The strangest light is cast upon his state of mind by the efforts which he now made to place two of his sister's children in Court-service.

He even tried to introduce one of them as a page into the household of Alfonso.
Eventually, Alessandro Sersale was consigned to Odoardo Farnese, and Antonio to the Duke of Mantua.

In 1585 new sources of annoyance rose.
Two members of the Delia Crusca Academy in Florence, Leonardo Salviati and Bastiano de'Rossi, attacked the _Gerusalemme_.

Their malevolence was aroused by the panegyric written on it by Cammillo Pellegrini, a Neapolitan, and they exposed it to pedantically quibbling criticism.
Tasso replied in a dignified apology.

But he does not seem to have troubled himself overmuch with this literary warfare, which served meanwhile to extend the fame of his immortal poem.