Page:Amyntas, a tale of the woods; from the Italien of Torquato Tasso (IA amyntastaleofwoo00tass).pdf/17

 soon completed that tendency to thwart and mortify him on the part of the court, and to be mistrustful and dissatisfied on his own, which is sufficient perhaps to account for all that he afterwards suffered, without either rejecting or believing the stories of his passion for the Duke's sister, Leonora. Nobody was more likely than Tasso to fancy himself in love with a person so situated, whether he actually was or not; but the same disposition which renders the fancy probable, renders fifty other causes of his adversity as much so.

But to return to the Aminta.—The Italians, among their other inventions, justly claim the merit of having originated this species of Drama. Eclogues, or detached pastoral scenes, are, it is true, as old as the Greeks; and these, or even dramas in ordinary, may have suggested the whole