From early youth Boscan was a poet; at first he wrote in the old Spanish style; but he was still young when his attention was called to the classic productions of Italy, and he was incited to adopt the Italian versification and elegiac style, so to enlarge the sphere of Spanish poetry. It was in the pear 1525 that Andrea Navagero came as ambassador from Venice to the court of the emperor Charles V. at Toledo. The Venetian was of noble birth, and so addicted to study as to injure his health by the severity of his application.[11] A state of melancholy ensued, only to be alleviated by travel. He was familiar with Greek and Latin literature, and cultivated a refined taste that could scarcely be satisfied by the most finished productions of his native land, while he exercised the severest judgment, even to the destruction of his own. At Toledo he fell in with Boscan and Garcilaso. Their tastes, their love of poetry and of the classics, were the same; and the superior learning of the Italian led him to act the preceptor to his younger friends. Through his arguments they were led to quit the composition of their national redondillas, and to aspire to introduce more elegance and a wider scope of ideas into their native poetry. Boscan, in his dedication of a volume of his poems, which included several of Garcilaso's, to the duchess of Soma, thus mentions the circumstances that led them to contemplate this change: "Conversing one day on literary subjects with Navagero the Venetian ambassador (whom I wish to mention to your ladyship as a man of great celebrity in these days), and particularly upon the different genius of various languages, he inquired of me why, in Castilian, we never attempted sonnets and other kinds of composition used by the best writers in Italy; he not only said this, but urged me to set the example. A few days after I departed home, and musing on a variety of things during a long and solitary journey, frequently reflected on Navagero's advice, and thus at length began the attempt. I found at first some difficulty, as this kind of versification is extremely complex, and has many peculiarities different from ours; but afterwards, from the partiality we naturally entertain towards our own productions, I thought I had succeeded well, and gradually grew warm and eager in the pursuit. This, however, would not have been sufficient to stimulate me to proceed, had not Garcilaso encouraged me, whose judgment, not only in my opinion, but in that of the whole world, is esteemed a certain rule. Praising uniformly my essays, and giving me the highest possible mark of approbation in following himself my example, he induced me to devote myself exclusively to the undertaking.