literary quarrel. The Castilian critics, who were banded in support of their own man, Sanchez, fell on Herrera with some justice for his inappropriate display of scholastic pedantry, and most unjustly for ignorance of Castilian. No Castilian will ever readily allow that an Andalusian (which Herrera was) speaks the language quite correctly. Of the matter of Garcilaso’s verse it may be said that it is pastoral, or gentlemanlike, and melancholy. The Spaniard finds, no doubt, a charm in the mere language, which of itself is enough; but even to him there may be suspected to be some tedium in this obvious determination to get a stool to be melancholy on. It is not the melancholy of Jorge Manrique, who is saddened by those eternal sorrows, death of kin and friends and the burden of life, but the melancholy of a gentleman who is imitating a model to pass the time in winter quarters. But the so-called _Lira_ or ode, in lines of seven syllables mixed with hendecasyllabics, addressed “To the flower of Gnidus” is elegant. It is in stanzas of five lines, rhyming the first with the third, the second, fourth, and fifth together, and enforces the well-known lesson, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” for the instruction of a young lady at Naples who had not favoured the suit of one of the poet’s friends. [SN: _Their immediate followers._] Only a very full history of Spanish literature could afford to dwell on Ferdinand de Acuña (Ferdinand, Fernando, Fernan, and Hernan are all forms of the same name, employed according to taste or local usage), who was a Portuguese noble in the service of Charles V., a soldier of distinction, a writer of Castilian verse, and a copious translator from the classics; or Gutierre de Cetina, a soldier best known by a graceful madrigal;[10] or many others whom it would be a barren display to name; but Diego Hurtado de Mendoza is too strong a man to be passed in a crowd. He is chiefly famous as a man of action--as a soldier who governed Siena for Charles V., and a diplomatist who represented the emperor in a very military fashion at the Council of Trent. In literature he ranks chiefly as the undoubted author of a history of the revolt of the Moriscoes, and as the possible, though doubtful, author of the _Lazarillo de Tormes_. Diego de Mendoza (1503-1575) was a younger son of the Count of Tendilla, head of one of the many titled branches of his famous house--the Douglases of Spain. He was the direct descendant of the Marquess of Santillana, and through him of that Lord of Butrago who sacrificed his life for the king at the battle of Aljubarrota.[11] His poetry was the relaxation of a great noble who broke through the rules in a fashion well calculated to horrify such critics as Juan de la Cueva. But Don Diego had fire enough in him to burn up a wilderness of correct poets of that order. Sometimes it flamed out with little regard to decency. But in happier moments--as, for instance, in the ode to Cardinal Espinosa--he could strike that