There were many Italianates before Boscán—as Francisco Imperial and Santillana; but their hour was not propitious, and Boscán is with justice regarded as the leader of the movement. He was not a poet of singular gifts, and he had the disadvantage of writing in Castilian, which was not his native language; but Boscán had the wit to see that Castilian was destined to supremacy, and he mastered it for his purpose with that same dogged perseverance which led him to undertake his more ambitious attempt unaided. He does not, indeed, appear to have sought for disciples, nor were his own efforts as successful as he believed: "perhaps because we all love our own essays." His Castilian prose is evidence of his gift of style, and his translation of Castiglione's _Cortegiano_ is a triumph of rendering fit to take its place beside our Thomas Hoby's version of the same original. But, it must be said frankly, that Boscán's most absolute success is in prose. Herrera bitterly taunts him with decking himself in the precious robes of Petrarch, and with remaining, spite of all that he can do, "a foreigner in his language." And the charge is true. In verse Boscán's defects grow very visible: his hardness, his awkward construction, his unrefined ear, his uncertain touch upon his instrument, his boisterous execution. Still, it is not as an original genius that Boscán finds place in history, but rather as an initiator, a master-opportunist who, without persuasion, by the sheer force of conviction and example, led a nation to abandon the ancient ways, and to admit the potency and charm of exotic forms. That in itself constitutes a title, if not to immortality, at least to remembrance.