[98] The “Menina e Moça” is the graceful little fragment of a prose pastoral, by Bernardino Ribeyro, which dates from about 1500, and has always been admired, as indeed it deserves to be. It gets its name from the two words with which it begins,--“Small and young”; a quaint circumstance, showing its extreme popularity with those classes that were little in the habit of referring to books by their formal titles. But whatever may have been the cause, Cervantes now wrote all he ever published of his Galatea, which was licensed on the 1st of February, 1584, and printed in the December following. He himself calls it “An Eclogue,” and dedicates it, as “the first fruits of his poor genius,”[99] to the son of that Colonna under whose standard he had served, twelve years before, in the Levant. It is, in fact, a prose pastoral, after the manner of Gil Polo’s; and, as he intimates in the Preface, “its shepherds and shepherdesses are many of them such only in their dress.”[100] Indeed, it has always been understood that Galatea, the heroine, is the lady to whom he was soon afterwards married; that he himself is Elicio, the hero; and that several of his literary friends, especially Luis Barahona de Soto, whom he seems always to have overrated as a poet, Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Lainez, and some others, are disguised under the names of Lauso, Tirsi, Damon, and similar pastoral appellations. At any rate, these personages of his fable talk with so much grace and learning, that he finds it necessary to apologize for their too elegant discourse.[101] [99] “Estas primicias de mi corto ingenio.” Dedicatoria. [100] “Muchos de los disfrazados pastores della lo eran solo en el hábito.” [101] “Cuyas razones y argumentos mas parecen de ingenios entre libros y las aulas criados que no de aquellos que entre pagizas cabañas son crecidos.” (Libro IV. Tomo II. p. 90.) This was intended, no doubt, at the same time, as a compliment to Figueroa, etc.