There the last duke of the House of Rovere, Francesco Maria II., Tasso's schoolfellow and patron, was spending his widowed years in gloomy Spanish pride.

The mortmain of the Church was soon to fall upon Urbino, as it had already fallen on Ferrara.

Guarini wrote: 'The former Court in Italy is a dead thing.

One may see the shadow, but not the substance of it nowadays.

Ours is an age of appearances, and one goes a-masquerading all the year.' A sad but sincere epitaph, inscribed by one who had gone the round of all the Courts of Italy, and had survived the grand free life of the Renaissance.
These words close Guarini's career as courtier.