in _tercetos_,[337] but Tasso--_o meu Tasso_---Ariosto, Petrarca, and others are mentioned.[338] In form and sound some of his _canções_ are not unworthy of Petrarca, but they are more homely and bucolic, have more _saudade_ and less definite images, no concrete pictures like that of _la stanca vecchierella pellegrina_ of the fourth _Canzone_. His second source of inspiration was his native Minho and the transparent waters and _fresca praia_ of the Lima. He was never happier than when wandering _lungo l’amate rive_, and this gives a pleasant reality to his eclogues. His muse, _a bosques dada e a fontes cristalinas_, sings not only of the conventional ‘roses and lilies’ but of honeysuckle, of cherries red in May, grapes heavy with dew, golden apples, nuts, acorns, the trout so plentiful that they can be caught with the hand, hares, partridges, doves, the thrush and the nightingale, and mentions oak, ash, elm, poplar, beech, hazel, chestnut, and arbutus. These eclogues, written in various metres, sometimes with _leixapren_ or internal rhyme, are collected in _O Lima_ (1596), which also contains his letters. His other works are sonnets, elegies, odes in _Rimas Varias_, _Flores do Lima_ (1596), and a third small volume _Varias Rimas ao Bom Jesus_ (1594) which includes elegies and odes to the Virgin written during his captivity, a long _Historia de Santa Ursula_ in octaves, and other devotional verse of much fervour and his wonted perfection of technique. If, read in the mass, his poems produce the impression of a cloying sweetness, it must be remembered that never before had Portuguese poetry risen to so harmonious a music. Faria e Sousa accused him of plagiarizing Camões, but in the case of a writer whose accepted poems, the _dulcissima carmina Limae_, are of such excellence the accusation cannot be seriously entertained. Neither he nor Camões was a great original poet, but in both the command of the new style was such that their poems were often confused by collectors. A passage in one of Bernardez’ letters (5, l. 6) seems to imply that his poetry was not appreciated at Lisbon. It was too genuine and clear to suit the clever Court rhymesters. But he had his followers, who would send him their poems to be corrected, or rather, praised, and later Lope de Vega recognized him as his master in the eclogue in preference to Garci Lasso.