ancient house of nobles of Toledo, and was killed by being hurled from a ladder while leading a storming-party at Frèjus in 1536. Little is known of their friendship, and indeed it would seem that they cannot have seen much of one another, for Boscan spent most of his life on his estate or at Court, whereas Garcilaso, who was first a page and then soldier to Charles V., lived, in common with all who followed “the conquering banners” of the emperor, on the march or on shipboard, from the Danube to Tunis. [SN: _The natural influence of Italy._] It would unquestionably be an error to conclude from the exact manner of its beginning that there would have been no Spanish imitation of Italian models if Boscan had not met Navagiero at Granada in 1526. Garcilaso, Diego de Mendoza, Gutierre de Cetina, and others, would no doubt have begun to write pastorals, epistles, and _canzones_ “in the Italian manner” in any case. Allowing for the strength of the Italian influence of the day, the close kinship of the two languages, the frequent intercourse between the peoples, the ease with which Castilian could be run into a Tuscan mould, this was inevitable. Yet the story not only gives a curious incident in literary history, but it is characteristic of the classic poetry of Spain. Boscan we see took to playing with the foreign metres as a mere exercise of ingenuity, and as an amusement for his leisure. He implies that Garcilaso acted on the same motives as himself. With such a beginning there was an obvious danger that the Spaniards would work as mere pupils and produce only school exercises. [SN: _Prevalence of the classic school._] The ample following found by these two is itself a proof that Navagiero’s advice and Boscan’s docility were hardly necessary. It needed only an accident to provoke the literary activity of the Italianate Spaniards gathered round the emperor, in the Court of Rome, at Naples, and at home, where the “learned” men were all readers of Italian and of Latin. Greek was never much read in Spain, though a few of her scholars were good Hellenists. The ambition of the poets of the school of Boscan and Garcilaso is shown by their favourite epithet of praise--the word _docto_. The literal sense is “learned,” but educated expresses its true meaning more accurately. It did not necessarily imply much more than this, that the poet was familiar with Horace as well as with Sannazzaro and Ariosto, which, at a time when Latin was the language of education and diplomacy, and Italian was the language of society, hardly amounted to learning, in the full sense of the word. The seed fell on well-prepared soil. A quick and copious harvest sprang up, which for a time overshadowed all other forms of literary growth. The second half of the sixteenth century was the time of the learned poets of Spain. The school lasted, indeed, into the seventeenth century, but it had produced its best work before 1600. [SN: _Its aristocratic spirit._]