Meanwhile the Spanish lyric verse of the _cancioneros_, cultivated with much assiduity but with little genius, hardly concerns us, whether in its native form or when reshaped into sonnets and other varieties under Italian influence by “learned” poets like Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega. Of most importance is the fact that poetry of the latter kind was disfigured by Gongora, a writer of the end of the sixteenth century, into one of those styles of exaggerated preciosity which always seem to secure a temporary success by their very absurdity. The _estilo culto_, otherwise known as Gongorism, was a deliberate invention, of which the main features were the consistent avoidance of the natural word and, as far as possible, of the natural order. Such tricks were congenial to the Spanish taste, which has always been too much inclined, whether in verse or prose, to verbose and ornate expression. Gongorism is but a new species of Spanish artificiality in this respect—a national characteristic recognized and ridiculed by Shakespeare in his Don Armado. How much of the peculiar style of Lyly’s _Euphues_ may be due to Spanish as well as Italian influences cannot be determined with any preciseness. But it should always be borne in mind that, after the marriage of Henry VIII with Catharine of Aragon, the English Court was frequented by Spaniards, and that, thanks to this fact, and the general prominence of Spain in the eyes of contemporary Europe, Spanish manners, whether of person or expression, were regarded as a proper subject of emulation by gallants and _beaux esprits_. This imitation extended far into the reign of Elizabeth. Before Gongora had introduced his new varieties of expression, this circle of Englishmen had been more or less familiar with the sententious antitheses and fantastic prolixities of the prose of Guevara (of the early sixteenth century), whose _Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius_ and _Golden Letters_ combined the characteristic proverbial philosophizing, often tediously platitudinarian, of his nation with its almost equally characteristic straining after uncommonness of phrase. Indeed it would seem that Elizabethan England caught from the Spaniards a taste for apophthegmatic wisdom which reached some among even the best of its writers, including no less a person than Bacon. * * * * *