1572. Alfonso
offered him a place in his own household with an annual stipend worth
about 88 _l_. of our money. No duties were attached to this post, except
the delivery of a weekly lecture in the university. For the rest, Tasso
was to prosecute his studies, polish his great poem, and augment the
luster of the court by his accomplishments.[12] It was of course
understood that the _Gerusalemme_, when completed, should be dedicated
to the Duke and shed its splendor on the House of Este. Who was happier
than Torquato now? Having recently experienced the discomforts of
uncongenial service, he took his place again upon a firmer footing in
the city of his dreams. The courtiers welcomed him with smiles. He was
once more close to Leonora, basking like Rinaldo in Armida's garden,
with golden prospects of the fame his epic would achieve to lift him
higher in the coming years.

[Footnote 11: See _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 80: to Giacomo Buoncompagno.]

[Footnote 12: 'Egli mi disse, allor che suo mi fece: Tu canta, or che
se' 'n ozio.']

No wonder that the felicity of this moment expanded in a flower of
lyric beauty which surpassed all that Tasso had yet published. He
produced _Aminta_ in the winter of 1572-3. It was acted with
unparalleled applause; for this pastoral drama offered something
ravishingly new, something which interpreted and gave a vocal utterance
to tastes and sentiments that ruled the age. While professing to exalt
the virtues of rusticity, the _Aminta_ was in truth a panegyric of Court
life, and Silvia reflected Leonora in the magic mirror of languidly
luxurious verse. Poetry melted into music. Emotion exhaled itself in
sensuous harmony. The art of the next two centuries, the supreme art of
song, of words subservient to musical expression, had been indicated.
This explains the sudden and extraordinary success of the _Aminta_. It
was nothing less than the discovery of a new realm, the revelation of a
specific faculty which made its author master of the heart of Italy. The
very lack of concentrated passion lent it power. Its suffusion of
emotion in a shimmering atmosphere toned with voluptuous melancholy,
seemed to invite the lutes and viols, the mellow tenors, and the trained
soprano voices of the dawning age of melody. We may here remember that
Palestrina, seven years earlier in Rome, had already given his Mass of
Pope Marcello to the world.

Lucrezia d'Este, now Duchess of Urbino, who was anxious to share the
ra