But a love of the country, of country scenery and country occupations, pervades nearly every thing Saa de Miranda wrote. The very animals seem to be treated by him with more naturalness and familiarity than they are elsewhere; and throughout the whole of his poetry, there is an ease and amenity that show it comes from the heart. Why he wrote so much in Spanish, it is not now easy to tell. Perhaps he thought the language more poetical than his native Portuguese, or perhaps he had merely personal reasons for his preference. But whatever may have been the cause, six out of his eight eclogues are composed in natural, flowing Castilian; and the result of the whole is, that, while, on all accounts, he is placed among the four or five principal poets of his own country, he occupies a position of enviable distinction among those of the prouder nation that soon became, for a time, its masters.[10] [10] There are many editions of the Works of Saa de Miranda; but the second and best (s. l. 1614, 4to) is preceded by a life of him, which claims to have been composed by his personal friends, and which states the odd fact, that the lady of whom he was enamoured was so ugly, that her family declined the match until he had well considered the matter; but that he persevered, and became so fondly attached to her, that he died, at last, from grief at her loss. His merits as a poet are well discussed by Ant. das Neves Pereira, in the fifth volume of the “Memorias de Litt. Portugueza” of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisboa, 1793, pp. 99, etc. Some of his works are in the Spanish Index Expurgatorius, 1667, p. 72. Montemayor, Polo, and their followers in prose pastorals, scattered bucolic verse of all kinds freely through their fictions; and sometimes, though seldom, they added to the interest and merit of their stories by this sort of ornament. One of those who had least success in it was Cervantes; and of those who had most, Balbuena stands in the first rank. His “Golden Age” contains some of the best and most original eclogues in the language; written, indeed, rather in the free, rustic tone of Theocritus, than with the careful finish of Virgil, but not on that account the less attractive.[11] [11] Of the poets whose eclogues are found in their prose pastorals I shall speak at large when I examine this division of Spanish romantic fiction. Montemayor, however, it should be noted here, wrote other eclogues, which are in his Cancionero, 1588, ff. 111, etc.