Although the pastoral drama is a legitimate as well as a beautiful kind of composition, it is not capable of very great extension or variety. Tasso’s successors might conceivably surpass him as poets, but could only repeat him as dramatists. His only serious competitor is his contemporary GIOVANNI BATTISTA GUARINI, the author of the _Pastor Fido_ (1537-1612). Guarini, the descendant of a Veronese family already distinguished in letters, was, like Tasso, attached to the court of the Duke of Ferrara; but, unlike Tasso, was a man of the world, and was employed in several important missions, especially one to solicit the crown of Poland for his master, where he nearly died of a Polish inn. Like most of the Duke’s literary protégés, he became estranged from him, and spent the later part of his life in roaming from court to court in quest of employment, and litigating with his children and the world at large. His disposition was quarrelsome; literary disputes had long severed him from Tasso; it is to his honour that when the latter was unable to watch over his own works, he took care of and published his lyrical poems. The most brilliant episode of Guarini’s life was the publication of his _Pastor Fido_ in 1590; but not the least troublesome was the literary controversy in which it involved him. These disputes, born rather of the idleness than of the conscientiousness of the Italian literati, are now forgotten, and the _Pastor Fido_, a direct challenge to the _Aminta_, is allowed an honourable though a second place. Its relation to its predecessor may be compared to that of the Corinthian order to the Ionic. Guarini has sought to compensate for the lack of natural, spontaneous inspiration by superior artifice of plot: his characters are more numerous, and his action more intricate and ingenious. This would not have availed him much if he had not been a poet, but this he certainly was, though with less of the _nascitur_ and more of the _fit_ than usual. Tasso was conscious of a truer inspiration, and conveys his claim to the virtual invention of a new mode in poetry in the verses which he has placed in the mouth of Love appearing in the disguise of a shepherd, thus rendered by Leigh Hunt: _After new fashion shall these woods to-day Hear love discoursed; and it shall well be seen That my divinity is present here In its own person, not its ministers. I will inbreathe high fancies in rude hearts; I will refine, and render dulcet sweet, Their tongues; because, wherever I may be, Whether with rustic or heroic men, There am I Love; and inequality, As it may please me, I do equalise; And ’tis my crowning glory and great miracle To make the rustic pipe as eloquent Even as the subtlest harp._