ort arrived in the course of a few weeks, entering the city
in great pomp; and for a time all went happily with the young poet. He
was in a state of ecstasy with the beauty and grandeur he beheld around
him--obtained the favourable notice of the duke's two sisters and the
duke himself--went on with his _Jerusalem Delivered_, which, in spite of
the presence of Ariosto's memory, he was resolved to load with praises of
the house of Este; and in this tumult of pride and expectation, he beheld
the duke, like one of the heroes of his poem, set out to assist the
emperor against the Turks at the head of three hundred gentlemen, armed
at all points, and mantled in various-coloured velvets embroidered with
gold.

To complete the young poet's happiness, or commence his disappointments,
he fell in love, notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with
the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have
loved in return; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli. Among his
rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and
who accused him on this occasion of courting two ladies at once.

Guarini's accusation has been supposed to refer to the duke's sister
Leonora, whose name has become so romantically mixed up with the poet's
biography; but the latest inquiries render it probable that the allusion
was to Laura Peperara.[3] The young poet, however, who had not escaped
the influence of the free manners of Italy, and whose senses and vanity
may hitherto have been more interested than his heart, rhymed and
flattered on all sides of him, not of course omitting the charms of
princesses. In order to win the admiration of the ladies in a body, he
sustained for three days, in public, after the fashion of the times,
_Fifty Amorous Conclusions_; that is to say, affirmations on the subject
of love; doubtless to the equal delight of his fair auditors and himself,
and the creation of a good deal of jealousy and ill-will on the part of
such persons of his own sex as had not wit or spirits enough for the
display of so much logic and love-making.

In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia
by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness; but the
continuation of his _Jerusalem_, an _Oration_ spoken at the opening of
the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora's sister Lucrezia with the
Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired
li