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"I thought that in princely dwellings folk would exhibit a higher
moral quality since they possess all the copious plenitude that may adorn
our nature. I found it the reverse Uranio. Men of high lineage were swift
to promise, but vastly slack in performance, and I found them the foes of
all simple goodness; gentle and reposed in aspect, but swollen in pride
like the whole sea. A race fair to outward seeming only...
What elsewhere is deemed virtue, here is held to be a defect. Nay,
shame is imputed to the deed that is not crooked, to the love that is not
simulated, to the simplicity of holiness, the faith that may not be
broken, the guileless heart and the clean hand --- all these are held as
the marks of low spirit, mere dull stupidities, and trifles to call up a
laugh. Trick and lie; fraud and robbery; spoliation hypocritically
disguised; to grow fat with gifts and ruin another; to find one's glory in
another's fall; these are the "manly" distinctions of this perfidious
crew... They are unrepressed by shame; respecting neither the claims of
affection nor those of blood; with no memory of any act of kindness. In a
word, nothing is more worshipful, holier, more conspicuously right, than
all the exact opposite of their vast hunger for court distinctions, their
ravenous appetite for gain."
Torquato Tasso
Born at Sorrento
3/11/1544
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