This narrative, together with the conversations and songs to which it gives rise, concludes the second book. In the third book the story assumes the character of a fairy tale. The nymphs lead their protectress, together with the rest of the party, through a thick forest to the castle of the wise Felicia, who is represented as a kind of priestess to the goddess Diana. The description of the wonders and magnificence of the castle occupies a great portion of the third book. The wise Felicia conducts the party to a superb hall of state, where they behold a numerous collection of majestic statues, representing Roman emperors, Castilian knights, and Castilian ladies. Even a place is found for the statue of a Moorish knight, of whose conflicts with the Christians a long history is related in this sanctuary of the goddess Diana. By means of enchantment Felicia cures Sireno of the torments of love. At length, in the sixth book, the poet releases his shepherds and shepherdesses from Felicia’s palace, and the reader for the first time becomes acquainted with the shepherdess Diana. She attaches the blame of her infidelity to her parents, by whom, during the absence of Sireno, she was forced to give her hand to another. In the following scenes, to the conclusion of the seventh book, where Montemayor’s labour terminates, the history of the principal characters makes no further progress. Some of the other lovers in the romance are, however, united according to their wishes. This composition, in which it is easy to recognize the uncultivated genius of a poet, who, to give vent to the emotions of his soul, deemed it necessary to wander through the whole region of romance, can only be regarded by the unprejudiced critic as a fantastical frame-work, serving to display pictures of the feelings and a philosophy of the heart, which constitute the prominent features of the whole poem. To paint romantic fidelity under the most fascinating and various forms, and at the same time to exhibit in a poetic point of view the theory of that fidelity, which even in a poem could only be verified by facts, was the idea which guided Montemayor’s inventive fancy, and the execution of which bears the full impression of his genius. The versified portion of the romance is the soul of the whole composition. A series of lyric poems, partly in the Italian and partly in the old Castilian style, are introduced; but these compositions are strikingly distinguished from the eclogues of Saa de Miranda by an epigrammatic poignancy, which frequently degenerates into antiquated subtlety.[202] But this epigrammatic turn usually imparts a more pointed precision to the lyrical expression, and a degree of consistency to the whole composition, which in no way injures its pastoral simplicity;[203] and when judged according to the characteristic form of the popular songs, called _Villancicos_, it by no means presents, to Spaniards in particular, the idea of too much refinement or incongruity with