In the latter province the path of a beginner was clearly marked out. Too obscure, as yet, to venture upon a line of his own, and anxious, if possible, to conciliate the general body of readers, Cervantes was practically compelled to choose between the chivalresque romance and the pastoral. Not knowing that he was born to kill the former kind, he decided in favour of the latter--and for obvious reasons. The Knight-errantries of Amadís and his comrades had been in vogue from the fourteenth--perhaps even from the thirteenth[34]--century onwards. _Amadís de Gaula_ was printed at least as early as 1508,[35] and had begotten a numerous tribe; but, when Cervantes was feeling his way in the ninth decade of the sixteenth century, popular enthusiasm for these tales of chivalry was cooling. The pastoral novel was the latest literary fashion. It would, possibly, be too much to say that the Spanish pastoral novel was a mere offshoot of the chivalresque romances; yet it is undeniable that the pastoral element is found in chivalresque stories of comparatively early date. For example, in the ninth book of _Amadís_, entitled _Amadís de Grecia_ (1530) the shepherd Darinel and the shepherdess Sylvia are among the characters; in the first two parts of _Don Florisel de Niquea_ (1532) the hero masquerades as a shepherd and pays his court to the shepherdess Sylvia; in the fourth part of _Don Florisel de Niquea_ (1551) the eclogues of Archileo and Laris are early instances of what was destined to become a tedious convention.[36] These, however, are simple foreshadowings of an independent school of fiction which was in full vigour while Cervantes was still a boy.