During the four years which glided by in this charmed existence, the youthful bard appears to have remained faithful to his first friend Lucrezia; and it was not until her marriage to the Prince of Urbino in 1571, that the superior charms of her younger and more sedate sister effected for her that alleged conquest of his heart, which long-continued assertions have almost established as a truth. It would be interesting could we fix the comparative encouragement which the bard enjoyed from the sisters, and ascertain the amount of favour severally vouchsafed him; on this much contested but conjectural ground we shall not, however, enter.[*187] Love-making, which is frequently a science rather than a passion, becomes almost invariably so where its flame is habitually fed by poetry or pedantry, and such were naturally the loves of Tasso in the atmosphere of a court whose polish was heightened by these accomplishments. The siren-notes of Italian song draw their melody from epithets calculated to soothe the ear even when they reach not the heart, and seldom afford evidence as to which of these organs they are meant to fascinate. This uncertainty gives life to a tribe of commentators, and has originated volumes of idle speculation as to the material existence of Laura and Beatrice, the platonic or passionate intercourse of Torquato with the Princesses of Este. The language of sonnets and _canzoni_ is equally suited to express or to feign, to indicate or to veil, heartfelt homage; and those of Tasso thus are capable of whatever interpretation best accords with the temperament or the theory of his critics. Such, for example, are the tributes of his muse on the marriage of Lucrezia, wherein, however, a suspicion of somewhat undue tenderness might attach to such lines as-- "Sad as a mourning convoy seems to me Your merry dances, and your Hymen's torch Will to my funeral pile a flame supply."[188] [Footnote *187: Cf. D'OVIDIO, _Il carattere, gli amori e le sventure di T.T._ in _Studi Critici_ (Napoli, 1879); see also CAMPORI e SOLERTI, _op. cit._, _supra_, p. 229, note *1.] [Footnote 188: "Liete danze vegg'io, che per me sono Funebri pompe ed un istessa face Nell'altrui nozze, e nel mio rogo è accesa."] In a _canzone_ of the same date, he makes that god descend from Parnassus to preside at her nuptials[189]; but the deity seems to have turned a deaf ear to this tuneful invocation, and we have elsewhere seen that no favour of his crowned the inauspicious union. [Footnote 189: "Lascia Imeneo Parnasso, e qui descende."]