or Garcilaso, or Garcilasso de la Vega, a celebrated Spanish poet, was born at Toledo, in 1503. He was the younger son of Garcilaso, counselor of state to Ferdinand and Isabella, their ambassador at the court of Rome, and grand commander of Leon, and of Sanchette de Guzman, lady of Batres, a considerable property of the illustrious house of Guzman, where may yet be seen a fountain which has existed for several centuries, and still bears the name of Garcilaso. Ferdinand V. conferred on the father of Garcilaso the name of Vega, in memory of a single combat which the former maintained against one of the most valiant of the Moors on the Vega, or plain of Grenada; and which was celebrated in the Spanish romances and histories of that age. Garcilaso was intended by nature for a rural and solitary life, at least if a judgment may be formed from his poetical productions, which all breathe nothing but love and peace, and manifest extreme gentleness of character. But his birth having called him to the profession of arms, his life was passed in camps, and his career was brilliant and tumultuous. He entered early into the army of Charles V., followed that monarch in the war of the Milanese (1521), and, though still young, distinguished himself by his valour, particularly at the battle of Pavia. In 1523 he served in the Spanish corps, which, having joined the imperial army, distinguished itself by its bravery against the Turks. In acknowledgment of his courage, Charles V. conferred on him, at Vienna, the cross of the order of St James. Garcilaso, by his merit, established himself in the good graces of the emperor; but a gallant adventure for ever deprived him of the favour which his talents and bravery had won. One of his cousins having become enamoured of a lady of the court, who, it seems, had gained the affections of Charles, Garcilaso favoured by all means in his power the passion of his relation, whose intentions were honourable. When the fact became known to the emperor, he sent the cousin into exile, and banished Garcilaso to an island in the Danube. During his detention, which was not of long duration, the latter composed one of his Canciones, in which he deplores his misfortune, and at the same time celebrates the charms of the country watered by the divine stream of the Danube (Danubio rio divino). In 1535, he served in the expedition which Charles V. undertook against Tunis, whence he brought back nothing but wounds and glory. He then passed some time in Naples and in Sicily, where he indulged in his favourite occupation of poetry. Pouring out maledictions on war, as the bane of nations and the destroyer of human happiness, he pleased himself with creating an imaginary romantic Arcadia, free from all the passions, tumults, and anxieties which distract men in this every-day common-place world; but notwithstanding these benign and peaceful pictures painted by his fancy, he still remained the soldier, and, in addition to his acknowledged courage, evinced considerable military talents. Hence, in 1536, he marched with the imperial army into France, having under his orders thirty companies of Spanish troops. But this was the last campaign of Garcilaso, who, in the disastrous retreat from Marseilles, found a death worthy of his valour. A number of French peasants having occupied a tower, whence they greatly annoyed the imperial army on its retreat, the emperor ordered Garcilaso to carry it by assault. He obeyed, but executing his order with less prudence than valour, he mounted the first to the assault, and was overthrown by a mass of stone, which struck him on the head, and inflicted a mortal wound. He was conveyed in this state to Nice, where, after lingering twenty hours in great agony, he expired in November 1536, being then in the thirty-third year of his age. Arms and letters sincerely deplored his loss; and the emperor himself was so touched, that when the tower had been carried, he caused twenty-eight peasants who remained out of the fifty who formed its garrison to be hanged on the spot where the poet-soldier had fallen. At the age of twenty-eight Gar- Garcilaso had married an Aragonese lady, Doña Helena de Zuñiga, by whom he had a son, who, like his father, fell in the flower of his age (1569), in a combat with the Dutch.

Although the military career of Garcilaso is not without glory, yet he owes his reputation to his literary merit, more especially to the reformation he effected in Spanish poetry, and which forms an epoch in the age in which he lived. For several centuries before the birth of Garcilaso, the Spaniards possessed a species of poetry. The first known compositions were romances, produced probably in the mountains of Asturias; and the first people amongst whom a less rude and incorrect kind of poetry appeared, were the Valencians and the Catalans, who wrote in their own particular language. The last of these troubadours was Jago Roig, who died at the commencement of the fifteenth century. In the kingdoms of Leon and Aragon, where the Castilian dialect prevailed, the only poetical compositions at first known were these romances, composed of redondillas or assonantes, each verse being subjected to a measure consisting of four trochees. Much about the same time appeared the verses of the Arte Mayor, composed of twelve syllables, like the following, in which Alfonso the Wise relates that he had learned from a celebrated alchemist how to make the philosopher's stone, by means of which he had been enabled to augment his revenues:

La piedra que llaman philosophical. Sabia fazer, e mi la ensenab. Fizimos las juntos, despues solo yo. Con que muchas vezes crecio mi caudal.

In the same century, that is, about the middle of the thirteenth, a Benedictine named Barceo introduced the verses called Martelliani by the Italians, and Alexandrine by the French:

Quiero far una prosa en roman paladino. En el qual suelo el pocho hablar a su vecino.

But this metre has for a long time fallen into almost total disuse, except in Spain. In fact, it was only under the reign of John II., a great protector of letters, who swayed the sceptre from 1401 to 1454, that Spanish poetry assumed a character truly national. This prince collected around him the ablest Valencian troubadours, and the most renowned Castilian poets; and it was then that the learned Marquis of Villenas, John of Mena, the Marquis Mendoza of Santillane, John of the Encina, and others, appeared, and that versification was subjected to some rules, conformably to the precepts laid down in Arts of Poetry composed by the two authors last named. But this versification was still very rude, when Dante, Petrarch, and Sannazaro had already made themselves admired in Italy and in all Europe, by the excellence and beauty of their compositions.

