Nothing can exceed the living tenderness of the deserted shepherd's complaints; and we feel as if the tone of fond grief could go no further, till the interest becomes heightened by the more touching nature of Nemoroso's laments: under this name it is said that Garcilaso introduced Boscan. Boscan was a happy husband and father. In his epistle to Mendoza, he mentions his former passions as a troubled dream, where all seemed love, but was really hate; and he does not allude to the death of any object of his affections. Mr. Wiffen, with the natural fondness of a translator and an antiquarian, delights in putting together the scattered and half lost fragments of his poet's life, and to eke out the history of his mind by probable conjecture, and is inclined to believe that Boscan was intended, and that being dear friends, Garcilaso pleased his imagination and heart, in making them brother shepherds in his verses. It is an agreeable idea, and not improbable: the reader may believe according as his inclinations leads him. But not to linger longer on preliminary matter, we select the most beautiful stanzas of the eclogue, which will confirm to the Spanish reader the opinion that Garcilaso is the most harmonious, easy, elegant, and tender poet Spain ever produced: soft and melancholy, he never errs, except in sometimes following the fashion of his country in reasoning on his feelings, instead of simply declaring them. Such fault, however, is not to be found in the following verses, wherein Salicio complains of his Galatea's inconstancy, recalling the while the dear images of her former tenderness. "Through thee the silence of the shaded glen,[18] Through thee the horror of the lonely mountain, Pleased me no less than the resort of men: The breeze, the summer wood, the lucid fountain, The purple rose, white lily of the lake, Were sweet for thy sweet sake; For thee, the fragrant primrose, dropt with dew, Was wished when first it blew. O how completely was I in all this Myself deceiving! O the different part That thou wert acting, covering with a kiss Of seeming love, the traitor in thy heart! This my severe misfortune, long ago, Did the soothsaying raven, sailing by On the black-storm, with hoarse sinister cry, Clearly presage: in gentleness of woe Flow forth, my tears! 't is meet that ye should flow.