His is the foremost post in point of time. In point of absolute merit he is easily outshone by his younger comrade, GARCILASO DE LA VEGA (1503-36), the bearer of a name renowned in Spanish chronicle and song. Grandson of Pérez de Guzmán, Garcilaso entered the Royal Body-guard in his eighteenth year. He quitted him like the man he was in crushing domestic rebellion, and, despite the fact that his brother, Pedro, served in the insurgent ranks, Garcilaso grew into favour with the Emperor. At Pavia, where Francis lost all save honour, Garcilaso distinguished himself by his intrepidity. For a moment he fell into disgrace because of his connivance at a secret marriage between his cousin and one of the Empress' Maids of Honour: interned in an islet on the Danube,—_Danubio, rio divino_, he calls it,—he there composed one of his most admired pieces, richly charged with exotic colouring. His imprisonment soon ended, and, with intervals of service before Tunis, and with spells of embassies between Spain and Italy, his last years were mostly spent at Naples in the service of the Spanish Viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, Marqués de Villafranca, father of Garcilaso's friend, the Duque de Alba. In the Provençal campaign the Spanish force was held in check by a handful of yeomen gathered in the fort of Muy, between Draguignan and Fréjus. Muy recalls to Spanish hearts such memories as Zutphen brings to Englishmen. In itself the engagement was a mere skirmish: for Garcilaso it was a great and picturesque occasion. The accounts given by Navarrete and García Cerezeda vary in detail, but their general drift is identical. The last of the Spanish Cæsars named his personal favourite, the most dashing of Spanish soldiers and the most distinguished of Spanish poets, to command the storming-party. Doffing his breastplate and his helmet that he might be seen by all beholders—by the Emperor not less than by the army—Garcilaso led the assault in person, was among the first to climb the breach, and fell mortally wounded in the arms of Jerónimo de Urrea, the future translator of Ariosto, and of his more intimate friend, the Marqués de Lombay, whom the world knows best as St. Francis Borgia. He was buried with his ancestors in his own Toledo, where, as even the grudging Góngora allows, every stone within the city is his monument.