Such compliments from a poet of promising fame could not be indifferent to one taught to prize genius as almost the equal of rank; nor were they the less acceptable to a lady of thirty-one, that their author had barely attained manhood. She received him with her sweetest smile, and presented him to her father the Duke, and to her sister Leonora, in terms which secured him a most flattering reception. Love and chivalry were fashions of the day, cultivated in common by all who strove to shine in the brilliant atmosphere of Ferrara, and the genius of Torquato lent itself gracefully to both. In many phases of Italian literature, it has been difficult for posterity to decide whether the fervour of amorous poetry was kindled by successful passion, or fanned by affected sentiment. The like mystery overhangs the love-notes which Tasso warbled in these palace-bowers. That his aspirations were not free from pedantry is proved by their, on one occasion, selecting the form of a public disputation, after the most approved scholastic models, wherein, during three days, he maintained against all comers, a series of abstract propositions regarding love and its developments. And though such singular exhibitions may sometimes have been suggested by deeper feelings, or accepted as the incense of the heart, they were doubtless in other cases but tournaments of gallantry, in which the name of some fair lady was adopted, to inspire the combatants to a victory extending not beyond the lists. Equally platonic might have been such love-tissued lyrics as our minstrel ever and anon dedicated to the sister Princesses, without any scandal, and probably without compromise of their purity. One of these, in supposed allusion to the favoured sister, having been specially excepted from the sentence of posthumous destruction pronounced upon many of his fugitive pieces by the poet when about to take a journey, must have ranked high in his estimation, and is thus translated by Glassford:-- "Now that my charmer breathes another air In woods and fields, how barbarous to remain In this deserted place, where grief, and pain, And darkness dwell, a region of despair! Nothing is joyful here, and nothing fair: Love grows a boor, and with the rustic train Now feeds his flock, and now in sultry plain Handles the scythe, or guides the pondrous share. O, happy wood! O smiling banks and gay, Where every beast, and every plant and stone, Have learned the use of generous customs mild. What shall not yield to her whose eyes alone Can, as they lend or take their light away, Polish the groves, and make the town a wild."