The old friendship of happier days with Tasso had not survived the wear and tear of life at court. It was known that they no longer saw or spoke with each other. And everybody--if not of their contemporaries, at least of subsequent writers--jumped to the conclusion that the writer of the "Aminta" and the writer of the "Pastor Fido" must be jealous of each other. Jealousy there certainly was. But some frailer and more mortal female than the Muse was the cause of it. The Abate Serassi in his life of Tasso admits that Tasso first gave offence to Guarini by a sonnet in which he endeavoured to alienate the affections of a lady from him, by representing him as a faithless and fickle lover. The lines in which Tasso attacked his brother poet are, it must be admitted, sharp enough! Si muove e si raggira Instabil piu che arida fronde ai venti; Nulla fe, null' amor, falsi i tormenti Sono, e falso l'affeto ond' ei sospira. Insidioso amante, ama e disprezza Quasi in un punto, e trionfando spiega Di femminile spoglie empi trofei.[53]... The attack was savage enough, it must be admitted, and well calculated to leave a lasting wound. Guarini immediately answered the cruel sonnet by another, the comparative weakness of which is undeniable. Questi che indarno ad alta mira aspira Con altrui biasmi, e con bugiardi accenti, Vedi come in se stesso arruota i denti, Mentre contra ragion meco s'adira. Di due fiamme si vanta, e stringe e spezza Piu volte un nodo; e con quest' arti piega (Chi 'l crederebbe!) a suo favore i Dei.[54]... There is reason to think that the accusation of many times binding and loosing the same knot, may have hit home. The sneer about bending the gods to favour him, alludes to Tasso's favour at court, then in the ascendant, and may well have been as offensive to the Duke and the ladies of his court as to the object of his satire. Both angry poets show themselves somewhat earth-stained members of the Paduan "Etherials." But the sequel of the estrangement was all in favour of the greater bard. Tasso, in desiring a friend to show his poems in manuscript to certain friends, two or three in number, on whose opinion he set a high value, named Guarini among the number. And upon another occasion wishing to have Guarini's opinion as to the best of two proposed, methods of terminating a sonnet, and not venturing to communicate directly with him, he employed a common friend to obtain his brother-poet's criticism. Tasso had also in his dialogue entitled the "Messagero" given public testimony to Guarini's high intellectual and civil merits. But Guarini appears never to have forgiven the offence. He never once went to see Tasso in his miserable confinement in the hospital of St. Anne; nor, as has been seen, would hold any communication with him.