At length came Boscan and Garcilaso, who, united from their earliest infancy in the closest friendship, and alike sensible of the merit of the three great Italian poets, the perusal of whose works had formed at once their taste and their understanding, resolved to effect a general reform in the bad taste which still prevailed in their own country. Boscan was the first to enter the field. He introduced the sonnet, the canzoni, the stanzas, and the endecasyllabic measure of the Italians; and his efforts were crowned with success. Garcilaso merely followed Boscan, but, on the other hand, he had the talent to surpass him, and approached more nearly to the sweetness and softness of Petrarch; whilst his rival imitated the precision and energy of Dante. All the contemporary poets united in opposing a reform the success of which would infer their condemnation; but although they evoked the shades of their illustrious predecessors, the genius of the two wise innovators triumphed over their cabals. Garcilaso and Boscan obtained the title of Fathers of the Good School; Garcilaso was named the Spanish Petrarch, the Prince of Spanish Poetry; and the desired reform was effected. It was followed by good imitators, till the apparition of Andalous Gongora, who appeared to have undertaken the task of banishing for ever good taste from his country; but, in spite of all his efforts, and those of his partisans, under the reign of Charles V., and the three Philips, his successors, Spain was fertile in good poets; and, in recent times, Iriarte, Cienfuegos, Moratin, Arellano, Quintana, and, above all, Melendez-Valdez, have enabled their countrymen to taste the delights of true poetry. Boscan, who survived Garcilaso six years, collected the works of the latter; but death surprised him before he was enabled to give them to the world. The first known edition is that of Venice, 1553, in 8vo. The celebrated grammarian Sanchez, called in Latin Sanctius, had corrected what he found defective in the oldest edition; but the most esteemed edition is that of Madrid, 1765, in 16to, containing a preface and notes, which prove the anonymous editor to have been an able and enlightened man of letters. It is not by the multitude of his works that Garcilaso has secured immortality, since they are all contained in a small volume; but this volume includes all that is necessary to serve as a model to the best poets of the Spanish nation.

The style peculiar to Garcilaso is the tender and the pathetic, which predominates, in a high degree, in all his compositions. Amongst the sonnets, which are thirty in number, may be particularly distinguished that one which commences,

O dulces prendas por mi mal halladas; and also another, not less beautiful, beginning, Si quexas y lamentos pueden tanto,

which Siamondi has translated with equal elegance and precision. But the composition which forms the glory of Garcilaso is the first of his three eclogues, which has served as a model to a crowd of imitators, who have not of course succeeded in approaching it. This poem, consisting of about four hundred verses, was written at Naples, where the author seems to have at once imbibed the spirit of Virgil and of Sannazaro. Two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoso, meet, and, by their plaintive songs, express the grief occasioned to the one by the infidelity,

Por ti silencio de la selva umbrosa, and to the other, by the death, of his shepherdess, Como al partir del sol la sombra crece.

In the first, there is a softness, a delicacy, a submission;

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1 Coleccion de Poemas Castellanos anteriores al Siglo xv. by Don Antonio Sanchez, Madrid, 1782, in 4 vols. 8vo. In this collection are contained the poem of the Cid, written towards the middle of the eleventh century; that of Alexander the Great, which belongs to the twelfth; the pieces of the archpriest of Pita, who lived at the commencement of the thirteenth; and the poems of Barceo, who died in 1268.

2 Livres de Roig, Valentia, 1735, in 4to.

3 The redondillas consist of four verses, in which there is an exact and full rhyme, as razon, corazon, called consonantes. The assonante is the echo of the final vowel, and not of the final consonant of the verse to which it corresponds, as sino, raso, claro, &c. When the romance is composed of redondillas, these change rhymes successively; but when it is composed of assonantes, a single vowel predominates throughout the whole romance.

4 These imitators, in adopting the Italian metres introduced by Boscan and Garcilaso, have nevertheless preserved their redondillas, their assonantes, and their octaves, which had been known in Spain since the fourteenth century.

5 Litterature du Midi de l'Europe, tome iii. p. 270. in the second a depth of grief; in both a purity of pastoral sentiment, which strike us the more forcibly when we recollect that the writer was a warrior destined to perish a few months afterwards in leading an assault. Each verse charms at once by the truth of an exalted but touching sentiment, by the happy choice of expression, and by a harmony which never fails to satisfy even the most delicate ear. Nevertheless, the song of Nemoroso is still more fascinating than that of his associate, perhaps, because it moves us more gently. The passage where he speaks of the buckle of his mistress's hair,

Una parte guarde de tu cabellos,

which he carries on his heart, and with which he is resolved never to part, has no model, neither among the ancients nor among the moderns. Garcilaso has also written elegies, of which one was composed at the foot of Mount Ætna; they are to be found in the same volume. Independently of the rare merit of all his compositions, which have placed the author in the first rank amongst the lyric and bucolic poets of his nation, the single elegy to which we have just referred would of itself be sufficient to ensure him immortality.

This poet must not be confounded with another person of the same name, but surnamed the Inca, a Spanish historian, born at Cuzco in 1530, who wrote, 1. Part First of Royal Commentaries, treating of the origin of the Incas, their laws, and their government, Lisbon, 1609, in folio; 2. Part Second of the Incas, or General History of Peru, Lisbon, 1617, in fol.; 3. History of Florida by the Inca, Lisbon, 1605, in 4to.