in her secret caves the bones of men devoured, and 'mighty poets
in their misery dead.' He might even have turned the pages of Aretino's
_Dialogo delle Corti_, and have observed how the ruffian who best could
profit by the vices of a Court, refused to bow his neck to servitude in
their corruption. But no man avoids his destiny, because few draw wisdom
from the past and none foresee the future. To Ferrara Tasso went with a
blithe heart. Inclination, the custom of his country, the necessities of
that poet's vocation for which he had abandoned a profession, poverty
and ambition, vanity and the delights of life, combined to lure him to
his ruin.

He found Ferrara far more magnificent than Urbino. Pageants, hunting
parties, theatrical entertainments, assumed fantastic forms of splendor
in this capital, which no other city of Italy, except Florence and
Venice upon rare occasions, rivaled. For a long while past Ferrara had
been the center of a semi-feudal, semi-humanistic culture, out of which
the Masque and Drama, music and painting, scholarship and poetry,
emerged with brilliant originality, blending mediaeval and antique
elements in a specific type of modern romance. This culminated in the
permanent and monumental work began by Boiardo in the morning, and
completed by Ariosto in the meridian of the Renaissance. Within the
circuit of the Court the whole life of the Duchy seemed to concentrate
itself. From the frontier of Venice to the Apennines a tract of fertile
country, yielding all necessaries of life, corn, wine, cattle, game,
fish, in abundance, poured its produce into the palaces and castles of
the Duke. He, like other Princes of his epoch, sucked each province dry
in order to maintain a dazzling show of artificial wealth. The people
were ground down by taxes, monopolies of corn and salt, and sanguinary
game-laws. Brutalized by being forced to serve the pleasures of their
masters, they lived the lives of swine. But why repaint the picture of
Italian decadence, or dwell again upon the fever of that phthisical
consumption? Men like Tasso saw nothing to attract attention in the
rotten state of Ferrara. They were only fascinated by the hectic bloom
and rouged refinement of its Court. And even the least sympathetic
student must confess that the Court at any rate was seductive. A more
cunningly combined medley of polite culture, political astuteness,
urbane learning, sumptuous display, diplomatic love-intrigue and genial
art