ion, Guarini was free to follow his own inclinations. He
therefore established himself at the Court of the Grand Duke, into whose
confidence he entered upon terms of flattering familiarity. Ferdinando
de'Medici 'fell in love with him as a man may with a fine woman,' says
his son Alessandro in one of his apologetic writings. This, however,
meant but little; for compliments passed freely between princes and
their courtiers; which, when affairs of purse or honor were at stake,
soon turned to discontent and hatred. So it fared with Guarini at
Florence. His son, Guarino, made a marriage of which he disapproved, but
which the Grand Duke countenanced. So slight a disagreement snapped the
ties of friendship, and the restless poet removed to the Court of
Urbino. There the last duke of the House of Rovere, Francesco Maria II.,
Tasso's schoolfellow and patron, was spending his widowed years in
gloomy Spanish pride. The mortmain of the Church was soon to fall upon
Urbino, as it had already fallen on Ferrara. Guarini wrote: 'The former
Court in Italy is a dead thing. One may see the shadow, but not the
substance of it nowadays. Ours is an age of appearances, and one goes
a-masquerading all the year.' A sad but sincere epitaph, inscribed by
one who had gone the round of all the Courts of Italy, and had survived
the grand free life of the Renaissance.

These words close Guarini's career as courtier. He returned to Ferrara
in 1604, and in 1605 carried the compliments of that now Pontifical city
to Paul V. in Rome on his election to the Papacy. Upon this occasion
Cardinal Bellarmino told him that he had inflicted as much harm on
Christendom by his _Pastor Fido_ as Luther and Calvin by their heresies.
He retorted with a sarcasm which has not been transmitted to us, but
which may probably have reflected on the pollution of Christian morals
by the Jesuits. In 1612 Guarini died at Venice, whither he was summoned
by one of his innumerable and interminable lawsuits.

Bellarmino's censure of the _Pastor Fido_ strikes a modern reader as
inexplicably severe. Yet it is certain that the dissolute seventeenth
century recognized this drama as one of the most potent agents of
corruption. Not infrequent references in the literature of that age to
the ruin of families and reputations by its means, warn us to remember
how difficult it is to estimate the ethical sensibilities of society in
periods remote from our own.[183] In the course of the analysis w