A more immediate factor in the evolution of Spanish letters was the Catalan Boscá, whom it is convenient to call by his Castilian name, JUAN BOSCÁN ALMOGAVER (?1490-1542). A native of Barcelona, Boscán served as a soldier in Italy, returned to Spain in 1519, and, as we know from Garcilaso's Second Eclogue, was tutor to Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, whom the world knows as the Duque de Alba. Boscán's earliest verses are all in the old manner; nor does he venture on the Italian hendecasyllabic till the year 1526, just before resigning his guardianship of Alba. His conversion was the work of the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Navagiero, an accomplished courtier, ill represented by his _Viaggio fatto in Spagna_. Being at Granada in the year 1526, Navagiero met Boscán, who has left us an account of the conversation:—"Talking of wit and letters, especially of their varieties in different tongues, he inquired why I did not try in Castilian the sonnets and verse-forms favoured by distinguished Italians. He not only suggested this, but pressed me urgently to the attempt. Some days later, I made for home, and, because of the length and loneliness of the journey, thinking matters over, I returned to what Navagiero had said, and thus I first attempted this sort of verse; finding it hard at the outset, since it is very intricate, with many peculiarities, varying greatly from ours. Yet, later, I fancied that I was progressing well, perhaps because we all love our own essays; hence I continued, little by little, with increasing zeal." This passage is a _locus classicus_. Ticknor justly observes that no single foreigner ever affected a national literature more deeply and more instantly than Navagiero, and that we have here a first-hand account, probably unique in literary history, of the first inception of a revolution by the earliest, if not the most conspicuous, actor in it. We have at last reached the parting of the ways, and Boscán presents himself as a guide to the Promised Land. The astonishing thing is that Boscán, a Barcelonese by birth and residence, ignores Auzías March.