Garcilaso is also the author of a small epistle in which he has endeavoured to seize the true horatian tone. It is not sufficiently important to deserve particular notice, but it is easy to recognize in it the fine tact of this author, to whom the critic, however severely he may judge his faults, cannot deny the title of the second classic poet of Spain. DIEGO DE MENDOZA. The third classic poet, and at the same time the first classic prose writer of Spain, is Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza,[169] a native of Granada, where he was born in the beginning of the sixteenth century, but in what year is not known. Descended from one of the first familes of the country, he had before him the prospect of high honours, which, as he was one of five children, his parents destined him to reach through the church. Being educated for the clerical profession, he received what was then considered a learned education. Besides the classical languages of antiquity, he acquired the Hebrew and Arabic. At the university of Salamanca, he studied scholastic philosophy, theology, and ecclesiastical law. While yet a student he was the inventor of the comic romance or novel, for it was at Salamanca that he wrote his celebrated work, the Life of Lazarillo de Tormes. Having become as conspicuous for a vigorous and sound understanding as for his wit and learning, the Emperor Charles V. who perceived that his talents might be employed with advantage in public business, drew him from his studies. He had not long left the university when he was appointed imperial envoy to Venice. He availed himself of the opportunities which this situation afforded to cultivate an intercourse with learned Italians, and to obtain an intimate knowledge of the spirit of Italian literature. Before his departure for Italy, he appears to have formed an acquaintance with Boscan; but he was patriot enough not to despise the old Spanish poetry. Though he loved the Italian poets, he preferred the ancients, and in particular Horace, who, like himself a man of the world, might occasionally assist him in his journey through the slippery path of political life; and certainly few poets could have divided themselves between literature and politics with as much dexterity as Mendoza. He was, however, far from being a cringing courtier. His low opinion of diplomatic dignity is stated frankly, and even somewhat coarsely, in one of his epistles, in which he exclaims:--“O these ambassadors, the perfect ninnies! when kings wish to cheat they begin with us. Our best business is to take care that we do no harm, and indeed never to do or say any thing that we may not run the risk of making ourselves understood.”[170] The ambassador of a prince of such deep dissimulation as Charles V. might naturally enough form an unfavourable opinion of his office; but he who could speak his mind in this manner, even when at his post, must have retained some of the spirit of old Spanish freedom.