The assertions of a
professed wit and hyperbolist are not to be taken for granted; yet it is
difficult to say to what shifts improvidence may not be reduced.

The singer of the house of Este would now, it might have been supposed,
be happy. He had leisure; he had money; he had the worldly honours that
he was fond of; he occupied himself in perfecting the _Jerusalem_; and he
wrote his beautiful pastoral, the _Aminta_, which was performed before
the duke and his court to the delight of the brilliant assembly. The
duke's sister Lucrezia, princess of Urbino, who was a special friend of
the poet, sent for him to read it to her at Pesaro; and in the course of
the ensuing carnival it was performed with similar applause at the
court of her father-in-law. The poet had been as much enchanted by the
spectacle which the audience at Ferrara presented to his eyes, as the
audience with the loves and graces with which he enriched their stage.
The shepherd Thyrsis; by whom he meant himself, reflected it back upon
them in a passage of the performance. It is worth while dwelling on this
passage a little, because it exhibits a brief interval of happiness in
the author's life, and also chews us what he had already begun to
think of courts at the moment he was praising them. But he ingeniously
contrives to put the praise in his own mouth, and the blame in another's.
The shepherd's friend, Mopsus (by whom Tasso is thought to have meant
Speroni), had warned him against going to court

"Pero, figlio,
Va su l'avviso," &c.

"Therefore, my son, take my advice. Avoid
The places where thou seest much drapery,
Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries,
And such new-fanglements. But, above all,
Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering
Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble."
"What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;--
"Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see
Things as they are not, ay and hear them too.
That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold
Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver,
Heavy with wealth, are baskets full of bladders.[6]

* * * * *

The very walls there are so strangely made,
They answer those who talk; and not in syllables,
Or bits of words, like echo in our woods,
But go the whole talk over, word for word,
With something else besides, that no one said[7].
The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers,
Chairs