The idea of a scholar and a poet, full of years and honours, passing the quiet evening of his life in a tranquil retirement in his own house on his own land, is a pleasing one. But it is to be feared that in the case of the author of the "Pastor Fido" it would be a fallacious one. Guarini would not have come to live on his estate if he could have lived contentedly in any city. We may picture him to ourselves sitting under his fig-tree, or pacing at evening under the trees of the straight avenue between his house and the village, or on the banks of one of the sluggish streams slowly finding their way through the flat fields towards the Po; but I am afraid the picture must be of one "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," with eyes bent earthwards, and discontented mind: "remote," because to the Italian mind all places beyond the easy reach of a city are so; "unfriended," because he had quarrelled with everybody; "melancholy," because all had gone amiss with him, and his life had been a failure; "slow," because no spring of hope in the mind gave any elasticity to his step. One other "haunt" of the aged poet must, however, be mentioned, because it is a very characteristic one. During this last residence at Guarina, he hired an apartment at Ferrara, selecting it in a crowded part of the centre of the city, especially frequented by the lawyers, that he might be in the midst of them, when he went into the city on the various business connected with his interminable lawsuits. The most crowded part of the heart of the city of Ferrara! It would be difficult to find any such part now. But the picture offered to the imagination, of the aged poet, professor, courtier, haunting the courts, the lawyers' chambers, leaving his, at least, tranquil retreat at St. Bellino, to drag weary feet through the lanes of the city in which he had in earlier days played so different a part, is a sad one. But there are people who like contention so much that such work is a labour of love to them. And certainly, if the inference may be drawn from the fact of his never having been free from lawsuits in one quarrel or another, Guarini must have been one of these. But it is passing strange that the same man should have been the author of the "Pastor Fido." They pursued him to the end, these litigations; or he pursued them! And at last he died, not at Guarina, but at Venice, on the 7th of October, 1612, where, characteristically enough, he chanced to be on business connected with some lawsuit.