in Heraldry, a sheaf of any kind of grain.

GARCILASO DE LA VEGA was descended from a noble family of Toledo, and was born in the year 1503. According to the romances, his father, who was counsellor of state to Ferdinand and Isabella, distinguished himself in single combat with a Moor on the Vega or plain of Granada; and thus was obtained, by royal appointment, the surname which distinguished the family.

The young Garcilaso gave early evidence of poetic talent, and had written several pieces in the old Castilian style, when he formed an acquaintance with Boscan, which soon ripened into friendship. Hence he was led to entertain new views of classical poetry, and to study Virgil and Petrarch with a special view to the improvement of pastoral poetry in his native language. But, though designed by his natural tastes for a rural life, it was his lot to follow the restless profession of arms; and the wars of Charles V. removed him from the home of his fathers, and dragged him from one country to another. In the year 1529 he distinguished himself as a member of the Spanish corps which repulsed the Turks in Austria. At Vienna he undertook to promote the marriage of his nephew with one of the ladies of the court, and thus drew on himself the displeasure of the emperor, whose dignity, it appears, was in some way compromised. He was, in consequence, banished to one of the islands of the Danube, and here he composed at least one of his canciones, bewailing his unhappy lot, but at the same time celebrating the praises of the majestic river, and describing the various countries watered by its streams. We hear of him again in 1535, when he was wounded in the adventurous expedition of Charles V. against Tunis. Thence he returned into Italy, and devoted himself, as far as circumstances permitted, to the composition of pastoral poetry. Bound by his profession to scenes of war which he hated, he solaced himself by employing his leisure hours in framing delightful pictures of Arcadian life, and embodying them in harmonious verse. Yet he seems to have possessed no inconsiderable share of military talent; for we find him in the command of eleven companies of infantry at the siege of Provence, when he could not have been more than thirty-three years of age. Towards the close of this partially unsuccessful campaign, he was ordered by the emperor in person to assail a fort, the garrison of which was harassing the retreat of the Spanish army. Garcilaso executed this commission with more zeal than prudence. Determined to be the first to scale the walls, he attained his object; but was struck on the head with a stone, and thrown from the ramparts. Being mortally wounded, he was removed to Nice, where he died a few weeks afterwards.

It would be difficult to discover from the works of Garcilaso that the author had spent an active and troubled life, almost constantly in the camp or the battle-field, and that he had died in the bed of military honour, the victim of his courage. He approaches even more closely than Boscan to the tenderness of Petrarch; and it is only by occasional characteristic traits that the Spaniard is recognised. It must be confessed, however, that when such passages do occur, the exaggeration is striking enough. Among his sonnets, which are thirty-seven in number, there are several in which we remark a sweetness of language and delicacy of expression which delight the ear, together with a mixture of sadness and of love, of the fear and yet the desire of death, betraying the strongest mental agitation. The translation of one of these sonnets, though it will give but a faint idea of Garcilaso's poetry, will yet afford a correct picture of Castilian love; a passion in which the fiercest warriors assumed a languishing tone and an attitude of submission:

Si quejas y lamentos pueden tanto.

If lamentations and complaints have power To rein the rivers in their headlong course, To bow the trees as with resistless force In lonely desert, glen, or darksome bower; If chanted plaints of his far less than mine Have charmed the savage tigers to attend, Have forced the rocks of hell an ear to lend, And spell-bound Pluto stern and Proserpine; Will not the miserable life I lead Move thee to pity—soften thy hard heart, And cause my humble supplication speed? If he who loses friend or worldly pelf Raises unchild his voice beneath the smart, Oh what his claim, whose loss has been—himself!

But the reputation of Garcilaso rests chiefly on his pastoral poems, in which he has been imitated, but seldom if ever equalled by subsequent writers. The first of his eclogues, written at Naples, where he seems to have felt Garcilaso the inspiration of Virgil and Sanazzar, is by far the most beautiful, and has ever been considered as a masterpiece.

The whole composition has the metrical form of an Italian canzone, and the plan is exceedingly simple. The author describes, with all the simplicity characteristic of genuine pastoral poetry, the meeting of two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoroso, who alternately pour forth their complaints—the one mourning the infidelity, and the other the death, of his mistress. In the strains of the former passion appears raised to the highest pitch, and then lost in an affecting self-sacrifice. In those of the latter there is even greater tenderness. In retracing his recollections, the mourner draws a series of melancholy pictures which have an indescribable charm. The beauty of the poem rises with the description of the beauty of the departed shepherdess. But the finest passage, and that which is considered to be unequalled either in ancient or modern poetry, is that in which Nemoroso relates how he carries in his bosom a lock of his Eliza's hair, with which he never parts for a moment—how, when alone, he spreads it out, wets it with his tears, dries it with his sighs, and then examines and counts every single hair.

