d the cordon of
royalty was being drawn tighter and tighter yearly in the Italy of his
day. That a sympathy of no commonplace kind subsisted between this
delicate and polished princess and her sensitively gifted poet, is
apparent. But it may be doubted whether Tasso had in him the stuff of a
grand passion. Mobile and impressible, he wandered from object to object
without seeking or attaining permanence. He was neither a Dante nor a
Petrarch; and nothing in his _Rime_ reveals solidity of emotion. It may
finally be said that had Leonora returned real love, or had Tasso felt
for her real love, his earnest wish to quit Ferrara when the Court grew
irksome, would be inexplicable. Had their _liaison_ been scandalous, as
some have fancied, his life would not have been worth two hours'
Purchase either in the palace or the prison of Alfonso.

Whatever may be thought of Tasso's love-relations to these sisters--and
the problem is open to all conjectures in the absence of clear
testimony--it is certain that he owed a great deal to their kindness.
The marked favor they extended to him, was worth much at Court: and
their maturer age and wider experience enabled them to give him many
useful hints of conduct. Thus, when he blundered into seeming rivalry
with Pigna (the Duke's secretary, the Cecil of that little state), by
praising Pigna's mistress, Lucrezia Bendidio, in terms of imprudent
warmth, it was Leonora who warned him to appease the great man's anger.
This he did by writing a commentary upon three of Pigna's leaden
Canzoni, which he had the impudence to rank beside the famous three
sisters of Petrarch's Canzoniere. The flattery was swallowed, and the
peril was averted. Yet in this first affair with Pigna we already hear
the grumbling of that tempest which eventually ruined Tasso. So eminent
a poet and so handsome a young man was insupportable among a crowd of
literary mediocrities and middle-aged gallants. Furthermore the
brilliant being, who aroused the jealousies of rhymesters and of lovers,
had one fatal failing--want of tact. In 1568, for example, he set
himself up as a target to all malice by sustaining fifty conclusions in
the Science of Love before the Academy of Ferrara. As he afterwards
confessed, he ran the greatest risks in this adventure; but who, he
said, could take up arms against a lover? Doubtless there were many
lovers present; but none of Tasso's eloquence and skill in argument.

In 1569, Tasso was called to h