It would be difficult to discover from the works of Garcilaso, that the author had spent a considerable portion of his short life in camps, and had died in the bed of military honour, the victim of his courage; for he approaches even more closely than Boscan to the tenderness of Petrarch. The general tone of his poetry is so soft and melancholy, that it is only by occasional characteristic traits, that the Spaniard is recognized; but it must be confessed that when such passages do occur, the exaggeration is striking enough.[161] In his sonnets, which are not numerous, the imitation of Petrarch is obvious; but he sometimes betrays that affectation of wit, which was still in Spain regarded as an ingenious manner of expressing vehement and profound passion.[162] One however exhibits throughout a delicacy of style and sweetness of manner, equalled by few pieces of the same kind, in the Spanish language.[163] He was not equally successful in seizing the character of the Italian canzone, of which he, as well as Boscan, was an imitator; and his reputation rests chiefly on his pastoral poems, which therefore deserve to be more particularly noticed. Since the rude dramatic eclogues of Juan de la Enzina pastoral poetry had made no progress in Spain. But Garcilaso de la Vega imitated Virgil and Sanazzar, and so happily united the romantic character with the correctness of the ancients, that his eclogues, though only one of them can be regarded as a masterpiece, surpass all Italian poems of the kind, those in the Arcadia of Sanazzar alone excepted. The fine Neapolitan sky appears to have had the same influence on Garcilaso as on Virgil and Sanazzar; and he seems to have regarded Naples as his poetical country. The first of his eclogues is by far the most beautiful, and marks an epoch in Spanish pastoral poetry. The whole composition has the metrical form of an Italian canzone. The invention is very simple. In the four introductory strophes, in which is interwoven a dedication to the Viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, the author describes, with all the simplicity which belongs to true pastoral poetry, the meeting of two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoroso, who alternately give vent to their feelings in melancholy strains. These elegiac songs reply to each other without interruption, and the relation subsisting between them gives to the whole lyric composition a proper consistence and unity. This is all the plan of the eclogue. But the glow of enthusiastic feeling, the happy choice of expression, and the harmony of versification so completely satisfactory to the ear, to be found in almost every line of these songs of sorrow, cannot fail to give delight to every mind susceptible of elegiac and beauty. Accordingly the Spanish critics are nearly unanimous in pronouncing this eclogue one of the finest works in their language. The subject of the first song is the infidelity--of the