son of Charles V. obtained a brilliant victory over the Turks, the magnificence of the rhythm would be sufficiently attractive, though the ideas conveyed in the torrent of sonorous syllables possessed less poetic beauty than really belong to them.[216] Occasionally, however, Herrera’s ideas degenerate into fantastical hyperboles; for instance, when boasting of his hero, he says, that Don John of Austria, that glorious conqueror of the infidels and the elements, combines within himself “whatever of heavenly power animates terrestrial bodies;” and that therefore “the fixed earth, the extended waters, the circumambent air, and the ever glowing flames depend on him, so that through the secret control which he exercises over earth, water, air, and fire, all these elements are his works.”[217] But passages of real beauty occur in Herrera’s odes, which afford a sufficient compensation for this sort of bombast.[218] Among the odes for which Herrera has chosen a softer theme, the prize of superiority has been justly awarded to the Ode to Sleep. It is one of those compositions which may be said to be single in their kind. The graceful choice of language, the picturesque effect, the delicate keeping in the composition, and the finish given to all the details in strict conformity with the true spirit of the theme, impart to this ode or cancion a lyric beauty which must render it in all ages an object of admiration, not only to the lover, but to the critic of poetry.[219] The other poems of Herrera, though extremely numerous, require only a slight notice.[220] His best sonnets, which are among the happiest imitations of Petrarch in the Spanish language, are characterized by the recurrence of some of the author’s favourite images, as for example, the comparison of his mistress to light, or the evening star,[221] &c. He is frequently very successful in the management of these similes; but at other times he falls into strange absurdities, such as making the “curling waves of gold of his sweet light float in the wind.”[222] But extravagant tropes of this kind could not be very offensive to Spanish taste, which had been accustomed to indulge the orientalisms of the old national style, and they were indeed not only tolerated but esteemed. It might have been expected that a writer possessing so much critical judgment as Herrera, would, as an imitator of Petrarch, have endeavoured to naturalize in his native tongue, the simplicity of the Italian poet; but he was too much a Spaniard to be pleased with such simplicity. His elegies, and other lyric compositions in the Italian syllabic measure, have all the same character.