If from the exterior forms we pass to the essential qualities, it may be said that no one surpasses Herrera in force and boldness of imagination, very few in warmth and vivacity of emotion, and none even equal him, if we except Rioja, in dignity and decorum. The greater part of his poems consists of elegies, songs, and sonnets, in the taste of Petrarch. It was Petrarch who first, deviating from the manner in which the ancients painted love, gave to this passion a tone more ideal and sublime. He refined it from the weakness of the senses, converting it into a species of religion; and reduced its activity to be constantly admiring and adoring the perfections of the object beloved, to please itself with its pains and martyrdom, and to reckon its sacrifices and privations as so many other pleasures. Herrera having, throughout his life, a passion for the Countess of Gelves, gave to his love the heroism of Platonic affection; and under the titles of Light, Sun, Star, Eliodora, consecrated to her a passion fiery, tender, and constant, but accompanied by so much respect and decorum, that her modesty could not be alarmed, nor her virtue offended. In all the verses which he devoted to this lady, there is more veneration and self-denial, than hope and desire. This taste has the inconvenience of running into metaphysics nothing intelligible, into a distillation of pains, griefs, and martyrdoms, very distant from truth and nature, and which, consequently, neither interests nor affects. To this error, which may occasionally be remarked in Herrera, must be added that his diction, too much studied and refined, offends, almost always, by affectation, and not seldom by obscurity. The style and language of love must flow more easy and unencumbered, to be graceful and delicate. Thus Herrera, who, no doubt, loved with vehemence and tenderness, seems, in uttering his sentiments, to be more engaged about the manner of expressing them, than with the desire of interesting by them; and to this cause must be attributed, that, of the Spanish poets, he is the one whose love-verses are the least calculated to pass from lip to lip, and from nation to nation.