It would be idle to deny that the _Galatea_ has many defects of the school to which it belongs, but it must always have a singular interest as being the first serious literary experiment made by a writer of consummate genius. Cervantes had the model, the sacred model, perpetually before his eyes, and he copied it (if not with conviction) with a grim determination which speaks for itself. He, too,--the _ingenio lego_--must be interpolating his learning, and referring to Virgil, Ovid, Propertius and the rest of them, with an air of intimate familiarity. Twenty years afterwards, when he had outgrown these little affectations, and was penning the amusing passage in which he banters Lope's childish pedantry,[59] the brilliant humorist must surely have smiled as he remembered his own performances in the same kind. He does honour to the grand tradition of prolixity by putting wiredrawn conceits into the mouths of shepherds who are much more like love-sick Abelards than like Comatas or Lacon, and, when his own stock of scholastic subtleties is ended, he has no scruple in allotting to Lenio and Tirsi[60] a short summary of the arguments which had been used long before by Filone and Sofía in his favourite book, León Hebreo's _Dialoghi di Amore_.[61] Had he taken far more material than he actually took, he would have been well within his rights, according to the prevailing ideas of literary morality. Whatever illiterate admirers may say, it is certain that Cervantes followed the fashion in borrowing freely from his predecessors. No careful reader of the _Galatea_ can doubt that its author either had Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ on his table, or that he knew it almost by heart.[62] His appreciation for the _Arcadia_ was unbounded, and in the _Viaje del Parnaso_[63] the sight of Posilipo causes him to link together the names of Virgil and Sannazaro:-- Vímonos en un punto en el paraje, Do la nutriz de Eneas piadoso Hizo el forzoso y último pasaje. Vimos desde allí á poco el más famoso Monte que encierra en sí nuestro hemisfero, Más gallardo á la vista y más hermoso. Las cenizas de Títiro y Sincero Están en él, y puede ser por esto Nombrado entre los montes por primero. In the _Galatea_, enthusiasm takes the form of conscientious imitation. It cannot be mere coincidence that Ergasto's song--_Alma beata et bella_--is echoed by Elicio as _O alma venturosa_; that such a _ritornello_ as _Ricominciate, o Muse, il vostro pianto_ reappears as _Pastores, entonad el triste canto_; that _Ponete fin, o Muse, al vostro pianto_ is rendered as _Pastores, cesad ya del triste canto_. The sixth book of the _Galatea_ is an undisguised adaptation of Sannazaro's work. In view of these resemblances, and many others indicated by Professor Scherillo,[64] the large indebtedness of Cervantes to Sannazaro cannot be denied.