It was nothing less than the discovery of a new realm, the revelation of a specific faculty which made its author master of the heart of Italy.

The very lack of concentrated passion lent it power.

Its suffusion of emotion in a shimmering atmosphere toned with voluptuous melancholy, seemed to invite the lutes and viols, the mellow tenors, and the trained soprano voices of the dawning age of melody.

We may here remember that Palestrina, seven years earlier in Rome, had already given his Mass of Pope Marcello to the world.
Lucrezia d'Este, now Duchess of Urbino, who was anxious to share the raptures of _Aminta_, invited Tasso to Pesaro in the summer of 1573, and took him with her to the mountain villa of Casteldurante.

She was an unhappy wife, just on the point of breaking her irksome bonds of matrimony.