The greater part of the third book of these poems is occupied by a paraphrastic translation of the Greek poem of Hero and Leander. Nothing of the kind had been previously known in the Spanish language. The metrical form which Boscan chose for his translation, was that of rhymeless iambics, or an imitation of the blank verse of the Italians. The language is so pure and elegant, the versification so natural, and the tone of the narrative so soft, and at the same time so elevated, that it is impossible not to be pleased even with the prolixity which the influence of the taste for romantic poetry has introduced into this free translation. To this translation succeeds a poem in the Italian style, entitled a _Capitulo_, and some epistles in tercets. The _Capitulo_, as it is called, is a love elegy, abounding in pleasing ideas and images, but on the whole too much spun out, like most Italian poems of the same kind. It has also its full share of genuine Spanish hyperbole and amorous despair.[155] The best of his epistles is, “The Answer to Diego Mendoza,” who was himself the first epistolary poet among the Spaniards, and whom it will soon be necessary to notice more at length. After the new poetical career was opened, these authors vied in imitating the epistles of Horace; but it is plain that the elegiac tenderness of Tibullus was constantly present to the mind of Boscan. In his Answer to Mendoza, the descriptions of domestic and rural life charm by their exquisite delicacy, and possess a still more powerful interest than the moral reflections, though these are unaffected and noble, and conceived in the true spirit of didactic poetry.[156]