Mature in age, I forced myself to appear young; exchanged my melancholy for gayety: affected loves I did not feel; turned my wisdom into folly, and, in a word, passed from philosopher to poet.'[179] How ill-adapted he was to this masquerade existence may be gathered from another sentence in the same letter.

'I am already in my forty-fourth year, burdened with debts, the father of eight children, two of my sons old enough to be my judges, and with my daughters to marry.' [Footnote 178: Alberi, _Relazioni_, series 2, vol.ii.pp.

423-425.] At last, abandoning this uncongenial strain upon his faculties, Guarini retired in 1582 to the villa which he had built upon his ancestral estate in the Polesine, that delightful rustic region between Adige and Po.

Here he gave himself up to the cares of his family, the nursing of his dilapidated fortune, and the composition of the _Pastor Fido_.

It is not yet the time to speak of that work, upon which Guarini's fame as poet rests; for the drama, though suggested by Tasso's _Aminta_, was not finally perfected until 1602.[180] Yet we may pause to remark upon the circumstances under which he wrote it.