The poem, as a whole, is evidently the genuine effusion of the author's soul; and the glow of enthusiastic feeling, the happy choice of expression, and the harmony of versification to be found in almost every line of these songs of sorrow, cannot fail to gratify the admirers of elegiac poetry. There is also a purity of pastoral feeling, which appears the more remarkable, when we remember that the poet was a warrior, destined to perish in battle at no distant period.

The following are a few stanzas from this celebrated eclogue:

Salicio. Through thee the silence of the shaded glen, Through thee the horror of the lonely mountain Pleased me no less than the resort of men; The breeze, the summer wood, and lucid fountain, The purple rose, white lily of the lake, Were sweet for thy sweet sake; For thee the fragrant primrose, gorm'd with dew, Was sought when first it blew. Oh how completely was I by all this Myself deceiving! oh the different part That thouwert sitting, smiling, and with a kiss Of seeming love, the spoiler in thy heart! This my severe misfortune long ago Did the soothsaying raven, sailing by On the black storm with hoarse sinister cry, Clearly presage. In gentleness of wo, Flow forth, my tears—'tis meet that ye should flow!

How oft, when slumbering in the forest brown (Deeming it fancy's mystical deceit), Have I beheld my fate in dreams foreseen? One day methought that from the noontide heat I drove my flocks to drink of Tagus' flood, And, under curtain of its bordering wood, Take my cool siesta; but arrived, the stream, I know not by what magic, changed its track, And in new channels, by an unused way, Rolled its warpt waters back: Whilst I scorched, melting with the heat extreme, Went ever following in their flight astray The wizard waves. In gentleness of wo, Flow forth, my tears—'tis meet that ye should flow!

But though thou wilt not come for my sad sake, Leave not the landscape thou hast held so dear; Thou may'st come freely now without the fear Of meeting me, for though my heart should break, Where late forsaken, I will now forsake. Come then, if this alone detainst thee, here Are meadows full of verdure, myrtles, bays, Woodlands, and lawns, and running waters clear, Beloved in other days, To which, bedewed with many a bitter tear, I sing my last of lays. These scenes, perhaps, when I am far removed, At ease thou wilt frequent With him who rife of all I loved. Enough! my strength is spent;

And leaving thee in his desired embrace, It is not much to leave him this sweet place.

Nemoroso. As with the setting sun the shades extend, And when its circle sinks, that dark obscure Rises to shroud the world, on which attend The images that set our hair on end, Silence and shapes mysterious as the grave 'Till the broad sun sheds once more from the wave His glorious lustre, beauty, and grace; Such shapes were in the night, and such ill gloom At thy departure still tormenting fear Haunted me, and must haunt me, until death shall doom The so much wished for sun to reappear Of thine angelic face, my soul to cheer, Resurgent from the tomb.

Poor lost Eliza! Of thy locks of gold One treasured ringlet in white silk I keep For ever at my heart, and when unrolled, Fresh grief and pity o'er my spirit creep, And my insatiate eyes, for hours untold, O'er the dear pledge will like an infant weep; With sighs more warm than fire, anon I dry The tears from off it; number, one by one, The radiant hairs, and with a love-knot tie; Mine eyes, this duty done, Give over weeping, and with slight relief I taste a short forgetfulness of grief.

WIPPER.

The second eclogue contains a strange mixture of metres and styles; tercets are interchanged with rhymeless iambics, and the simple dialogue is suddenly abandoned for the dramatic. In the third, the genuine character of the pastoral is resumed, and the lyric dialogue in octaves harmonizes pleasingly with its tender description of amatory sorrow. But both are considered inferior to the first eclogue.

Garcilaso made essays in other kinds of poetry, but with less success. One of the most interesting is an elegy which was written at the foot of Mount Etna, and addressed to Boccaccio. The mythological recollections excited in the poet by that classic ground, his mournful descriptions of the miseries of war, and his tender anxieties for a beloved object in his native land, diffuse a considerable charm over this elegant poem, which is, besides, fraught with comparisons and images at once novel and truthful.

The poems of Garcilaso, when collected, form only one small volume; but these have secured him an immortal reputation, and obtained for him the highest rank among the lyric and pastoral poets of his country.