In fact, these poems of Francisco de la Torre are the most exquisite of the fruits which the Parnassus of Spain had then produced. All of them pastorals, his images, his thoughts, and his style, detract nothing from this character, but preserve the most rigorous keeping with it. His most eminent qualities are simplicity of expression, the liveliness and tenderness of his emotions, the luxury and smiling amenity of his fancy. No Castilian poet has known how to draw from rural objects so many tender and melancholy sentiments: a turtle-dove, a hind, an oak thrown down, a fallen ivy, strike him, agitate him, and excite his tenderness and enthusiasm. The imitations of the ancients, in which his poems abound, are recast so naturally in his character and style, as to be entirely identified with him. It is a pity that to the purity of his language was not added greater study of elegance, which suffers at times from trivial words and prosaic expressions. At times, also, the diction becomes obscure from dislocations and omissions of expression, the results perhaps of negligence, and a corruption of the manuscript. Lastly, we miss in his eclogues variety, knowledge of the art of dialogue, and opposition and contrast in his situations and interlocutors: the poet who paints and feels with so much delicacy and fire when he speaks for himself, does not succeed in making others speak, and loses himself in uniform and prolix descriptions, which at last weary and grow tiresome. Hitherto poetry preserved the natural graces and simplicity which it had caught from Garcilasso; and Luis de Leon had succeeded in giving it some sublimity and grandeur: Francisco de la Torre inclined more to subjects that require a middle style, such as those which rural nature presents. He had ornaments of taste, but without ostentation or wealth, and his language was more pure and graceful than brilliant and majestic. The best supporters of this style were Francisco de Figueroa, who in his eclogue of Tirsi gave the first example of good blank verse in Spanish; Jorge de Montemayor, who, with his _Diana_, introduced the taste and love of pastoral novels; and Gil Polo, one of his imitators, who, less happy than he in invention, had much the advantage of him in versification, and almost arrived at the point of throwing him into the shade. But, passing from these writers to the Andalusians[H], the art will now be seen to take a change in taste, to assume a tone more lofty and vehement, to enrich and adorn the diction, and to manifest the intention of surprising and ravishing; in short, to aspire to the _mens divinior atque os magna soniturum_, by which Horace characterises true poetry.