These then are the writings I possess of the Marchioness." He composed several pieces, madrigals and sonnets, under the genial influence of this exchange of thoughts.

It was a period at which his old love of versifying revived with singular activity.

Other friends, like Tommaso Cavalieri, Luigi del Riccio, and afterwards Vasari, enticed his Muse to frequent utterance.

Those he wrote for the Marchioness were distributed in manuscript among his private friends, and found their way into the first edition of his collected poems.

But it is a mistake to suppose that she was the sole or even the chief source of his poetical inspiration.
We shall see that it was his custom to mark his feeling for particular friends by gifts of drawings as well as of poems.