[1] The fullest collection of Spanish ballads is that of Duran in the _Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra_; but the best are in the _Rosa de Romances_ of Wolf and Depping, ed. 1844-1846, with notes by Don A. Alcalá Galiano. [2] For Villalobos see _Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra_, B. xxxvi. There is a modern edition of Perez de Oliva. Madrid, 1787. [3] _Origenes de la Lengua Castillana._ Mayans y Siscar. Madrid, ed. of 1873. [4] The early editions and translations of Guevara are very numerous. The passages spoken of in the text will be found in _Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra_, _Obras de Filósofos_. CHAPTER II. THE SPANISH LEARNED POETS. THE STARTING-POINT OF THE CLASSIC SCHOOL--THE NATURAL INFLUENCE OF ITALY--PREVALENCE OF THE CLASSIC SCHOOL--ITS ARISTOCRATIC SPIRIT--WHAT WAS IMITATED FROM THE ITALIANS--ITS TECHNIQUE AND MATTER--ARTIFICIALITY OF THE WORK OF THE SCHOOL--BOSCAN--GARCILASO--THEIR IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS--THE SCHOOLS OF SALAMANCA AND SEVILLE--GÓNGORA AND GÓNGORISM--THE EPICS--THE ‘ARAUCANA’--THE ‘LUSIADS.’ [SN: _The starting-point of the classic school._] Mr Ticknor has made the very just remark, that the manner of the introduction of the later Italian influence into Spanish poetry enables us to see for once in a way exactly, when and at whose instigation a literary revolution was begun. The story is told by the best possible authority, by Juan Boscan, who was one of the leaders of the movement, in the long letter to the Duchess of Soma, which is printed as a preface to the second book of the collected works of himself and his friend Garcilaso de la Vega, published at Barcelona in 1543.[5] En (to give him his native title) Juan Boscan Almogaver was a Catalan of a noble family and of good estate. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it probably fell in the last years of the fifteenth century. He died in 1540 at Perpignan, where he had gone in discharge of his duty as _ayo_, or tutor, to that formidable person the great Duke of Alva. The story has been often told, but must needs be repeated in every history of Spanish literature. Boscan, who had already written verse in the old forms of the previous century, was a cultivated gentleman who had served in Italy, and had there acquired a good knowledge of the language. This he afterwards turned to account in a translation of Castiglione’s _Courtier_, which was considered by the Spaniards as not inferior to the original, and had great popularity. In 1526 he attended the Court at Granada, and there met Andrea Navagiero the Venetian ambassador. Navagiero urged him to write “in the Italian manner.” Boscan turned the advice over in his mind during his long ride back to Barcelona, and finally decided to act on it, though not without doubts, and not until he had been encouraged by a friend. This was the far more famous Garcia Laso de la Vega, whose names, according to a not uncommon custom, were combined into Garcilaso.[6] He was born in 1503 of a very