cruel sufferings. After the publication of Rinaldo he had expressed his views upon the epic in some Discourses on the Art of Poetry, which committed him to a distinct theory and gained for him the additional celebrity of a philosophical critic. The next five years seem to have been the happiest of Tasso's life, although his father's death in 1569 caused his affectionate nature profound pain. Young, handsome, accomplished in all the exercises of a well-bred gentleman, accustomed to the society of the great and learned, illustrious by his published works in verse and prose, he became the idol of the most brilliant court in Italy. The first two books of his five-hundred-odd love poems were addressed to Lucrezia Bendidio and Laura Peverara. The princesses Lucrezia and Eleonora d'Este, both unmarried, both his seniors by about ten years, took him under their protection. He was admitted to their familiarity. He owed much to the constant kindness of both sisters. In 1570 he traveled to Paris with the cardinal. Frankness of speech and a certain habitual want of tact caused a disagreement with his worldly patron. He left France next year, and took service under Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara, the Cardinal's brother. The most important events in Tasso's biography during the following four years are the completion of Aminta in 1573 and Gerusalemme Liberata in 1574. Aminta is a pastoral drama of very simple plot, but of exquisite lyrical charm. It appeared at the moment when music, under the influence of composers like Palestrina, Monteverdi, Marenzio and others, was becoming the dominant art of Italy. The honeyed melodies and sensuous melancholy of Aminta exactly suited and interpreted the spirit of its age. Its influence, in opera and cantata, was felt through two successive centuries. Aminta, played by courtiers in an island of Po river where the duke had his Giardino di delizie, was first printed by Aldus Manutius the Younger in Venice in January 1581. A Croatian translation of Aminta by the poet Dominko Zlatarić, Ljubmir, pripovijest pastijerska, was printed one year before the original, also in Venice. The Gerusalemme Liberata The Gerusalemme Liberata or Jerusalem Delivered occupies a larger space in the history of European literature, and is a more considerable work. Yet the commanding qualities of this epic poem, those which revealed Tasso's individuality, and which made it immediately pass into the rank of classics, beloved by the