GARCILA'SO DE LA VEGA, the intimate friend and associate of Boscan in the radical and successful reformation of Spanish poetry, was born at Toledo in 1500, or, according to some biographers, in 1503. His family enjoyed great consideration and military reputation; and Garcilaso himself from the age of eighteen followed Charles V. over Europe and in his expeditions to Africa till the disastrous retreat of the Imperialists from Marseille in 1536, when, being tho first to mount the breach of a tower, which he was ordered to carry by assault, ho lost his life in the attempt.
Despising the clamour raised against introducing into a brave nation the effeminate taste (as his opponents called it) of the conquered Italians, Gentlest", with equal boldness but greater skill than Boscan, substituted the modern Sapphic or Italian hendecasyllabic verse, both for the short metre of the ancient romances and redondillas, and for the heroic Alexandrine and all the verses of arte moyor. The sweet ness of many of his thirty-seven sonnets captivatea the ear, while the contrast of fear and desire, of sorrow and love, which they express, touches the sympathies of his readers. His odes are still more uni
formly excellent; and his last is much praised by Muratori, as his Flor do Guido' is by Paul Jovins and Sir William Jones. But his masterpiece is the first of his three eclogues, which has never been equalled by any of the numerous imitations of it. Garcilaso wrote it at Naples under the inspiration of Virgil's tomb, and stimulated by Sanazzaro's reputation. It is to be regretted that in this piece, as in others, his facility and copiousness of expression betrayed him into diffuseness and over-refinement. Nevertheless he is at the head of the pastoral poets of Spain, and he would perhaps have been the first of her lyric poets if he had lived longer, or if Herrera in the following century had not gained that title for himself.
Gareilaso's poems have been printed very often, and commented upon by Herrera, Sancho de las Brow's, Temaio Varga% and Azara, the elegant translator of Middleton'e Life of Cicero,' and they have been excellently translated into English by the late G. 11. Wiffeu.