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240 gave to his Neapolitan patron, and, though afterwards the servant of princes, died in poverty. When twelve years old Tasso lost his mother, poisoned, as was thought, by her relatives, to rob her husband of her portion. We have spoken of the Jesuitry which marred his early education; afterwards, however, he was brought up in a much saner manner. At Urbino, where his father found a temporary refuge, afterwards in busy Venice and at Padua, where he ineffectually studied law, he had become a master of classics, mathematics, and philosophy, and had not only read but annotated Dante. By the time (1565) when he became attached to the court of Ferrara, he had published his Rinaldo, in form an imitation of Ariosto, but indicative of a new spirit; and had less fortunately signalised the termination of a two years' residence at Bologna by a scrape in which he had involved himself by reciting a pasquinade upon the university, which not unnaturally caused him to be accused of having written it. This adventure at least evinced serious deficiency in tact—an endowment more essential than genius in the situation where he now found himself.

Tasso's immediate obligations at the court of Ferrara were to Luigi, Cardinal d'Este, brother of the Duke, who seems to have expected nothing from him but duteous attendance, and the completion of the great poem of which the Rinaldo had given promise, and whose theme was still unfixed. Nothing appears to the Cardinal's disadvantage; nor is any especial reproach addressed to his high-spirited brother the Duke, except the heavy taxation he imposed to maintain a magnificence disproportioned to his revenue. The two great ladies of the court, the Duke's sisters, were decidedly sympathetic,