When the Delia Cruscans attacked his own poetry, he answered them with a defense of the _Amadigi_; and he spent much time and pains in editing the _Floridante_, which naught but filial feeling could possibly have made him value at the worth of publication.
In the spring of the next year, Lucrezia d'Este made her inauspicious match with the Duke of Urbino, Tasso's former playmate.

She was a woman of thirty-four, he a young man of twenty-one.

They did not love each other, had no children, and soon parted with a sense of mutual relief.
In the auturmn Tasso accompanied the Cardinal Luigi d'Este into France, leaving his MSS.

in the charge of Ercole Rondinelli.

The document drawn up for this friend's instructions in case of his death abroad is interesting.