The Spanish chivalresque novel is thought by many sound judges to derive directly from Portugal,[37] which may, in its turn, have received the material of its knightly tales--and perhaps something more than the raw material--from Celtic France.[38] The conclusion is disputed,[39] but whatever opinion may prevail as regards the source of the books of chivalry, it seems fairly certain that the pastoral novel was introduced into Spain by a Portuguese writer whose inspiration came to him from Italy. In a general sense, Virgil is the father of the pastoral in all Latin lands: the more immediate source of the Italian pastoral is believed to be Boccaccio's _Ameto_, the model of Tasso and Guarini as also of Bembo and Sannasaro. Jacopo Sannazaro,[40] a Neapolitan courtier of Spanish descent, is the connecting link between the literatures of Italy and the Peninsula during the first part of the sixteenth century. His vogue in the latter was enhanced through the instrumentality of the renowned poet Garcilaso de la Vega,[41] the "starry paladin" of Spain. No small part of Garcilaso's work is a poetic recasting of Sannazaro's themes,[42] and we can scarcely doubt that Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ suggested the first genuine Spanish pastoral to the Portuguese, Jorge de Montemôr, so called from his birthplace. The point has been contested, for Montemôr's _Siete libros de la Diana_ are often said to have been published in 1542,[43] and the first Spanish translation of Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ (by Diego López de Ayala) does not appear to have been issued till 1547.[44] It may, however, be taken as established that Montemôr's _Diana_ was not really printed much earlier than 1558-9,[45] when it at once became the fashion.[46] The argument sets forth that in the city of León, by the banks of the Ezla, dwelt the beautiful shepherdess Diana, beloved of the shepherds Sireno and Silvano; the shepherdess favours Sireno, who is suddenly called away to foreign countries, whence he returns a year later to find a change of times and hearts, Diana being wedded to the shepherd Delio: "and here beginneth the first book, and in the remainder you shall find very diverse histories of events which in sooth befell, howbeit travestied under a pastoral style." Montemôr's diverse histories, which owe something to Bernardim Ribeiro's _Saudades_ or _Hystoria de Menina e moça_[47] (a novel that begins as a chivalresque romance and ends as a pastoral tale), took Western Europe by storm. They may have been in Spenser's mind when he wrote _The Shepherd's Calendar_: they were unquestionably utilized by Sir Philip Sidney in _The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_, and it has been alleged with more or less plausibility that--possibly through Bartholomew Yong's version of Montemôr, which was finished in 1583, though not published till fifteen years later--the episode of Felismena has been transferred from the _Diana_ to the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_.