and grace,
with a high, noble forehead, deep gray melancholy eyes, regular
well-cut features, and hair of a light brown. He had the advantage of
all the culture of his time. His manners were refined by familiar
intercourse with the highest nobles of the land, and his mind richly
furnished, not only with the stores of classic literature, but also
with the literary treasures of his own country; while a residence,
more or less prolonged, in the most famous towns, and among the most
romantic scenes of Italy, had widened his mental horizon and expanded
his sympathies. He had already mounted almost to the highest step of
the literary ladder. Nothing could exceed the tokens of respect with
which he was everywhere received. But, in spite of all these
advantages, Tasso was now beginning to realise the shadows that
accompany even the most splendid literary career. His own experience
was now confirming to him the truth of what his father had often
sought to impress upon his mind,--that the favour of princes was
capricious, and that a life of dependence at a court was of all others
the most unsatisfactory. Constitutionally disposed to melancholy,
irritable and sensitive to the last degree, he brooded over the
fancied wrongs and slights which he had received; and at first he was
disposed to accept the advice of his father's friend, the well-known
Sperone, who strongly dissuaded him from going to the court of
Ferrara, painting the nature of the life he would lead there in the
most forbidding colours. It would have been well had he listened to
this wise counsel, strengthened as it was by his own better judgment;
for in that case he might have been spared the mortifications which
made the whole of his after life one continued martyrdom. But
recovering from a protracted illness, into which the agitation of his
spirits threw him, when on a visit to his father at the court of the
Duke of Mantua, he passed from the depths of despondency to the
opposite extreme of eagerness, and, fired by ambition, he resolved to
enter upon the path to distinction which now opened before him. And
here we come to the crisis of his life.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a state of things existed in
Italy somewhat similar to that which existed in the Highlands of
Scotland in earlier times. Each Highland chief maintained an
independent court, and among his personal retainers a bard who should
celebrate his deeds was considered indispensable. So was i