The city of Toledo.
[X.]—Page 302.
Mosen Dural, a distinguished gentleman of Barcelona, and Grand-Treasurer of the city.
[XI.]—Page 305.
To the Flower of Gnido.
The title of this Ode is derived from a quarter of the city of Naples, called Il Seggio de Gnido, the favourite abode then of people of fashion, in which also the lady lived to whom the Ode was addressed. This lady, Violante San Severino, a daughter of the duke of Soma, was courted by Fabio Galeota, a friend of Garcilasso, in whose behalf the poem was written. In the original, Garcilasso plays upon the names of the parties, comparing the paleness of the lover, not to the lily, but to the white violet, and representing him as a galley slave in the boat, or, to speak more poetically, the shell in which the Queen of Beauty at her birth sailed along the ocean. If I have been guilty of preserving any trace of this idle play upon words, it is only that it has chimed in necessarily with the sense. Mention is made by Sanchez, of an elegy addressed by Fabio to Violante, beginning
Andate senza me, chara Violante?
Wilt thou then go without me, in thy wrath,
Dear Violante?
the pathos of which has led me to look for it, but without success, in various old collections of Tuscan verses.