa which he had built upon his ancestral
estate in the Polesine, that delightful rustic region between Adige and
Po. Here he gave himself up to the cares of his family, the nursing of
his dilapidated fortune, and the composition of the _Pastor Fido_. It is
not yet the time to speak of that work, upon which Guarini's fame as
poet rests; for the drama, though suggested 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